Ani-Me #5: PROMARE’s Killer Vibes, Relaxed Jibes, and Ending Bribes (Patreon)

Welcome to Ani-Me! The Series Where You Make Me Watch Anime! To be clear, you aren’t making me do anything because I have enjoyed every bit of this so far. And since the last vote ended up being so damn close I decided I should just go ahead and watch both movies. Which brings us to…

Today’s entry: PROMARE (2019)

Endings are powerful instruments. I can’t tell you how many movies forget that sheer fact. It doesn’t even matter if a given movie has a crack premise, so many are satisfied to just limp along to their ending and land them with an obligatory wet fart. It feels like such a travesty because endings aren’t supposed to be about “everything now being fine,” they’re supposed to be about genuine catharsis. They’re the time where the very thing we most desperately want to happen, happens. And when done right, endings can feel like triumphant hammers; the utter crescendo whose very clarity brings your entire movie into focus. They can even take something not quite working and elevate them tremendously. And in the case of PROMARE?

They can basically save your movie.

Okay, the word “save” might be a little extreme, but I honestly spent the first 90 minutes of the runtime feeling like… uh… am I missing something, here? What brings on the passion for this film? Luckily, I’ve been around the block enough times to know that when you experience the reality of “people like this movie, but I’m not clicking with it, THEREFORE it must be bad and people are wrong” then you are probably the person who is wrong. And really that attitude is the basically the death knell of any artistic journey, personal or otherwise. So I stayed with it and by the closing credits, I knew why it ended up being so embraced. Because the film’s final moments just radiate with emotion. It’s the swell of that theme song, the final knockout, and the most of all, the emphasis final kiss (which, yes, plays coy about two men kissing, but also holds long and elegantly enough for you to know YES, THIS IS A FUCKING KISS). I can only assume this is a coup to get away with? But it’s more how it feels a part of the triumphant swell, then plays right into the lovely calm that follows, all before the film promptly dropping the curtain and gets the viewer the hell out of there. If we watch movies because we want to feel a certain way? Well, the ending of this film allows you to come out of the theater smiling.

As for the build up to that finale?

Well, I have to admit it lays just enough of a set-up of tit-for-tat and conflict between Galo and Lio for me to care when the moment of their uniting finally comes, but I honestly had trouble with the construction of the overall story in getting there.

Keep in mind, I’m also afraid of “stepping in it,” because I’m deeply aware of how much I much I don’t know about this genre. I’m especially cautious because PROMARE’s story approach reminded me of why I’ve bounced off a lot of TV anime earlier in my life. The film feels in utter tandem with what I naively called “Goku hair anime,” which I, of course, now realize is a hugely reductive statement. It was just that I’d just catch five seconds of something and it always seemed like these dudes with giant hair, squaring off and running at each other as electrical energy crackled with every hit. Everything about it felt huge on style and featured extreme yelling, but felt light on meaning and actual characterization underneath. Granted, I’m sure that these works were just like any other, in that there were examples shows that probably used that style brilliantly and the ones that simply aped the tropes.

The problem is that, to me, so much of the first 90 minutes of PROMARE felt light on meaning, too. We’re constantly hit with title cards, aggressive posing, and wall-to-wall style overload. Any attempts to “fill it in” with characterization resulted in countless scenes of characters just explaining their background like it was a grocery list. There’s not only so little time for introspection, the writing is barely tracking the characters. Heck, at the 54 minute mark the narrative came back to the rest of fire team and I was like, “oh yeah! I forgot about them!” Sure, everyone got a name card and a cool look. But none of them really got anything to do. The film is just too darn busy running through the beats of popular stories without bothering to set up more than one of them.

I was talking our video essay editor, Landon, after I watched it and he said “it’s like a very condensed season of a shounen anime.” And I was like “wait, what’s that?” and that’s how a lot of our conversations go. But after I learned, I surmised the problem isn’t so much that it’s condensed, it's that it still doesn’t know how to actually set-up the big moments it’s trying to clock. It’s honestly just treating story beats like a box to tick off before just rushing by into something else. Seriously, I can’t tell you how many times this would just throw another wrinkle on the sci-fi lore leaving me to go, “da fuq is the point of this?” But I get the sense that a lot of the Calvinball is very much on purpose.

Because it loves throwing that nonsense exposition before hitting you with in-jokes like, “what’s this old man saying?” It’s just classic lamp-shading. And it feels part and parcel with genuinely good lines, like “Coward! Attacking me while I was striking a pose!?” And I think this is stuff is funny. But without any structural soundness underneath these moments, then it’s just the kind of writing that knows enough to know that certain tropes exist and can therefore call them out, but still doesn’t know enough to uphold or transcend the basic foundations behind them. So yeah, you can throw all the clever reference bait you want at me, but if there’s no meaningful set-up under it? Then you’re just watching someone shout punchlines. And there are few things more tiring then the act of watching “punchline, punchline, punchline.”

