Promare

Fans Went Wild at Promare: Live Inferno Cheer Screening, Live Music Event

PROMARE All-Night Event Includes Kill la Kill, Gurren Lagann Screenings

Upcoming LEGO set has a Promare reference: https://twitter.com/penkid11/status/1260333720415858688?s=21

Too bad Lego sets have become so expensive over the years. I'd love one of these.

It has a BIONICLE reference in it as well, so that's a twofer for me so I'm buying it.

Just watched this movie for the first time, and it was a lot of fun. I couldn't with all the self-jabs though — "Deus ex Machina" was the best one, though I loved how they lampooned the fact that he was able to make all of that technology, but he still couldn't find a way to save the planet

I think the implication is that he wasn't really trying as hard to save the planet as he could have. He too quickly jumped to "abandoning Earth is the only way".

It doesn't help that he pretty much exacerbated the problem as well, since experimenting on the burnish just sped up the lava issue as well That being said, the Promare leaving at the end felt pretty bittersweet to me, given how it had defined their identity for decades at that point

I stumbled upon this ANN opinion piece about Promare and Brand New Animal's metaphors for outsiders and how Trigger managed to botch them. I could be on board with this, were it not for the fact that the writer thinks that Trigger is commenting on recent American issues with racism and police brutality. First of all, Promare's development started several years ago, also the fact that Trigger are "Westaboos" (weaboos but for Western stuff) doesn't mean that the references to US pop culture are meant as a commentary on the country's issues. The mere fact that Promare's heroes are based on Japanese firefighters is indicative on how the writer just wanted to be outraged at something. Not to mention that half the piece is spent just recapping what happened in the film and the anime series.

That's why I never really liked Anime News Network and a certain part of American anime writers, they always write stuff through the lens of America and make it so that Japanese shows with superficial Western elements are ultimately about their own country. I still remember one article about Space Dandy's poor sales in the States, with the writer arguing that Dandy was a "jock" and, since most American anime viewers are "nerds", they would never have liked him. That was one of the dumbest things I've ever read.

I mean, Freeze Force ain't subtle.

Dandy’s problem was that it straight up wasn’t funny most of the time. I don’t know what they were on about.

Space Dandy was consistantly hilarious and I loved it. It had a great dub, too.

Thats beside the point, however. I feel like neither Promare nor BNA were about Western issues, specifically. In fact, both carried elements that were unabashedly Japanese in cultural influence.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Oct 20th 2020 at 4:25:26 AM

From the ANN forums:

That's what I think too, oppression is not a specific US theme despite the Americanized setting of the film. By the way I enjoyed Dandy because I like when the Japanese mix American popular culture with their own (see also: Panty & Stocking). As for being funny, I agree that some episodes were mediocre and comedy is subjective, but all in all I found it to be a good effort.

5

There's also this annoying veneer of pseudo intellectualism in the fandom that I hate as well. Like, maybe the big spectacle shows AREN'T trying to make this big grandiose statements and you really ARE over thinking things on top of over complicating messages.

Promare in particular feels like an indulgence on the part of Trigger. Does it make a lot of logical sense? No. Did they write in a literal Deus Ex Machina just to get the protagonists into a mech? Yes. Was it a wild ride? Absolutely.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Oct 21st 2020 at 10:59:19 AM

Honestly I feel like we don't get much heavy anime action films that aren't just non-serial films of already existing franchises.

So the fact Promare is a pure balls to the walls action romp is just dope.

Agreed. Not just that but while I like Makoto Shinkai and Mamoru Hosada's works, I'm just sort of burnt out on them in a way, ditto for so many movies being similarly drama centric like Maquia, Ride the Wave, Children of the Sea, etc. All incredibly good movies, but it just gets exhausting in a way that only Promare really felt cured.

Agreed and that's what people loved about it.

Edited by doomrider7 on Oct 21st 2020 at 11:15:16 AM

Uh, no? Promare and BNA are both blatantly about Themes in addition to wild over the top action. Sometimes to their detriment. (I personally thought Promare did a better job at integrating the two than BNA did)

They both have themes, yes, but while I'd say BNA is more about its themes than what's necessarily happening on screen, Promare is the opposite. Promare doesnt really hold up under scrutiny, and that's OK, because it's a spectacle with an underpinning of meaning than anything else.

