Disclaimer: This site as a whole covers 2D animation. The 2025 film "Scarlet" is reviewed here for having a significant, but still minority, portion of it being 2D and not CGI.I think director Mamoru Hosoda, unfairly, gets a bad rap, and I'm not fully sure why. His 2025 film "Scarlet" is his 8th feature-length film as a director - he's one of the most prolific and busy film directors in the anime industry (for comparison, Hayao Miyazaki has directed 12). Hosoda's works manage to find a delicate balance of crowdpleasing mainstream content that the whole family can enjoy, while also more effectively making me cry than most other anime as it depicts family and human connection (see "Wolf Children"). And unlike some other directors (looking at you, Makoto Shinkai), Hosoda has proven himself able to venture out into different types of stories (OK, his "Digimon" short, "Summer Wars," and "Belle" have a similar thematic premise, but he's still quite varied by anime standards). And despite his writing quality slowing degrading (his early films weren't written by him alone), his films have been remarkably consistent, all significantly better than average against other original anime films. Despite all of that, fan sentiment has slowly deminished ever since "Mirai," to the point that most comments on articles previewing "Scarlet" were negative. Don't let recency bias sway you the wrong way; if anyone asked for a recommendation for anime film directors, Mamoru Hosoda is one of the first I'd offer. All that said, "Scarlet" in particular earned some trepidation. A year before release, and after the CGI-heavy "Belle," Hosoda said in interviews that this would be his first fully-CGI film, abandoning the 2D animation format that made him a household name. Further, his exact (translated) quote was that "this was not 2D animation or Hollywood-style CG, but was aiming for a completely new look." So... it's just cel-shaded 3D animation? Like hundreds of video games? Like dozens of previous attempts with CGI anime (nearly all of which look particularly terrible)? At the time, the only "new" look we've seen in 3D animation came from "Into the Spider-Verse," which was already 7 years old and re-done to death in American animation by this point. Sure enough, the released "Scarlet" looks like typical, albiet high-quality, cel-shaded 3D, and this promise for "a completely new look" was exactly like every other Japanese businessman who hadn't seen another film or game for over a decade before promoting their own. For abandoning 2D animation, we felt betrayed. For his over-hyped false promises, we felt lied to. Ignoring his qualities as a director or writer, of course views would be negative before walking into the theatre. Just imagine how much good will the film would have had if they were just upfront in their trailers, showing there WAS a significant amount of 2D animation in "Scarlet!" But we'll get to that later...Much like how "Belle" was (very) loosely inspired by "Beauty and the Beast," "Scarlet" is (very) loosely inspired by Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Starting in 1600's medieval Denmark, Scarlet is a princess to a loving King during peaceful times. But her uncle, the power-hungry Claudius, supported by an incestuous Queen (Scarlet's mother), finds an excuse to accuse the King of treason, publicly executing him in front of his horrified subjects, including Scarlet herself. This forever changes her, and as years pass, she dedicated herself to training to fight with swords and fists, planning the day she'll one day inact revenge. As King Claudius enjoys his luxury and as the wider populace slowly suffers in poverty, Scarlet can no longer wait, and confronts him at a gala, unknowingly drinking poisoned wine he had prepared for her. The film STARTS with Scarlet awakening in the afterlife, some vast, barren landscape of Purgatory. She's lost and alone, and missed her chance at revenge, except... she's told Claudius is also down here somehow, and has ordered his mass legions of "loyal" subjects to kill Scarlet here in order to join him through the gates of Heaven. Seeing this as her final chance, Scarlet prepares to venture through Hell itself to carry out her vengance, no matter how many dead soldiers attack her along the way. She does find one unexpected ally along the way: a young, modern-day Japanese emergency nurse, a pacifist who stops and heals every 17th century soldier Scarlet attacks in defense. Up until that last sentence, this sounds like an intriguing, if somewhat basic, premise. We get to see Hosoda's unique vision of Hell, and indeed, there are some good jumpscares here and there. We get to see a strong-willed, and well-trained, female lead, in very-well choreographed hand-to-hand combat. But yes, why is that nurse (named Hijiri) there? This version of Hell crosses time and space, but why does it seem he the only character to have existed after 1900? Hijiri's presense is core to the plot - his extremely naive take on pacifism is meant to convince Scarlet (perhaps along with her Father's unknown last spoken words) that revenge isn't the answer, and that she should try to move on. This nearly drives her mad; to be or not to be? To kill or not to kill? At first, Scarlet balks at his stupidity: "You know nothing of war" she says. With sadness, Hijiri replies, "No, we too have war in my time." Clearly, this was inspired by the recent real world-scale wars and attrocities carried out after 2020. This is Hosoda's anti-war film, a plea to lead by example and put down your swords, to live by compromise instead of conflict, at a time when anti-war messaging is more important than ever.
