Author: Charles Villanueva

5 Upcoming Indie Games To Look Out For

The weeklong Steam Next Fest, which presented a promising slate of indie games soon to be released, ended today. Being the indie game sleuth that I am, I took it upon myself to try out several demos to see which ones were worth looking out for. Here are the ones that stood from the pack.

CRYSTAL PROJECT

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It’s always a joy to see developers take a stab at classic gaming ideas and spin them into something different. Enter Crystal Project, which takes the fundamentals of an old-school Final Fantasy game and meshes it with the non-linear trappings of modern RPGs. In essence an open-world JRPG, Crystal Project gives players the freedom of exploration and without the cumbersome storytelling made famous by genre.

The current state of the game is incredibly polished and elaborate. It has all the bells and whistles of Final Fantasy classics such as a versatile job system and a turn counter for that modern QoL. Visually, the game is a treat. The combat animation is sublime and almost rivals the likes of the burgeoning 2.5D aesthetic pioneered by Octopath Traveler. The voxel Minecraft-backdrop takes traditional JRPG exploration to literally a new level by allowing players to move vertically on each 3D platform with a jump feature.

Fans looking for something traditional might be turned off by the game’s openness. According to developer Andrew Willman, the game’s story will be more of a world-building aspect than an actual plot.

Crystal Project is listed to come out on Q1 of 2022

ANNO: MUTATIONEM

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The release of Cyberpunk 2077 may have been a letdown for the cyberpunk genre but that isn’t stopping smaller devs from keeping it alive. In Anno: Mutationem, you play as Ann, a cyborg on a quest to find her missing brother that is seemingly involved in a big corporate conspiracy. In this incredible rendered 3D world, your 2D protagonist will fight waves of goons and all sorts of cybernetic creatures as you traverse through a hostile city.

While the demo doesn’t show us the full potential of what the game offers, it’s enough to pique anyone’s curiosity. The combat seems complex enough to allow players aerial combos. Exploring the unique 3D plane with a 2D character already makes the game a worthwhile experience.

No concrete release date is attached to this game though it has 2021 listed on Steam.

WYTCHWOOD

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Steam describes Wytchwood as a story-rich, crafting RPG set in a gothic landscape filled with fables and folklore. None of those descriptions are ones that would usually draw a gamer like me in but a single glance at the game’s storybook artstyle did more than convince me to check out the product page.

Wytchwood will ooze charm and vivid nostalgia to kids who grew up reading books resembling it. Yet it somehow feels all unfamiliar and fresh. Given that you’re playing a witch and have your own Black Philip, there are obviously dark occult themes that rest beneath the cutesy design. The game mechanics are quaint and simple yet also seem deep enough to keep the casual gamer occupied. As far as indie games go, this is one of the most memorable ones I’ve seen in a while.

No concrete release date is attached to this game though it has 2021 listed on Steam.

HAIKU THE ROBOT

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I arrived late to the Metroidvania party. Ori and Will of the Wisps turned me on to it but Hollow Knight showed me the genre’s true potential. So to see an upcoming game like Haiku the Robot embrace genre sensibilities akin to Hollow Knight makes it a highly-anticipated Metroidvania in my book.

The game’s presentation is absolutely stunning. The graphics, sound design, and gameplay are all tightly crafted. The pixel art style is wonderfully reminiscent of the Game Boy Advance era of sidescrollers I grew up playing. The platforming and combat feel precise and hefty which is absolutely crucial to any good Metroidvania. The little progression system we get to see is also very promising.

There’s no release date for the game currently but its Kickstarter campaign is still ongoing.

YOUNG SOULS

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The Young Souls demo had me in awe in the first 5 minutes of the game where it throws you in this suburban fantasy world where a small town is being taken over by goblins and odd monstrosities. A 2D beat-em-up game at its core with fun RPG elements as its flourishes, the player is given control of Tristan and Jenn, twins who find themselves in the middle of this crazy premise.

