A new anime styled Star Wars short takes the side of the Empire and finally shows off what TIE Fighterscan do in the right hands.

Taking lone animator Paul Johnson four years to create, the entire short is a definite love letter to 80’s style anime. From fantastically layered shading to full on nods to classic anime flourishes. Such as the balletic missile volleys being a lovely reference to theItano Circus and Macross dogfights in general.

The short also utilizes elements from the classic 1994 PC space combat game TIE Fighter, as the movies rarely showed any real detail as to the internals of the Imperial fighter cockpit. So while there is some very nice fan conjecture on some of the internals of these fictional craft, there’s also lot ofactual research that has gone into this as well (as you can partly see above).

As this short film takes the side of the Empire, it all ends rather badly for the Rebels but it shows the ebb and flow of the battle very nicely.

While the music is also done brilliantly, it would have been good to have some of the original Star Wars score included. I am guessing as this is a fan based effort, the rights for using that music would have been an issue.

All this aside, it’s worth mentioning that I know the animator personally. We both shared a real love for old school mecha anime back in the day, often discussing suitably nerdy topics until the small hours of the morning. So it’s nice to see his work and passion given form like this, as well as being appreciated by other fans too.

Currently he’s working over at Rasam Concept on a new game called Out Quest, which he also created rather lovely animated trailer for.

In any case, strap in and enjoy seven and a half minutes of anime inspired Star Wars glory.

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