Books book culture What Lures Readers Into Picking Up an Unfamiliar Book? What elements do you look for when browsing the shelves? By James Davis Nicoll | Published on February 9, 2026 Photo by Agustin Gunawan [via Unsplash] Comment 0 Share New Share Photo by Agustin Gunawan [via Unsplash] One might expect that all one needs to do to convince readers to pick up your newly published novel is for it to appear in some appropriate venue (bookshelf, website, etc.). However, even if we were to limit ourselves to conventional publishing and physical books, an astonishing number of books are published each year. It’s easy—quite possibly inevitable—that your new book will get lost in the crowd. What works to attract attention? One possible solution is to ask your neighborhood Books Georg what induced them to pick up the books in the two weighty sacks they are carrying. Luckily for me, despite my very moderate reading pace, I am somehow a Books Georg1, which greatly simplifies the logistical challenges involved in questioning me. So: What will get me to pull a book off the shelf? Actually, make that “a book by an unfamiliar author”2. Obviously, authors with whose work I am already familiar have a leg up. I have long lists of authors for whom I keep an eye out. But how did I find them in the first place? Two main routes: first, methods that the author and sellers can control, and secondly, stuff that they cannot. What publishers, distributors, and authors can control… In declining order: Art: The art doesn’t have to signal much about the contents of the book. In fact, it’s probably best to assume that it won’t. As one publisher has established, the art doesn’t have to be good. In fact, as Penguin showed with its classic cover design, you don’t technically need art in the sense of illustrations at all, as long as the cover design is striking. If the cover inspires a browsing reader to pause and consider the book, the cover did its job. There are a few drawbacks to depending on art to catch the browser’s eye. First, you’ll need an artist (or in the case of Penguin, an inspired designer). But artists and designers want to be paid3. Artists are notoriously insistent on eating and living indoors, as if they were royalty. Second, the cover art will only be visible if the book is face out, rather than spine out. Blurbs: Blurbs are intended to entice the reader, to convince them that this is a book worth buying. Like cover art, conveying any sort of accurate information about the book is an optional extra, something a publisher might consider if the circumstances allow. Still, it’s bad if having read the blurb, the reader has no idea at all what the book is about or to whom it is supposed to appeal. I do need to carve out a special exception for blurbs so terrible they attract reader attention. The classic example is, of course, the back cover copy for Margaret St. Clair’s Sign of the Labrys, which famously read: WOMEN ARE WRITING SCIENCE-FICTION! ORIGINAL! BRILLIANT!! DAZZLING!!! Women are closer to the primitive than men. They are conscious of the moon-pulls, the earth-tides. They possess a buried memory of humankind’s obscure and ancient past which can emerge to uniquely color and flavor a novel. Such a woman is Margaret St. Clair, author of this novel. Such a novel is this, Sign of the Labrys, the story of a doomed world of the future, saved by recourse to ageless, immemorial rites… FRESH! IMAGINATIVE!! INVENTIVE!!! Does that convey anything beyond, perhaps, that the person responsible for the blurb had not read the book and had a deadline? No. It’s a trainwreck of a blurb, but it is so memorable I still think about it sixty-plus years later… and I do own that particular edition, so the blurb did its job. Proximity: It never hurts to be shelved right next to a popular author (or at least the author the reader was originally looking for). I no longer remember which of Simak or Silverberg I found first, but I do remember that I tried the second because their book happened to be next to the first. This is to some extent under the author and publisher’s control, depending on the author’s tolerance for pen names. Use a pseudonym starting with “Tol,” “Ki,” “We”, or “Ya” (to name a few) and your book will be shelved in well-travelled real estate4. Or since surnames tend to cluster, you might get lucky and not need a pen name at all. Eye level: When I ran my store, I was very aware that anything below knee level and anything above eye level was basically invisible to