In my ongoing quest to fill the gaps in my anime canon, I finally sat down with Belladonna of Sadness —a classic film whose reputation reached me long before I made it appointment viewing to scratch off my growing watchlist. Even in my ignorance, I knew that ever since the glorious times of fully hand-drawn animation, Belladonna of Sadness has held a venerated position. Even by today’s standards, as an anime film, Belladonna of Sadness still has few equals.
I went in expecting a kind of psychedelic Fantasia : lush, sentimental, and unmistakably tragic in the indelible way all French-inspired works are. What I didn’t clock was the fine print…
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