Scarlet (2026) Movie Review

Scarlet (2026) is a movie that was directed by Mamoru Hosoda who some may know as the director of Wolf Children (2012) or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006). The movie has a run time of 1 hour and 51 minutes.

I don’t really watch that much anime on TV despite knowing that there a lot of good anime’s out there I’ve never seen or heard of. What I have been enjoying doing lately is watching the anime movies at the the cinema. They are the only animated experiences you can actually get these days there and I love seeing the animation on the big screen. When you’re in there watching it, you can really appreciate the art and all the work that has gone into making the movie.

I like the animation in Scarlet. There are a lot of nice scenes to look at. But my main observation was the Scarlet character looked to be animated a lot better and had a lot more detail than many of the characters in the story. Like as if she was just clearer the rest. I don’t know if this was intentional for the story or it just seemed that way to me. But many of the other lesser characters looked to be basic in their appearance compared to when you see Scarlet on the screen. Not sure what it was as I am not a animation expert but I noticed it. Overall I did like the animation though, I got what I was looking for out of this experience.

The story of Scarlet is okay. This is a story with a strong revenge theme running throughout it. Scarlet’s father is murdered early on in the story and she is then poisoned by the killer as well. She awakens in a realm that is between life and death. It is here where the revenge themes are the strongest, she’s definitely not happy. This is until she encounters another man in there, who is more forgiving and encourages her to let go of her rage and anger. Scarlet is a story of change. I like this story, but at 1 hour and 51 minutes it did feel little long. Maybe 90 minutes would have suited a bit better, there were some parts of the story where I felt like the movie did drag on a little bit and it got slow.

Overall this is a movie to go and see at the cinema if you really just love seeing anything animated at the cinema. I loved watching this and looking at all the work that went into it. The story is decent, but does drag on a bit and the runtime felt a little long for me. It’s not a bad movie though and worth it if you’re in the anime niche to go and see this weekend.