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Star Wars: Visions: Season 2: Episode 9: Aaus Song

What is it ? : A little girl, Aau, and her father work on a planet where they mine Kyber Crystals, however in the past the Sith visited the planet and poisoned the Kyber, leaving it with the blood red colour of the Dark Side.
The Kyber that now gets mined requires Jedi to visit the planet and heal the Kyber, this is a difficult task, and is not always successful. One day a Jedi visits Aau's father to heal a particularly tainted piece of Kyber, and Aau watches through the window and hear a particular singing tone coming from the Kyber, however the healing doesn't work.
Later her father takes her into town, where she works caring for beast of burden while he works in the mines, but she once again hears the singing from the distance, so sneaks off, finding an alternative route into the mine where she discovers a cave full of poisoned Kyber.
Aau begins to sing to the Kyber, and it begins to turn blue as it is healed, but her father discovers her and snatches her from the caves, which begin to shake and collapse. Outside as the planet trembles and the Kyber sings discordantly, Aau begins to sing once again, and this calms the Kyber and eventually it all turns blue, as she has healed it all.
The Jedi returns, and offers Aau a chance to become a Jedi, something she agrees to, and they leave in the Jedi's Starship together, as Aau is the first in their family to travel to the stars.

High Points : We've heard in the past about Sith torturing Kyber Crystals to get them to turn red, as if they were alive. And this makes sense that the crystals can also be healed, and it makes some sense that these hurt crystals are calmed and returned to their natural state as Aau's singing calms them.
The concept that these crystals are living in some way, that they are calmed and healed by someone singing a calming song to them works well, like a parent singing a lullaby to a crying child. That the Jedi have been applying a very scientific method to repairing these crystals, whereas the more effective way is to provide them with some love and care to let them become whole once more.

Low Points : The animation style is interesting, and while it in no way is bad, I did find it very distracting that everything seems to be made out of fuzzy felt. The texture of the materials used in the animation are super obvious and makes it all feel very fake.

So what do you really think ? : A nice story to end the second season on. While Visions all too often falls into the trap of thinking that they've only got 10-20 minutes to tell their entire story, so uses it to create a premise where a Jedi and a Sith will batter each other with lightsabers. This one tells a far more calm story, and while there's some action and danger (the escape from the earthquake and collapsing caves), there's no bad guy antagonist to drive things forwards, just a more gentle tale of discovery.

Final Words : And so we reach the end of Season 2 of Visions. It's been an interesting one, and I've really enjoyed the fact that they let animation studios across the world play in the Star Wars sandbox. I've not enjoyed every episode, but on the whole I've enjoyed the look into different interpretations of the franchise.
This year feels like Lucasfilm had closer control on the scripting, as they aren't quite as "out there" as the first season, which is a loss of some imagination, but also a good thing as the stories do make more sense within the Star Wars framework, rather than just vaguely using the iconography we're familiar with.
I'm solidly in favour of them doing a third season, there's still a lot of animation studios out there, and I'd love to see what Star Wars looks like when interpreted through some other cultures and national histories and identities.

Score : 9/10

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