Star Wars Celebration 2025 in Japan revealed several new upcoming titles from the Lucasfilm Publishing panel. One that immediately got me and several Chiss-loving fans hyped was Star Wars: THRAWN Adaptation, a new manga from Man Tsang.
I love the manga adaptations, with a few being some of my favorite Star Wars comics. I grew up with manga and anime, so I adore seeing beloved characters in a new art style. Also, Thrawn (2017) is one of my personal favorite Star Wars books of all time, just following up Thrawn: Alliances, which is my favorite buddy comedy with villains. No, for real. I don't think Timothy Zahn meant to write a comedy novel complete with borderline Monty Python sketches from Ruhk and Kimmund. I even told Zahn to his face once how much I loved this comedy.
Now that the hype has died down, and looking back on the Celebration announcement, I can't help but ask as a Thrawn fan:
Do we actually need the Thrawn manga adaptation?
The short answer is, no, we don't actually need any adaptation, except for maybe the Revenge of the Sith novelization, which is considered one of the greatest pieces of Star Wars media of all time. Adaptations, by nature, are retreading on already established media. They used to be great, adding in bonus scenes and cut content. Though lately, the comic book adaptations really haven't been worth your money.
However, the manga adaptations are a completely different beast from their comic book counterparts. While they tend to stick to the same story, occasionally they do add in new stuff. The Star Wars: Visions adaptation is a good example of that. So with Star Wars: THRAWN Adaptation, there is a chance we'll get new insight on some of our favorite characters and story with a different artist tackling it.
And I purposely just wrote "a different artist" because this is the second time we have gotten an adaptation of Thrawn (2017). In 2018, we got a six-issue comic book adaptation by Jody Houser and Luke Ross. This was a well-received comic run, because it was the first canon images of several beloved characters like Eli Vanto (who I'll get to in a moment) and Karyn Faro. We can even see Ross' version of Eli on the cover of the Thrawn manga that was revealed at Celebration. There are so many Star Wars books-- heck, even Thrawn books that haven't had any kind of adaptation yet. Why are we, again, treading on the exact same ground?
I do think some of my negative feelings towards the manga are because these new characters from Zahn's trilogy are so beloved. Fans, myself included, have been clamoring for years for a new Eli Vanto story. He was an instant fan favorite, becoming the latest John Watson-type to Thrawn's Sherlock Holmes. He provided such a unique view to the Chiss as well as the Empire because he also faced prejudice and scrutiny that had to be overcome.
We haven't seen Eli since 2019's Thrawn: Alliances, and so many of us Chiss fans want more stories with him. I'm so happy to see him in the adaptation, which gives a chance for something new. But it's not enough. I think that's really what gets me about this manga adaptation:
It's cool. I'm going to buy it. But I would rather have something new. I would rather have a new story with the characters I love versus the second time we're rehashing Thrawn (2017) in comic form.
We don't have a release date yet for Star Wars: THRAWN, but hopefully it does well so we might be able to get new stories down the line.