Promare

While Gurren Lagann used drills and Kill la Kill used thread, Imaishi and Nakashima`s new “Burning passion” storyline takes the symbolism to the next logical step, using fire itself (and shapes) to drive the story forward. It`s both boldly new in appearance with it‘s bright colours and liberal use of CG yet immediately recognizable as an Imaishi work. While many haven’t been blown away by the studios output as of late, I think it’s important to realize how little this resembles your standard Trigger release. This film is their first in the almost 8 years the studio has beenrunning and a similar affair to Darling in the Franxx in that it is a collaborative work. How it isn’t similar, though, is that it isn’t shit and their collaborative studio, Sanzigen, are a CGI studio who work in the field of revolutionizing CGI use in anime. While some of collaborations mainly focus on background armies and mechanical parts, their standout title Bubuki Baranki from 2016 received praise across the internet for being the best looking use of CGI in anime to date and many claiming it to be the future of CGI anime. It’s clear with Promare they are wanting to take their highly praised CGI/cel shading anime aesthetic and combine it with the stylings of Imaishi and Nakashima to create the most traditional looking anime CGI project to date, and here I believe they succeed. On the quality of the CG and integration, I personally found it fantastic. There were a small number of times the frame rate seemed only slightly off, but in the grand scheme I'm only making this criticism to be fair. For my personal enjoyment of the film it had very, very little impact. After seeing the film and following the discussion online, I want people to understand that enjoying or praising this film doesn't mean the individual is a fan of or sympathizer of CG integration in anime, but can appreciate a well animated, piece using it. For example, even though they are stylized vehicles, I love the cuts in episode 6 of Panty and Stocking with Chuck and Fastener fighting in their cars. It’s easy to dismiss CGI outright without actually analyzing what works and doesn’t in a scene, and with Promare, I’d say it almost always works. Also, even thought there is a lot of CG integration, there is a ton of purely 2D cuts as well. The conclusion to the fight between Galo and Lio among many others is entirely 2D and there are some seriously awesome cuts that people are going to see in .webms for a long time to come. Concerning the story itself, it is a Nakashima Kazuki story through and through hitting all the right Imaishi notes. It begins setting up a very familiar chaos vs order story line but quickly begins to focus mainly on discrimination and instead of breaking apart order with progress and chaos, the idea of unity and rebirth. It's a very familiar story, but with just the right variation to the tale to make it feel fresh and relevant. It definitely moves very quickly, as it's covering a story that could easily have been expanded and made into a longer series, but as is, it works. I was all in, but can also immediately see where a lot of the backlash for this film is going to stem concerning the themes and criticisms of society present. This film is apparently going to be getting a more global release, and I implore you if interested to catch this film on the big screen. The visual story telling at play was fantastic and the film had my blood pumping from beginning to end. Touching briefly on the music, I enjoyed Sawano's soundtrack but a few tracks were a bit repetitive. He has a recognizable sound.. And the soundtrack of was most remenisent of Kill la Kill, albeit a weaker Kill la Kill. All things considered however, Kill la Kill is one of my favourite soundtracks of all time, so this is barely a criticism. The music wasn't a highlight of the film for me but still very enjoyable.

