What a movie.

Scarlet Bond is a semi-canon side-story that takes place after season 2, and has new lore, a cool princess named Towa, and focuses on a new character, Hiiro, and he's one of the best so far. A fiery, determined ogre hell-bent on avenging his people, yet who is reasonable (and trusting) in the face of genuine people.

He's a compelling character, who falls into bad company later on, and let's just say he has some.. sad scenes.

After the intro scenes, it only gets better. The first thing you notice then is that it's a perfect recap: making the current situations easy to understand for me who hadn't touched the show in years, and in a fun way, too. The pacing is perfect. The characters are all re-introduced, too, in a concise way, and no matter what character you liked, you're sure to enjoy it: Veldora, Milim, the ogres, etc, all of the rest too (even the most side characters stand up to TenSura character standards). And then Diablo in particular not only has a good introduction here, but is a star of the movie in his own way.

And of course, Rimuru. The movie reminded me why he's an amazing character. Kind, simple, pragmatic, wise, and quick-thinking: he had some really cool scenes and some heartwarming ones, such as when, in a hopeless situation, he silently asked the Great Sage if there was any way to save one of his servants, at the end.

The fights were actually really cool, with all sorts of abilities shown, high power levels (low nuclear level, and the power scalings are kept intact), and amazing animation. Alot of the animation in the first half, though, with the exception of one fight, was alot simpler, and everything was more story-focused. Here's some of the earlier animation (sorry it's a .webm):

But don't be tricked- the closer it gets to the end of the movie, the better the animation is (and not just for the fights):

Anyway. Death death death so many deaths. The movie opens and ends with deaths. Death gives depth, meaning, and value to the characters' motivations. At the end, (SPOILERS)

The non-spoiler version is that there are multiple twists, and while it may seem like alot, it manages to feel natural.

Oh, and the movie has really great music but.. the music for the Diablo vs Violet fight... 10/10, a perfect musical, reminiscent of Vanitas music (no visuals to spoil, take a listen!):

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So yeah. If you are a TenSura fan then I highly highly recommend this movie.