A Deep Dive into “Black” – Star Wars Visions Volume 3 Episode 9
Directed by Shinya Ohira and produced by David Production, “Black” is the most experimental and emotionally powerful short in Star Wars: Visions Volume 3. Known for his work on Akira and Spirited Away, Ohira brings a unique artistic sensibility to the Star Wars universe, crafting a story that communicates more through motion, color, and sound than words ever could.
This episode is a haunting, wordless meditation on war, identity, and the remnants of humanity when duty consumes the soul. Told entirely without dialogue, “Black” unfolds as a storm within the mind of a stormtrooper. Ohira describes it as “a battle between past and present, light and dark, life and death,” and that’s exactly what the viewer experiences.
The short doesn’t offer a literal narrative but instead presents an abstract portrayal of a soldier’s fractured consciousness, caught between obedience and memory. The result is hypnotic, harrowing, and beautiful. It’s a deeply emotional experience that resonates long after the screen fades to black.
A Visual and Auditory Masterpiece
The animation in “Black” is unlike anything seen in the anthology. Each sequence shifts styles and palettes, from sketched chaos to painterly abstraction to geometric precision. These visual changes are unified by Hiroyuki Sawano’s pulsating score, which drives the narrative forward. The music swells from the quiet melancholy of the orchestra to the frantic intensity of jazz, mirroring the trooper’s unraveling psyche.
Star Wars Visions Volume 3 Episode 9 relies heavily on music and visuals to tell its inventive story. Together, sound and image collide into a sensory overload that feels almost theatrical. One can easily imagine watching this projected on a massive screen, with the sound vibrating through the floor.
Humanizing the Stormtrooper
What makes “Black” remarkable isn’t just how it looks—it’s what it says. By turning inward, it reframes one of Star Wars’ oldest images: the stormtrooper. In most stories, they’re faceless extensions of the Empire, stripped of identity. But here, the armor becomes a prison for memory.
The destruction of the Death Star isn’t a heroic climax; it’s a tragedy. Millions die, and Ohira reminds us that not all of them were monsters. The cost of rebellion, the cost of war, echoes through the mind of one man who can’t escape the horror of what he’s done or what he’s been made to be.
That humanization places “Black” alongside Andor and Lost Stars as some of the few Star Wars stories willing to confront complicity and consequence without flinching. But where those used dialogue and performance, Ohira achieves the same effect through movement and rhythm.
Jazz as the Language of Storytelling
Jazz is the language of Star Wars Visions Volume 3 Episode 9, and it’s better for it. Every frame feels alive with conflict, every beat of Sawano’s score another heartbeat of guilt and revelation. It’s the kind of storytelling only animation can do: pure emotion without translation.
The attention to detail borders on obsessive. Veterans and students from Ohira’s animation circle collaborated on the project, infusing each segment with its own texture and identity. Look closely and you’ll catch hidden flourishes, like a shattered Millennium Falcon, butterflies inspired by Earth symbolizing rebirth, and collapsing silhouettes of the Death Star dissolving into memory. These images anchor the meaning of every frame, letting interpretation drive the experience.
A Unique Emotional Experience
Every second is alive with vulnerability, fear, regret, and fleeting hope, all stripped of dialogue, exposition, or moral framing. It trusts the audience to meet it halfway, to feel instead of just watch. That’s rare in Star Wars, and even rarer in animation at this scale. Ohira’s stormtrooper isn’t a hero or a villain; he’s the embodiment of what war erases, and what art can restore.
“Black” is the best example of the creativity that makes Star Wars Visions as good as it is. And that’s what makes “Black” so powerful: it doesn’t tell you what to feel. It asks you to sit with what you see. Whether you interpret it as the death of a soldier, the rebirth of a soul, or simply the internal collapse of conscience, “Black” invites reflection. It lingers. It demands silence when it ends. A work of art worth talking about.
An Existential Reflection
In a collection filled with stories about faith, courage, and perseverance, “Black” stands apart as something more existential. It’s not about victory or hope. It’s about empathy and the realization that even within the Empire’s machinery, humanity still flickers. By the time the stormtrooper’s world collapses into light, it’s less redemption than release. The person beneath the armor is finally free.
“Black” stands as the purest expression of what Star Wars: Visions was meant to be: raw, unfiltered imagination turned into expression left to interpretation. It takes the familiar language of Star Wars and bends it until it feels alien again, revealing the people and pain buried beneath the myth.
It’s haunting, intimate, and alive with purpose. By the time the stormtrooper dissolves into light, “Black” has already done what great art always does: it changes how you see everything that came before.
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