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Star Wars: Visions has become a darling among fans thanks to its repeated proof that the galaxy, far, far away has plenty of compelling stories to tell beyond the Skywalker saga. Recognizing the adoration for fresh narratives, Lucasfilm is poised to release Star Wars: Visions volume three on Disney+ this fall, with a spin-off series of long stories called Star Wars: Visions Presents coming down the pipeline.
One overlooked aspect of Star Wars: Visions‘ rip-roaring success is how it has redefined storytelling within the series by forging unexpected collaborations with renowned Japanese animation studios like Trigger (Promare, Kill La Kill), Production I.G (Kaiju No. 8, Heavenly Delusion), and Wit (Attack on Titan, Spy x Family). The driving force behind the anime anthology’s artistic collaboration is Qubic Pictures, an independent production company whose mission is to “craft high-quality animation that transcends cultural boundaries, reaching global audiences beyond the core anime fanbase.”
With Star Wars: Visions volume three on the horizon of Disney+’s binary sunset, we sat down with Qubic Pictures CEO Justin Leach to learn about how the animated anthology series came into being and how the upcoming season aims to elevate Star Wars collaborations to new heights—while hopefully inspiring other pop culture franchises to embrace the magic of animation anthologies in its wake.
This interview has been edited for brevity.
Isaiah Colbert, io9: For a time, anime anthologies like Memories and Robot Carnival were a thing of the past, but now we’re seeing a resurgence with them in series like Love, Death + Robots and Star Wars: Visions. With Visions bringing together some of the most renowned anime studios, how did Qubic determine which studios to collaborate with?
Justin Leach: I first worked at Production I.G back in 2001. I worked on Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence as a CG creator. From that point on, I kept in touch with a lot of friends, and with the studios. I also did the first crowd-funded anime called Kick-Heart, which is directed by Masaaki Yuasa. So, over the years, I’ve gathered a list of studios and friends that I know and always kept an eye on who’s making cool stuff.
I was always a big fan of Memories, Robot Carnival, and Neo Tokyo—I watched all of those when they came out at the time. I was tasked with working with the Lucasfilm team to find studios that would be suitable for the [Visions], so I tried to give a balanced selection they could choose from in terms of quality, their style, [and] their reputation. So I just really tried to get a nice, diverse selection of studios that would each do something really cool and unique. I really cared about quality and making sure we work with the best people. That was the main motivation: trying to find who does great work and who is also passionate about Star Wars, because I think it’s really important for people to have that passion when making a project.
io9: You mentioned fostering these relationships beforehand. Building off of that, were these partnerships that led to Star Wars: Visions volume one formed through those outreaches, like a one-to-one “We’re going to have you in Visions,” or did those studios also have to pitch their own visions for what they saw as a potential episode for the show?
Leach: The way that Lucasfilm set up the Visions project was to have the creators make their own Star Wars visions. We would first approach the studios with a creative brief of the project, and then we mentioned we were interested in working with them. So, the studio would recommend a person who would love to make a Star Wars short, or “We think this director would be a good fit.” It was definitely a good partnership with each individual studio.
Once the team was selected at each individual studio, they would each present a pitch of what they wanted to make. Sometimes it was one pitch. Sometimes there were multiple pitches. Sometimes we would approach other studios that, for some other reason, didn’t work out, or they were not available. We had a list of people that we wanted to work with, and we just reached out to them. I think what we found, generally speaking, everyone was very excited about the idea of making a Star Wars anime. Luckily, we found people who had passion. I feel like it was a smooth process because they were already knowledgeable in the lore, and they knew everything about Star Wars, so it was exciting to see what they came up with.
In the first season, we weren’t quite sure what we would see or how the world of Star Wars would look through the lens of anime. One of the first things was the dual artwork with [“The Duel” character] Ronin, which was one of our first artworks that came in. I remember that being a very memorable moment where we were all like, “Wow, that is so cool.” It’s a great moment seeing those coming to life.
io9: What was the initial vision behind the production model Qubic Pictures developed for Star Wars: Visions?