Hordes of goblins are sent your path as you alternate between each twin, hacking them away, parrying, dodging, and all that. Like most good beat-em-ups, the combat is surprisingly in-depth and should allow for all sorts of combos in a co-op setting. The RPG element works in harmony with the brawler elements as it opens up a new avenue of complexity in building your characters’ stats.

The only evident downside to this game is that you quickly get a sense of how subpar the writing and dialogue are. The game has a very Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic to it which is quickly undermined by characters forcibly cursing to seem edgy.

The game has Q4 2021 as its release so stay tuned as it may be real soon.

October 7, 2021
‘WHAT IF…?’ Needs To Stop Covering The Hits And Start Making Its Own

Today saw the release of the season finale of Marvel Studios’ first animated venture, What If…?. Over the course of 9 episodes, the show did its damnedest to play with the framework offered by 20+ films in the canon and the premise of an anthological format. The result is an unexpected mixed bag of stories that felt way too familiar. For a show that was supposed to explore the endless outcomes of the multiverse, we sure as hell got some glaringly familiar outcomes.

For example, Captain Carter is transported to the present-day, in time for the opening events of The Avengers, at the end of the pilot episode. It’s a deviation you’d think would massively impact the fate of the MCU; if Peggy is around to fight Loki as soon as he arrives on Earth, the world would be forever changed. Yet when we catch up to where she is in this finale, she’s somehow on the same path as Sacred Timeline Steve; headed to the Lemurian Star in a stealth suit to stop Batroc from hijacking the ship. The ripple effect should be way more monumental than the HYDRA Stomper showing up at the end.

Why is this the case when even the smallest of deviations can alter timelines in drastic ways?

To ask why from a story POV would be to tear apart the seams of Captain Carter’s timeline, which no one has time for. But to ask from the vantage of the show and all its episodes makes the answer clear: the show is more concerned with honoring the MCU’s past than it is carving its own future, for better or worse. It cares about giving audiences to point fingers at like that DiCaprio meme. A lot of the creative decisions in this show end up feeling like mandates because of how restrictive it feels. Every episode has to be about an existing movie. All the players involved must be characters in the canon. Episodes must have familiar MCU scenes.

That’s how you end up with a ludicrous subplot like using Arnim Zola, a primitive AI from the 1970s, to stop a superior technological cosmic being like Ultron. Why is that the solution in a multiverse of infinite possibilities? Why are they aping the notoriously dumb subplot of Independence Day? Why couldn’t it have been Kree or Skrull tech? Why didn’t the Watcher pluck out technology from another universe that would rival Ultron? It just had to be Zola because… reasons and to do something unfamiliar would be to go against the season’s grain.

When I took the job, one of my rules was let’s be free. We’re in the multiverse — we should be as free as can be and go and run into the wild, into the stories the movies will never do, into the stories the TV shows will never do, and show both Disney and the fans all the possibilities of these characters.

Head writer AC Bradley’s quote above feels naught given the outcome of the season. When every episode seems keen on covering the MCU’s greatest hits than making its own, it doesn’t feel exactly free. Sure, What If…? does take some interesting swings in imbuing genre tones into familiar episodes like turning Fury’s Big Week into a murder mystery or turning the first Doctor Strange movie into a tragic romance. But those tonal changes can only do so much when everything else plays out like movies fans have seen dozens of times.

It’s why the Killmonger episode feels somewhat empty. It throws in a wrench in the form of Tony Stark surviving his kidnapping but never explores it. What happens to a world without Iron Man? What would happen if Killmonger became a force for good? The show never really asks itself that. Instead, the events of Iron Man pan out in the dullest way possible. The events of Black Panther happen anyway when Killmonger ends up taking over Wakanda. It’s as if they just wanted to cover Iron Man and Black Panther in an episode to fill a quota.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that my favorite episode of the season is the Star-Lord T’Challa one. Brushing aside that it’s a poignant piece of storytelling that beautifully sends off Chadwick Boseman as T’Challa into the aether, it’s the one that riffs the least on the MCU’s past. The episode feels fresh on a lot of levels and gives us macro ripple effects such as Thanos becoming a good guy and the universe becoming infinitely a better place. Sure, it recreates the iconic GOTG Morag scene but it’s an episode that lives and breathes on its own terms.

