May 14, 2020
[This review contains spoilers.]
I thoroughly enjoyed my initial watch of Promare. The art is beautiful, if the colors are a little headache-inducing, and the music is catchy and fits well into the design. I also haven't been that genuinely excited watching an action movie since back when Marvel movies used to be good(although that's not what this is about). At face value, Promare isn't a masterpiece, but it's a fun movie with good themes.
But that doesn't mean it's above criticism.
[Beginning of spoiler territory]
First off, let's talk about the supporting cast*. There are exactly two black (speaking) characters in a sea of white/pale ones. Neither
...
of them are well-written, one being a brutish military cop whose lines mostly consist of calling his own name like a pokemon(I don't need to tell you why that's bad, right? right?) and the other being a boring friend to the main hero with a single one-liner that boils down to "It's the Burnish's fault for being oppressed, they're violent!"(Also not great)
Second, I feel that the antisemitism of this movie should be acknowledged. One, the Burnish's main goal throughout the movie is to escape the violence they face by creating their own nation, essentially**. Two, the Burnish are imprisoned in life-threatening conditions and experimented on; and the authorities' and the public's stance on this is summed up by that aforementioned one-liner***. Sound familiar? Trigger portrays the Burnish in a way that is uncomfortably(and dare-I-say disrespectfully) close to Jewish history and oppression. I've seen others argue that there's more bad imagery in this vein in the movie, but personally, these are the most major issues worth mentioning.
[End of spoiler territory]
So, in conclusion, Promare is not a movie to idolize. Its fancy shell of rebellion, gay, and aesthetic does not make up for the mess that Trigger made of a botched oppression plot and racist/antisemitic writing. If you have nothing critical to say about this movie, you definitely missed something.
*I'm white, so you should definitely take what I say on this matter with a grain of salt.
**Basically the history of Israel.
***What happened during WWII?
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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