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The Red Spectacles Restored! And Celebrating Mamoru Oshii’s Kerberos Saga

Ed Sum

The Red Spectacles OriginalMetrograph Showtimes:

Distributor: Small Sensations!

Anyone unfamiliar with Mamoru Oshii’s Kerberos Saga may wonder where to begin. The franchise sprawls across anime, radio dramas, manga, and live-action films, making its chronology look more like a web than a line. For my part, I believe the journey starts most powerfully with The Red Spectacles. Its recent 4K restoration—debuting at The Metrograph and perhaps also courting other art houses down the road—offers the perfect opportunity to revisit this strange, brooding cornerstone of Oshii’s world. There’s hardly any grain in sight!

To experience this work on the big screen is essential. The Japanese crowdfunding campaign (via Motion Gallery) performed remarkably well, reflecting both local enthusiasm and international curiosity. And for viewers whose entry point was Jin-Roh—as mine was—this neo-noir odyssey feels shockingly raw. More grounded. More abrasive. Visceral in ways that anime, by its nature, softens.

Technically, the radio drama While Waiting for The Red Spectacles provides far more context, though it’s not easy to access right now. There’s no online version. I suspect this restoration’s home-video release will include it, because it clarifies why Kōichi Todome (Shigeru Chiba), Washio Midori (Machiko Washio), and Sōichirō Toribe (Hideyuki Tanaka) form such a core trio. They are the final survivors of the Kerberos Panzer Cops after the larger unit is ordered to disband.

Watching this film with the rest of the saga in mind, I couldn’t shake the sense that the Kerberos Corps functions like a dark-mirror counterpart to the Knights Templar. The historical versions were protectors of pilgrims. But with no just cause, they were ultimately dismantled under immense political pressure by King Philip IV. The parallels aren’t perfect—the purposes, eras, and ideologies differ—but both orders become shrouded in myth, fear, and ambiguity. Each begins with the rhetoric of protection, evolves into an elite force policing internal unrest, and finally collapses under the weight of its own power.

Other media in the Kerberos franchise explore what the Corps did before their fall, and how survivors endure after it. If there’s a true kinship between the Panzer Cops and the Templars, it lies in how Oshii imagines them: an Orwellian interpretation of knighthood—order without sanctity, loyalty without clarity, ritual without meaning.

In The Red Spectacles, most of these warriors are already gone. Calling what remains “hope” feels naïve. The film presents a surreal, decaying Tokyo where feudal logic has crept back into urban ruins. Todome (pictured above), having gone into hiding, returns out of loyalty—or guilt—to rescue his comrades. Instead, he finds an urban dreamscape where nothing is trustworthy. What he experiences unfolds less like a narrative and more like a feverish montage of vignettes, silent-film gags, bureaucratic nightmare logic, and theatrical absurdity.

Though wildly different in tone from Jin-Roh, this movie often feels like a Japanese cousin to Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. Both hinge on institutions that want the protagonist to conform to a “new normal.” The difference is that in The Red Spectacles, everyone already knows who Todome is. Their goal isn’t to force resignation—it’s to grind him into compliance with an Orwellian system that has replaced the world he once fought for.

Kenji Kawai’s score stitches the film’s tone together. During fights (notably the bathroom brawl), his jazz-inflected “Mickey Mousing”—a technique where music mirrors on-screen action—adds absurdity. When the film leans on the comedic, especially during the silent film–inspired moments, I’m reminded of his other works. Kawai’s scoring for The Irresponsible Captain Tylor strikes similar balances between light-hearted whimsy and underlying tension. Sharp musical stings and percussive bursts underline physical comedy as well as violence. And yes—there’s even a tubular-bell moment that cheekily nods to The Exorcist.

Without this orchestration, The Red Spectacles would feel much more oppressive. With it, the movie becomes a strange, playful, unsettling beast—half noir, half theatre of the absurd.

If any work deserves a Criterion release, it’s this one. Whether that happens depends on the restoration team’s deliverables and international licensing. We likely won’t hear updates until 2026. With luck, this restoration will pave the way for an omnibus set, allowing audiences to follow the entire Kerberos arc in one coherent collection.

4 Stars out of 5

The Red Spectacles Trailer (4K)

Suggested Viewing Order
for the Kerberos Saga

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