The Ninth Jedi is getting a full Star Wars anime series this August

Production I.G's acclaimed Star Wars: Visions short "The Ninth Jedi" is spinning off into a full eight-episode anime series on Disney+ and Hulu on August 5. The project falls under a new "Star Wars: Visions Presents" banner that Lucasfilm is using to tell longer stories outside the main franchise continuity.

The series picks up after the events of the original 2021 short and its Volume 3 follow-up, "Child of Hope". The Jedi Order is virtually extinct. The Sith have vanished. The galaxy is mired in chaos, and a young girl named Lah Kara is caught in the middle of it. She is training under Margrave Juro, and the two of them are leading a small fellowship of trainees on a quest to rescue Kara's father.

Her father is a sabersmith named Lah Zhima. He figured out how to forge new lightsabers, making him a massive target for anyone trying to seize power in a lawless galaxy. The villains are now weaponizing Kyber crystals on a massive scale, forcing Kara into a direct conflict with a new faction of dark side users.

Because this exists under the Visions umbrella, it ignores standard Star Wars canon. That freedom lets the creators play with established mythology in ways the mainline movies cannot. In this specific timeline, newly forged lightsabers physically change color to reflect the heart of the person holding them.

A new era of Star Wars anime

Production I.G is handling the animation. The studio has a massive pedigree in science fiction anime, including work on Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass, and more recently, Kaiju No. 8. Their style fits perfectly with the high-stakes swordplay of the Star Wars universe. Kenji Kamiyama, who wrote and directed the original short, is supervising the new series.

The English dub cast brings back Kimiko Glenn as Kara. She is joined by Andrew Kishino as Juro, Masi Oka as Ethan, and Simu Liu as Kara's father. The voice cast also includes Patrick Seitz and JP Karliak.

Star Wars and anime have always been a natural fit. The franchise borrows heavily from Akira Kurosawa's samurai films, and Japanese animation studios excel at exactly that kind of heightened, emotional melee combat. The first volume of Visions proved that letting different anime studios apply their own cultural lens to the Star Wars universe yields fantastic results.

Expanding the anthology

Giving a popular anthology short a full season is a smart move for Lucasfilm. The original short was a standout in the first volume of Visions. Fans immediately wanted to know what happened next, and a dedicated series gives the creative team room to actually explore this weird, isolated era of the galaxy.

The half-hour episode format should give the pacing some breathing room. Anthology shorts are great for quick bursts of action, but they rarely have time to develop a deep supporting cast. Eight full episodes will let Production I.G build out the world and establish a real threat. The story introduces some moral ambiguity, with one character openly questioning how many people the Jedi have killed in the name of justice.

If this limited series does well, we might see other fan-favorite Visions shorts get the exact same treatment. There are plenty of other alternate universes introduced in the anthology that deserve a second look, but a full-scale war over the last remaining lightsabers is a perfect test case for the format.