Sort yeah to both. What I meant wasn't that they don't have themes, but more that the creators aren't trying to make some kind of big socio-political statement and are just trying to tell cool stories that happen to strike certain thematic cordsif this makes any sense.

Edit: The was a really good quote by Oda about what I'm trying to say in that he's not trying to make any sociopolitical statements with One Piece and is simply writing stuff he thinks will make a good story. That's kind of what I mean.

Edited by doomrider7 on Oct 21st 2020 at 12:56:45 PM

Treating the idea of critiquing the work for flaws that it has as "a veneer of pseudo-intellectualism" feels kinda anti-intellectual to me. Like, BNA and Promare were shown by authorial comments to have nothing to do with specifically American issues, but I feel like it's a bit iffy to let the works completely off the hook for that. That it doesn't actually parallel American issues doesn't mean that they don't fuck up the themes they have in kinda iffy ways. BNA more than Promare in this case.

BNA features the oppressed group being explicitly stated to be more emotional and manipulable with religion, they're incapable of forming a proper society because stress turns them into unstoppable killing machines, a tragedy that was experienced by one of their societies was self-inflicted, and the final antagonist was a member of their group, rather than the oppressors. (spoiling just in case, since this is the Promare thread and all). Like, American or not that's kind of a fucked up way to treat a theme about societal oppression.

Promare has this as far less of an issue because the Burnish are a group that randomly came into existence under mysterious circumstances which caused a major tragedy when a crapton of people became incredible pyromancers. The society we see developed to prevent that tragedy from happening again, both in good ways (fire departments got more stuff and there's water sources everywhere) and bad ways (Freeze Force capturing anyone who's a Burnish no matter what they've done, the freezer facilities they get thrown into to contain them), but it's a lot more fantastical than the sort of situation that BNA has where Beastmen are a specific group that's existed alongside humanity for a long time.

Just because something doesn't put care into its themes doesn't mean it isn't saying anything, it just means its accidentally shouting stupid shit instead of intentionally doing so. Now, this doesn't mean I hate BNA or Promare, far from it, I enjoyed both works a lot for many of the reasons people have mentioned, but you can enjoy a work immensely and still recognize that it fucks up in a lot of ways.

I'll agree with Alfric here. Japan likes to pretend it doesn't have any truck with societal oppression, because the official line is that all of Japan is racially homogeneous aside from the foreigners who come in. But Japan is still racist - against Koreans, mixed-ancestry Japanese, and especially black people - and just because their social climate doesn't directly mirror the States', that doesn't mean BNA is off the hook in terms of being analyzed - less for what it's trying to say, and more for what it accidentally reveals about the creators' prejudices.

That's a fair take ,and I'm definitely not going to say you're wrong. However, I think it is important to remember that cults are not an uncommon thing in Japan. And the parallels it draws between idols and cult worship are pretty spot on. The berserk thing could also be taken as an anti-isolationist message. Animacity wasnt the problem. The problem was that, once there, you couldnt leave or be a part of the greater world. It was seen as the only safe place for Beastmen and thus became a hotbox for their own issues. The situation was only exacerbated by internal and external forces standing to benefit from the continued discrimination preventing Beastmen from integrating/reintegration into greater society.

BNA was kind of a mess. I liked it, but I feel like the messages it put forward were pretty muddled, overall.

@Alfric

I don't necessarily disagree, my point is that the messages are likely more incidental than intentional representations of the authors beliefs on certain topics. Like the religious symbolism in Evangelion where Anno later admitted he added it in simply because it looked cool and had no real meaning to the work as a whole. With Promare, BNA, and KLK, Trigger was likely just wanted a framework of a story to build awesome spectacle stuff around and we're not really meant to think to hard about those things. Doesn't mean the message can't be muddled or poorly done, but that it's likely incidental rather than intentional since that's not what they're focusing on.

Thats a fair point. While Death of the Author is important to take into account, what we do know of the authors intent can help shape our understanding of why things are the way they are. For what its worth, I suspect the incidental missteps for their theming are likely why I find BNA less irksome than something like Detroit Become Human and Bright, where the intentions are more overt and they still fuck it up. While BNA has some thematic issues, it has enough going on besides those themes to carry the show in spite of them, whereas something more focused on the themes of the narrative rather than the spectacle would crash and burn.