I just watched Promare

I really liked it!!! Let's start with that, and then get into the more specific reasons why. It was really fun, with a good balance in between humour and serious moments. The pacing worked really well, and they were able to tell a good story in the limited time frame of just about two hours.

Just a head's up, I'm not sure if I'm interpreting any of the symbolism the way the film's creators intended, but I might share my personal takes on some of it. Also, spoilers.

While I was watching the movie, I took notes on the things I knew I'd want to write about, but a lot of my notes, especially towards the end of the movie, aren't all that compelling or useful, so this might end up being a pretty short post.

Let's get into the specifics. The audio in the opening scene was understated, creating an uncomfortable atmosphere for the Great World Blaze. I am admittedly not the bravest person, but I felt like the opening was really creepy and almost dystopian feeling, but it led really well into the establishing shot of Promepolis with the fire hydrants lining the streets.

One thing that I noticed in the visuals was the use of shapes. The colours were incredible, and really bright. It's a nice change of pace from a lot of american movies, which all seem to be dark and gritty a lot of the time. But the shapes were one thing that I really liked. The fire was consistently triangular, and even the ashes of the Burnish were triangular.

On the flipside, all of the firefighter's gear, as well as the water and the ice that they used were all very boxy and rectangular, or in some cases, cubes. Even the lens flare in the scene where Galo and Aina were talking on the frozen lake was square.

Second of all, the music was incredible. Hiroyuki Sawano is an absolute genius. I loved the soundtrack, and I'm listening to it while writing this post. It fit all of the scenes very well, and I really like the softer emotional peices as well as the more exciting ones.

Of course, there's the moral aspect of the film. It's interesting how at first, we were led to believe that all the Burnish did was destroy. Then the perspective flipped over to show what was being done to them, and we saw a much more human side to who we had previously thought were inhuman.

Side note, it's cool how for the initial firefighing scene, the fires were entirely inhuman up until the very last part. We could see that the flames looked like they had a mind of their own, but there was absolutely no humanity in them. We didn't see any of the Burnish's faces, or hear Lio's voice, until the abolute last second.

The movie shows you the perspective of the average citizens of Promepolis: these are terrorists. They don't care about how much destruction they cause while trying to prove their point. We were shown the worst side of the Burnish before they allowed us to see the more human side of them, along with what the regular citizens thought of them.

They really didn't sugarcoat the atrocity of the warp drive. The human centrifuges were incredibly painful, and you could hear it in the collective screams of thousands of people.

That's basically all the worthwhile things I have to say about Promare. I had fun watching it, and if you haven't seen it yet, then I recommend it as a good movie with incredible music and stunning visual design.