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It might only be April, but studios are already jockeying for position in next year’s award season. Sony is pinning a lot of its awards hopes on Scarlet, an upcoming anime film from Mamoru Hosoda. Its December release date is clearly designed to give the movie the best chance to wow judges before the deadline for Oscar nominations close at the end of the year, giving it a good chance to repeat Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki’s 2023 success with The Boy and The Heron.

Scarlet has been described as the story of a brave princess who transcends time and space, which might be the perfect tagline because it tells us enough to get excited about the movie without telling us anything useful about its plot. Sony is co-financing Scarlet alongside Studio Chizu and Nippon TV and has set its release date as December 12, 2025. It is close to the 2023 release date for Miyazaki’s The Boy and The Heron, which went on to win Best Animated Feature at the Oscars the following year.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Mamoru Hosoda gained buzz for one of his movies. His 2018 film Mirai was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars and 2021’s Belle was selected for the Cannes Premiere Selection before going on to gross $65 million at the global box office. Sony is clearly hoping that Scarlet will do one better than getting nominated for an Oscar by giving it a coveted December release date, which would be the perfect way to justify their recent focus on the anime side of their business.

Mamoru Hosoda’s Scarlet is landing in theaters on December 12, 2025, just in time to generate some buzz ahead of the 2026 award season.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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• How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
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• The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did
• Studio Ghibli movies have never been as cozy as you think they are and that's what makes them magic