Let’s Talk Visions

Regular readers will know that I’m usually petty quick on the draw putting up a review/breakdown of new Star Wars trailers. And yet it’s been a few days since the new trailer was released for Visions, and this is my first mention. And there’s a reason for that: I’m just not sure where I stand with it.

Anime is so far outside my knowledge base, I would have no idea where to start talking about this. To give you an idea, the only real animation I have properly watched (not counting catching the odd episode of The Simpsons or Family Guy when there is nothing else on TV) have been the 4 canon Star Wars series, the new What If…? MCU series and the Harley Quinn series, and none of these are even going to be anything like Visions, which is utilising famous anime studios. While I can appreciate the quality of the work, I can’t really talk much about it as I wouldn’t know where to start.

Almost tying into this, as someone not used to anime, I hadn’t even considered that the show would not be in English, as all the rest of Star Wars content is. But as we saw with the 2 trailers released, the series will be available with the original audio and English subtitles, or with an English dub. So what the hell do I watch? The English dub has a stellar voice cast, but as hard as they try, it will never quite match up with the visuals (or so I would imagine, coming back to my lack of anime experience) and while I am happy to watch the subtitle version, I can’t help but wonder if my lack of experience having to use subtitles will cause me to miss out on some of the action and animation quality as I am focusing on the subtitles, so while I can get this from the dubbed version, I can never quite get the full experience.

But it’s not just the issue if my inexperience with anime, it’s also the fact that these stories have been confirmed to be non-canon. Is canon the be-all and end-all? No, but this is a site that first and foremost focuses on the canonical story that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. There’s only so much information I can hold onto in my mind, so to me the canon story has to take priority. In line with this as well, the lack of canonicity and the anime roots means that it looks like we will have some featsthat are completely unbelievable, similar to Mace Windu being a one-man army in Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars or the overpowered nature of Starkiller in The Force Unleashed and that creates a disconnect in my mind that hurts my viewing experience, similar to how all the way through The Bad Batch‘s Order 66 sequence I couldn’t help think of the comic that had been out for years that was being overwritten.

Will I watch the series? Yes. Am I excited to see it? Yes. Is it something I will enjoy? Potentially. Will I go back and re-watch it? Perhaps. I’m reserving judgement for when I can sit down and watch the series.

As for whether I cover the series on here, I’m not going to promise anything. But if I do cover it, it is more likely going to be one article giving my quick thoughts on each story rather than a review of each story like I usually do with a series.

Thanks for reading!

May the Force be with you….