Imagine If Hosoda Simply Made an Ohara Scarlet Remake With Black Muslim Chara Piloting Furry Mecha And Hired Me As Scenarist
Impressions on Hateshinaki Scarlet by Studio Chizu, the 3D anime movie directed by Hosoda. There's a slightly longer version of the article available for Ko-fi subscribers.
Asalam aleikoum how's it going. If I had a job as an anime journalist in the industry's current state of Infernal Affairs, this article would have a stupid SEO drone title like "20 Years After Creating Digimon, The Director Of Summer Wars And Mirai Is Back With A New Divisive Movie". Make sure to thank capitalism/racism for preventing that.
Just like with many of my impressions articles, note that there is a slightly longer (don't expect much), slightly more personal version of this article for Tier 1 Ko-fi subs！！イェーイ！！8888888！！ It's 5$ a month. Tier 2 is 10$ to get even more of my weird puns and brainworms, distilled in interviews and livestreams translations. Thank God I won't become homeless or anything even if you don't sub, but it could allow me to make more articles and videos. And maybe one day insha Allah I'll get like 100 subs and be able to make "WOKE ot*ku independent pop culture and political journalist" my real job.
Imagine if Hosoda simply stuck to what he does best. If he wanted some Skarlet so much and wanted to do something truly original, he could have picked Ohara Skarlet, remade it into a 2D anime with black muslim characters piloting furry mecha. And then hired me as one of the scenarists.
There was an animation festival held in Paris on the last week of November, with several anime movies shown. One of these was SUKARURETTO, the new movie by Hosoda Mamoru's studio Studio Chizu, which released in Japan on November 21. I technically didn't see the movie myself, but I can tell you it was incredibly bad. Source: trust me sis.
Do not go watch the movie thinking "maybe it looks weird at first glance but it's actually a masterpiece, just like Cross Ange, one of the best anime of the 2010s decade and a useful tool for filtering white-minded leftists who cease all critical thinking the moment they see anime nudity in a Japanese work and immediately dismiss it as problematic".
SUKARURETTO is super bad and has no Clow Reedeeming Cobray factors. What you see and hear in the trailers is indeed the whole movie. AAA Hollywood story where STRONG INDEPENDENT WOMAN falls in love with generic dude and learns revenge is bad actually.
Not really what I want from Hosoda but people comparing this to Berserk 16 are outta there minds. Even the worst shot in the trailer blows anything for that outta the water. We gotta find better comps for CGi
— Slater (@slatersev.bsky.social) 2025-08-02T02:11:42.332Z
It's obviously not on that level, but that's a comparison between a small, notoriously janky TV studio and a theatrical director who by default has access to way more resources. It's true that Hosoda has lost some of the generational 2D talent he had tight control of, but that's kinda self-inflicted
— kViN (@yuyucow.bsky.social) 2025-08-02T10:07:16.767Z
And that I think sums up a sad stage of his career. He insists on being a miya-like figure who writes his own films, even though the partnerships with Okudera were so much more compelling. I'd say the exception is Mirai where he was writing something personal, but on the whole, a preventable mistake
— kViN (@yuyucow.bsky.social) 2025-08-02T10:09:17.045Z
Same with his choice to push for 3D: not only has that alienated the exceptional team he had, but it's anthitetical to his storyboarding. He has always been at his best when *betraying* space, drawing from that Ikuhara-like staging and even in comedic ways he excelled at. Obviously you can also...
— kViN (@yuyucow.bsky.social) 2025-08-02T10:10:50.076Z
board something stunning in 3D, and it's not like tendencies can't be mixed, but being so adamant in using Objective space when you're good at subjectively twisting it is so weird. That's why most shots are framed in boring ways, it's not his game! (Also the timing's so janky... that tackle...)
— kViN (@yuyucow.bsky.social) 2025-08-02T10:12:47.414Z
I have no idea why the movie sucks so much. Like I always say I'm not a sakubuta and don't know much about anime production. Judging from kViN's tweets though, basically Hosoda Mamoru really wanted to do a 3D movie at all costs for some reason even though he has no idea how to do it.
My personal theory is: this is an nth case of Japanese society being unconsciously white supremacist, worshiping everything Caucasian USAjin and Western Europeans do. My headcanon is, Hosoda was like "All the USAjin anime studios do full 3D anime for decades now!! That's the mainstream!! If I wanna pretend winning an OSUKAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR one day, I gotta do a 3D movie too. Inspire myself from some popular Western fantasy, but avoid fusing it back with obviously Japanese and otaku culture elements like how Ice Cream Goods games would do it. This is the way Towards The Future for A Better Tomorrow!!".
The funny thing is I think Hosoda and his team emulated Hollywood movie culture really well. They even sprinkled some slightly ambiguous racism. Like that caravan that shows up, which is like the movie stating "we don't see Colors here" like a typical unconsciously racist person. It's just the right amount of racism so that most people will say "You're just overthinking it you should be happy he put some blacks and arabs NPCs in there". Sure bro, we're all either terrorists, misogynists, queerphobes, or comedians and minstrels. But it's aaaaall a coincidence.
I guess at least it could've been worse. Just like many other Japanese artists, Hosoda could have gone "NTRs and NebulaChain are the future we gotta do it, USA is all about it!!" And made some movie with a tie-up game called The Boy and 幻愛 (GenAI) CryptoMechaBeast.
Note that the Official Toho Movie YouTube channel has several making-of like videos and interviews with Hosoda and his team. However, seeing these were all released slightly before and after the movie, I assume that it's mainly PR and that they don't go into details which could affirm or deny my headcanon. Either way it's like 2 hours worth of video so I'm definitely not watching them.
Anyway thanks for reading, I'm gonna try and make other articles for the other movies I saw insha Allah. I watched Look Back, Housenka, and Chao. That wasn't at the festival, but I also finally saw the 2025 Conan movie so I need to write about this as well. (I also need to import my posts on the 2022-2024 Conan movies from my defunct Substacks to here.)
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