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It took me years to figure out why exactly Star Wars Visions was such a draw to me. I’ve loved the Star Wars franchise since I was a kid – even before I knew what anime was, in fact. I’ve written about my highs and lows with the series before, but even when I fall out of love with the galaxy far, far away, I always come back for a new Star Wars Visions series. Not just because it is a chance to watch some of anime’s best minds at work but because it is a chance for Star Wars to finally be a bit weird again.

There is a reason why the cantina scene remains one of the most iconic Star Wars moments ever. Up until that point, the world felt very normal. Nothing but humans and droids and the occasional Jawa to facilitate trade between them. Then Luke, this farm boy from nowhere, walks into a bar and we suddenly see the universe for what it really is – a big, boisterous melting pot of people. People of every shape, size, and color serve drinks and play music and it is treated as a perfectly normal sight. He doesn't gasp in wonder at the blue dudes playing jazz in the corner or the giant walking carpet in the corner. Even on a planet as out of the way and boring as Tattooine, the galaxy was a beautiful melting pot that everyone just accepted.

It is the first introduction we get to just how vast and diverse the Star Wars universe is and it has stuck with the franchise ever since. Most of the scenes after that were between humans, with the occasional droid or odd-looking alien there to remind us that this was sci-fi. But the cantina has become what I love about Star Wars; the unpredictable danger and the infinite weirdness that contact with other lifeforms would bring.
I don’t think that the Star Wars movies ever captured that feeling of weirdness again. Sure, there was the scene in Maz’s tavern in The Force Awakens that served as a direct callback to the cantina scene in A New Hope, but, like so many things in the new trilogy, it felt artificially inserted to remind us of what came before. Maz was someone Important in the universe, which meant that her tavern wasn’t just some lawless dive in the middle of nowhere. There was a significance there, which made the diverse characters expected. It was blatantly intentional with its weirdness, which inherently made it less interesting.

Then we have Star Wars: Visions, which shows just how wild the galaxy can be when Lucasfilm lets it. The short snapshots of stories from across the cosmos, featuring weird, wonderful, and unexpected creatures, feel shocking compared to everything that came before it. While not every animated segment is on the same level – my favorite is still The Twins by Trigger – each is undeniably different from anything else in the franchise. Not even Darth Maul’s awkward robot spider legs were as wonderfully unexpected as watching a little robot learn to use the Force in T0-B1.

It isn’t just that these shorts were anime or made in Japan (they weren’t – several were by Korean studios) that made them so memorable or different. And it isn’t like we haven’t had great animated Star Wars shows over the years. But Star Wars: Visions doesn’t try to have a big, sweeping narrative. It wants to throw something unique at you for 15 or 20 minutes and explore just how vast and unpredictable the galaxy could be. How alien and yet familiar it could feel. They were given a license to explore the universe in a way that no one had before or has since and it felt like magic.

As we wait for yet another movie – this time The Mandalorian and Grogu and then maybe a new trilogy starring Rey if they ever get around to making it – I find myself yearning for the unpredictable nature of Star Wars: Visions more than ever. I hope against hope that Lucasfilm finds a way to make Star Wars feel a bit more anime. Make the world feel vast and unpredictable. Give me something I haven’t seen before and it will help ignite that spark of wonder that the series has been missing.

Get to know, understand, and love the Star Wars franchise more with our Star Wars watch order, guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies & TV shows, and all the Star Wars movies and Star Wars TV shows ranked.