Lucasfilm’s far superior anthology series, Star Wars: Visions, celebrates the essence of Star Wars not by redoing The Phantom Menace or The Last Jedi but by creating new tales that revered George Lucas‘ resonant vision of a galaxy far, far away. The end result is an amazing tapestry of wildly original Star Wars stories that fans are already demanding spin-off shows for. The people who made those shows respected the greatest hits of the Star Wars universe and, in turn, made their own.

The first season of What If…? isn’t a bad one but it’s one that leaves a lot to be desired. That it’s Marvel Studios’ first animated anthological outing gives it somewhat of a pass but in order for the show to become greater in future seasons, it needs to start making its own hits instead of covering others.

October 6, 2021
Charles V’s OMNIBUS #1

I’ve been a comic book reader for as long as I can remember. Given how my dad was a former collector, there’s a good chance I read through a comic before even getting my hands on a coloring book. And I’m still at it reading comics on a daily basis to this day.

I figured that, with the dozens of titles I read in a year, it might be productive to share my thoughts on them in this new series I’m trying called OMNIBUS. I read a lot of bad comics as much as I read good ones so not all the books you’ll see in this series will be recommendations. Think of this as a comic book diary.

MAGNETO

Remember that scene in X-Men: First Class where Magneto visits some Nazis chilling in a bar and gleefully murders them? That’s pretty much the selling point for this Magneto solo run.

Cullen Bunn and Gabriel Walta’s take on the Master of Magnetism is relatively simple yet so precise. A no-frills John Wick-esque revenge tale of Magneto hunting down people who have wronged mutantkind. There are elements of a forensic procedural to it as the story cuts between Magneto’s bloody road of vengeance with the S.H.I.E.L.D. officers hunting him down.

The premise gets muddled halfway when the then-event Axis ties in but Bunn still manages to stay true to the core of Magneto’s pursuit of ending bigotry against mutantkind no matter the cost. If you’re itching to see a relatively standalone arc starring one of Marvel’s greatest villains, this is the book.

GRASS KINGS

A sheriff’s wife vanishes without a trace. With no leads in sight, he places his suspicion on a community of squatters settling in a nearby unclaimed piece of land called the Grass Kingdom, with whom also the sheriff is feuding. That particular piece of land has had its own fair share of troubles, dating back to the pre-colonial days when Native American tribes inhabited the land. In the not-so-distant past, a notorious serial killer may have once lived in the Kingdom too. As the mystery of the missing wife unravels, the Grass Kingdom is forced to look into its own past and come to terms with its secrets.

Grass Kings is a part murder mystery, part character drama, and part history lesson written by Matt Kindt, one of the most underrated creators in the business, and drawn by artist Tyler Jenkins. It’s an old-fashioned tale of betrayal and grief, told through Jenkins’ beautifully rustic watercolor drawings and Kindt’s reflective writing. Its characters are a diverse lot and the Grass Kingdom itself feels lived in. It’s a surprise this hasn’t been made into a show yet because it has the makings of a great small-town drama.

SPIDER-WOMAN

Jessica Drew can’t catch a break. After remaining in comic book obscurity from the late 80s onwards, the character eventually experienced a renaissance in the 2000s when Brian Michael Bendis made her one of the lead Avengers of that era. There was one catch though: the Jessica Drew of this New Avengers era was a Skrull and had been for quite some time. This Skrull impersonating Drew was, in fact, the Skrull queen Veranke and had orchestrated a decade-long secret invasion of Earth.

That brings us to the Spider-Woman solo series by Bendis and Alex Maleev, which tackles the aftermath of the Skrull invasion from the real Jessica Drew’s perspective. The miniseries is a spy thriller that has Jessica Drew dealing with the world’s worst hangover. What do you do when you wake up missing four years of life and find out that someone took over the world in your identity? You hunt the remaining people involved in it.

