Review of Promare (2019) by Shininglion — 12 Nov 2021

This film is a trash fire that despite how bad it is, it is hard to hate. The visuals are interesting, though never really reach spectacular or beautiful levels, just enough eye-popping color and action to maintain something like interest for a couple of hours.

Is it a spoiler if by dropping the name of another movie I feel I could give away the entire plot of the film? Or does that just qualify as pathetic lack of creativity and near plagiarism on the part of the creators? As far as the story itself goes, it's basically a tone-deaf version of Karas with an almost identical plot, similar style of "there are no rules to their powers so don't even try to figure it out" action sequences, but missing the more intimate character-building moments and moral uncertainty that cemented Karas as an anime classic.

There are major problems with this film. If in an action movie the sound of someone getting out their weapon makes the same boom and rattles the screen the same way a building toppling over does, or the same as an entire planet cracking apart at the seams does (that never happens in anime, right?), then there is truly no up-and-down of excitement. It's like a horror movie that never accomplishes to be scary or build tension because every few minutes there's an unnecessary fake out jump scare, making the later deadly jump scares seem less scary. It desensitizes the viewer to what's going on and makes the later moments that are supposed to be the climax of the film just feel like a different color of earlier scenes.

This movie is the exact type of movie/show that people who say they hate anime have seen and is why they hate anime. No kidding, it's mindless. Another major issue this film takes from the worst of the anime industry is having endless powers and metaphysical concepts that have no set limitations or rules that must be followed, meaning they can do anything, anything can happen. There's no tension and no point caring because God could literally come down at any moment and turn everyone into fish, and there's a self-aware scene in this film involving a self-titled "Deus ex Machina" that almost seems to poke fun at the audience for that fact. Poorly paced humor in inappropriate moments soils the film. The movie is about 80% expository dialogue, where despite the lack of actual limitations to the film's concepts, characters rattle on about them for entire scenes, and the film's main character even falls asleep listening to such conversations, as a joke. I can't see how it's funny when in actuality I felt just as bored listening. Is this a deconstruction of its genre or just a self-aware film that knows you'll pay to see some half-assed eye candy even if it's plotless and ridiculous? Take away this film's color palette and it would be mediocre in every sense of the word. The colorist deserves half this film's profits. The musicians deserve the other half.

The music is great, the characters are fun and spirited enough that it's hard to hate them, even though they are all extremely cliche and have zero depth. There are moments the visuals feel innovative, but they are very brief. There are as many moments where the film is visually ugly and looks like Minecraft.

I honestly cannot recommend this film to anyone aside from maybe the 8-12 year old age range, unless you just want some mindless flashy images to be shown for a couple hours. But there are films that do that and actually have a compelling story, message, and characters, so if you ask me, life's too short for garbage like Promare. I couldn't wait for it to end, but if it had been 20 minutes shorter I might have been able to forgive some of its major flaws and enjoy it as popcorn fodder. 90 minutes is about the cap for my tolerance for that, though. That said, nothing short of a total rewrite could save this from being a throwaway film and another nail in the coffin for expanding anime to a wider audience. I would be happy if Japan never made another film like this, but I'm sure they'll continue to churn one out every weekend.

If you want an anime that handles the same social themes with a thousand times more brains, depth, and nuance, check out Terror in Resonance or Darker than Black (minus it's horrible sequel series that destroys everything), or probably any other anime, seriously. If you want similar action done better, even Advent Children and Karas, which arguably set the tone for this style and created many of the camera innovations of it, hold up better after all these years.