Star Wars: Visions Presents – The Ninth Jedi: Anime Expo to Screen Episode 1 on July 2 (Plus Panel Details)

We’re getting a front-row seat to a bigger galaxy. Anime Expo has confirmed a special screening of the first episode of Star Wars: Visions Presents - The Ninth Jedi on July 2, with the episode shown in Japanese with English subtitles. For those of us who’ve survived decades of anime seasons (and Murcia summers), this feels like opening a familiar book and finding an extra chapter tucked inside.

Anime Expo: what’s screening, when, and how

The event is billed as a special presentation hosted by Production I.G and Lucasfilm. The key promise is simple: we’ll watch episode 1 before the wider rollout, and we’ll do it the anime way—Japanese audio, subtitles on, attention span engaged.

The series is a limited anime spinoff tied to the Star Wars: Visions project, and it’s also slated to premiere this summer on Disney+. In other words: Anime Expo gets the appetizer, and streaming gets the main course. We’ll try not to spill soy sauce on the lightsaber.

The panel lineup: names to watch (and why they matter)

After the screening, the session includes a panel with a mix of anime-side leadership and Lucasfilm production muscle. The announced guests include:

Kenji Kamiyama (supervising director and series script supervisor), Shunsuke Tada (director), Hitoshi Itō (producer), and Lucasfilm executive producers Jacqui Lopez and Josh Rimes.

Tada’s résumé includes titles like Kuroko's Basketball, STARMYU, and Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These - Collision. Itō has credits tied to Star Wars: Visions and Attack on Titan The Final Season. We’ve seen enough production pipelines to know what that suggests: tight direction, experienced scheduling, and a team that understands how to keep a big franchise from wobbling like a droid with low battery.

How The Ninth Jedi grew from a short into a longer story

Here’s the interesting shift. Star Wars: Visions started as an anthology—fast, sharp, self-contained. Now it expands with Star Wars: Visions Presents, designed specifically to tell certain stories with more runway. Think of it like moving from a single manga chapter to a full volume: the same DNA, more space to breathe.

“The Ninth Jedi” is the first story to get that longer narrative treatment. And for fans who liked that short’s mood and myth-building, this is the logical next step: fewer goodbyes, more continuity.

A quick Visions recap in numbers (because we like receipts)

So far, the project has stacked its shelves like this:

Volume 1 debuted in September 2021 with 9 shorts, produced by Japanese creators and studios. Names in that first wave included studios such as Trigger, Kinema Citrus, Kamikaze Douga, Science SARU, Production I.G, and Geno Studio.

Volume 2 arrived on May 4, 2023 (yes, Star Wars Day) with 9 more shorts, but widened the lens to animation studios around the world. The lineup spanned 10 countries, including Japan, India, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Chile, France, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States.

Volume 3 debuted on October 29 and continued storylines from three Volume 1 shorts: “The Duel”, “Village Bride”, and “The Ninth Jedi”. That continuation is the breadcrumb trail leading directly to this new limited series.

Put it together and we’re talking 27 shorts across three volumes—a pretty healthy orbit for a project that started as an experiment.

And yes, there’s more Ninth Jedi beyond the series

Separate from the limited anime series, the short “The Ninth Jedi: Child of Hope” explores a conflict that predates Kara’s birth. It’s background fuel—useful if we want context, but not mandatory homework (we’re old enough to respect sleep).

What we should do next

If we’re attending Anime Expo, this is a clean target on the schedule: July 2 for episode 1, then the panel for production details and creative intent. If we’re not going, we can still plan the watch for the Disney+ summer premiere and compare notes afterward like it’s a weekly club—only with more space wizards.

Call to action: If you’re heading to the convention, lock this screening in early and arrive with time to spare. And if you’re watching from home, set a reminder for the Disney+ drop and keep an eye on how Star Wars: Visions Presents reshapes the anthology into long-form storytelling.