The comic isn’t remarkable by any means; it starts off great but eventually goes nowhere interesting. Part of me has a hunch that the upcoming Secret Invasion show will have a similar tone to this comic. You won’t miss out on anything if you don’t ever read this.

MISTER MIRACLE

Tom King furthered his penchant for turning superhero stories into existential domestic crises with the wonderfully manic Mister Miracle miniseries for DC in 2018. In essence a companion piece to his thematic Marvel counterpart Vision, Mister Miracle is a deeply complex examination of what it’s like to be a son of Darkseid and all the craziness that comes with being a New God.

The complexities of being a son of Darkseid are examined through the homelife of Mister Miracle, as he lives his day-to-day with his loving wife Big Barda. The story’s vantage jumps from their home to Mister Miracle’s professional life as an escape artist to their duties fighting a war against Apokolips for New Genesis.

As someone who has never read a comic featuring these characters before, what blows me away is how Tom King and collaborator Mitch Gerads managed to draw me in through the banality of it all. The comic isn’t afraid of exploring the silliness of Mister Miracle calling Big Barda to talk about babysitting in the middle of a war or debating whether the Female Furies would make good party guests the same way it is bold enough to examine heavy themes of suicide and trauma.

These characters have always been intimidating to my non-DC fan self so see them in this new light is refreshing.

BLACK ROAD

You can never go wrong with a good Viking story and Black Road is exactly just that. Somewhat of a spiritual spinoff from Vertigo’s pseudo-historic epic Northlanders, Black Road chronicles the road of vengeance a Pagan warrior named Magnus the Black takes after witnessing a helpless Catholic priest get killed by his kind. Throughout his journey, Magnus reflects on the harsh realities Scandinavia is faced as the Christians forcefully take over all that he has known.

The comic is absolutely brutal in all regards. It doesn’t mince words in its criticism of Christianity as much as it doesn’t hold back with gore. But even in the face of all that darkness, the book has some really empowering things to say about faith and life.

October 3, 2021
Konami Reportedly Remaking ‘METAL GEAR SOLID 3’

No video game company has purposefully dismantled its own legacy more than Konami. A few years ago, the company got rid of collaborator Hideo Kojima, essentially ending the Metal Gear franchise as we knew it, and shelved further development on a lot of their top-tier console titles like Silent Hill in order to focus on gambling games like slot machines.

However, a new report is indicating that the company may have had a change of heart as they are allegedly remaking the seminal PS2 game, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. According to VGC:

The new project is currently in early development and multiple sources suggested it would be centred around fan-favourite entry Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, rather than the original MGS. Konami also intends to release remasters of the original Metal Gear Solid games for modern consoles, ahead of the larger project, we understand.

Remakes are all the rage these days with the arrival of the next-gen consoles. Rumors of a remake of the 1998 classic Metal Gear Solid have been circulating online for quite a while but this report indicating that a Snake Eater remake takes precedence is somewhat unexpected. Nonetheless, it should all be very lucrative for the company as these games are so sought-after.

Source: VGC

October 1, 2021
We Got an Early Look at Disney’s ‘ENCANTO’

Walt Disney Animation Studio may be on its 97th year and 60th film but there seem to be no signs of it slowing down. Its 60th outing, Encanto, comes out later this year and we at Murphy’s Multiverse got to see 30-minutes of footage from the film. What we saw wasn’t long but was enough to convince us that this movie is worth anticipating.

As the setup for the movie goes, The Madrigals are a family that’s been blessed by an Encanto, bestowing their line with powers unique to each family member. The family lives in a fantastical home and uses their abilities to keep their town prosperous. However, a mysterious dark force seems to be after the Madrigals, putting their house and powers in jeopardy. It all falls on Mirabel, the one family member without powers, to solve this sinister mystery haunting her family.

