While Japanese animation fans are discovering new episodes of LAZARUS every week - the new work by the great Shin'ichirō Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Space Dandy) - a fantasy film is expected to bring them together this year in theaters.
A very ambitious fantasy film
After having been confined to Japanese borders for a long time, Japanese animated cinema is increasingly exported internationally, to the point of becoming a very serious competitor to American productions. Led by Katsuhiro Ōtomo (Akira), Mamoru Oshii (The Ghost in the Shell), Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies) and Hayao Miyazaki (Castle in the Sky), a whole gallery of filmmakers have succeeded in establishing themselves on the global animation market. It is now impossible to do without Japanese animation, and some films have achieved such popular and critical success that Hollywood is now forced to get with the times, building more and more bridges between American cinema and Japanese animation.
While all of Hollywood has been engaged since 2019 in a fierce competition to obtain the new fantasy work capable of taking up the torch from Game of Thrones, Japanese animation studios also seem to have their say. Thus, director Mamoru Hosoda, known in particular for his acclaimed films Wolf Children and The Boy and the Beast will offer this year his new animated feature film Scarlet, the first image of which was unveiled at the end of 2024. Four years after the experimental sci-fi film Belle, Hosoda will this time tell the story of a princess who must face her sworn enemy in Hell one last time.
Scarlet is already considered the darkest film of Mamoru Hosoda's career, but also the most ambitious; the filmmaker will indeed adopt a new visual approach entirely developed for the film, which could well revolutionize the use of 3D in animation. Good news, Scarlet already has a trailer and a release date, revealed earlier this month. So, the date is set for December 10, 2025 in French cinemas, just a few weeks after its Japanese release!
One year after the worldwide box office failure of Kenji Kamiyama's animated feature film The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, produced for Warner Bros. Discovery, Scarlet is on a mission to pick up the torch and do better. The film has the advantage of being completely original - it is not an adaptation - as well as the reputation of its author. Let us remember that Mamoru Hosoda is often considered, alongside Makoto Shinkai (Your Name.) as the heir to the absolute master of Japanese animation, Hayao Miyazaki, despite the enmity he feels towards the director of Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle.
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