Review of Promare (2019) by Xv_ — 08 May 2021

Judging by the mere name, Promare doesn’t say to you anything at all. Its first 15 or 20 minutes might make you think this is just only a hyper-stylized and action-oriented anime movie, but just by looking a little further, Promare has a lot of things to say.

Co-produced by Studio Trigger and XFLAG, Promare tells us the story of an alternate reality in which a mysterious cataclysm known as the Great World Blaze killed a large amount of the world’s population, the only thing for certain is that this was caused by spontaneous human combustions and after this event, humans with pyrokinetic powers (known as the Burnish) started to emerge.

After a brief prologue of the Great World Blaze and setting the premise, Promare fast forwards to the future some decades later and throws ourselves right into the action where a group labeled as terrorists called Mad Burnish are creating mayhem in the city of Promepolis (our main place), and here we are introduced to our main protagonist Galo, a member of Burning Rescue team created to counter the attack from Burnish rogues.

If you’re familiar with Trigger you know how they roll in terms of stylization and action sequences, in this movie they certainly went all out by giving tons of fluid action to the plot, not only the action is incredibly kinetic but the composition of the scenes are outstanding too, almost every scene could be a wallpaper and that isn’t an exaggeration. The use of dramatic reactions and movements also gave great physical comedy, and in Trigger fashion, they use immense titles with bold fonts to present characters and other things to accentuate key moments.

Characters in this movie are pretty likable and relatable, even the main protagonist who if it was made by other people would probably be annoying, it’s pretty well scripted, some other characters can feel a little one-dimensional but giving them just a few moments they show more depth.

The movie has a heavy emphasis on action, at times it can be hard to grasp the situation and know exactly what’s going on, this is a thing that persists during the entire film and can be a little tiring once the movie hit its third act, but if you’re into the right mindset you can easily enjoy this ride without any problem at all. The second half of the movie is more tamed in terms of action and it is more focused on developing characters, which is good as it lets you breathe between the fights.

Promare has a lot to say in regards to its characters and discourse, it makes you think about current social problems like racism and classism among other things, even with the hyper-stylized animation these themes are well presented and arguably have a similar focus in regards to the story. Promare it’s a movie that may be hard to grasp for many but it definitely will be loved by many more.