In the press junket for Encanto, co-director Charise Castro Smith talked about how each power a Madrigal family member has corresponded to family dynamics we’re all familiar with.

It’s special in a way that is a nod to family dynamics that we can all relate to. So there’s a strong, dependable child who’s the rock of the family. There’s the perfect golden child whose happiness blossoms. There’s a quiet kid who’s not so comfortable talking to people, so he talks to animals. And there’s the worrywart who can see the future, but only sees the bad things. So as we thought about that, we had a big breakthrough, because we realized that the family’s house didn’t have to be just a house, because in an Encanto the house itself could have powers too.

On the foreground of Encanto is a very Nancy Drew-esque tone that draws you in. The beats of Mirabel trying to piece together information about the family’s past and her investigations within the fantastical realms in their house evoke that of a young adult detective story, with the film’s fantastical titular subject matter serving as the background. The curious nature of Mirabel, on top of her status as the normie in the family, already makes her the quintessential underdog detective. Director Jared Bush had this to say about her:

Mirabel really carries this story. It is about her,and she goes on this journey. She’s funny and human and empathetic, deeply emotional and quirky, and I think literally unlike anything we’ve ever put on screen before. And Stephanie [Beatriz] not only nailed all of that, she brought her own personality to the character, ad libbed a ton of lines, and really elevated both this character and our movie considerably.

The Madrigal family home is a character in and of itself, in many ways serving as the crux of the family’s identity. Director Byron Howard spoke about the importance of the family’s mystical place of refuge not only as a storytelling device but also as a thematic anchor.

So we played with the idea of the physical as a literal representation of the family and their emotional connections. If the family’s happy, the house is healthy. If the family’s being playful, the house may be playful. But if the family is going through struggles, the house cracks Byron Howard

To respectfully remain true and genuine towards the cultural material they’re adapting, the Columbian Cultural Trust was formed. Composed of experts in Columbian music, anthropology, culture, architecture, and botany, this group was crucial in the development of Encanto. According to Jared Bush:

They’ve been part of the film, literally since the beginning, probably even before the beginning, reviewing early scripts, participating in every screening, and meeting with us weekly. That’s a lot of meetings to help ensure that the creation design look and feel of our world is on point. We are enormously indebted to them and all of the experts who formed our Columbian Cultural Trust.

Walt Disney Animation president Clark Spencer praised the work of directors Jared Bush and Byron Howard, who helmed the hit Zootopia a few years back, and their newfound collaborative partner Charise Castro Smith during the junket, saying:

One of the things I love so much, Byron and Jared, and then when Charise joined, was this creative world that the audience is going to fall in love with. And we had so many of those components. During my nearly 20 years of producing, I never had the chance to produce a Disney musical. So when the opportunity presented itself to work with Byron Howard, Jared Bush, and Lin-Manuel Miranda on Encanto, I jumped at the chance. And while it might seem crazy to run a studio and to continue to produce a film at the same time, I just couldn’t step away from a project I loved so deeply.

September 29, 2021
Jason Momoa Teases Higher Stakes for ‘AQUAMAN’ Sequel

It’s been quite some time since we last saw Arthur Curry square off against his brother, Ocean Master, in a battle for the Four Kingdoms and the safety of the surface world. With stakes as high as that, it’s hard to imagine how the sequel, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, may top such a premise. But according to Jason Momoa himself, the stakes are indeed a lot higher in the sequel.

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It won’t be long until we get an idea of what the stakes of this film will be since DC Fandome 2021 is less than a month away. Production for the film has been underway since June and just a few weeks ago, Aquaman’s new updated suits were revealed. By the time DC Fandome comes, they’ll likely have some sort of sizzle reel to debut.

September 25, 2021
Dan Stevens Seemingly Playing Kro in ‘ETERNALS’

Eternals features a lot of borderline obscure characters but easily the most obscure of the entire ensemble is the Deviant big bad Kro. So to hear Legion star Dan Stevens casually namedrop the character in an interview seems oddly peculiar. Stevens was spotted two years ago hanging out with the Eternals cast in London, prompting fan speculation then. In an interview with Collider, Stevens had this to say about the speculation.

