Two weeks ago the Pickaquoy Centre’s cinema had an anime showing. My friend and I are both fans of good anime and were eager to go. The movie Promare was shown in both dub and sub form, a formula which I greatly appreciate as it allows for fans of both formats to enjoy. But time to actually talk about the movie.

Co-produced by Studio Trigger and XFLAG, Promare is set in the near future after people start mysteriously developing fire based powers. 30 years after the emergence of these people called Burnish we follow Burning Rescue a group of super awesome anime fire fighters with mech suits.

After the opening sequence showing the cataclysm caused by the emergence of the Burnish, Burning Rescue is sent out to save people’s lives when a building catches fire. Thus we, in the first moments of the film, get an awesome action scene introducing the members of the team and most notably rookie member and lead character Galo Thymos (who basically is the anime reincarnation of Kamina from Gurren Lagan) whose mech suit and weapon is a lovely homage to fire fighters from Japan’s past.

At the top of the building after saving the trapped people, Galo faces off against the cause of the fire, the leaders of the terrorist group Mad Burnish most notably their leader and fellow Lio Fotia. After an awesome fight Lio is captured. Now normally something like this would be the final battle in movies but this isn’t even the end of the first act!

What follows is a film with loveable characters, detestable villains and most importantly amazing visuals; in fact I put this up there with Fantasia and the ending of Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a master piece of a visual and audio experience that is best experienced in film. At the opening of the film we meet the people that worked on it and they said it was a film about colour and they didn’t lie. Lights from sirens are used but they aren’t expressed by flashing lights but by beams of colours. And that’s not to say anything about the music.

Hello everyone. This is where I (Nephrite) come in. I am most definitely a fellow anime enthusiast and a long time fan of Gurren Lagann among other things. As Sgathaich has already stated the music is heart pounding with the level of energy that allows you to get lost in the experience. Not only is the music incredibly well performed and far different from the kind of music one would expect in western animation production but when you get to the end. Oh man when you get to the end! The music reaches a crescendo to the point that it will get stuck in your head for weeks and in my personal case I’ve had to hold back tears a few times while listening to the music simply due to the positive associations. Oh god why isn’t it June yet!? WHY CAN’T I BUY THIS!?

Now it may seem I’m being light on details but that’s because it really is a massive audio and visual spectacle, the film is just under 2 hours long but things move at such a pace that you don’t feel board or rushed leading to an amazing climax that much like the ending of redline will burn though any depression you currently have as you cheer for our heroes.

Promare is a film that currently you just don’t get over here in the West, those wonderful animated specials sure we get things in live action like the final battles of Endgame and King of the Monsters but not in animation anymore, it’s all CG and toned down, I miss those days, CG is not special anymore. I do hope the new Phoenix Cinema shows more anime like this cause I so miss that feeling.

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