Another Star Wars series debuts on Disney Plus. The turnover of new series seems to have slowed considerably in the past few years, hopefully favouring quality over quantity.
Spinning out of the “Star Wars : Visions” series, The 9th Jedi is a move into an anime style for Star Wars, appealing to the overlap in two otherwise different venn diagram sets.
This is a tale about a Jedi, Kara who is looking to recruit other Jedi to fight against a repressive warlord Nawaam, and his Sith sidekick Gennoh.
The first episode seemed to have a few echoes of Phantom Menace (but not the bad ones). The anime style brings a needed fresh perspective. The animation is good, though if there were one criticism, the ships look like they were drawn using a late 20th Century Computer aided design package and look incongruous. I also read a recommendation that it should be watched with Japanese dialogue with English subtitles, on which I concur. English dubbing of anime never sounds quite right.
Episode 1 is promising, the producers are sensible in distancing it from the whole Skywalker thread, the SW universe has a long history to explore, why concentrate on Luke’s family? If I had a criticism it feels like an anime with a Star Wars slant rather than a Star Wars story through an anime lens. I’m going to stick with it, because I’ve started it now and I have to finish it, and though the first episode wasn’t particularly compelling there is enough there to make me curious.
If nothing else, it should be lauded for its fresh perspective and bringing some variety to the SW Universe. It won’t be for everyone, but we all know that Star Wars fans are an open minded and reasonable bunch, and it’s not as disappointing as the “Mandolorian and Grogu”.
Speaking of “M&G”, it’s been reported by Lucasfilm / Disney that despite it being a flop at the box office, the success of the merchandising cushioned the impact.
https://variety.com/2026/film/news/disney-ceo-moana-mandalorian-grogu-box-office-flops-1236828236/
It was Star Wars that first really exploited merchandising in such a big way, George Lucas sold the pay cut for directing in return for the merchandising rights to Kenner for what would now be considered a peppercorn fee. Kenner made millions.
In some instances, like with a lot of deals these days a film is just a way of hawking new merchandise, the film can flop, but the toys and collectables can keep it all rolling in. As much as it’s good to have cool merchandise (though there is an argument for it diluting the property, and some merchandise is basically just landfill – nothing sold by TGC obvs). Sometimes, a film or TV series is just an expensive advert for the licensees of the IP.
But who doesn’t want cool stuff? And surely if the source material is high quality, then fans are more likely to go crazier over the merch’
Check out the Star Wars merch’ on the TGC website.
and Star Wars games on The Game Collection website.
header image by Disney+ - https://dam.gettyimages.com/thewaltdisneystudios/allaccess/#!asset/g446jq6m7qksjkm9qfgcj, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83608054
