Our Terms & Conditions | Our Privacy Policy
It’s easy to ensnare me when it comes to anime. If it’s uncanny to the point of absurdity, and/or its visual style appears unique and eye-catching, I’ll fly in like a magpie that’s spotted something shiny. So it was no surprise that Kenji Nakamura’s 2025 film Mononoke: The Ashes of Rage, with its demon-slaying protagonist and overstimulating vibrancy of colors on a ukiyo-e woodblock, would draw me into its orbit.
I went into Nakamura’s previous movie in the series, 2024’s Mononoke: Phantom in the Rain, with no idea what to expect. I hadn’t watched Nakamura’s original 2007 anime series Mononoke, but I was intrigued by the description, wondering how Nakamura would convey a horror-mystery through such bright, lushly colorful visuals. The answer is: with gut-churning expertise.
Mononoke: The Ashes of Rage continues this level of mastery — and as far as I’m concerned, it’s far superior to the first movie. The film picks up a month after Phantom in the Rain leaves off, with a return to the setting of the women’s quarters in the Emperor’s castle, also known as the Ōoku, where concubines and handmaidens dedicate their lives to the Emperor’s service. Several other characters introduced in The Ashes of Rage also reappear, including permanently peeved Captain of the Guard Saskashita and concubines like Lady Fuki Tokita and Lady Botan Ootomo. The most important reintroduction is, of course, Medicine Seller — aptly described in a past Polygon piece as “the demon-slaying Poirot of the Edo period.”
Image: Netflix
Unlike its predecessor, The Ashes of Rage assumes the audience is already intimately aware of the Ōoku and its denizens’ intense emotions, which attract the supernatural creatures known as mononoke, so it doesn’t waste time with exposition. Medicine Seller appears almost immediately, with the grave implication that getting rid of the first mononoke haunting the Ōoku wasn’t enough: Another entity still lingers behind the walls. Worse still, the mononoke’s fiery passion looks like it will swallow the community of handmaidens and concubines whole if it isn’t dealt with.
Many of the characters return in Ashes of Rage, but I can’t deny that I love the Ōoku itself the most. Although it is just a small part of the Emperor’s castle, it has its own community, politics, and rules, which are even more fascinating than the movie’s supernatural element, though you can’t have one without the other. In Ashes of Rage, the narrative hones in on the cutthroat game of imperial succession and the power it brings, particularly for the concubines and their families. Whoever is lucky enough to birth a male heir first will, inevitably, rise to power, and so will her family. With several concubines in the running, it’s a game of chance. Or it would be if the Emperor weren’t already taking special interest in Lady Fuki, a draper’s daughter who poses a great threat to the more influential concubines from richer families, such as Lady Matsu. Still, with the previous Madame deposed, rules lawyer (and rules true-believer) Lady Botan of Clan Ootomo takes over, curbing the Emperor’s favoritism by establishing that he must visit a new concubine each night for service, and forcing the concubines back onto equal ground.
The level of power to be bestowed on whoever wins this game of succession is too enticing to leave it to chance. According to Councillor Ootomo (Botan’s father and the general head honcho of the goings-on between the Ōoku and the other wings of the Emperor’s Edo castle), whoever has control of the heir has a “seed of fire” – something which starts small, but threatens to become a raging inferno that people will be powerless to stop. When it’s revealed that Fuki is pregnant, the knives come out, and so does the poison, and everything else you can think of to dispose of a rival. It’s electric to watch the dispute unfold with such slick animation. The intake of breath, sweat falling from a brow, and teeth baring into a snarl is so visually engaging, and adds so much to the already exuberant optics.
The level of deceit and rage directed toward Fuki inevitably brings the attention of a Hinezumi. This supernatural yokai originally depicts itself as a guardian deity, taking the form of mice and residing in the feelings of those who wish for a successful childbirth. With a child being so vital for the future, this film’s focus on a creature that looks to protect motherhood — at whatever cost necessary — isn’t exactly surprising, but feels far more narratively harmonious than the plot of the original film.
In The Ashes of Rage, Nakamura’s doesn’t completely drop his tendency to introduce mysteries and characters, then leave the audience wondering about their significance. (We still don’t know the significance of that one guy who guards the foul-smelling water at the bottom of the Ōoku, even though he was introduced in the first film.) But here, he doesn’t linger as much on these threads, either. It’s best to watch Phantom in the Rain if you want to follow what’s going on in Ashes of Rage — without that background, the smaller moments here will likely feel incomprehensible.
Ashes of Rage drops gobsmacking visual hints and puzzles throughout its tightly structured narrative, and they’re wonderful to analyze and pick at, especially on a second viewing. The movie is like a picture book: Scene transitions showcase beautiful tapestry-like art, this time around depicting a maiden on a small boat, surrounded by burning mice and smoke. Fire, in general, is artfully woven throughout the majority of the scenes. When the Hinezumi strikes, it burns from the inside out, leaving nothing but a blackened, charred corpse. The most enticing visual, however, is the smoke. Its trails linger behind characters as they walk, changing color from grey to black in a way that feels like a warning of what’s to come. The seed of fire and the inferno it will bring to the Ōoku’s already shaky future of is starting to burn. Change is inevitable, and the audience can’t do anything but wait to see what catches fire.
When that inferno does arrive, and we learn that humanity’s depravity has even further depths than these movies previously imagined, it all comes with an explosion of shocking, thrilling visuals that makes it impossible to look away. In spite of the kaleidoscope of color and phantasmagoria, though, Ashes of Rage is one of the most haunting pieces of media I’ve watched this year. It does not shy away from depicting how the web of conspiracies spun by the men in power critically affects the women around them. It also doesn’t ignore how these women’s ignored, suppressed bids for real connections — ones that reach further than politicking and power plays — bring these supernatural predators to life in the first place.
Mononoke: The Ashes of Rage is a triumph from start to finish, one that will sit with you for days after you’ve finished watching. The third and final chapter in this movie trilogy is set to release sometime in 2026, giving you plenty of time to catch up with the first two films, and even watch the original anime series if you want more background. You won’t find another movie this beautiful and haunting at the same time, this capable of putting the “phantom” in “phantasmagoria.”
Mononoke the Movie: The Ashes of Rage is streaming on Netflix now.
Images are for reference only.Images and contents gathered automatic from google or 3rd party sources.All rights on the images and contents are with their legal original owners.
Aggregated From –
Comments are closed.