browsers. Does this inform my own browsing habits? It does not! A book that happens to be at my eye level is much more likely to be noticed by me than one that is not. Aside from not having a surname beginning with A or Z, I don’t have concrete suggestions about how one can ensure one’s book ends up at eye level. Well, you can try bribing the clerks, I suppose5. You can at least take heart from the fact that Poul Anderson and Roger Zelazny both had great careers despite the shelving handicap of their surnames. What sellers cannot control: Spontaneous word of mouth from someone I trust. Note the absence of “someone with whom I agree.” Someone doesn’t need to have the same preferences or views about books as I do to be someone whose opinions are useful to me. They just need to be coherent, consistent, and sincere. I can work out from what they said how I am likely to react to a book. From the author’s and publisher’s perspective, this is the most frustrating filter, because it depends on spontaneity and trust. Gaming this system destroys spontaneity and is a good way to annihilate trust. Therefore, to even try to influence word of mouth is high risk. Rather than convince readers that your book is worth reading, it could instead convince them to disregard everything from that particular source of book gossip. I’d name names of places I no longer trust to provide me with good reads, but I so hate being sued… Those are the primary filters I use. What are yours?[end-mark] Even though my review pace has slowed with age to the point that I am only forty-five times as productive as the median reviewer in the 2016 Clarksworld survey, rather than the sixty-five-fold rate I managed when I was at my peak. ︎I will also rule out one of the great drivers of my purchases in the 1970s, which was “it was the only science fiction or fantasy book the store had in stock.” Which had the advantage of introducing me to ambitious authors I would not have thought to try and the disadvantage of introducing me to Gregory Kern’s books. ︎“Gosh, can’t I just use a plagiarism engine to generate artslop?” Well, sure. That’s an option open to any moral vacuum. But why should a reader believe that the contents of a book were any less AI-generated than the cover? I employ numerous negative filters, elements that will absolutely get me to ignore a book. AI cover art is up near the top of the list. ︎There are some downsides. For example, when I went looking for James Alan Gardner’s Expendable, I couldn’t find it until I stopped to think where an overworked clerk might have mis-shelved it… over in mainstream, with the John Gardner books. Both John Gardners. Grendel was tucked in among Bond books. Poor Blofeld’s had an accident. So may you all. Another example: Walter Jon Williams and William John Watkins are not the same people, but their names are similar enough that I’ve had to add footnotes to reviews explaining that. ︎I knew of an author back in the days of spinner racks who made a point of being nice to the guys who delivered new books each week. As a consequence, her books would be left on the spinners when they should have been pulled, which had a measurable effect on her sales. ︎The post What Lures Readers Into Picking Up an Unfamiliar Book? appeared first on Reactor.

News Starfleet Academy Avery Brooks Gave His Blessing to Starfleet Academy’s Big Sisko Episode Writer Tawny Newsome breaks down the battle to pay tribute to Captain Sisko and Avery Brooks in Starfleet Academy’s latest episode By Matthew Byrd | Published on February 6, 2026 Photo: John Medland/Paramount+ Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: John Medland/Paramount+ Note: This article contains light spoilers for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy episode 5 “Series Acclimation Mil.” While we won’t dive into the full spoilers here (you can find more of those in this review), it’s safe to call Star Trek: Starfleet Academy‘s latest episode (“Series Acclimation Mil”) a massive tribute to both Deep Space Nine and Avery Brooks’ beloved character, Captain Benjamin Sisko. Starfleet Academy co-showrunner Noga Landau even referred to it as a love letter to both DS9 and Sisko in our recent interview with them. And now, in an expansive (and excellent) interview with TrekMovie, episode writer Tawny Newsome explains how the episode came about. “I was pretty adamant that for this episode, it was our job to make this an homage, a celebration, and really a bit of a correction for what I feel has been an oversight