Star Wars has always been influenced by Kurosawa.  Since the beginning, Kurosawa’s samurai pictures, most notably The Hidden Fortress , have served as the inspiration for the entire Saga and all of it’s spinoffs.  It was great to see that a Kurosawa noir, Stray Dog, found it’s way into being homaged in the Star Wars mythos.

Both in this episode of Clone Wars and in Stray Dog, the new kid on the force (Ahsoka Tano as a padawan in the slums of Coruscant and Toshiro Mifune as a young police detective in the slums of post-war Tokyo, respectively) loses their weapon to a pick-pocket who carries out a string of crimes with it, leaving the rookie to retrieve it.  To aid in the search, this rookie turns to a veteran of the force (Tera Sinube, the aged Jedi Master and Takashi Shimura as the aged police detective, respectively) to help them get the weapon back.  Murders are committed, the stakes get higher, the main character feels guilty about the crimes committed with their weapon, but at the end of the day, they finally get it back.

This episode followed the formula of the movie, albeit in an incredibly condensed format, and suffered a bit from it.  I suppose that’s my problem with knowing and loving the source material being homaged, I’d have loved to see a full length feature remaking the film in the Star Wars universe in its entirety.  Knowing that that wasn’t possible (or at least not what happened), I had to reevaluate the story for what it was.  Sure it didn’t have all of the complexities of the source material, but for a kids show, it was really fun to watch.

The action and suspense in this show were particularly well done, and the Coruscant slums (last glimpsed in this level of detail in Attack of the Clones) were a very cool backdrop to get back to.

I also really enjoyed the two new villianous characters introduced, the criminals responsible for taking Ahsoka’s lightsaber, Ione Marcy and Cassie Cryar.  Actually, Ione was okay, but Cassie had a very cool look about her and carried her half of the episode admirably.

All in all, this was a very fun episode.  Again, not the best, but still excellent television and certainly much better than anything else on TV.

Now bring on the Mandalorians.

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