Hosoda’s starting point was a desire to make a thoroughly modern take on the classic revenge narrative, which naturally led him back to Shakespeare, the originator of the genre tropes we know so well today.
He told Zavvi: “I asked myself what I would do if I were to write a revenge story today, and in the course of that thinking, Hamlet inevitably came to mind. Hamlet is often described as the origin of revenge tragedies, but it is not necessarily a story in which revenge is carried out and the audience feels satisfied.
“If anything, I think it is a story about a chain of consequences: what happens when revenge continues in a chain? Shakespeare illustrates that very consequence, and I felt that this made it resonate now especially considering the current state of the world.”
Maybe calling Princess Scarlet’s revenge mission an adaptation of Hamlet – even if it opens in 16th Century Denmark – is a stretch considering the leaps in time and space that follow. But the film couldn’t exist without it, as Hosoda outlines.
“I believe Shakespeare’s works continue to be read today not because of their settings or historical context, but because the contradictions and inner struggles of human beings remain unchanged across time. Using the narrative structure and basis of Hamlet as a starting point, I aimed to create a moment in which us living in the world today can ask ourselves, “Is revenge just? Or is it an act that ultimately destroys the world?”
“In a modern age where we are unable to stop the “cycle of retaliation,” I feel the questions posed by classical works are more vital than ever. Scarlet is a work that attempts to retell the questions inherent in the classic story not as a relic of the past, but as something spoken directly to the world we live in now.”
The anime is arriving in UK cinemas on the same weekend that another film inspired by Hamlet – the speculative historical tale Hamnet – is all but certain to win its lead actress Jessie Buckley a Best Actress Oscar. Having developed the film for several years, it’s a context Hosoda could never have predicted, but one he assigns to the continued relevancy of the play’s themes.
He continued: “When making this film, there was no way of knowing that other works related to Hamlet were being made at the same time - I heard that even film festival program directors found the phenomenon intriguing! This is not entirely unusual as similar situations have occurred in the past.
“Around the time Akira Kurosawa began developing Throne of Blood, Orson Welles was also making a work based on Macbeth, and Laurence Olivier was likewise working on Macbeth - perhaps the themes of Macbeth were simply needed in that era. Such cultural currents and the needs of the times tend to influence works that emerge.
“However, I believe it is not us creators who should directly articulate and connect these things, rather, meaning arises more accurately when audiences themselves reflect on it. Among Kurosawa’s films, I find Throne of Blood, which takes Macbeth as its motif, truly extraordinary, as that kind of approach to adaptation is very rare in Japan.
“In fact, I used to think that only a master like Kurosawa could dare tackle such a famous classic.”
Since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Scarlet has proved divisive due to its radical blend of 2D and 3D animation techniques, switching between the two depending on which reality the heroine finds herself in. As the director argues, it was the only way to convey the otherworldly nature of the narrative.
“I believed that a film must have a sense of scale that matches the size of its story, and for this film, I was particularly focused on how space is expressed on screen. As a basic visual structure, the world in which Scarlet lives in reality is depicted through hand-drawn 2D animation, while the Otherworld is constructed entirely in 3DCG.
“There are many ways to expand cinematic space, whether in 2D animation or in live-action filmmaking. By combining those approaches with CG technology, we experimented repeatedly through trial and error; I approached it less as creating a hybrid form and more with the intention of updating the language of animation itself.
“Until now, animation has largely been treated as an either-or choice: either it is made with CG, or hand drawn, and the two have rarely mixed in any essential sense, almost like there is a strict conceptual opposition. However, with Scarlet, we aimed for a visual language in which the strengths of 3DCG and the power of traditional Japanese hand-drawn animation seamlessly blend within a single world, appearing natural and integrated.
“We spent a great deal of time on trial and error in search of a fresh form of animated expression that had not been seen before. It was an extremely difficult challenge, but our guiding principle was to treat CG not as a substitute for hand-drawn work, but as a tool that exists on an extension of hand-drawn expression, and to raise it to a level that felt satisfying both artistically and technically.”
As with any animator experimenting with photorealism, the most challenging things to bring to life are the imperceptible details a general audience might not clock.
“What I was especially particular about was the dirt”, Hosoda continued, “I wanted audiences to feel how desperately Scarlet was trying to survive, not through dialogue, but through the wounds and dirt left on her body and clothing. In many cases, dirt in animation functions only as a symbolic detail to heighten realism, but in Scarlet, I wanted dirt to exist not simply as information, but as an extension of emotion.
“Photorealistic texture doesn't automatically create emotional depth. That is exactly why I always placed an emotional target first and wanted each trace of dirt and every wrinkle to hold the character’s presence and something like body temperature within it.
“As a result, I think we arrived at a kind of image-making that had never existed before, one in which the emotional vibration of Scarlet’s lines and the spatial density of 3D exist at the same time. By respecting the history of Japanese hand-drawn animation and thinking within that extension, we were able to achieve a fresh and distinctive visual language unique to this work.
“We take pride in having created our own unique new form of animated expression.”
Having now broken new ground for the medium, is Hosoda planning on pushing those experiments with form even further in his next project? Well, not if the story doesn’t require it – and that comes before anything else in his process.
"My goal is not simply to continue using a new technique for its own sake, but I don’t think that returning to a more traditional 2D style would be a conservative choice. What matters is what kind of expression is most appropriate for each particular film.
“With Scarlet, I needed a new visual language that could achieve both the reality of the living world and the radically different space of the Otherworld through a high-level fusion of 2D and 3D, but not every story calls for the same method. If a film is quieter and needs to observe the breathing rhythm of everyday life or the subtle tremors of emotion, then the strength of simpler 2D expression may be what resonates with the audience the most.
“The one thing I can say is that I do not intend to stop challenging myself; even when working in 2D, it would not mean simply returning to an old-fashioned method. Expression should always continue to renew itself, and that process depends not on how flashy the technology is, but on whether it can create emotions and visions of the world that audiences have not seen before.
“Whatever form my next work takes, I aim to create a new cinematic experience unique to that film.”