in a lot of modern Trek,” says Newsome. “We haven’t talked nearly enough about the Siskos, about Benjamin Sisko, or about the show Deep Space Nine at all, despite it being a massive addition to our canon. So I was pretty adamant. I’ll say I was frothing at the mouth some days about how important this was. So if anyone thought it was too much canon, they shared those details among themselves.” Even though Starfleet Academy‘s writers have thus far not shied away from using the series’ setting and premise as an excuse to dive deep into Star Trek lore, the Sisko storyline is its own beast. Not only is it a relatively deep cut (despite DS9‘s resurging popularity in more recent years), but addressing that storyline at all means running the risk of interfering with the deliberate ambiguity that makes it so powerful. So far as that goes, Newsome and the writers wanted to work as closely as they could with the DS9 crew in order to make sure they were doing the right thing. That process involved partnering with one of the biggest players in the Sisko storyline, actor Cirroc Lofton, who played Jake Sisko in DS9. “Cirroc and I were on the phone and at lunches for months and months and months and months trying to figure out how we could get this done,” says Newsome of working with Lofton. “Getting the episode made was such a gargantuan feat, and I have had so many partners locked arm-in-arm in battle. Between [co-showrunners] Noga Landau and Alex [Kurtzman], Cirroc, [executive producer] Aaron Baiers… don’t even know where to start, but all I can tell you is that it was seemingly so impossible to be able to address the hugeness of the Sisko story with some of the limitations that we have because of canon, some of the limitations that we have because of available actors. And we really just wanted to honor the man, Avery Brooks.” Brooks retired from acting roughly 20 years ago, but even if he was willing to appear on the show, having him on-screen again risked compromising the story the team was trying to tell. However, Brooks was a presence behind the scenes where he approved of the episode nearly every step of the way. “I don’t know if he has seen it yet, but he has read it,” Newsome says of Brooks’ involvement. “It was really important for us as the writers to get his blessing at multiple steps along the way, thanks to Cirroc, who deserves an executive producer credit for this episode. He was well aware of things, maybe even before I was authorized to share them. But I was like, ‘We got to make sure Mr. Brooks is cool with this.'” Though Brooks doesn’t make a physical cameo, we do hear Sisko’s voice towards the end of the episode. Interestingly, that audio clip wasn’t taken from DS9 but came from a more personal source. “That is a private recording that belonged to Mr. Brooks that he very graciously allowed us to use,” Newsome reveals regarding the audio that was taken from Brooks’ spoken word album Here. “I still get chills thinking about how it came to be, because I was very anxious asking him for anything. Because this man has given so much of his artistry, his life and himself to this franchise… he very graciously allowed us to have this.” Perhaps more importantly, Newsome feels that the writers were able to honor Brooks’ long-standing belief that Sisko would never abandon his family without them actually having to show the character or even definitively say what happened to him. “We had to square that with the fact that we have seen a lot added to the canon, and there hasn’t been any mention of seeing him,” Newsome muses. “So we sort of had to get into the territory of something that maybe science and Starfleet records can’t explain. So that’s why we wanted to put it in Jake’s mouth at the end where he literally says, ‘I can’t prove it.’ But all those things you think he missed, he didn’t. He was there.” And even though the entire episode is a tribute to Star Trek fandom as much as it is a tribute to Brooks and Sisko, Newsome says she snuck in one additional Easter egg few fans may pick up on. “I made them put in Kerrice [SAM] saying some version of ‘I can live with it,'” Newsome says regarding a variation of one of Sisko’s most impactful lines. “And someone who kept doing a version of the script later kept taking it out. And I kept putting it back in, probably seven or eight times. And finally, it made it to it made it to filming.” [end-mark] The post Avery Brooks Gave His Blessing to <i>Starfleet Academy</i>’s Big Sisko Episode appeared first on Reactor.

