General Star Wars Animated Series

Watched premiere of Young Jedi Adventures.

Great start

Main kid Kai getting Yoda’s training lightsaber is something I didn’t expect. Also fireworks seeds. And Nubs.

Really loving just how much every episode from Visions 2 had their own unique feel, you can feel how every one of them came from a different culture and that makes for a very interesting watch.

My top three were probably Screecher's Reach, The Spy Dancer and In the Stars. There was no episode I liked as much as I did The Ninth Jedi, but I'd say on avarege this was stronger than the first volume, with The Pit being the only episode I found a bit weak.

Edited by uncertanSearcher on May 4th 2023 at 8:41:21 PM

Amused that the common thread of Season 1 was samurai Jedi and Sith, and that for this season it’s precocious magic kids.

Well, season 1 was strictly Japanese studios, and A New Hope was very heavily influenced by Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. Hard to resist the cultural appeal :p

Edited by TheAirman on May 7th 2023 at 4:52:23 AM

Another common thread this season is more stories focusing on Imperial occupation. Season 1 only really did that with Lop & Ocho, while the Sith took the forefront in most of the shorts. But here at least four of them center the Empire subjugating a planet and how its citizens resist. Seems the widened net of studios from around the world illuminates how deep the scars of real empires still lay.

My concept for a Star Wars short would be a homage to classic horror films, where a archeological team decents into an ancient Tomb on an asteroid, only to learn too late that the crypt's occupent isn't dead but kept alive by lost technology that only looked like a sarcophagus, as he's draining the life force from one unfortunate member of the team, before pursuing the rest.

Realizing they've stumbled on a Ancient Sith, the lead researcher, a twi'lek, tries to navigate the survivors back to the surface but they are picked off one by one by the shambling Sith until only two are left.

With each life he takes the Sith becames less and less decrepit until he's restored to his original crimsoned skinned self just as the remaining two make it back to the base camp team. Frozen with fear the camp listens as he begins to register his surroundings and talks of how much time has passed since his fellow Sith Priests had their "rightful domination of the asteroid" overthrown by the Jedi.

Becoming enraged at the recollection he ignites his saberstaff and begins attacking the camp, until the twi'lek researcher grabs one of the lightsabers they uncovered, and blocks one of the Priest's strikes, who senses something familiar about the Twi'lek, and is lured back into his tomb, the researcher begins slicing key support pillers during the struggle when they notice the Priests is trying to save his crypt from debris, until he's buried once again.

Reunited with the survivors they all speculate what the Sith recognized the Twi'lek as their ship leaves, the implication being that they were the reincarnation of one of the Jedi who faced him so long ago, signifying how obsessively Sith cling to their life that they become unnatural monsters, while the Jedi embrace the natural flow of life and death.

The short ends with the camera panning underground as a hapless space rodent is caught by a hand emerging from the rubble and begins to be drained by the Not Quite Dead Priest.

So, I was just randomly browsing around Wookiepedia and was surprised to discover that Hanna City from Vision's "I Am Your Mother" wasn't invented for the short. It's the capital of Chandrila, Mon Mothma's home planet.

Oh, I've been to Chandrila. There's a mission there in Rogue Squadron. Er, the first one. For the Nintendo 64.

I chose to bellieve all Wedge merchandise exists in Canon as well.

Visions volume 2 was definitely a lot stronger across the board and I greatly enjoyed all of them. My top three are probably Screecher's Reach (that aesthetic and that ending!), I Am Your Mother (a greatly needed one-off in terms of comedy), and my opinion keeps going back and forth between Journey to the Dark Head for personal biases and Aau's Song as the great note to end the season to round out the lot.

Also I was so convinced that In the Stars was stop-motion that I was surprised to find out it wasn't, haha.

Revisiting Star Wars Rebels clips.

Man, it's crazy how Kanan and Hera were blatantly in a relationship for years even while he was semi-seriously doing the Jedi thing again, and yet nobody involved lost their shit and murdered a bunch of kids.

<side eyes Anakin>

C'mon man! It was just that one time!

Yeah, not having an Order to constantly tell you it is dangerous or Palpatine to corrupt him helped them.

It is hillarious that until Ashoka in Mandalorian and Yoda most of surviving Jedi seem to not give kark about more… controvelsial rules of the Order.

Edited by EmperorGeode on May 18th 2023 at 10:57:56 AM

Well they do have more important things to deal with.

And even then its not like they are any safer.

One arc in the Charles Soule Vader comic started with Vader and Inquisitors raiding the home of an ex-Jedi who left the order to be with a woman. Poor guy and his wife were brutally murdered as Vader took their baby.

Sure got to enjoy that romance alright........

Edited by slimcoder on May 18th 2023 at 10:59:31 AM

Well in that case guy apperently left Jedi before Order 66, so he couldn’t have know that his family would be in danger.

It's really a bit jarring too that all of a sudden in Mandalorian Ahsoka is intent on being a rule following Jedi.

Luke too, tbh. Given that the works that made those two famous had them be likable because they were unconventional.

Well we did last saw Ashoka she did learn her master fell to the Dark Side and was stuck in the place where she can see the past, that coudn’t helped her.

Luke as he lampshades in Last Jedi was never taught about failures of the Jedi. Even in comics he mostly meets people who idolise Jedi, with all critisism coming from the villains. It (and maybe Experience with Leia and her visions) has given him somehow naive image of the Jedi.

Kanan vs. Vader but instead of a lightsaber duel, they're just having a verbal "Reasonable Man Comfortable in His Identity" vs. "ALPHA DOG DOMINANT" argument about how to treat women.

Edited by TobiasDrake on May 19th 2023 at 6:57:05 AM

My perspective on Ahsoka in Mandalorian with regards to “da rules”, is that she’s coming from a very deep personal trauma on this specific issue. She knew Anakin personally, and by the end of TCW they had transformed for the standard Master-Apprentice dynamic to a more sibling-like relationship.

She may be an apostate, but her lived experience with her Jedi loved one playing fast and loose with the “attachment” rules is that it led immediately to multiple galaxy-wide genocides and 20 years of Space Nazi dictatorship.

Knowing what she does about Grogu, she probably only sees a bunch of red flags just waiting to fly if he doesn’t make a choice complying with the rules Anakin broke.

Her relation to Anakin is probably also why she doesn’t feel she can be the one to raise/train Grogu.

As for Luke, well he may be Anakin’s kid but he never knew the man pre-Vader, only the misinformation that everybody told him. But, he is the one who managed to “redeem” Anakin, so in Ashoka’s eyes he’d be the most ideal person to train Grogu as a Force wielder.

Others above have already discussed Luke in terms of what we know from TLJ, but I also think it’s reasonable to consider that when he was giving Grogu the ultimatum, he may genuinely have been thinking that Dinn would simply be dead of old age by the time Grogu is grown & trained enough to walk his own path.

Sad news. Ray Stevenson who played Gar Saxon in both clone wars and rebels has passed at 58

To be fair, Anakin had a lot of issues due to his upbringing. He didn't go all murder-y purely because of his marriage.

Yeah, he massacred an entire village of Tusken Raiders before he got married.

True, some people like to simplifi it to “Anakin got married, turns out Jedi were right/he was a dick (which to be fair he definetely could be)” but it ignores that Anakin having prophetic dreams that his wife will die in the child birth (same kind he had before his mother died) was just top on the iceberg of issues that was Anakin’s life.

Finally finishing up Visions.

The Spy Dancer is good, y'all.

It's so freaking good!

Really something to put together “wait, why is she defending that one guy… oh. OH!”