English Dub Review: Scarlet

We have now arrived at Mamoru Hosoda’s 8th directorial film project (11th if you count the Digimon films). Depending on who you ask, he’s proven himself to be able to make films with conveying a central theme without the allure of an IP attached. Whether it’s the similarly digital world-centered Summer Wars or the split-between-realms setting of The Boy and the Beast, pretty much every one of his films has to do with the idea of family and a specific relationship one can have in one. And while this idea isn’t completely abandoned in this new film Scarlet (titled Endless Scarlet in Japanese), it appears he’s reaching out to make a story about one’s relationship with your fellow man.

So the basic plot of this film is that a princess by the name of Scarlet sees her king father get executed when she is just a child, as commanded by the treachery of her corrupt uncle Claudius. He is then crowned the new ruler of the kingdom and since then, she spends the next several years training and plotting to take him down as he leads a new age of tyranny on the land. Sadly, she ends up dying by his hands, which leads us to see her soul  sent to a place called the Outer Land, which is this movie’s version of the afterlife.

We also learn that once they are killed again in the Outer Land, their bodies disintegrate and join what they call “the nothingness” (which I’m grateful to now know is a real word, because I kept thinking back to the force of nature-style antagonist of The Neverending Story Part II a couple times after hearing it). It is a place where every human being goes when they die, regardless of their faith, class, and amount of good or bad deeds done while living. It also, more interestingly, is a place where both the past and future are one in the same. This means that people who have died thousands of years after Scarlet’s time can meet people who have died long before, almost as if their deaths have just happened.

We see this comes in the form of Hijiri, who is a present day male nurse from Japan that Scarlet meets that isn’t from her time. Even if he isn’t on board with killing anyone that gets in her way like Scarlet is, he decides to join her on her journey of revenge against Claudius, who is in the Outer World as well.

With a set up like this, it can be pretty easy to imagine how limitlessly complex a setting like this can be, probably more so than Hosoda was letting on. Going in, I knew nothing about this movie outside of the vague premise of “princess becomes badass warrior”, so watching this film and getting all these details was exciting at the time. It’s one thing to go and say that every person on planet Earth goes to the same afterlife, but to actually illustrate that through what characters are wearing based on the time period is another thing. It’s the bare minimum of legwork they can do (one could even argue it can come across as window dressing in a way) but it’s nice to see them do it anyway.

There areldiers and knights wearing armor from different periods in history of different backgrounds, both Eastern and Western. We see scenes of monks in orange robes who are some of the only non-violentaracters in the film. There’s even a short sequence where Hijiri takes part in a traditional Hawaiian hula dance, complete with a song sung by (according to the credits), an actual Kuma Hula teacher! (Iokepa Lopaka Ka o onuku umu Igarta-De Vera). It was neat to see a Japanese production try to be inclusive as opposed to seeing that done from something from the Western front.

I’m praising the different types of decades shown in this, but it did get me wondering about the supposed present Hijiri is from; if this is meant to be a world where both the past and future people meet and try to survive, where ARE the rest of the more modern people at? Like, it feels there should be a bit more people who just look like everyday people in the background amongst all the other people, you know? There’s a scene where Hijiri shows how useful he is because of the modern medicine he has, and it is a neat contrast to show how far society has come in terms of how we treat people. But it just makes me think of how there are people who still die everyday in our current time; not so much to things like war or murder (which they do ponder on in this film) but stuff like cancer or even other illnesses that we haven’t found cures for yet.

It’s worth mentioning that there is some talk about this place called the Infinite Land, which I guess is meant to be some heavenly paradise. I won’t spoil what happens, but there is some talk on whether or not this place is real or not throughout the movie. Hosoda’s films tend to be optimistic, and for a short period we see our main character Scarlet be broken and beaten in a number of ways, so one could argue it balances it out. I just wonder if the way this film ends and me questioning it is a result of the current cynicism of the world I’m feeling. Basically, there are points where they help characters are sent to kill them, and that sets the stage where they are on good terms, which is weird for a setting that is basically meant to be Limbo for every living soul ever. It’s this weird notion that as long as you are kind and generous all the time, things will go your way. 

Now here comes the elephant in the room: the CGI. There was some commotion about it when eve trailer dropped and the varying qualities CGI anime can have There’s some really immaculate stuff like the indie series The Galactic Limited Express, but then you also have Uzumaki (Thanks Zaslov). I found it to be tolerable, they do a fun thing where the CGI is only ever used in the Outer World, further illustrating how different of a world it is. The backgrounds and landscapes would get eerily real at times, but thankfully the models of these characters feel more at home in such a setting than what happened with the goofy cartoonish designs in Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur.

A number of the previous films by Mamoru Hosoda were co-produced by the  French studio Charades, but this one is instead co-produced by Columbia Pictures, an American company. I have no idea if this is part of the reason for the new artistic direction, but it would make sense if it did, especially if they needed different expertise for it. Other co-producers for this film include three Japanese studios: Studio Chizu, Toho, and Nippon TV. In the credits, you will see they also had help from some animation studios in Taiwan, India, and South Korea, even listing some of the animators from each.

The English dub for this film was directed by Todd Haberkorn, in addition to voicing several background roles himself. It’s nice to see whenever a dub is directed by someone who has experience in voice acting. While I won’t call it excellent or that it reinvents the wheel, it’s a pretty admirable job at points. Erin Yvette does a pretty good job at selling the broken down Scarlet who needs to be given some hope, and Chris Hackney was alright as Hijiri. A big surprise was David Kaye voices Claudius, who I immediately recognized from similar characters he’s done. He was great here.  

Overall, I think maybe this film could’ve used a bit more tug in certain areas. It’s good to be nice and hopeful for the betterment of humanity and all, especially if you’ve lived a life of bitterness. But to paraphrase civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael,  I feel we misunderstand the concept of love on a regular basis. In order to properly love things like humanity and companionship, you have to also properly hate things that seek to destroy those things. I didn’t mention this earlier, but this film, like Belle, appears to be a loose adaptation of a work of fiction, in this case William Shakespeare’s Hamlet instead of Beauty and the Beast. There are characters who have names like Voltemand , Cornelius, and Polonius. I’m sure if I was highly familiar with the story of Hamlet, I would be able to get the significance of how these characters are adapted in comparison, but alas.

I don’t hate this movie, but I do feel it got a bit too saccharine for its own good. Plus, as someone who rarely sees anime movies when they first drop, it’s weird to see another anime film this year where the protagonist is a cynical woman who has every right to be cynical about the world who meets a guy that is more soft-spoken and is more gentle, and both eventually develop a romantic relationship, however short it may be. I’ll end it off on this: The stuff I liked, I really liked. The action was quite realistic and choreographed. You could feel and see the impact certain blows had