Julian Gnam
September 25, 2018 Back in in July we reported on the Russian artist Ahriman, who takes shots from Western action films and redraws them in the style of 90s anime. They’re so well executed, it really makes you wish you could see them animated, and it seems Ahriman has decided to answer that wish by collaborating with a few other Russian artists to create an anime-style trailer for Star Wars: A New Hope. By pairing redrawn shots from the film with its existing Japanese dub, he was able to create a very convincing look at what Stars Wars might have been like as an anime:
It’s hard not to smile seeing Ahriman’s depiction of Han Solo, which reminds us of dozens of cocky anime heros from before the 2000s. It feels a little ironic that Jabba’s appearance here seems to gel much better than any of his official CGI iterations in the various special edition revisions of A New Hope.
While the Japanese version has existed for decades, most viewers outside Japan will have only seen the film in their own native language, so it’s new to them and feels like a fresh anime-specific take. Naturally the acting style for each character is almost exactly what you’d expect from their anime alter-egos. Undoubtedly using the existing Japanese audio was much less work than any other approach fans could have attempted from scratch, so it’s a perfect fit all around.
If you enjoyed this, you should definitely check out Otaking77077’s Tie Fighter short. Since it doesn’t recreate classic scenes or characters from the Star Wars movies, it may not scratch the same nostalgic itch as Ahriman’s trailer, but since all the shots are totally new, it features a lot more completely original animation.
Source: Polygon
Related Posts
