YMMV / Ani

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Jar-Jar's first scene shows him broke, drunk, addicted to drugs, and trying to hang himself. After recovering a bit with Ani's help, Jar-Jar's story ends with him getting shot by Obi-Wan and dying a slow death. By the end, you practically can't hate him anymore.
• Broken Base: Some people didn't like how the cast didn't sing, while others appreciated the background music.
• Creator's Favorite Episode:
  • Surprisingly, Joey Richter stood up for this show over the one he was in that season (The Trail to Oregon!), saying the soundtrack from this show is his favorite of all the Starkid catalog and the one he keeps in his car.
  • Nick Lang has likewise said that of all the acting roles he's done, Obi-Wan in this show is his favorite, although he seems to share a lot of fans' criticisms regarding why this show underwhelmed the audience.
• Discredited Meme: One complaint about why this show failed to land with fans is that a lot of the Star Wars jokes in the script were extremely tired when this show came out (in 2014, nine years after Revenge of the Sith). RedLetterMedia had already released what was considered the definitive takedown of the prequel trilogy in 2009 — the same year as A Very Potter Musical! — and at this point making fun of the prequels was seen as a bit of a lazy Dead Horse Trope. It's notable that, by contrast, both Twisted and The Trail to Oregon! were making fun of very old media — a movie from 1992 and a game from 1985 — and those parodies came off as parodying the audience's childhood nostalgia more than the properties themselves, something Ani didn't really benefit from to nearly the same degree.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The take on Jar-Jar Binks as being completely broken by his status as The Scrappy to the point of attempting suicide was already pretty harsh, but it became even worse following Jar-Jar's actor Ahmed Best's confession that the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the character (and, by extension, to him) had sent him into a depression which caused him to seriously consider suicide.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • This is not the first Star Wars parody where Obi-Wan is an alcoholic and Darth Vader compares the Death Star with a boob.
  • People surprised that Grand Moff Tarkin, of all people, is reinvented as a romantic heartthrob thanks to Joe Walker playing him might be interested to read Darksaber by Kevin J. Anderson, which features a young Natasi Daala waxing poetic about her passionate affair with Tarkin.
  • In contrast to the above point about Jar-Jar, the fact that one of his lines specifically mentions people saying he ruined the whole Star Wars universe, coupled with Ani's Affectionate Nickname for him being JJ, ended up being rather Hilarious in Hindsight now that many Star Wars fans feel that a different JJ ruined the franchise.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Jar-Jar Binks. For bonus points, they didn't even have to change his personality, just display how painful being The Scrappy can be, turning him into a complete Tear Jerker of a character.
• So Okay, It's Average:
  • It seems to be the consensus that while Ani is funny and has likable characters, it isn't as good as the previous musicals for various reasons (songs being sung by the band instead of the cast, bland set design, melancholy tone, and a fairly by-the-numbers story being the main complaints).
  • It was also overshadowed by the much better-received The Trail to Oregon!.
  • Arguably an Audience-Alienating Premise, since the whole point is it centers on The Phantom Menace as Anakin's Glory Days and takes place before any fan-favorite Star Wars characters like Luke, Leia and Han Solo enter the story.
  • Magnum Opus Dissonance: Many Starkid fans were disappointed because they expected Starkid's take on Star Wars fandom to finish up the series of their very well-received pop culture parody takes on Harry Potter DC Comics, and Disney (as predicted by the Patronus scene in A Very Potter Sequel). It surprised everyone when it was the parody of Oregon Trail that became the big Sleeper Hit of the 2014 Starkid season.
• Tear Jerker: The death of Jar-Jar Binks.