Last week we looked at some of the studios and styles of the first two episodes of Star Wars: Visions. This week, shocker, we’re doing something similar! We’re going to take a look at episodes 3 and 4, titled THE TWINS and The Village Bride respectively.
Episode 3: THE TWINS
THE TWINS follows a pair of twins, Am and Karre, born from the Dark Side. They have a massive and powerful kyber crystal as a power source for their Gemini Class Star Destroyer, which they plan to use to bring order to the galaxy and eliminate any disruptive star systems. There is a betrayal afoot and a duel breaks out!
The studio taking the lead on THE TWINS is Trigger, Inc. Anime fans may recognize Trigger, Inc. as the studio behind such popular anime as Kill la Kill and Darling in the Franxx. The animation style is very reminiscent of Kill la Kill. It has innovative weaponry, high paced action, amazing dialogue, and some pretty solid story telling. This holds especially true considering it only holds a 17 minute runtime. The music in this episode is the first that held very true to the Star Wars style instead of going in a different direction. This gives it more of a canon feel as your watching it. There are a few references to old Star Wars lines that any fans of the series will recognize, whether hardcore or casual. An interesting lightsaber design within this episode is Am’s four whip like blades that come from her armor. Very interesting look, but the lightsaber Karre ends up wielding has it’s own interesting look!
For what it’s worth, this episode was a very close 2nd for me behind The Duel. I think if there was an episode that could be expanded on and made into at least a limited series, this one is it!
Episode 4: The Village Bride
The Village Bride is a very complex episode for its 18 minute runtime, but bear with me here. It follows two vastly different styles of Force users. One of these types of users is the traditional Force user from the Star Wars Universe, while the other type is more of an “in tune with the planet and nature” type of Force user. The prior lands on a planet while on the run from the Empire and stumble upon local natives that are the latter, yet they refer to the Force as “Magina.” The two stories do intertwine rather quickly and it makes for an awesome tale of two sides of the same coin.
The studio that brought us The Village Bride is Kinema Citrus Co. They are most notably the studio behind The Rising of The Shield Hero. The animation style is rather smooth and not to dissimilar to what is considered the “standard” art style in anime. It had a bit of a Sakura Quest kind of look to it in my personal opinion. The music style sound design was very natural in a sense that it felt like it immersed you in the nature aspects of the episode. One thing that I’ve really been enjoying about all of these episodes, this one included, are the interesting lightsaber designs. The Jedi, simply known as F, in this episode wields a yellow katana style blade.
I certainly enjoyed these two episodes and would really love to see a deeper dive into the story line of THE TWINS and see maybe a limited run series on it. Next week I’ll be taking a look at episodes 5 and 6!
