Hideo Kojima Praises a 2023 Hard Sci-Fi Anime With a 100% Rotten Tomatoes Score — So Why Did Almost No One Watch It?
All aboard the Mars Express: With launch windows tightening and deep-space tech maturing, a packed manifest of probes, landers, and crewed ambitions is rolling to the pad, turning the red planet from long shot to next stop.
Hideo Kojima has a new animated obsession, and it is not Japanese. It is French, underseen, and very good. If Mars Express slipped past you in 2023, now is probably the time to fix that.
The movie is a gritty sci-fi mystery about a space private eye named Aline and her android partner. A routine job on Mars mutates into a mess involving conspiracies, crime, and missing kids. It barely made a dent at the box office the first time around (about $1.5 million), but out of nowhere it is getting a theatrical run in Japan on Friday, January 30, 2026 — and the hype machine is suddenly alive.
Leading the charge: Kojima himself. Fresh off releasing Death Stranding 2 last year, he jumped on Twitter to stump for the film and basically anointed it a spiritual throwback to the brainy, harder-edged sci-fi animation he grew up on.
"The look, design, world-building, story, theme, authorial voice. It evokes the hard Sci-Fi anime that I love — the ones released in the '80s and '90s during the OVA boom... It is a rare anime that could never emerge from streaming services or even from modern Japan. This French anime is something we ought to support and protect at all costs."
He even name-checked the heavy hitters from that era — Mamoru Oshii, Yoshiaki Kawajiri, and Satoshi Kon — which tells you exactly where his head is at with this one. That is a very specific lane, and Mars Express seems to hit it: sharp design, dense world-building, and a story that actually has ideas on its mind.
The critics are backing him up. The Japan Times called it "the best anime film of recent years" — and yes, we all know it is French, not Japanese, but if they are comfortable calling it anime, I am not arguing. Over on Rotten Tomatoes, it is currently sitting at a tidy 100%.
If you are wondering how to watch it without waiting for the Japan release, here is where things stand right now:
- Origin: France; first released in 2023
- Plot: Space P.I. Aline and her android partner get pulled into conspiracies, crime, and missing-children cases on Mars
- Box office: About $1.5 million from its initial cinematic run
- Japan: Opens in theaters Friday, January 30, 2026
- U.S.: Available to rent or buy on Prime Video and Apple TV
- U.K.: Not streaming anywhere at the moment
- Vibe check: Kojima says it channels that late-80s/90s OVA-era, hard sci-fi flavor
- Reviews: 100% on Rotten Tomatoes; The Japan Times is all-in
Short version: this is one of those sleepers that got lost in the shuffle and is now finding its crowd. If that retro-futurist, ideas-first sci-fi itch has been tough to scratch lately, Mars Express might be exactly what you are looking for.