Kro comment [laughs]. Even if I could say anything, I wouldn’t be able to and would have to kill you on Zoom. Is that cryptic enough?

So unless Stevens just happens to be a real diehard comic book reader that knows the deep cuts, this is a solid indication that he’s playing Kro. The performer playing the CGI character has been noticeably omitted from any of the marketing materials. Having an actor as amazing as Stevens behind the character is assuring, to say the least. It’ll be interesting to find out if he did the motion capture in addition to the voice.

Source: Collider via Twitter

September 24, 2021
EXCLUSIVE: Lucasfilm Interested In More Non-Canon ‘STAR WARS’ Content

Canon can be intimidating at times and a 40-year old franchise like Star Wars definitely fits that bill. With dozens of canonical comics published a year, multiple shows, and games within the canon in production, it’s no wonder the non-canon Star Wars: Visions feels like a nice reprieve.

I spoke with Lucasfilm VP for Franchise Story James Waugh on whether the company has an interest in producing more non-canon content like Visions to which he said:

It’s something we are interested in. The reason we approached Visions as it was is we wanted to empower specific creators within their process and medium. So much of the stuff you see in Visions… the specificity of anime as a medium justifies a lot of the storytelling. So do I think we could do more none-timeline storytelling? I think under the Visions framework, absolutely. There is a certain joy in having celebratory content that is removed from the gravitas of the canon. We’ll have to see what the fandom wants.

Judging from the critical and fan response, the verdict for Star Wars: Visions overall has been immensely positive. One of the best things about the show is its accessibility. You need only to have seen A New Hope to get the gist of what the show is all about. Here’s to hoping we get more shows like it.

September 23, 2021
EXCLUSIVE: How A Rock Opera Ended Up On ‘STAR WARS: VISIONS’

Star Wars: Visions is a celebration of all the Star Wars stories that came before. The season showcases a tapestry of diversified Star Wars stories from the best anime studios in Japan. To promote the show’s release, I got to speak with producers James Waugh and Kanako Shirasaki on what it was like to produce such an incredible project.

Shirasaki shed some light on the studio selection process and how they landed on the six animation studios.

We wanted to showcase different Japanese anime styles. So we went to different studios with different histories and backgrounds to show the diversity of anime. We reached out and asked them to submit a pitch. I think they sent a brief idea of their episode. Some studios sent multiple ideas.

According to Lucasfilm VP of Franchise Content, James Waugh, the pitches the team got had some unexpected ideas including the episode Tattooine Rhapsody, which is the season’s most unique story yet.

We had always knew we wanted a diverse array of creators. We really worked hard on cracking Visons’ framework to allow for fun celebratory swings and unexpected things you can only get from the anime medium. We saw The Duel first and thought, “This is unbelievably beautiful.” I ended up seeing Tattooine Rhapsody and went, “Whoa. We’re doing a rock opera now?” As that slowly went into script, that turned into a wonderful story.

I asked Waugh how Tattooine Rhapsody came to be given how it felt the most connected to the Star Wars we’re all familiar with yet also felt unlike anything we’ve seen from this world. No one ever imagined Jabba the Hutt and Boba Fett in a rock opera yet this episode gives us just that.

It was really their pitch. We help ground it in Star Wars because their storytelling was so appropriate for that point in the timeline and was dealing with things that were established. We knew we could ground it in known fiction because their characters were so well rendered and fresh.

One of the more striking details of Tattooine Rhapsody are the wildly different character designs. Shirasaki revealed that the studio was anxious when they got first got a look at the episode.

The initial pitch of the character design was different from what you normally see in Star Wars and that made us skeptical. But it turned out great. I think the Star Wars story about rebels fit in with the punk rock attitude of the episode.

