Star Wars Goes Full Anime: The Ninth Jedi Gets an 8-Episode Series in August 2026
Key takeaways
- The Ninth Jedi is the first full standalone Star Wars anime series, not another anthology short, launching August 5, 2026 on Disney+ and Hulu
- Production I.G animates, with Ghost in the Shell's Kenji Kamiyama supervising and Shunsuke Tada directing
- It continues the story of Lah Kara from Visions Volume 1's "The Ninth Jedi" and Volume 3's "Child of Hope"
- A new "Visions Presents" banner lets creators tell longer-form Visions stories, signaling Lucasfilm is serious about anime
Star Wars has flirted with anime for years. Star Wars: Visions proved the galaxy far, far away could survive being handed to Japanese studios, and the results were some of the most exciting Star Wars anyone had made in a decade. But every entry was a short. A taste, then gone. At Anime Expo 2026, Lucasfilm finally did the thing fans had been quietly begging for: it greenlit a full one.
Star Wars: Visions Presents - The Ninth Jedi is an eight-episode limited anime series, and it arrives August 5, 2026 on Disney+ and Hulu. This is the first standalone Star Wars anime series, and the team behind it is not a random pick.
The Anime Expo reveal
The announcement came out of an Anime Expo panel on the first day of the event, held in the JW Marriott Diamond Ballroom. Supervising director Kenji Kamiyama, director Shunsuke Tada, and producer Hitoshi Ito took the stage to debut the trailer and a teaser poster. Kamiyama thanked the crowd for their years of enthusiasm for Kara and Juro, the characters at the heart of the original short.
If Kamiyama's name rings a bell, it should. He directed Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and co-directed the recent Star Wars: Visions short "The Ninth Jedi," so he is not a newcomer being handed the keys. He is the person who built this corner of the galaxy in the first place, now getting the room to expand it.
Production I.G is the right studio
The series is animated by Production I.G, one of the most respected names in the medium and the studio behind Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass, and Haikyuu. That pedigree matters here. "The Ninth Jedi" short was praised specifically for how it fused a genuine anime sensibility with lightsaber action, and handing the full series to a studio with that much action-drama experience is a strong signal that Lucasfilm wants craft, not a quick brand extension.
Director Shunsuke Tada, who has significant TV anime experience, runs the day-to-day. Between Kamiyama supervising and Tada directing, the show has both a clear creative vision and a steady hand for the eight-episode grind.
What the story covers
The series is the next chapter of a thread that started with "The Ninth Jedi" in Visions Volume 1 and continued with "The Ninth Jedi - Child of Hope" in Volume 3. It picks up shortly after those shorts and follows Lah Kara as she keeps training under Margrave Juro. Alongside a small fellowship of rookie Jedi, Kara sets out on a journey to save her father.
Crucially, you do not have to be a lifelong Star Wars scholar to jump in. The Ninth Jedi corner of the timeline sits far from the familiar Skywalker material, which gives the anime freedom to build its own tone and stakes. That distance is a big part of why the original short felt so fresh, and the series inherits the same advantage.
The "Visions Presents" banner is the real news
The eight-episode format is not a one-off experiment. Lucasfilm launched it under a brand-new "Visions Presents" banner, created specifically to let filmmakers tell longer-form stories inspired by characters and worlds first introduced in the animated anthology. In other words, Visions is no longer just a shorts showcase. It now has a pipeline for turning its best ideas into full series.
That is a meaningful shift. It means the standout entries from past Visions volumes have a path forward instead of ending as one-and-done experiments, and it means Lucasfilm is treating anime as an ongoing format rather than a novelty. For a franchise that has spent years figuring out what to do with its animation slate, committing to longer anime storytelling is a genuine statement of intent.
Why this matters for anime fans
Plenty of Western properties have tried to borrow anime's look without earning it, and the results usually land somewhere between flat and embarrassing. Visions was the exception because Lucasfilm did the honest thing and gave the work to actual anime studios with actual authorial voice. The Ninth Jedi series doubles down on that approach: real studio, real director, real continuity with the shorts that made people care.
Eight episodes on Disney+ and Hulu starting August 5 is not a huge run, but it is enough to prove whether the Visions Presents model works. If it lands, expect more of the anthology's fan favorites to graduate into full series. And if you have been waiting for Star Wars to stop teasing anime and actually commit to it, this is the closest it has ever come.