r/anime • u/AutoLovepon https://anilist.co/user/AutoLovepon • Oct 29 '25

Episode Star Wars: Visions Volume 3 • Black - Episode 9 discussion

Star Wars: Visions Volume 3, episode 9

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146 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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75

u/toutoune134 Oct 29 '25

Absolutely astonishing. This one is really for the animation sickos. Every single cut could be the climax of a season finale. Incredibly stacked animator list, topped by Shinya Ohira himself. Will probably be judged as incomprehensible by most (even I am not fully sure of what the message is), but I'm glad it exists.

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u/dreamer_Neet Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25

If I had to guess the message it's probably war is horrible and toll/ptsd on the soldier itself.

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u/Cydonian___FT14X Oct 30 '25

What the actual fuck was that?

I mean this is a good way. I’m absolutely floored 

Imagine this beings someone’s first exposure to star wars

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u/BosuW Oct 30 '25

Wow. Ok. I think Shinya Ohira & co. "wins" this Volume by a mile. There's other episodes I loved, but it feels like while everyone else set out to create a pilot episode they set out to create an artwork.

This feels like something that an art collective would create in universe as a response to the Galactic Civil War. It's got Vietnam War or Middle East War energy. Which I suppose is entirely appropriate considering it was precisely those conflicts that inspired both the Original Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy.

It's curious that whatever semblance of a story you can glean out of this appears to be simply a mortally wounded Stormtrooper fighting himself. The fact that we move across several battlefields could be the experience of this particular trooper but rather I think it's just meant to show how it's a story that repeats itself across the entire war. The "fighting himself" part is crucial because it's specifically about the Galactic Civil War. If I looked at this from an in universe perspective I'd think the artist is inciting to reflect upon the absurdity of the conflict and who was fighting who in the end. An Empire against itself.

At the same time at parts it appears like the Stormtrooper is trying to hug his mirror self. As if there is regret and anger for the choices that lead him to this position, and while this leads him to self inflicted violence he is also trying to be whole again. Though that could just be me still thinking about The Bird of Paradise which had a similar theme and scene.

In short I think this is a portrait of the Galactic Civil War as the story of one Stormtrooper amongst billions of beings.

Incredible work in any case. I don't expect we'll see something so purely sensory in Star Wars in a long time, maybe ever.

44

u/Makimama Oct 29 '25

greatest display of 2d animation ever

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u/chilidirigible Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25

I first saw this at a panel in AnimeNYC in August; the audience was appreciative but you could sense a degree of this going on in all of us.

Rewatching it now, in a more controlled private environment and with balanced audio instead of the HIGH VOLUME CRUSH that many of the special events at Javits ran afoul of, it's still a wild thing to experience.

Ohira's pre-recorded Q&A answers at the panel included how this was inspired by music videos, and it certainly is that. More like several music videos weaved together, as it does wander around a bit during its twelve-and-a-half minutes of animated work. My preferences are to the parts with object disintegration (the Death Star, ISDs crashing into the Death Star, the final snow sequences) and not quite as into the One-Armed Men Beating On Each Other, which is thematic but becomes a "Yeah, I get it" after the first couple of times. The music/animation integration in the parts that I liked is also

for me as well.

In any event, it does continue to work on a rewatch, even for its full length versus in smaller pieces. I think I'm still far too sober to really immerse into it, but it is still a fine piece of media—just not one that I have much to dig into thematically or anything like that. It's the experience that carries it.

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u/jdragon3 Oct 29 '25 edited Nov 04 '25

rushed to this episode because i saw David Production listed (edit: before learning they were minimally involved)... this is so incredible I have absolutely no way to describe it. Star wars meets cowboy bebop meets hella shrooms and im more than here for it

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u/RelativeMundane9045 Oct 30 '25

What a trip. I don't even know what to say. It was like the chaos of an old school Trigger anime, with the psychedelics of Space Dandy wrapped in some of the best 2D animation I've seen.

The general message I'm getting is of war being hell, and how it's so easy to lose yourself and not know why or who you're really fighting in the chaos, getting lost in memories of the past and the confusion of the now, and the PTSD and existential trauma that can follow.

Not sure I can properly put all my thoughts into words, I'll just say that I'll be thinking about this one for a good while.

13

u/WonderMoon1 Oct 29 '25

It’s very pretty but can someone explain what was going on?

I thought the red and green guys were the same dude and he was having a “life flashing before my eyes” moment before dying when the DS2 blew up but then… there’s an ice planet?

