Scarlet

The ambition is undeniable... Scarlet is certainly a more hopeful version of this story than Shakespeare’s original. It’s also still thoroughly an anime, complete with a highly emotional ending that has echoes of Spirited Away in its romance.

Those looking for a straight Hamlet adaptation or an action-oriented animé should look elsewhere; those looking for a fantastical, visually glorious story that reflects on the potential and pitfalls of humanity are in for a good time.

Great animation, excellent chemistry of voice actors, although plot can be somewhat confusing to understand at times. Also, to some viewers, the story-line may also be uninspiring too due to the Hamlet influenced story-lines being saturated in the animated world.

Well, there IS the sheer ambition and SPECTACLE of the thing. As a re-thinking (and expansion into an epic) of Hamlet , it’s audacious, but on the issue of a practical philosophical approach to living in the real world, it’s almost as uncertain and unclear as Hamlet’s OWN thinking. It’s definitely an imperfect epic, but an epic nevertheless.

Is Scarlet Mamoru Hosoda’s best film? No. But is it an above-average film worth watching? Absolutely.

an overstuffed yet simplistic mess

Hosoda’s animation is so photorealistic that it ventures into the uncanny valley

Scarlet never gets as deranged as Hosoda teases or as uplifting as its mystical conceit projects.

The normally great director misses the mark with a wonderfully animated but narratively clunky retelling of the Shakespearean staple

A frustrating waste of animating and directorial skill for the price of an excessively ordinary, hollow story.

Mamoru Hosoda’s isekai riff on Hamlet is one of this year’s biggest anime disappointments.