Here's the first look at Star Wars Celebration Japan's new merchandise

Star Wars Celebration 2025 tickets are on sale next month, and in the lead up for the sale, Star Wars released its first look at some of the upcoming new merchandise on StarWars.com.

A good chunk of the first look items are variations of the Star Wars Celebration Japan logo in both English and Japanese, or a mix of the two languages. These are simple and nice, with the purple and while text and detailing on the black. Sharing the same design are pins, patches, and baseball caps which all look great.

However, the standout is the key artwork that was revealed in March, with Darth Vader drawn in an ink painting style known as sumi-e in front of Mount Fuji. This key artwork is stunning on a T-shirt, but the other pieces are fantastic. The tote bag with the key artwork is super nice. However, it's the hand fan that catches my eye. Hand fans are an important part of Japanese culture, so seeing this Star Wars designed to make such a unique item is wonderful.

However, when the key artwork was revealed in March, we noted in our article that no artist was revealed. There was a concern online about whether or not the artwork was created by A.I.

Now, a month later, we haven't received a real update on that front. In fact, some sleuths online might have confirmed the key artwork was made by A.I. Brad from Friends of the Force podcast had reached out to the event organizers about the key artwork, asking for an artist. The response he got was a non-answer, saying that the information was "not yet available," which is a pretty yikes answer.

Hey, Star Wars Celebration, this isn't the right call. Be open and transparent if you're using A.I. to create your key artwork. That way, fans can make the choice themselves whether or not to ethically purchase your items. The Star Wars Celebration Japan merchandise looks great. Too bad it might be tainted by being created by a machine instead of a person. I said this last time when it came to Celebration news, and I'll say it again:

Star Wars worked with seven different studios for Star Wars: Visions Season 1. Why not grab any of them to make your Celebration artwork since you have history with them?

Anyway, tickets will be available on May 2 for Star Wars Celebration 2025, and you can see the full line of new merchandise over on StarWars.com.