Leach: Qubic’s focus has always been bridging Hollywood and Japan, or trying to create these international collaborations. Our first was Eden, which was an original pitch based on my idea that was a four-episode series. Then we had to figure out the team and who was working on it. We got the director from a Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, [Yasuhiro] Irie-san, and we also got the character designer from Cowboy Bebop, [Toshihiro Kawamoto], who’s someone that I’ve known, who was one of the founders of [studio] Bones. That was one example. We’ve tried different permutations of how we can work with Japan because I’m very passionate about anime and want it to be as globally accepted as possible. I want to make the audience as wide as possible. I don’t want anyone to have any misconceptions about the art form.
Over the years, as I work with Japan more and more, I want artists’ names to be more recognized. I want studios to be better known. So we’ve always tried to find ways to act like a bridge. Often, I think we act like a buffer between the Japanese culture and the Japanese production system and the way things typically work in Hollywood in the west. We know both sides, so we try to help with translation—all the back-and-forth communications. We have translation staff to handle all that stuff and try to make it go as smoothly as possible, so there’s no misunderstanding. All productions are challenging, so we try to make it as easy as possible for the two sides to work together. The animation production culture in Japan is very different from how things are typically made in Hollywood. Even the mentality of how things are made is completely different from the storyboard development process in the west and the east.
But fortunately, with Visions, the wonderful thing about this project is that the Lucasfilm team allowed the creators to tell their own story. It wasn’t prescriptive. Obviously, there are broader branding guidelines they have to adhere to, but I think the creators had a lot of freedom. We were like the central hub between all the studios and the Lucasfilm team. We helped facilitate all the communication and made sure that everyone got what they needed, communication went smoothly, and they didn’t have to think about it too much on either side.
io9: How did Qubic develop a production pipeline and workflow that enabled studios like David Productions, Wit Studio, and Trigger to integrate their distinctive styles while maintaining a cohesive Star Wars feel for the series—without buckling under the differences between Hollywood’s style of production and Japan’s?
Leach: We develop ways of tracking communication. Our tools and pipeline were mostly around communications and translation because we let each studio handle the production on its own pipeline. So we didn’t enforce any global pipeline across all the studios. We let the studios work in the way that they’re used to. We didn’t try to interject or get involved in that process at all.
What we typically do in terms of production is establish milestones. For example, we need to have the script delivered by this date. We want the storyboards by this date. And we’d work with the studios on what those milestones are. They vary from studio to studio, but we’ll track all those deliverables and keep an eye on the schedule. We’ll also assist with procedural things like agreements—those are the less exciting parts of production, but very important nonetheless. We have internal tracking documents for translation and communication—comms. So, when we get an email in, we have to translate it into English, and then send that English email to Lucasfilm, translated, and then they might have some comments on something. So we have to translate that back into Japanese and send the email back.
With one studio, that’s a lot of work, but when you multiply that by seven or eight studios, I jokingly say it’s like making a series where you’re making each episode at the same time. So, it becomes a bit of a logistical challenge when you have all this information to communicate to all the different studios. So we had to come up with pipelines to streamline that communication. We use software like Smartsheet, and another one [called] Notion that we use a lot now to track all those things.
io9: What were the biggest technical or logistical challenges in facilitating collaboration between studios from Japan and Lucasfilm with Visions volume one?
Leach: Because it was our first anthology, the hard part was tracking all these different communications with all the studios and people involved. I think that was our big challenge: how do we do this simultaneous communication back-and-forth in English and Japanese? We had to figure out the most optimal way to work with this anthology format. After we did season one it was pretty easy for us to jump back into season three.
io9: Beyond highlighting renowned Japanese animation studios, volume two welcomed diverse talent from India, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Chile, France, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States. Each brought its unique storytelling style—be it through 2D, 3D, or stop-motion—to the anthology. How did the selection process unfold to bring these studios on board?
Leach: I was a little involved in the beginning of season two, but I ended up not working on it for various reasons. I did make some initial introductions, like Rodrigo Blaas. He’s a good friend of mine. I also know Studio La Cachette. I’ve known them for many years, so I made a couple of introductions.
