swordsmanship Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Scarlet
(Hateshinaki Sukaretto,
果てしなきスカーレット,
lit. Endless Scarlet)

Director – Mamoru Hosoda – 2025 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 111m

****

Trapped in the Otherworld, a limbo preceding the afterlife, Princess Scarlet seeks revenge on her uncle who has killed her father the King – anime reimagining of Hamlet is out in UK cinemas on Friday, March 13th

Walking across a vast desert and dying of thirst, a redhead recalls how she came to be there. Those were happier times in sixteenth century Denmark, when Scarlet (voice: Mana Ashida from Lonely Castle in the Mirror, Keiichi Hara, 2022; The House of the Lost on the Cape, Shinya Kawatsura, 2021; Poupelle of Chimney Town, Yusuke Hirota, 2020; Pacific Rim, Guillermo del Toro, 2013) – for it is she – spent time with her father King Amleth (voice: Masachika Ichimura from Giovanni’s Island, 2014), drawing his portrait outdoors. Amleth always had the best interests of his people at heart.

Yet there was always a dark foreboding in the background – Scarlet’s severe mother Gertrude (voice: Yuki Saito from The Third Murder, Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2017) who ripped up her drawing, her power-hungry, warmongering Uncle Claudius (voice: Koji Yakusho from Perfect Days, Wim Wenders, 2023; Belle, Mamoru Hosoda, 2021, The Third Murder; Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997; Shall We Dance, Masayuki Suo, 1996) with his greedy eyes on the throne.… Read the rest

Detective Conan
The Million-Dollar Pentagram
(Meitantei Konan
Hyakuman Doru
no Michishirube,
名探偵コナン
100万ドルの五稜星)

Director – Chika Nagaoka – 2024 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 111m

****

Spin-off from a hugely populardetective mystery manga and anime franchise – and Japan’s biggest box office success of 2024 – impresses on the level of eye-candy provided you don’t attempt to follow the overly convoluted plot – out on UK digital from Monday, March 3rd 2025

Japanese property Detective Conan is huge, running as a serialised manga in Weekly Shonen Sunday for 30 years, and turned into an anime series two years after that. By 2024, the manga has been collected into over a hundred volumes, while the franchise has spawn both animated and live action features among other things. The current film is the 27th animated feature, and at the time of writing is the biggest film at this year’s Japanese box office.

It may not be a good place to start with the franchise. Unlike Spy x Family Code: White (Kazuhiro Fusuhashu, Takashi Karagiri, 2023), which does a surprisingly effective job at getting the newcomer up to speed on a well-established anime franchise, Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram doesn’t bother to explain its characters and their complex network of relationships, so you may find yourself completely lost before it starts throwing its increasingly convoluted plot developments at the viewer (as it does almost immediately with disorienting speed).… Read the rest