Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi Review
One of the greatest things that can still happen in Star Wars after nearly 50 years is experimentation. Star Wars is too rich an idea not to explore them outside of traditional live-action films. With Star Wars: Visions, we got to see many studios exploring Star Wars through new lenses and angles in exciting ways from around the world. One of those stories has spun out into a full anime series with Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi. It’s strange watching lightsabers swinging around in an anime as if it’s something new, which it is, because Star Wars should have always had an anime. Lucas’ original inspiration from Akira Kurosawa and Seven Samurai sets the Jedi up to fit into anime archetypes with ease. Production I.G. delivers a fantastic dive deeper into their Star Wars universe with The Ninth Jedi, filled with flair, action, and brilliant design.
Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi is set in a distant future where the Jedi Order has faded after conflicts. The show centers on a young girl named Lah Kara who tries to rescue her captive sabersmith father and help rebuild the Jedi alongside her master and friends.
Lightsabers as a concept soar in anime. From the color definition in animation itself, it’s a weapon that lends itself to epic off-the-wall battles. When you have an aesthetic you are approaching your project with, such as The Ninth Jedi has, there is so much freedom in what a lightsaber can look like. The hilts featured in the show are beautiful and genuinely unique without ever losing the language of what a lightsaber should look like in your mind. Some lightsabers have incredible circlets around the blade that harken to the feeling of a tsuba, which is the piece between the blade and the hilt of the kitana, a guard. The series also thematically plays around with the colors of the lightsabers in a very interesting way that I will avoid due to spoilers.
With so much of the original Star Wars lifting from Kurosawa’s work, it would only make sense that those tropes he pioneered would work well in TheNinth Jedi as well. One such trope is the training of the peaceful villagers, where a skilled warrior teaches the common person to stand up for themselves. In this show and in most Star Wars stories, the Jedi are either knights or myth. This show toys with both of those ideas by having those mythical knights help common people stand up to a threat to the galaxy. We have those key Star Wars components of fascism, rebellion, and the hero’s journey on full display in Ninth Sister, which makes it incredibly well balanced between the traditional anime themes and the Star Wars flavors mixed in.
The animation from Production I.G. is stellar as usual on The Ninth Jedi. With past projects like Psycho Pass, Haikyu!!, and multiple Ghost in the Shell projects from their animation studio, I had high hopes this would look as good as the Star Wars: Visions short, and it did not disappoint. There is a masterful blend of traditional animation and backdrops mixed with newer 3D animation that allows the ships and droids to have more shape and form. I have already described how good the lightsabers are, but the animation on the combat itself is stellar as well. It’s a beautiful show from top to bottom.
Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi is a testament to the need for more Star Wars anime in the future. With familiar tropes, unique fresh designs on familiar ideas, and plenty of storytelling avenues to explore, it’s a surefire hit to explore the Galaxy Far, Far Away in new animated ways.
An 8-episode limited anime series from Lucasfilm and Production I.G, “Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi,” will premiere August 5, 2026, exclusively on Disney+ and Hulu. Part of an all-new “Star Wars: Visions Presents” banner, which will be used to tell longer-form “Star Wars: Visions” stories, the limited series picks up not long after the events of the “Visions” shorts: “The Ninth Jedi” and “The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope.” In the new series, Lah Kara continues to train in the ways of the Jedi under Margrave Juro. Kara goes on an epic journey of self-discovery as she and Juro’s small fellowship of Jedi-in-training embark on a quest to save her father. “Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi” is directed by Shunsuke Tada and written by Mitsuyasu Sakai. Kenji Kamiyama serves as supervising director. The executive producers are James Waugh, Jacqui Lopez, Josh Rimes, Justin Leach, and Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, the producers are Hitoshi Ito and Kanako Shirasaki, and the co-producer is Caroline Keller.