Story: 7/10 The story is just 2 hours of studio Trigger clowning on themselves. With this movie, it's like they've become completely self aware. They're all but parodying themselves more and more with each subsequent work they put out, and strangely, they're better off for it. Yes, that's right. Studio Trigger is at its best when it's not taking itself too seriously. Remember Little Witch Academia and Darling in The Franxx? Remember how miserable and boring they were to watch? Yeah. Promare is the antithesis to all that. It's Imaishi's wake-up slap to Trigger, showcasing what made Gurren Lagann such a timeless classic. "Hey, you rememberthat?" He said. "Let's make more of THAT." He suggested. That said, Promare's story is not exactly "Gurren la Kill" as some call it. It does come pretty damn close, though. It does just barely enough to differentiate itself from big bro Gurren Lagann and big sister Kill la Kill. Trigger knew comparisons to those two shows would be inevitable, and what did they do? They embraced the meme harder than anyone expected them to. And the result? A drug-addled haze of a movie. A cranium-busting roller coaster of pure fucking adrenaline and hype, but not much else. And you know what? That's all I ever asked for from Studio Trigger. As is standard Studio Trigger fare, the story is extremely over the top and convoluted - hopelessly so for a movie. This is the stuff that 24 episode anime series are made of, not a 2 hour flick. As a result, the story moves at an unbelievably breakneck pace. There is not a single moment to blink or look away. In every shot, there is always something going on, something flying across the screen as the camera pans 360 degrees. Anything that is explained is rushed through without a moment's pause, and anything that is not explained is brushed off in a very flippant and nonchalant manner. Actually, I'm making it sound worse than it actually is. When you're watching the movie, it just works. There is just enough plot for you to actually care about what's going on. There is just enough characterization for you to care about the characters, to want to see them triumph. In exchange for cutting some of these elements a bit short, the movie moves the plot forward and resolves things at such a rapid pace that our attention is held captive throughout the entire movie. And last but not least, this speed demon pacing paves way for the two most powerful ingredients in the Gurren la Kill formula: unending hype and escalation. In Promare, anyone who's even half familiar with Trigger's and by extension Gainax's storytelling chops should theoretically not bat an eye at anything. But we do anyways. We cannot help but be drawn in. It's everything we've all come to know and love, cranked into maximum overdrive. It's no understatement to say that hype and adrenaline are the glue that makes the underwhelming story and characters stick. There's something strangely hypnotic about a shirtless man with spiky hair screaming about how he'll put fires out with his "burning spirit" as he smashes a button that makes his mech transform into optimus prime but with 6 arms and a giant firefighting umbrella. Escalation is the name of the game. The scale of the story and fights just ramps up and up into absolute pandemonium. That is not to say, however, that the story is bad, or that it relies too heavily on hype as a crutch. But let's just say that, if this movie was made by any other studio, it would have been laughed out of the theaters. However, because this is a Trigger animation, directed by the based god Imaishi, magic happens. Only Trigger can make something both so mediocre and so amazing at the same time. Art: 10/10 Promare was one of the most visually and aurally intense anime movies I've ever experienced. It makes 99% of all other anime movie look like they were drawn on an Etch-A-Sketch by a dyslexic Parkinson's patient. Every single action scene was so hyper-kinetic; so dynamic but clear-cut and satisfying, that even if you think the story is shit, it's damn worth watching for just the animation alone. Imagine episode 12 of One Punch Man but stretched out to 2 hours. The camera has a will of its own and will change angles once every other frame when it's not doing overhead 360 degree pans around a giant robot flying across the map, smashing through 12 buildings before leveling a mountain as it kicks off said mountain to fly straight towards the space ship it was fighting. The best part is that you can always tell what was happening. Never did Promare lose or confuse me as to what I was looking at. Every single shot transitioned into another so seamlessly and coherently that I really felt like I was moving along with the action, felt every punch, heard every scream from inside the cockpit. In other words, the animation always put me at the heart of the action, a very subtle thing that can make or break action sequences. A lot of shows have amazing sakuga fights but tend to make a clusterfuck of them. Promare, however, never once dropped the ball on that front. Also, I have not seen this much seamless and clever use of 3D CG since Houseki no Kuni. This is some of the best looking CG animation I've ever seen, and it unarguably enhances the experience in every way, allowing for some camera angles and choreographed movement that would not have been possible to convey with just traditional animation alone. Sound: 10/10 Many major action sequences in Promare played out like an AMV, in that the action and music were synced perfectly to create a synthesis of the senses that was fun to experience. However, for AMVs to work, the songs had to be good. Preferably, really good. Did Promare's OST fit the bill? Yes and more. It was composed by the same guy who composed tracks for Kill la Kill. If you thought Blumenkranz or Don't Lose Your Way was good, look up "Inferno" and "Kakusei" on Youtube. At least, that was what I immediately did after I finished watching this movie. I'm still humming them as I'm writing this review right now. There was not a single track that did not fit the mood or did not enhance a scene in any way. Every single track was in top form, especially the ones that played during the major action scenes. Remember the finale of Gurren Lagann with Sorairo Days blasting in the background, or that fight with the huge kaiju with a lot of guns from FLCL to the total bop that is Blues Drive Monster? Yeah. Same energy. Enjoyment: 10/10 The only way my night could have ended better was if I also got to snort coke off the buttocks of an Amsterdam hooker while getting a lapdance from an actual anime girl. I also have a friend who waited 4 hours in line to get into the premiere and he said it was completely worth it. Overall: 10/10 Trigger is like that one loose cannon drunk friend that we keep hanging around because in his lucid moments he can be genuinely brilliant and awesome guy to hang around (i.e Kill la Kill, Space Patrol Luluco, Inferno Cop) but when he's drunk he's vomiting subpar material like it's stomach flu season (i.e Darling In The Franxx, Little Witch Academia). His latest flash of sober genius turned out to be Promare and once again we are reminded of why we keep having this love-hate relationship: all so that someday he would shape the fuck up and remind us all again of what made anime such a special medium in the first place, to allow such brilliant works of kinetic art to grace our eyeballs and such passionate screams of men vibrate in our eardrums.

