Hateshinaki Scarlet

I'm just gonna straight to the points : watch it if you're interested, but keep your expectation as low as possible when you decided to watched it.

This movie giving me some Ghibli vibes about there's a lot of interpretation from what happening through the movie. Since I'm not a Ghibli fan, ( I'm dumb when talking about the message in some kind of metaphorical forms) I don't understand almost anything from the creator want to tell us about those kind of things , but I definitely still can enjoyed the movie until the end. The plot was very simple about revenge ( read the ... synopsis ) there's nothing special about it, like really. The characterization from the MC or other side characters was nothing special too, it's just really like a Shounen type of characters. BUT the animation and scoring was really the one that makes me can enjoyed this movie until the credits end. The animation is combination of 2D and 3D, so if you can't enjoying a 3D type of animation so this wasn't the movie that you'll enjoy but it's still a very good 3D for me. The art was really beautiful, I don't know why but some of the frame makes me remember of anime Devilman: crybaby, but it's just really my mind playing some trick. And the Scoring is the one that's makes it worth to watch in the cinema! Trust me, if this movie gonna release in the streaming platforms, you can't never ever feel the fullness of the background music and the sounds effect that this movie gonna give you (unless you have the technology about that lol).

Conclusion : watch it if you interested, but set the expectation as low as possible and just remove your brain from thinking about the plot. I know 2025 giving us some masterpieces movie like Chainsawman: Reze Arc in the last few months before, that's why perhaps a lot of people giving too harsh scores about it since this movie is really flopped in terms of plot and characterization. But about the animation and scoring, Its definitely worth to watch (atleast in my opinion lol :'p) .
Thanks for reading, it's my first time making reviews since I kinda feel bad about the score. So, I hope my reviews give you guys some insight about the movie. Have a nice day!

Edit: the song tittle is " A celebration Song " if you guys perhaps wanted to hear the full song, it's a good song too in my opinion!

I thought the movie was well executed in terms of animation, storyboarding, directing, fight sequences, and the sound (especially in IMAX) but the story itself falls flat on it's face. The whole premise of the movie just doesn't make sense and I was distracted throughout the whole movie on just the premise. Everything is too convenient and never explained how so many characters all ended up where they did. The animation style along with the wooden characters just made things worst. The movie tries to add symbolism and mythical creatures along with pacifist themes, and it's fine if they don't explain the world but if ... the characters themselves and the circumstance of their plight doesn't vibe, make sense or likable, all you have left is some cool fight scenes in between dialogue.

Saw it today. Jan 30th 2026
Basic summary:
Bad directing, very bad writing.
Very good animations, very good choreography

Bad directing: way too much random stuff going on. Bollywood dancing. Some Hawaiians in medieval middle east. The romance appeared so late in the end that it was pointless even including it and couldve just left it as a mother-son or friend and friend relationship. There was no need to even include romance at the last second. Simply way too much random things that should've been cut out. Along with missing parts of the story which leads to...
Bad writing. Way too many gaps in the story. ... They go from the Hawaiian dance to somehow recruiting an entire army? How did she do that? Nobody knows. Is she even the leader? Nobody knows. She's just fighting as front line infantry, maybe shes the leader, maybe shes just a lowly foot soldier, i dont know whats going on and why they suddenly went to war and how the old kingdom got transported to their world. What is going on in the movie?

Animation quality is very nice, well drawn stuff. However what's the point if there's only a handful of battle scenes?
Choreography very good. Lots of good fighting combat. My favorite scene was the Tibetan peace monks going into combat but there's no explanation for it. Just a fun scene to watch.

If you're a fan of war entertainment then this is an alright background movie while you do something else. Then watch it for the battle scenes and when it's over go back to whatever you were doing. War movie fans will enjoy those battles, they did great work condensing as many bodies possible into a single frame like it's the Total War video games in their battle. For everyone else that doesn't like war action. Skip it.

It takes a pretty good amount of inspiration from Berzerk and loosely from Macbeth. Very very tiny bit of combat comparisons with Vinland saga. Except those three are very well written with coherent stories.