Our specialty is anime, so I think [Lucasfilm] already had much of the team in place to handle those things, working with English-speaking studios. So I didn’t get involved in that too much.
io9: Qubic was more hands-on in helping with volume three, correct?
Leach: Yeah, my role was the same as the first season as a co-executive producer. I’d say our role didn’t change too much between [volumes] one and three. We pretty much did the same thing. It was really hard trying to choose—I wanted to remake a lot of them again—[and] we couldn’t do sequels to everything. That was always a challenge. We would have those types of discussions. [Executive producers] James [Waugh], Josh [Rimes], and Jacqui [Lopez] played an important role, and Jacqui on the Lucasfilm team, helping establish the overall direction.
io9: Are there any particular Star Wars: Visions episodes in volume three that you’re particularly excited about fans watching?
Leach: I can’t say anything about it, but I will say we’re going to be showing one of the shorts at Annecy this year. It’s in competition. It’s called Black. It’s directed by Shinya Ohira. I’d recommend anyone trying to go watch that if they can. I am very excited to see how people will react. Unfortunately, Lucasfilm is like the CIA, so I can’t really divulge anything, but I’m very excited for the project, and I can’t wait for people to see it.
io9: Looking at it as a bigger picture, do you anticipate anthologies in the animation space becoming a broader trend across the animation industry, inspiring more household names to explore stories like Star Wars has with Visions?
Leach: I think we’ll probably see more anthologies from different brands. I’ve even been approached by some other big IPs about doing something similar that I can’t talk about. Anime is so popular right now, and it’s what the younger generation wants to see. Traditional companies in Hollywood are trying to figure out “What are ways that we can get involved in this growing market?” Stylistically, it’s very different from what some bigger studios typically do.
Netflix has had a lot of success with anime. Even when I go to Japan now and onto the Netflix app, the top 10 are almost all anime. There’s just so much anime there now. It’s a big source of growth. I think there’ll be more. It’s a great way to test the waters, see what works, what doesn’t work, and then they can expand that and develop it further for the things that do work. For a lot of big IPs, it might be a big jump to go right to a series, but sometimes they do. It allows people to explore some ideas before committing to something more long-form.
Robot Carnival, Neo Tokyo, Memories, those anthologies established great directors who would go on to make Akira and Ghost in the Shell. [Directors like] Yoshiaki Kawajiri [Wicked City, Ninja Scroll, and Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust]. Anthologies also serve to develop up-and-coming talent, and the up-and-coming directors who will become more famous in the future.
[After] that project I worked on, Kick-Heart, which Yuasa directed, we created another short after that called Adventure Time Food Chain, which is a collaboration between Eunyoung Choi and Yuasa. That was the first project that Science Saru did. That’s what established the studio. Short films, traditionally, have always been a great way to develop the best directors in the best new studios. That is another great benefit of the anthologies. It’s growing and nurturing new talent.
Toward the close of our interview, Leach excitedly mentioned that, alongside its collaboration with Lucasfilm on Visions, Qubic is teaming up with Netflix and Studio Orange (Beastars, Land of the Lustrous) to bring Scott Westerfeld’s steampunk fantasy novel Leviathan to life as an anime. It’s directed by Christophe Ferreira and features a score by Studio Ghibli’s legendary Joe Hisaishi, who also contributed to Visions episode “The Ninth Jedi.”
“It’s another permutation of this collaboration model. How can east and west work together on these types of projects. This was just a very international team, all working side by side. At the very beginning, we invited Orange to contribute,” Leach said. “We didn’t want to just hire them as a service studio. We wanted them to be a creative partner. So, we invited them to all of our story meetings, and they were able to give feedback. We also worked with author Scott Westerfeld and made sure he was able to see what’s going on and be involved in that creative process.”
He continued, “[Leviathan] is authentically anime, but it also has some western and some European elements.”
Fans eager for a first glimpse can catch more details at a panel during Anime Expo.
Star Wars: Visions volume three premieres October 29 on Disney+.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
