Endless Scarlet (2025)
The second film I’ve seen in cinemas this year, “Scarlet” or “Endless Scarlet” as per the Japanese title. I have no idea why anime films need to be reduced down to one word titles for their English language releases. Anyway, let’s talk about the film; Danish Princess Scarlet lives a happy life with her father, King Amlet, during the last decade of the 16th century. Though life seems peaceful in the kingdom, both the queen and Scarlet’s uncle, Claudius, conspire to falsely accuse the King of treason, which ends in the King’s public execution. An enraged Scarlet sets about wreaking revenge on her uncle, only for him to poison her before she can stab him to death.
She wakes to find herself transported to the afterlife, the Otherworld. There an old woman, seemingly a guide in this world, advises her that Claudius is also in the Otherworld. The only thought in her head is killing him (people in the afterlife can be destroyed and turn into “nothingness”). After being betrayed by Claudius’ soldiers whom she thought were loyal to her, she defeats them and comes across a young man from present day Japan, Hijiri. Hijiri, a paramedic when alive, absolutely refuses to believe he’s dead and ends up patching up anyone Scarlet defeats. Much to Scarlet’s chagrin, Hijiri believes that revenge and conflict is not the answer to the grief and anger over her father’s death. Regardless, with Hijiri in tow, she sets forth to find Claudius, who is searching for a mythical promised land.
Right from the release of the first trailer for this film back in April last year, it really felt most people were determined to skewer the film and director Mamoru Hosoda himself. That criticism intensified when the film was actually released in Japanese cinemas. From my understanding, Japanese critics weren’t all that kind to the film, but there were also numerous reports of near empty cinemas in the first few days of release. In addition I saw so many Japanese people on social media absolutely trashing the film, something I’ve never seen before for any anime film. I’ve never seen a fairly well respected director like Hosoda absolutely fall out favour so quickly and with such bitterness and bile towards him and the film from the general public.
I have to admit, my patience with Hosoda was sorely tested with “Belle” (which had the much better original Japanese title of “The Dragon and the Freckled Princess”) and I had set my expectations for this film extremely low based upon the almost universal negative reactions to just the film’s trailers, not even to the film itself. Another issue which perhaps set him and film up for failure was some of the English language publicity for “The Dragon and the Freckled Princess” which astonishingly portrayed Hosoda as being more feminist in his depiction of women than Hayao Miyazaki. In addition, his split with Satoko Okudera, screenwriter for all of his films up to “Wolf Children”, is also viewed as a negative, with Hosoda perceived as a mediocre writer, which I partly agree with.
Having seen the film, I have to say it’s far, far better and significantly less frustrating than “The Dragon and the Freckled Princess”. Dare I suggest it’s almost a return to form for Hosoda. Well, almost, but falling quite short of reaching the quality of his 2015 film “The Boy and the Beast”. Loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, this film is more or less a journey of one woman trying to avenge her father with a somewhat moralistic Japanese paramedic acting as her conscious tagging along. While that sounds like a terrible idea for a film, and Hijiri can come off as a naïve idealist completely out of his depth in a violent, utterly hostile world, I could suspend my disbelief enough to mostly enjoy it for what it is. In addition Scarlet ignores most of his pleas for non-violence. If you can handle the idea that kindness trumps hostility and confrontation, you may get something out of the film too.
I did find the criticism about the CG animation to be mostly baseless. Putting aside a couple of off looking mid distance shots and a handful of wide crowd shots, the vast majority of the animation looked really good. In fact a lot of film just looks gorgeous, really beautiful. In addition the score and sound design were amazing. An absolute highlight of the film. The insert songs and the dance sequences do come off as a bit trite and mawkish. In particular the dance sequence outside Shibuya station, part of Scarlet’s dream/vision, isn’t bad as such, it just feels slightly out of place in the film in my opinion. The ending itself was also a bit maudlin and hackneyed. I really think Hosoda was going for a big crowd pleasing ending. Personally, I can forgive him and didn’t think it was all that bad. I really can’t agree with the criticism out there that film is badly directed. It just isn’t. The film is a real treat for the eyes and the action sequences are great. The screenplay is pretty decent, leaps and bounds over the issue plagued “The Dragon and the Freckled Princess”. However it could have been better. I think people should ignore the relentlessly negative online noise over the film and go into it with zero expectations. I personally found it to be great, but not brilliant, entertainment.
