Promare | Little White Lies

Pro­mare

25 Nov 2019 / Released: 29 Nov 2019

Geometric robot figure with sharp angles and green and black shapes against a pink and purple background.
Geometric robot figure with sharp angles and green and black shapes against a pink and purple background.
3

Anticipation.

Can Imaishi translate the energy of his television shows to film?

4

Enjoyment.

Absolutely he can.

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In Retrospect.

As delightful as it is demented.

Pyro­ki­net­ic mutants, shirt­less fire­fight­ers and eco-fas­cists col­lide in the first fea­ture film from Stu­dio Trigger.

An excit­ing cacoph­o­ny of flames, robots, chis­elled tor­sos and ridicu­lous catch­phras­es from its first five min­utes, Pro­mare is a near-per­fect dis­til­la­tion of the fran­tic, hyper­ac­tive and elab­o­rate work of Hiroyu­ki Imaishi. Ele­ments of the Stu­dio Trig­ger co-founder’s past work are ubiq­ui­tous, like Shige­to Koyama’s char­ac­ter designs ripped straight from Gainax’s Gur­ren Lagann, and the bal­ance of com­e­dy and wild, bor­der­line deranged action of Kill La Kill.

In the world of Pro­mare, part of the pop­u­la­tion has a muta­tion called Bur­nish’, giv­ing them pow­er over oth­er­world­ly flames. The emer­gence of this muta­tion led to a world­wide calami­ty known as the Great World Blaze. Cut to 30 years lat­er, and a group of mutant rad­i­cals known as the Mad Bur­nish are set­ting every­thing aflame, with the team of fire­fight­ers Burn­ing Res­cue there to put the fires out.

Chief among them is the film’s bone­head­ed, per­sis­tent­ly shirt­less pro­tag­o­nist Galo Thy­mos – self-described as the world’s num­ber one fire­fight­ing idiot” – who loves the sound of his own voice as much as he loves sav­ing the world, yelling mean­ing­less catch­phras­es (“It sets my firefighter’s soul ablaze!”) while he does it.

The mix of self-aware ban­ter and exu­ber­ant action is intox­i­cat­ing, a hyp­no­tis­ing tor­na­do of bright geo­met­ric pat­terns, pas­tel-coloured flames and swoop­ing 3DCG shots engi­neered to fit with the more tra­di­tion­al 2D ani­ma­tion. It’s almost a seam­less merg­ing of two fair­ly dis­tinc­tive ani­ma­tion styles, though you can still track the breaks between the two meth­ods. Beyond the action, the rep­e­ti­tion of tri­an­gles in the souls of the Bur­nish and in the flames enforces the idea of the spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion between these peo­ple and the plan­et, entire­ly through visu­al design.

Across the nar­ra­tive, Galo fos­ters a rela­tion­ship with his foe turned fren­e­my Lio Fotia, the young leader of the Mad Bur­nish. With Lio, Imaishi plays with the X‑Men dynam­ic of per­se­cut­ed super-beings, and even calls on the idea of eco-facism for its pri­ma­ry antag­o­nist, who exper­i­ments on this minor­i­ty for the sup­posed bet­ter­ment of a dying plan­et. As Imaishi pulls out some bonkers third-act sur­pris­es, Galo’s under­stand­ing of the world is turned on its head. This comes with a sur­pris­ing ten­der­ness and sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty, as the Burn­ing Rescue’s accom­plish­ments are put into per­spec­tive and the per­se­cu­tion of the Bur­nish is revealed, after which the real sto­ry – the lib­er­a­tion of Lio and his peo­ple – begins.

The eco­log­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal issues at the heart of Pro­mare are even­tu­al­ly resolved by keep­ing true to one’s self, and by the good-old shō­nen ani­mé log­ic of just punch­ing hard­er than you ever have before. Imaishi is ful­ly aware of this absur­di­ty, and owns it with a bom­bas­tic swag­ger. Ulti­mate­ly, the style is the sub­stance, the motion is the motive – and the film’s great­est plea­sures to be found in its sound, fury and pure­ly expres­sive chaos.

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