Trigger, I think we need to go on a break. Now, I love the studio's punk-like, devil-may-care attitude. It was so cool to see an upstart animation studio so flagrantly try to play by its own rules, especially a studio with that Gainax pedigree. But over time I've come to realize it's less that I like what the studio has actually made, and more that I just like the attitude of the studio itself. I loved the original Little Witch Academia shorts and Space Patrol Luloco, but everything else has, at best, left me wanting. And nowhere is that more the case than Promare, perhaps the TriggerestTrigger production. It's a blend of themes, imagery, plot points, character archetypes, etc. that the studio has mined before squeezed into a 110 minute package. Here more than ever, though, it all feels so surface level. The visuals are, of course, fucking sick, with this blend of 2D and stylized-3D that reminded me of Into the Spider-Verse's splendor. The opening ten minutes put it all on display in this kinetic and fun action sequence, but that's where it peaks because afterward the script completely falls apart. Goddamn is the dialogue so clunky and mechanical, all in service to a plot that's propelled only by inelegant exposition dumps. Goddamn is most of the cast utterly expendable, and the rest two dimensional (save the villain, at least). Goddamn does this feel like a 12 episode series crammed into less than two hours, with so much happening but very little having any impact. This doesn't even feel like its own film; this is like a compilation film for a show that never got made. Wait, no, that show was made 12 years ago and it was called Gurren Lagann, but lifting Kamina's design and the entire set-up to the show's second half isn't enough to recapture the magic (and this certainly isn't the first time they've tried). So blatantly aping your past work just makes the shortcomings of the present that much more obvious. Perhaps I'm also just tired of idiot heroes saving the world from assured destruction by sheer force of belief, rather than letting the pragmatic villain have a point, because god forbid we let the characters wrestle with an actual moral dilemma. The finale is a spectacle that's at least worth a watch on Youtube, but I was so disengaged by then that I could not enjoy it as much as I so clearly should have. It's a shame that such great direction and style and visual-sense are all wasted on a cruddy foundation - the script. I love what you want to be, Trigger, but until you seriously invest in the writing of your works (or Imaishi just goes full, Dead Leaves-style gonzo from here on out), I think I should be seeing other studios for a while.

Promare is like a slot machine. It will stop and then go go go! It starts with great action, right before it gives you your homework, because this film is a bit of a cramfest. It feels like a twelve-episode series that was turned into an hour and fifty-minute movie, because there's so much happening that it's mind-numbing. Nothing leaves an impact, because there isn't any build-up, and the slower scenes come out of nowhere like a checklist, this adds to the cramming again, because there's so much to check off, to the point where in-between the amazing actions set-pieces it feels like it's mostlyexposition about the characters and story, trying to cram everything in there. But that's just the overall problem I have with this movie, it does try to give the indication that this isn't meant to be taken too seriously, by calling the robot that almost came out of nowhere, Deus ex Machina, which I laughed at, even if I realized they were simply lampshading the fact that their film had a deus ex machina. The film is well tied-together, it just would've been better if it were spread out better. If it had to be a movie, couldn't they plan for a series of films or add thirty minutes to the runtime. As for the good, I liked Lio and his story, even if we only know the simple parts of Lio, which we don't know his backstory, but if they rewrote the film to be about Lio, than I would be loving this movie, because Galo isn't a bad character, he's fun, but I simply prefer Lio. The music is also fantastic, as expected of hiroyuki sawano. The animation is varying. The CGI looks pretty good with ow they use it, but this is a movie, and for a film, the animation is a little underwhelming, if it's 2d animation, it feels like it was barely animated, and if it's 3d, it can feel unnecessary. There is some tonal whiplash, I don't mind as much, because combining tones is important to me, but when this film with a Deus Ex Machina joke also has genocide, it could create massive whiplash. I know I'm supposed to take it seriously, but that doesn't excuse bad writing. there aren't actually that many problems with this movie, though all the exposition, pacing problems, and twists that come out of nowhere make it hard to recommend it. It's not something I regret watching like Mortal Engines, Nausicaa of the valley of the wind, Tales from Earthsea or Rampage, but if you want to watch it, rent it if it's available. I would watch it if someone had it at a party for free if you're wondering: Story- 1 art- 4 sound- 10 character- 4 enjoyment- 3 Average- 4.4 personal rating- 2

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