News What to Watch What to Watch and Read This Weekend: January Was a Rough Year, So Here’s Ian McKellen Reading Shakespeare Plus: A fantasy retelling of Charles Dickens and a rare chance to recommend Venom: The Last Dance By Molly Templeton | Published on February 6, 2026 Photo: Lionsgate Comment 0 Share New Share Photo: Lionsgate The sign for a bar near me currently reads “January was a rough year.” February isn’t off to a much better start; this short month promises to be at least as long as the previous one. There are the horrors, and then there are the people facing and fighting the horrors. And there are many ways to address the horrors, as Ian McKellen reminded me this morning when I watched his Colbert appearance. That’s below, because I think everyone should see it. It’s a reminder that history repeats, that art is powerful, that people can be moved—and maybe changed—by the unexpected. Stay warm, call your reps, and tell your friends you love them. Ian McKellen Is an International Treasure Last night, Ian McKellen—currently appearing on stage in New York—sat down with Stephen Colbert for a long conversation. I’m sure it is all wonderful, and I’ll listen to it eventually, but so far I’ve just watched one key clip. In it, McKellen performs a monologue. It’s gorgeous. It’s impossibly gorgeous. He is impossibly good, making the most of his somewhat unlikely stage, staring at the audience, into the camera.  I saw the clip without context; it just said “a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More,” which was somewhat perplexing. Shakespeare’s what? But in the longer video, McKellen introduces the monologue, explains how he originated the role, why it’s believed to be written by Shakespeare—all just beautifully deftly and succinctly. I’m kind of not telling you what’s in the monologue on purpose. I think you should watch it. It’s from 400 years ago and it is crushingly timely. He got a few lines in and I teared up. (Colbert clearly did too.) Whoever at The Late Show with Stephen Colbert decided to ask him to do this—they’re a bit of a genius. McKellen, returning to a speech he first gave 50 years ago, is a master.  Good Luck, Have Fun, Appreciate Some Actors’ Previous Films Next week, Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die arrives in theaters. Presumably the name will take up entire marquees. While not a huge fan of Verbinski, I am a huge fan of many of the actors in this film’s cast, all of whom have previous movies that are worth spending time with.  I don’t need to tell you that Sam Rockwell is a genius, and has been at least since he turned up on Galaxy Quest. Zazie Beetz made a splash in Deadpool 2, but is also delightful in Bullet Train, a movie that was never quite as fun as it should have been but is still diverting enough for a weekend watch. I cannot actually recommend Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, but I can tell you that Michael Peña was very good in it. Juno Temple is, of course, in Ted Lasso, but she’s also in Venom: The Last Dance, which is not as charming as the first Venom, but irresistible in its way. And then there’s Haley Lu Richardson, who I first saw in Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls, a quiet indie about one very long day in the lives of some women working at a sports bar. It’s also about the incompatibility of compassion and capitalism. Nothing out of the ordinary happens, except that everything is out of the ordinary. It’s so good, and Richardson is great in it. I can’t wait to see her face the apocalypse (maybe). Dickens + Faeries = A Far Better Thing February 7 is Charles Dickens’ birthday, which means this is as good a time (perhaps a better time) than any to recommend H.G. Parry’s A Far Better Thing, which rewrites A Tale of Two Cities with faeries and changelings. Frankly, it made a lot more sense to me this way: Sydney Carton was taken by the faeries, and Charles Darnay is the changeling left in his place. (Lucie is also a changeling.) Parry effectively weaves a whole faerie world into Dickens’ fabric, and it works astonishingly well. She’s not writing over Dickens, not trying to one-up him, but putting a different spin on his classic tale. (Her first novel also involved Dickens; she has a PhD in English literature and knows of what she speaks.) If you want to know more, Strange Horizons has a great review. We Need Way More Independent Media and We Need It Now A lot of layoffs have been announced recently, from Pinterest cutting staff and leaning in to AI to Amazon cutting a huge number of employees (as CNBC notes, also in conjunction with a push to invest in AI). But this week’s cuts at The Washington Post hit especially hard. A correspondent in Ukraine was laid off while working in a war zone. “The layoffs affect every corner of the newsroom,” NPR wrote. That includes the entire books section, which has been closed.  Yes, you read that right: Closed. Gone. No more books coverage. No more SFF column from Charlie Jane Anders. A lot of book folk took to Bluesky yesterday to talk about what this means, and how bad it is for books; as Meg Reid wrote, “Every national book review outlet that closes feels like a death knell for independent publishers.” You can find a lot of obituaries for the Post as we knew it, but I particularly appreciated this one, from former Post employee Ashley Parker, which is intimate, personal, detailed, and a reminder of how meaningful a truly supportive workplace can be.[end-mark] The post What to Watch and Read This Weekend: January Was a Rough Year, So Here’s Ian McKellen Reading Shakespeare appeared first on Reactor.