... and it's incredibly naive writing, just as frustratingly so as the character of Hijiri. By all accounts, Scarlet's childhood WAS a time led by peaceful leaders, but a handful of evil, greedy individuals stole it all away, and the peaceful and loyal citizens were powerless to stop it. This remains true within the film up to the end - Claudius is not one that can be reasoned with. And this is true for the real-world conflicts that inspired this, each caused (and still carried out, at the time of this writing) by a handful of evil monsters that hold no value in human life. How can one come forth unarmed to negotiate when the other side's first reply is a bullet? The common saying today is "peace must be fought for, it requires active participation to be protected." The film "Scarlet" has no such observation - it feels like a story about ethics written by a 10-year-old, with the emotions of a depressed 16-year-old. That's not the only odd directorial choice in the film. There are odd dream-like sequences here and there, including a mid-film scene of Scarlet and Hijiri dancing to a pop song in the middle of modern-day Tokyo, lasting a couple minutes long... WHY??!?! It's an impressive spectacle with a massive crowd of 3D-animated background characters, but is also poorly animated, as if it was their first attempt at recording motion capture. This scene might have made sense in "Belle," but not in a medieval-inspired revenge tale of war. Scarlet's journey is still ultimately an emotional and effective one, don't get me wrong, but this is Hosoda's worst downfall yet in terms in writing and editing. As far as animation goes... I was surprised to see the flashback sequences, either for Scarlet's period in Denmark or in Hijiri's modern era of Japan, were 2D animated, not too different from Studio Chizu's older films. And these scenes look good. Not as good as those past films, perhaps because these weren't where all the attention was spent, but still good. Meanwhile, the scenes in Hell are 3D CGI, allowing for detailed fight scenes, particle effects when an enemy dissovles into dust, for massive crowds of people, and so on. OK, cool, they thematically separated the styles of the two worlds, with the land of the dead feeling like dead CGI, on purpose... except some of the Purgatory scenes DO use 2D animation for background characters that only appear in a couple shots, and some modern-era scenes DO use 3D animation (see that weird dance sequence in the previous paragraph). That bizarre lack of consistency makes no sense at all, and feels especially strange because, surely, it would have only taken an extra month or so of production to make this aspect consistent. Does the CGI at least look OK? It looks fine. The film can't decide on a consistent frame-rate though, with a couple scenes being fully smooth. And of course, despite shading that leans more into a 2D-Cel aesthetic, the shading and lighting does look more real and detailed, a complete constrast from Hosoda's usual style in 2D animation, where he famously avoids any shading or shadow in his characters. And in some scenes, the characters or environments look especially well-shaded, almost realistic in their detail - it looks good in the moment, but is inconsistent to the rest of the movie. Designs of the underworld look cool, especially Claudius's castle in Hell, which looks like it was ripped from Mordor in "The Lord of the Rings," complete with an army thousands-strong of desparate followers outside. For scenes like this, I can see why 3D animation was chosen, and it's luxurious by anime standards, but I can only dream of how beautiful the film as a whole would have been had it been entirely 2D animation. Whatever the case, box office results didn't look great. In Japan, the opening weekend was less than 1/4 the opening "Belle" received ("Belle" would go on to make $57 million in Japan alone, but the lifetime results for "Scarlet" are suspiciously absent online). In North America, it got a surprise IMAX release, and was exclusively shown in IMAX for its first week, before a planned "wider" regular release on February 13, 2026. I was eager to see the film, so I saw the IMAX screening - it only had one time per day, due to other, bigger films getting the IMAX screen for the rest of the evening. The theatre was remarkably empty on my day. And I'm glad I saw it, because without warning, in Canada, there were absolutely no showtimes on February 13 and beyond. I'm talking even in larger markets, like Toronto - there was nothing! And yes, just a week prior, the film's social media pages said both the US AND Canada were supposed to get this wider release. I could only imagine this was due in part because of such low box office returns, and all signs point to this being a potential financial disaster for Studio Chizu. I'm happy to see Mamoru Hosoda take a swing at something new, and a classic revenge tale is an exciting idea for him. But he really needs an editor to help with his writing. And sure, maybe true artists believe "it's not the tool, it's how you use it," but his audience has spoken, and he needs to step away from 3D CGI. The most remarkable thing about "Scarlet" is that it's still a very watchable, and moderately entertaining, adventure film, despite the gluttony of errors and detours. Maybe Shakespeare doesn't need an editor to work with him, but Hosoda sure does.