A new Mamoru Hosoda movie is a big deal. Over the past two decades, Hosoda has become a rarity as an anime director: a household name who has banked multiple box-office hits with original films not based on existing manga, like "Summer Wars" (2009), "The Boy and the Beast" (2015) and "Belle" (2021). He also directed the only anime film outside the oeuvre of Studio Ghibli to earn an Academy Award nomination, 2018's "Mirai."

Hosoda is also remarkably consistent. Since 2006's "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time," he's cranked out films like clockwork, with films landing in late July every three years. So my eyebrows went up when summer 2024 came and went without a new Hosoda film — and then again when the first trailer for "Scarlet" appeared online earlier this year.

While Hosoda's last film, "Belle," was his take on "The Beauty and the Beast," "Scarlet" is his version of "Hamlet." The titular protagonist, voiced by Mana Ashida, is a Danish princess whose father (Masachika Ichimura) is betrayed by his conniving brother, Claudius (Koji Yakusho), who has the king executed and ascends to the throne. Scarlet attempts to take revenge by poisoning her uncle, but not before he can poison her back. Scarlet wakes to find herself in the afterlife, a barren hellscape populated by souls in limbo from across time and space, including a paramedic from modern-day Tokyo named Hijiri (Masaki Okada). Scarlet and Hijiri are polar opposites — she a warrior obsessed with revenge, he a healer who believes in empathy — but they find themselves traveling together, battling enemies and gaining allies as Scarlet searches for the undead Claudius.