News Baldur’s Gate HBO Is Making a Baldur’s Gate 3 Series, and the Game’s Creators Aren’t Involved The show will pick up where Baldur’s Gate 3 left off but feature new characters and storylines By Matthew Byrd | Published on February 6, 2026 Screenshot: Larian Studios Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Larian Studios Deadline reports that HBO is developing a TV adaptation of Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3 with The Last of Us and Chernobyl co-creator Craig Mazin set to write, produce, and serve as showrunner for the series. Released in 2023 by Larian Studios, Baldur’s Gate 3 resurrected the Baldur’s Gate gaming franchise, which was started by the legendary RPG studio, BioWare. Set in the Forgotten Realms (which is part of the Dungeons & Dragons universe), Baldur’s Gate 3 sees players create a protagonist and then throw them into a massive world filled with compelling characters, dangerous creatures, and countless storytelling possibilities. Though initially considered to be something of a niche project due to both the dense nature of the franchise and Larian’s previous projects, Baldur’s Gate 3 went on to be one of the most acclaimed and successful titles in recent gaming history. It’s no exaggeration to suggest it may be the greatest role-playing video game ever made, and its many, many fans include Mazin himself. “After putting nearly 1000 hours into the incredible world of Baldur’s Gate 3, it is a dream come true to be able to continue the story that Larian and Wizards of the Coast created,” says Mazin. “I am a devoted fan of D&D and the brilliant way that Swen Vincke and his gifted team adapted it. I can’t wait to help bring Baldur’s Gate and all of its incredible characters to life with as much respect and love as we can, and I’m deeply grateful to Gabe Marano and his team at Hasbro for entrusting me with this incredibly important property.” Mazin’s involvement with The Last of Us seemingly makes him an obvious candidate for this job, but the devil is very much in the details in this instance. While HBO’s The Last of Us series has thus far been an adaptation of Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us and The Last of Us Part 2 (with certain creative liberties taken along the way), HBO’s Baldur’s Gate series is being described as a continuation of the events of Baldur’s Gate 3. It will feature new characters and storylines, but it will also advance the adventures of many of the major characters from Baldur’s Gate 3 (it’s not believed the show will draw from the prior Baldur’s Gate games more than what is needed for the purposes of lore and world-building). While there are some questions regarding which of Baldur’s Gate 3‘s numerous possible endings the show will draw from, the set-up seemingly affords the show’s team with relative creative freedom. With no Baldur’s Gate 4 in development and the events of Baldur’s Gate 3 behind them, the show’s team will have the chance to tell a fairly fresh story in this universe. It remains to be seen whether that much creative freedom will help or hinder the series’ writers, but it’s certainly worth noting that those writers will not include members of Baldur’s Gate 3 developer Larian Studios. Yes, Deadline reports (and Larian Studios confirms) that the developers have no official creative involvement with the HBO series. While the show’s crew will include people close to the series (most notably Chris Perkins, the former Head of Story at Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast), much of the team responsible for making Baldur’s Gate 3 one of the most acclaimed games in recent memory will not be a significant part of this production. That is certainly unusual when compared to some of the more successful recent video game adaptations like Fallout and The Last of Us, which notably featured substantial involvement from various members of those games’ creative teams. It’s also worth noting that Baldur’s Gate 3 was a true passion project for Larian Studios that required years of meticulous development as well as years of the studio making Baldur’s Gate-like titles that proved their credentials. Not involving them in this process is a risky move that has drawn mixed reactions from some Larian team members. Larian Studios’ CEO Swen Vincke said he’s eager to chat with Mazin and offer whatever thoughts and help he can, while Larian’s Director of Publishing Michael Douse went on a bit of a social media rant that included the line “I genuinely don’t think anyone can trump our writers.” To be fair, we do not know who will ultimately write HBO’s Baldur’s Gate series beyond Mazin himself. So far as that goes, it’s possibly worth noting that Mazin enjoyed an… unusual career prior to launching his HBO series, which includes writing credits on Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, The Hangover sequels, and the 1997 Harland Williams comedy RocketMan. Tonally, Chernobyl and The Last of Us are obviously pretty far removed from those works, but it will be fascinating to see which direction Mazin ultimately takes this particular series in given that Baldur’s Gate titles are traditionally filled with more light-hearted elements that balance out all the drama, conflict, and intrigue. The task is certainly tall, but the potential is undeniable. Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most faithful digital adaptations of Dungeons & Dragons ever made. Among other things, that means it faithfully recreated the experience of throwing a group of fresh characters into a dynamic world and embracing the beautiful chaos of the stories that are told along the way. The HBO series will reportedly focus on a cast of new characters navigating the world left behind by the major events of Baldur’s Gate 3, which is roughly how the great Baldur’s Gate and D&D stories of the past kicked off. Though Larian proved themselves to be uniquely gifted storytellers in this world, perhaps a new group of adventurers will (as many D&D players of the past have done) eventually find their own way. There’s no further information regarding this adaptation’s production schedule or any significant additions to its creative team, but we’ll keep you updated as soon as we learn more. [end-mark] The post HBO Is Making a <i>Baldur’s Gate 3</i> Series, and the Game’s Creators Aren’t Involved appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Scarlet Mamoru Hosoda’s Scarlet Gives Us a Gender-Swapped, Purgatorial Hamlet I’m not sure which afterlife includes the GIANT FLYING ELECTRICITY DRAGON, but I want to go to that one. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on February 6, 2026 Credit: STUDIO CHIZU Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: STUDIO CHIZU Scarlet is a new anime from Mamoru Hosoda, director of Mirai, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Belle. I got to see it during the New York Film Festival, but it’s hitting U.S. theaters this weekend (including IMAX in a few places). Like Belle it focuses on the point of view of a young woman in a retelling of a classic tale, in this case, Hamlet. Scarlet (Mana Ashida) is the Princess of Denmark, and lives happily with her father, King Amleth (Masachika Ichimura), and less happily with her scheming mother Gertrude (Yutaka Matsushige). When her uncle Claudius (Kōji Yakusho) murders her father in order to marry Gertrude and rule the kingdom, the young girl plots revenge. Unlike in the original play, she’s extremely proactive in her plan, with little of the original Hamlet’s self-sabotage. But her plan goes awry, and she ends up dead, trapped in a terrifying afterlife, while Claudius and Gertrude rule together in blissful evil. Mamoru Hosoda sat down and said “Sure Hamlet’s great, but could it be better? What if I gender swap it and make it play out in an unsettling purgatory, whose rules are unknowable, with the threat of dissolving into nothingness always seconds away? And while I’m at it, maybe I’ll interrogate the idea of vengeance itself, and ask whether maybe humans should try to break the cycle of unending violence before we destroy ourselves?” It sounds incredible, and parts of it are—but I’m not sure that it lives up to its extraordinary premise. I’m not sure if it even could. Credit: STUDIO CHIZU But the parts of this film that work are incredible. The animation is gorgeous. At some points it’s an excellent epic anime, at others it becomes a sort of photorealistic landscape that feels utterly alien. At others, hilariously, Hosoda uses the clean, simple style of a slice-of-life anime series, that serves to highlight the strangeness of the afterlife he’s created. Also there’s a giant flying electricity dragon—any movie with a giant flying electricity dragon is worth my time. The other fun thing in this otherworld, where time is pretty meaningless, and life and death coexist, is that a lot of the problems of earthly life have carried over. Bandits teem across vast deserts attacking and looting caravans of people. And there is the constant threat of violence; if you’re injured badly enough in this otherworld, you dissolve into nothingness. We see this sequence many times over the course of the film, sometimes showing people who are at peace with their ending, and