Director of Belle, The Boy and the Beast discusses how real-world events influenced the creation of his first post-pandemic anime.

For close to two decades, there was a remarkably consistent rhythm to anime director Mamoru Hosoda’s movies. 2006 saw the premiere of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Hosoda’s first truly major hit, and from then on he released a new anime film every three years, with Summer Wars in 2009, Wolf Children in 2012, The Boy and the Beast in 2015. Mirai in 2018, and Belle in 2021.

2024, though, came and went with no new Hosoda anime, which might have fans of the director and the anime studio he co-founded, Studio Chizu, feeling a little antsy. We’ve finally got a look at Hosoda’s next anime, though, with the release of a teaser trailer for Scarlet.

Titled Hateshinaki Scarlet (hateshinaki meaning “boundless” or “endless”) in Japanese, Hosoda’s latest work is a dark fantasy anime that appears to use full CG for its visuals. The preview video’s onscreen text announces “the birth of a dynamic heroine princess” and foreboding says “This madness runs rampant throughout the world.”

The movie’s official website describes the story with:

Having failed to take revenge for her slain father, the princess Scarlet sets out for the land of the dead. In this world that overflows with madness, if she cannot take revenge upon her sworn enemy, if she cannot reach the place beyond bounds, she will become nothing, and cease to exist.

An adventure beyond imagination.
A battle without end.
A fateful meeting beyond the bounds of time and space.

At the end of this endless road, will Scarlet find a way to live?

While Hosoda hasn’t really shied away from including frightening, apocalyptic imagery in his anime, Sacrlet looks to be especially dark in tone, with scenes of gritty clashes between armies that stretch as far as the eye can see and massive dragons, impaled by dozens of swords, flying ominously through the sky.

Along with the movie’s announcement, Hosoda has released a statement detailing its inspirations:

I first got the idea for this movie around March of 2022.

During the pandemic in 2021, I felt like the world was united as we all strived to find ways to deal with the coronavirus. Then in 2022, just as we were starting to come out of that, wars broke out in various places, and I had a sense that our world had taken a sudden turn for the worse for our world. We saw news on a daily basis of how things that we had considered obvious parts of daily life were crumbling. It was shocking to see how life, this world we exist in, and the peace we have, are so very fragile.

People are looking for the answer to the question of how to live in a world without peace. I don’t know if such an answer exists, but everyone is desperately searching for ways to resolve conflicts, and ways to live in safety and security. If I was going to make an anime, I felt that it should face those sincere feelings that people have, and that’s where the idea for Scarlet came from.

Looking at developments in the world, I feel like there are many situations which will give birth to deep resentment and a thirst for revenge. If someone take revenge, then someone retaliates. The chain of events continues without end. This loop has to be broken free from, but it’s naive to think that it’s easy to do so.

If Scarlet is driven into a situation where she has to take revenge, or if we ourselves were driven into one, what should we do? Even if we know in our minds that we have to sever the loop of revenge, is that something that we’re emotionally capable of doing? It feels like a challenge that we have been presented with, and that is why I decided to make Scarlet a revenge story.

Hosoda’s anime often contain magical elements such as beast people and portals to other worlds, but Scarlet will be his first pure fantasy project (unless you count One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island as part of the genre). And while every Hosoda movie since The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was a summer release, Scarlet will open in theaters in Japan this coming fall, on November 21, with a North American theatrical release slated for December 12.

Source: Scarlet official website, Deadline
Images: YouTube/東宝MOVIEチャンネル
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