Promare (blu-ray)

Within moments of adjusting the audio to Japanese, the subtitles to English and Promare cracking me over the skull like a sledgehammer, though I could only make use of 2.1 of that 5.1 sound, I felt I had to crank up the volume. The film demanded it, even if my neighbours might hate me for it. Immediately you could tell this was meant to be up on the big screen, tall as houses, loud as hell, overwhelming your senses. Even on a much smaller TV Promare had impact.

The Blu-ray had been sitting around for months. Mental block after mental block stopped me from just watching it. Being a creature of moods, watching it at the right or wrong time could make all the difference. Or so I told myself. Idiot. Should’ve just watched it.

Like I say, I’m an idiot.

Aside from knowing this came from the animation studio Trigger I’d managed to insulate myself about the films story. I’d even managed to hide from the fact that director, Hiroyuki Imaishi, was responsible for Kill La Kill, Gurren Lagann and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt. That’s some quality insulation, shame my flat isn’t so well served. (And yeah I like all those series especially Kill La Kill, even if avoiding it for years after reading a dodgy review (not on UKA I'd add), and Panty and Stocking.)

Promare is clearly a Trigger product. It oozes style and is entirely in the look of Kill La Kill. This is no bad thing. Form and colour and kineticism slam together nonstop into an opening 20 minutes that is almost breathless and leaves you equally so. I had to take a break (admittedly to get another beer) to catch my breath. Aside from an introductory acts of spontaneous combustion during the titles, Promare drops you straight into Promepolis, a city in terror of pyrokinetic humans known as Burnish. But help is at hand! The firefighting team, Burning Rescue, and their new(ish) recruit Galo Thymos, is there to save you! Yes you! From the Mad Burnish, a terrorist organisation, and their leader, Lio Fotia.

But is the city of Promepolis, its venerated leader, Kray Foresight, and the Burnished, all they appear to be?

I’m sure you can guess, I mean it may be a coincidence but Foresight, has an emblem that looks suspiciously like the Facebook symbol and his first name is Kray. From a story perspective little in Promare is going to take you by surprise especially as elements of the story not just stylistically mirror Kill La Kill. You do wonder if Promare was gestating as the crew were making Kill La Kill? If so this again is no bad thing but it does mean if au fait with that series some of the elements will come as standard: the nemesis becomes ally, the hidden secrets and duplicities of the past returning to life.

But who cares?

Not me, because the film gets by on sheer unadulterated gusto. Like I say I had to take a (beer) break after the first 20 minutes but as I did it reminded me of when I first listened to the first few tracks on TOOL’s 10,000 Days when I had to pause the music and just take it all in. Promare was the same: the crashing kinetic action, the overwhelming visual impact was almost overload and yet, what strikes me is the sheer fluidity of it all. As the camera, characters, visuals and action all sweep and swagger by it is remorselessly and brilliantly controlled. As Galo Thymos and the film careen through the first minutes, crashing into the innards of burning building, accepting mecha guises, fighting Lio Fotia and standing off against the menacing official Freeze Force, this could have easily become an unholy mess of action signifying nothing more than a desire to please visually. Instead in its opening Promare gives us enough broad characterisation and story to keep the action meaningful and not supply pointless action porn. Moreover, beyond the precision of the colour palette – varying from light to brash – it’s how the director keeps the action just the right side of overwhelming. It’s not so over the top as to leave you with that: say what? feeling; no, it keeps you engaged and interested, and of course pretty bloody well thrilled. I’m a sucker for visuals, but I need character and story to back it up.

So Promare shifts gears, having satisfied the immediate desire for visual action, giving space to mad Burnished’s Lio and other, everyday if hidden Burnished; in doing so Promare dares to venture quietly into questions of freedom – as the film opens we’re left thinking that the Burnished are just some mad pyrokinetic nutjobs but the story pulls back layers of the onion. Some of this is obvious – the Burnished are being abused (how and why? You’ll find out but not here…) and most memorably around a pizza restaurant where humour and inhumanity collide. Galo, too, gets some more history, especially his relationship with the man who rescued him as a child: Kray Foresight. A subplot with yellow Burning Rescue member Aina and her sister Heris, provide further taps towards something more meaningfully emotional not just action – though the suggestion that Aina rather fancies Galo is somewhat undercooked – unless I was just imagining their unspoken relationship. But the story makes it clear that our characters matter and though arguably we don’t see enough of the wider Burning Rescue team, there is a sense of solidarity, of family, including father figure, Ignis Ex, who stands up for the younger, more emotionally driven Galo. Character-wise the heart of the film centres on Galo and Lio coming to respect one another, and fight together for a better future, with more than a shade of Ryuku and Satsuki coming together to fight in Kill La Kill. Thankfully both Galo and Lio are engaging characters and the remainders are recognisable types so that we can invest in them based on series we’ve seen before so that they come alive in our minds (if perhaps more than is apparent in the actual film).

Being the finicky bugger than I am, I do have to say though Promare is exhilarating it is not perfect. That the characters were in part underdeveloped was something I was conscious of even as I was watching and enjoying the film. Arguably it’s not a biggie as the core Galo-Lio character arcs carries the film but it made me question if Promare would have worked better as a series? A series would have given that bit more time to develop the story, to allow the characters and their dynamics to live and breathe. I wasn’t convinced that Promare needed to be a film. In this I might be in the minority but it meant that it didn’t allow for some of the subtleties to reside in amongst the hyperdriven story that exists in Gurren Lagann or even Kill La Kill, though Promare drops in some more sensitive moments without compromising the overall tone.

That said that Promare is a film and assumedly budgeted as such means that the visuals – and I do so love those geometric visuals: is it wrong to emotionally cartwheel at how refractions of light are represented not as round but as a square? – are superb throughout. Also being of a certain age make you recognise how some of the imagery is reminiscent of old computer games (am I the only one to really, really feel the influence of the LucasArts classic Day of the Tentacle?), so the animation is a beautifully realised mashup of old and new, while looking strikingly gorgeous. And Promare really is an unmitigated joy to look at. The quality of the animation, the visual style all just oozes a creative team who are at the peak of their aesthetic game. If the striking colours juxtaposed with brilliantly realised designs (even if some character designs are reminiscent of previous series Galo looks similar to Kamina in Gurren Lagann) don’t leave you nigh drooling it’s likely because the introduction has awed you into unconsciousness.

Fans of Imaishi’s previous work will likely have already consumed Promare, likely several times and if you’ve not watched this efforts, Promare is perhaps the perfect place to start as you can consume it in under two hours then explore his other work (though I appreciate Panty and Stocking can tend to be marmite piece)

Perhaps the summation for Promare is that it made me want to go back to watch to those Trigger series I’ve seen before and those I’ve not; not to mention earlier works like Panty and Stocking (though not Dead Leaves, Panty and Stocking kicking that in its proverbial).

So whatever you do, don’t let it sit on the shelf or languish your streaming list, just crank up the sound on the biggest screen you can find and enjoy.