In 2017, Japanese animator Hideo Itoyanagi created a recap animation of Star Wars: The Force Awakens intended for the local audience, which used versions of the movie's characters made to resemble BB-8 in their shape and way they moved. Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy became a big fan of the animation and its director, and when she came to Japan in December of 2017 to promote Star Wars: The Last Jedi, she met up with Itoyanagi and asked him to create original shorts in the same style as the original recap.
Itoyanagi wanted to come up with something new to the animated world of Star Wars. His intention was to make the world look like simple caricatured paper-cutout silhouettes put on top of each other. He also compared the camera movements to those which could be seen in old video games. Building on top of his original recap shorts, the new animations would utilise the roundness, tilting, spinning and rolling movements of the characters to tell the story and create humor.