Lucasfilm Calls THE NINTH JEDI a “Spectacular” New Chapter for STAR WARS Anime
Star Wars has had some fun with anime for a while now, and it’s about to take a major step forward. After three well-received seasons of the Star Wars: Visions anthology, Lucasfilm is finally expanding one of those shorts into a full anime series.
The project is Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi, and according to one of the key executives behind it, the series is shaping up to be something special.
Anime and Star Wars have proven to be a great match. Star Wars: Visions let top anime studios reimagine the galaxy far, far away through short-form storytelling, and fans quickly gravitated toward “The Ninth Jedi” as one of the standout entries. That short hinted at a much larger story, and Lucasfilm clearly saw the same potential.
Josh Rimes, executive producer of Star Wars: Visions and vice president of animation development and production at Lucasfilm, spoke with Polygon last year about why expanding The Ninth Jedi into a full series made sense. With more room to tell the story, Lucasfilm also took on a deeper creative role than it did with the anthology shorts.
“As the Visions anthologies sprung to life, we began thinking about how to expand the storytelling medium of Visions beyond shorts,” Rimes said. “It’s really a testament to the shorts and their storytellers that so many gave us such lived in worlds and such vivid and exciting characters and adventures.”
For Lucasfilm, The Ninth Jedi stood out because it already felt like the opening chapter of something much bigger. The short introduced Kara, a young Force-sensitive on a dangerous path tied to the future of the Jedi, and ended on a note that practically begged for continuation.
“The world of The Ninth Jedi always felt so epic-scaled and the ending to the first short promised a grand journey to come, so discussions with director Kenji Kamiyama and the team at Production I.G naturally evolved,” Rimes explained.
“We were just excited to hear their enthusiasm about Kara’s journey to find her father and her quest to restore the Jedi Order and how those two missions might dovetail or even come into conflict.”
Kenji Kamiyama returns to direct and supervise scripts for the new limited series, continuing his work from the previous Star Wars: Visions shorts. Animation duties are once again handled by Production I.G, a studio with a long history of high-quality anime storytelling.
The series is set after the events of the original shorts and will build directly on the foundation they established.
Unlike the anthology format, this project represents Lucasfilm’s first full anime series, and that shift has made it a much larger production.
“It was such a big endeavor — the first full on anime Star Wars series, so we would support the team from early pitch stages through designs and production as the story was built out,” Rimes said. “It truly is coming together in spectacular fashion and we can’t wait for the world to experience it next year.”
At the moment, there’s no exact release date locked in, but Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi is expected to arrive sometime this year. The idea of a fully realized Star Wars anime series expanding one of Visions’ most compelling stories is more than enough to get fans excited.
If this is the direction Star Wars animation is heading, the future looks pretty awesome.