It would honestly be more palatable if the themes were fully clicking, but the extended metaphor of this one is a mess? I mean, it’s clear that “being burnish” is a gay metaphor but the second you try to turn it in into the extended metaphor along with the story it’s just not there? Mostly, because the bad guys are using the bodies of gay people to power a spaceship to leave earth, because the same gay people also causing global warming??? Look, maybe I’m missing something but it doesn’t really track because they seem happy treating modern issues like part of some villainous grab bag. I don’t think they honestly want to dig deep into it. Which is also the reason the emotional fire is never used to talk about the taboo of expressing emotion in a pilot society. They’re also happily eschew any complex character quandaries with hero worship in order to turn this bad guy into 2D punching fodder. It’s: “not only am I using people to power my 1% spaceship, but I’m ALSO a total dick who hates you!” But the truth is that it doesn’t much care to have this make sense. All of it is mere fodder to pass by on the film’s clear “mission of style.” And any time a movie does that, it’s just going to depend on how much you like the style.

… So this the part where I say I didn’t like the style.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the aim of the style. I mean, of course I like the aim. Fuck, this is a movie almost exclusively done in bisexual lighting! This is my shit! But it’s the little bits execution of that aim that give me pause. First off, let me say that the big problem with talking about aesthetics is that’s incredibly difficult to communicate. To really do it justice I’d have to stop and get into the nitty gritty of every single shot. And it may seem strange for me to argue this dislike given that there are so many times in PROMARE that you’ll get an incredibly gorgeous shot that’s artfully composed and full of verve and energy. But a lot of times it’s also full of jagged edges and frames packed a hair too night, as if it’s constantly begging for more negative space. And while there’s color contrast galore, note how little gradient there is in light to dark contrast or shadow, which is part of the reason why it feels like there is a constant lack of depth to the imagery. But far more problematic for me is the way it’s all edited together. You barely can get a sense of scene or a given moment. Everything is in constant motion. Which plays into the old Hollywood adages that if everything’s moving then nothing’s moving. And if everything is a powerful pose or a moment of meant-to-be iconic imagery, then nothing is. You don’t just need variation, you need to build to things. So it’s the same problem throughout: you can’t have all punchlines if there’s no set-up. Jus like you can’t have a moment be memorable if there’s no tension leading to that catharsis. Which is why action of this film is always kinetic AF, but there’s absolutely no drama to it either.

So it’s just empty style? Pure style over substance!?!? IS THAT WHAT ARE YOU SAYING ABOUT THIS AWESOMELY FUN MOVIE HULK WHAT THE FUCK!?!?! Well, that’s the the thing people forget about this saying of style over substance… style is never truly empty.

Because what PROMARE does have is VIBE galore.

And vibe is damn powerful! Because when you like someone or something’s vibe? That’s a connection, too. It’s usually because it’s speaking a language of similar interest and temperament to you. It taps into this intangible source of mutual appreciation. It’s part of the unspoken way of why so many people love so many things in pop culture. Heck, I genuinely argue that vibe is why people gravitate toward toward shows like Stranger Things. It doesn’t matter that the narrative is full of plot-blocking, avoidance, and frustrating delay, you can tell it likes the same things you do. So what it lacks in its own precision, it makes up for in the fact that the creators happen to have good taste (I mean ultimately, it’s also a show about how rad 1983 was made by a couple of dudes born in 1984. But that’s the thing, we’re always most nostalgic for the time we barely missed). That may not be my thing, but I have that kind of relationship with other stuff. Vibes can just pull us in. And I get the sense that the same is true with PROMARE.

Because it’s vibe is just that, vibrant. It’s full of clashing neon, queer energy, and quippy repartee. It has an insane premise that makes for the impossibly fun idea of superhero firefighters. Heck, everything about feels like it’s meant to evoke sugar-filled delirium of Saturday morning cartoons, right down to the way it seems to designed to sell toys (this is an era I didn’t miss by the way, as it intersects with the Voltron era of my own childhood). Quite frankly, I would likely have eaten this shit up when I was younger. And even now as I make all these points about narrative and construction, I fully understand that all of my complaints only amount to one big: “this movie could have worked a lot better if…” Which doesn’t matter that much… Especially because in the end, it still worked.

And for all the ways it was a mess, PROMARE seemed happy to be a mess. Giddy even. It probably knows much of its audience is cool vibing with the punchline, punchline, punchline of all of it. And as I look through the response in popular culture right now I see that it did the all important thing of living on in fandom in the most delightful of ways. Even as I sit here, I feel myself liking it film and more as “an event in retrospect,” though I’m probably not keen on rewatching. But that’s okay. I’m delighted it exists. And I’m even more delighted that I watched it as part of an import step in this weird anime journey that I’m going on.

Speaking of which, I want to take this opportunity to check in with you in on that progress. Because so far I’d say that I haven’t really been into the from cold detachment of kewl teenage sci-fi, while I’ve obviously adored the gentle countryside / fantastical magic girl glee. But rather than stay on that path, I think it’s time for me to skip right on ahead and jump into something, like, SUPER fucking odd. Just totally bizarre or provocative and even offensive? I dunno, I just would love to hear suggestions for the next poll.

Yeah. Let’s get weird.

<3HULK