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Shinya Ōhira's Star Wars: Visions Short Is the Last Memories of a Dying Man

Lucas Films returned to Japan for its third installment of Star Wars: Visions Volume 3, building off the success of Volume 1. At the Star Wars: Visions panel at Anime NYC, audiences were greeted by the frenetic mind of director of Shinya Ōhira, a key animator on Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron, Masaaki Yuasa's Night is Short, Walk On Girl , Takeshi Koike's Redline, and Katsuhiro Ōtomo's Akira.

The segment, "Black," was animated at david production by an assembly of Ōhira's favorite veterans in the industry and web animators recruited off of X. The result is a calvaclade of sensory snippets flanked by key Star Wars imagery. Visions executive producer James Waugh described "Black" as the anthology series' most experimental entry yet, but I doubt anything could have prepared the audience for Ōhira's vision.

"Black" is set in the fleeting moment of destruction following Luke's one-in-a-million shot that destroyed the Death Star. Fans of the original trilogy (or anyone who has experienced any exposure to pop culture in the last 40 years) know the general sequence of events leading up to the climax of Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope. Ōhira asks the audience to confront the human cost of interstellar war, especially the Stormtrooper grunts sacrificed at the altar of conquest.

With hardly any dialogue, "Black" swirls between scenes of overwhelming destruction and small moments of serenity within the psyche of one unnamed Stormtrooper. Over the course of a matter of minutes, we see his internal struggle, literal synapses firing in his dying brain, as the "red" force of imperial loyalty wrestles with the "green" force of humanity. In his last moments, he recalls the deaths he helped perpetuate and the small serenities where he existed just as a man.

Ōhira intentionally left "Black" up to audience interpretation, but cited the Polish animated short "Paths of Hate" as an inspiration alongside his reverence for Masahito Yamashita and his work on Mamoru Oshii's Dallos. The short, which took Ōhira three years to produce, started as a music video concept. He was originally looking to support singer Sakura Fujiwara's music with less concern about a cohesive story. The final result is a blend; Fujiwara's jazz-influenced song, backed by full-bodied trumpets, fills the auditory void while classic Star Wars spacecraft maneuver through the rubble. There are moments of stark silence that feel incongruent; the roar of fire and crushing metal would have been a welcome addition to help bring the explosive aftermath to the forefront. As-is, the silence felt like an error rather than an intentional choice.

If "Black" is any indication of what's to come from the rest of Star Wars: Visions Volume 3, the anthology will reach new artistic heights yet unseen from previous franchise tie-ins. October 29 can't come soon enough.

ANN's coverage of Anime NYC 2025 is sponsored by Yen Press!