other times with people who claw to remain conscious. Hamlet provides the spine: Claudius’ betrayal of his brother Amleth is the catalyst for the whole story, characters from the play show up in various remixed forms, and several of Shakespeare’s iconic scenes are used in new ways. Scarlet herself is an instantly compelling character, maybe even more so than her original—it’s hard to watch someone come back to consciousness after death and fight their way through piles of rotting corpses without rooting for them. I think one of the strengths of the film is that it isn’t bound to Hamlet, however. It uses it as a springboard. The film’s afterlife is both exciting and existentially terrifying, at least at first. There doesn’t seem to be much order to it, no rules, no Handbook for the Recently Deceased. The landscape is desolate and beautiful, and when the electricity dragon appears, it’s to hurl lightning bolts down upon the souls below. This seems to be kind of a punishment? But the morality isn’t really explained. Everyone in this purgatorial state is at risk of being killed again by roving bandits, at which point they seem to truly and completely disappear, and there’s also the sense that a person might simply dissolve after a while. This sets a certain kind of stakes, but the problem is that as the film goes along, it drains a little of the mystery from the film, since since you’re basically watching characters who are in constant physical danger, and hoping they don’t die—the same way you’d hope that with living characters. I wanted the stakes to be a bit different for dead people in another realm. Credit: STUDIO CHIZU Soon after waking to this new kind of consciousness, Scarlet meets a paramedic named Hijiri (Masaki Okada). The young man insists he isn’t actually dead. He’s also dressed in casual 21st Century clothing, carries a modern medical valise, and is clearly from something more like our era. Scarlet is confused, and sometimes offended, by Hijiri’s upbeat outlook on life. She’s frustrated by his habit of stopping to help anyone who needs it. For her, the quest for vengeance is all-consuming, and the people she meets in the afterlife are either vehicles or obstacles for revenge. As you can probably guess, this becomes one of the main tensions of the story. Scarlet’s worldview is dark, violent, and bitter. She sees herself as a weapon, and can’t imagine the kind of life Hijiri describes to her, where people try to help and support each other, and there’s time for music and fun. The other tension, of course, is Scarlet’s quest to find her nefarious uncle in the afterlife and destroy him. So what if time passes differently on the other side, and almost everyone who ever cared about this fight is now in the afterlife, or just… gone? So what if Scarlet’s own father, the betrayed king, long ago passed into nothingness? Scarlet’s mission has to transcend everything else, right? Credit: STUDIO CHIZU That’s why we love the story—the catharsis of watching Hamlet kill his uncle in the final moments before his own tragic death—right? Hosoda tries to use this classic tragedy to explore the tragedy of vengeance as a concept. By moving the action to an afterlife, he underlines how wasteful the original story is: Hamlet, a young man of many talents, popular with his people, with great friends, spends the last months of his life on murder and dies without accomplishing anything but his vengeance. Scarlet, a young woman of many talents, is murdered by the same man who murdered her father, and rather than using her afterlife to find some sort of new adventure, she rededicates herself to the earthly mission that got her killed. For a time the film seems to be trying to explode that plot, to show Scarlet different ways of being. But sometimes the discussion between Scarlet and Hijiri gets much too heavy-handed, and sometimes the film paints itself into a corner once the battle between Claudius and Scarlet moves into the otherworldly realm. I think my sticking point is just the opening of the film promises a story that will take us in a lot of different directions, but a lot of the plot comes down to swordfights and battles—just like the original Hamlet. But having said that, the ending of the film is complicated and deeply moving, and I still think this is an audacious and often moving work, and a fascinating adaptation of Hamlet as well. Anime fans, Shakespeare fans, and especially devotees of Hosoda’s work will find a lot to love in Scarlet.[end-mark] The post Mamoru Hosoda’s <em>Scarlet</em> Gives Us a Gender-Swapped, Purgatorial <em>Hamlet</em> appeared first on Reactor.