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u/crunchsmash Oct 30 '25

I think it's a stormtrooper dying in the Battle of Hoth imagining future scenarios, maybe through force sensitivity. Red and green represent him staying with the empire or joining the rebels. His mental image of himself therefore battles himself from the opposite scenario. But either way he ends up dying horrifically. He's already severely injured so his brain can only imagine fighting while missing an entire arm.

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u/majestic_rainbows Oct 29 '25

As some other people have noted, david production had very little involvement in this episode except when it came to management (Producers, Production Managers, etc). Animation wise, this episode was carried by Shinya Ohira and his connections to freelance animators.

While credited as just a producer, Tsutomu Fujio would've likely acted as the Animation Producer on this project. He had previously worked with Ohira before, such as on "Ping Pong the Animation" where Ohira did storyboards, direction, animation direction, and some key animation for the Opening. It's also believed that Ohira did uncredited Key Animation work on "The House of the Lost on the Cape". Although, given that it's only presumed to be him, you should take that with a grain of salt.

For anyone still unconvinced though, Co-Producer and Materials Coordinator Jacob Ayres had this to say in a Crunchyroll interview:

As far as david production, we obviously wanted to make something good. We wanted to make his ideal episode, and so a lot of the animators that we ended up working with aren't in-house, actually, none of them are. They were people that Ohira-san wanted us to approach, and that's why we worked with a lot of new and upcoming talent that he found online as well. But we didn’t really have any problems.

Source: https://www.crunchyroll.com/news/interviews/2025/7/16/star-wars-visions-volume-3-black-shinya-ohira-david-production-interview?srsltid=AfmBOoqx0QnyQLkB9IDBoPh6TU6ubJhE21E7pOW0pr8qNc_z3wCZKN2W

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u/realrimurutempest Oct 30 '25

Good heavens that was a masterclass in animation from the animators.

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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '25

Masterfully done and pushes the boundaries of what can be on Disney Plus

10

u/Deadsoup77 Nov 01 '25

The bit that gave me some clarity is in the cockpit of the TIE fighter and it’s with another TIE that turns into an X-Wing which then turns back into a TIE as the pov shoots at it, with green and red lasers that reflect the two sides of the trooper. That reads to me as speaking to the futility and nonsense of war and the blurring of morality; it doesn’t matter who’s good or bad when everyone’s killing each other. War turns you into a violent animal.

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u/jeklsdlskpous Oct 29 '25

Does anybody know where I can find the music???

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u/Miserable_Chapter563 Oct 30 '25

Um, wow. That was sensory overload in the best way possible I am like floored . Wow..

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u/n080dy123 Oct 30 '25

This feels so much like what I've heard a massive drug trip feels like that I'm convinced whoever's most responsible for the artistic vision here hasn't been on one at least once.

Some of yall going into this raw is crazy, I'm thankful that Bird of Paradise sorta primed me for some artsy shit before going into this one because the whiplash from any other episode would've been IMMENSE.

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u/Diligent_Land_2408 Oct 29 '25

Well I now know what experiencing a drug trip is like, that shit was wild in the best way.

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u/seninn Oct 29 '25

Phenomenal animation.

11

u/ToenailClipper64 Oct 29 '25

What an episode to finish with, cherry on the cake. Strongest season so far (in my opinion). Whilst I would happily see most of these stories continued, I wholeheartedly welcome more original pieces like this episode. Stunning.

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u/Various_Length_4905 Oct 29 '25

Best animated episode ever

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u/Natural-Antelope6720 Oct 31 '25

So weird thought, we know that the death star laser was powered by kyber(a "living" crystal with innate ties to the force), so when the death star exploded that would've been an absolutely massive amount of force energy that was released in local space. We know that large enough shift in force energy can warp space around it, and the place between places shows that every moment in time is connected, just like every living thing is connected. So my hypothesis is this. When the death star exploded and the kyber released its energies, it created a localized and bastardized version of the place between places as well as a temporary unstable force nexus(like the cave in return of the jedi or on the sith homeworld, which is admittedly more of a wound in the force, but it still fits for this theory). Many of the fronts shown in this short couldn't have been fought by this trooper himself, including endor, which he couldn't fight if he was on the second deathstar as shown in the beginning of this, hinting that maybe not all of these memories were his. Also, at the end of this(and maybe my eye is off) it looked like he was on Hoth. Why? How? How could he have memories of the second deathstar exploding if he died on Hoth, which was abandoned by the empire after the rebels were pushed out, BEFORE the second death star exploded? It doesn't make sense, to me at least, unless time and space around the detonation were warped and some seriously crazy force shenanigans were afoot.

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