Watching Scarlet (果てしなきスカーレット)

Scarlet (果てしなきスカーレット) , the latest anime movie by director Hosoda Mamoru, opened in Japanese cinemas today. I quite liked his previous work, Belle (竜とそばかすの姫), and I was somewhat interested in this new movie, even though the trailers left me more than excited. It didn't feel very reassuring that the second screening for the day on opening day, the one that I went for, was only 10% filled.

After sitting through 111 minutes of this movie, I found it to be very much less interesting than Belle. A way to summarise my thoughts would be that this is a 111-minute sermon disguised as an anime movie. Director Hosoda seemed to have a lot to say about life, and the movie just went on and on preaching those thoughts. Yes, it was well animated, although I felt the character design of the protagonist Scarlet fluctuated a bit. The fight scenes looked decent enough, and the backgrounds were well drawn. Too well, because the movie sometimes dwelled too long on a background art, as if dragging out time or trying to cut animation budget. Still, as an animated work, it was decent enough.

 

The problem was the story, and the voice acting of the male lead. The story largely takes place in the land of the dead, which is a fantasy setting. But it has to start with being set in 16th century Denmark (where the protagonist was born and grew up), and the male lead coming from modern (or near-future) Japan. I really don't understand why director Hosoda needed to use real-world settings for an otherwise fantasy story. Yes, he probably did it because one of his messages in the movie is about leaving the past behind to lead a different future, but I still think him trying to pack too many messages into a single movie ended up with a story that jumps all over with no proper coherence. I even thought, "What was he smoking when he wrote this?" halfway through the movie.

 

The male lead is not a voice actor by profession, so I can't really blame him; I think his lack of life in voice acting was compounded by the poorly written script that just felt odd. Dialogue was a mess, with characters talking like Shakespearean characters at the start, then shifting to a more modern nuance. Director Hosoda tried to give some depth to the characters, but because his movie had so many messages, there wasn't any real opportunity to develop characters or endear them to the viewers. The movie ended with the protagonist kind of having feelings for the male lead, but their relationship over the course of the story was kind of antagonistic, so I really didn't know how they could end up where they ended.

 

Unlike other Hosoda Mamoru movies, this one didn't have a large whale, though it had a large dragon. But like Belle, the protagonist sang... the song reminded me so much of Belle, that it felt like a cheap knockoff. I have nothing against Ashida Mana (who voiced the protagonist, and sang the ending song) but she is definitely not the singer that professional singer Nakamura Kaho (who voiced Suzu in Belle) is.

 

In the end, it felt like director Hosoda was trying to bring together all the things that worked in his past movies and use them to preach his thoughts about life. I would only recommend this movie to die-hard Hosoda Mamoru fans or people looking for a way to waste two hours of their time.