September 22, 2021
REVIEW: ‘STAR WARS: VISIONS’ Feels Like A Homecoming For The Franchise

It’s exciting to see Star Wars find new life in interesting ways, 40+ years into its existence. The franchise first found new life in books when the Original Trilogy first ended and then found its way into animated shows once George Lucas did the Prequel Trilogy. Disney upped the ante by canonizing a new line of comic books, video games, and animated shows to coincide with the Sequel Trilogy. With the sequel trilogy over, the franchise now finds new life in an anthology series called Star Wars: Visions.

The idea behind Star Wars: Visions is simple: have the best animation studios in Japan create whatever stories they want in the Star Wars sandbox. Spread out over 9 tightly crafted episodes, the result is a stunning reimagining of what Star Wars fundamentally could be if divorced from complicated continuity and restrictive lore. This might be the most autonomous Star Wars has been since the Legends Novels.

Visually, the Japanese studios went all out. Each episode boasts its own distinct art style ranging from monochromatic Kurosawa compositions to Osamu Tezuka-inspired Astroboy aesthetics. The series is sprinkled with charming anachronisms: lightsabers resemble katanas, Stormtroopers look like Edo-period warriors, Jedis wear tengais, and settlements don’t look like they’re in a galaxy far, far away. The design liberties they take look jarring at a glance but the way everything comes together makes it a feature, not a bug.

The lightsabers fights are absolutely stunning. They’re executed with the precision and excess that animes have become synonymous with, giving battles a true sense of scale, weight, and personality. There’s never a dull fight in Visions. Every lightsaber swing feels thunderous. Even the goofier designs like the umbrella lightsaber manage to look graceful thanks to how the fights are composed.

Contrasting exuberant aesthetics, Star Wars: Visions breaks down a lot of grand Star Wars concepts into the fundamental ideas that inspired George Lucas in the first place, in particular, the Japanese feudal myths. A chunk of the season depicts Jedis as wandering ronins, looking for their next momentary calling, harkening back to the jidaigeki roots of Star Wars. And then you have the more classic Star Wars motifs such as warring families and the Campbellian monomyths that are also explored throughout the season.

These episodes are simple in nature but speak volumes through the spaces it allows its ideas to breathe. Plots aren’t complex nor are there dozens of characters. Every story is confined to its own 15-20 minute space but the thematic scope that gets explored is vast and profound.

Siblings and families tethered together by the Force is an idea that is famously explored in the Skywalker Saga. Anakin, Luke, Leia, Kylo Ren, and by proxy, Rey, all figure into this lineage of fate and tragedy that served as the franchise’s core pathos. Star Wars: Visions harnesses that idea and synthesizes it in ways that the films did not. The episode aptly titled The Twins pits two sibling Sith Lords against one another in an over-the-top lightsaber battle in space, an idea remotely reminiscent of the Solo twins in Legends lore. Lop and Ocho is a tale of two sisters who are forced into choosing sides when the Empire takes over their city; both fighting for their city’s protection.

The true star of the season might be the second episode titled Tattooine Rhapsody. As evidenced by its namesake, Tattoine Rhapsody’s story has an emphasis on music. It’s about rock musicians on the run from bounty hunters, a premise that already stands out in a series that has an emphasis on the feudal inspirations of Star Wars. Tattooine Rhapsody feels the most contemporary of all the episodes yet is the most unique. There’s a surprising weight to the episode as its themes deal with friendship and purpose in a really fun way. The J-rock music sequences add a charm to it as well.

My favorite episodes of the season happen to explore the archetypal commoner-turns-hero myth that made Luke Skywalker’s story so iconic. Visions takes that soaring feeling of watching the Twin Suns set in Tattooine as the hero faces uncertainty, and gives it new life. Whether it’s a droid fending for his home or a humble daughter of a sabersmith forced to vanquish an evil force, these stories are the ones that resonate the most.

Japanese culture has long influenced this grand world and to have Japanese visionaries take a stab at it feels like a homecoming in many ways. That Star Wars can be at its best by having simple stories that celebrate its essence is proof of its lasting legacy. Give me more of Star Wars: Visions.

September 21, 2021