Old-School 'Star Wars' Manga: The Best (And Goofiest) Scenes

Nerds across the world are furiously hyping themselves up for the release of Star Wars: Visions, an anthology series made out of all-new anime shorts inspired by one of the seminal works of popular entertainment: yes, The Animatrix. But they’ll also be based on Star Wars, probably.

Thing is, this is not the first time someone asks the question “What if Star Wars, but also Japan?” Back in the mid-’90s, George Lucas licensed his babies to Japanese publisher MediaWorks, resulting in a Star Wars manga series named … Star Wars Manga.

The story sticks extremely closely the plot of the movies, but everything is mildly magna-fied. For starters, there’s way more blood splashing around than we remember from these classic scenes …

…  especially on Return of the Jedi, the kid-friendliest and cuddliest part of the original trilogy.

This is actually an interesting study on how the same script can lead to wildly different products, because, despite having the same dialogue, Han comes off as way more of a maniac in this version. And possibly a vampire, too?

Obi Wan is also a lot more badass, not to mention spry, than Alec Guinness’ “I was just on my way to bed when you caught me” performance.

The most jarring thing is that the movies are handled by different artists, leading to certain stylistic inconsistencies. For instance, Luke and Leia look like they’re about twelve on A New Hope …

… but then, Luke suddenly turns into 1990s Jean-Claude Van Damme after training with Yoda for two days, and Leia is definitely of adult age by the time she has to put on the golden bikini.

Speaking of that outfit, guess what’s the FIRST thing that pops into Anime Luke’s mind upon finding out that Leia is his sister?

Meanwhile, Chewbacca goes from a wacky cartoon character in A New Hope to a distractingly handsome furry hunk in Empire Strikes Back …

… and from that to a truly striking resemblance to the sucky panther tattoo meme in Jedi, to the point that we’re seriously wondering if the original tattoo artist used this manga as a reference.