(02-19-2022, 11:56 AM)BillyONare Wrote: @anthony What is the significance of Promare?
@ToubouBogomilist Which Muv-Luv is recommended?
Promare is a more optimistic take on Akira, The Fury, Carrie, Scanners, Slan, etc.
It's a movie about society's most sensitive members having so much repressed life in them that it starts to explode outwards violently, the opening sequence makes a point of demonstrating that these are socially frustrated types this is happening to.
Society is able to progress enormously beyond the initial disasters of explosive individuals, but it needs to build itself more and more around being ready to crack down on these types as soon as they emerge. And they can't stop emerging because as Lio says at the start of the movie, "the flames are a part of us, we have to burn".
The main firefighter hero Gallo is a pretty great guy, but he's also obviously a dumbass. Not in a bad way, it's just what he is. He's a brute-simple, robust kind of guy, and his look is very eager dog-like. Big puffed out chest, always smiling. In contrast Lio is extremely feline, his hairstyle makes his head look bigger than his shoulders, his dress is fancy, his body is fine and lithe rather than broad and powerful.
Gallo isn't a bad guy, but his robustness is a double-edged sword. He's insensitive, kind of socially retarded, and he's going to be one of the last ones to ever notice that something's wrong with the world. He really has to be beaten over the head with this stuff before he catches on. Again compare that to Lio, who feels the wrongness of their world so acutely that his body will react with explosive force against it whether he consciously wants to or not.
And their world is revealed to be wrong. The explosive people, the 'burnish', are actually responding to a natural force inside the planet that's trying to express itself through them, and the frustration of this force is threatening to destroy the world. Two guys know this, Prometh and Foresight. Both names that suggest knowledge, awareness, power, whatever, but one is corrupt and one isn't.
Foresight built himself up as the great champion of normalfag humanity against the threat of wild outsider weirdo burnish who might explode and kill everyone, but is eventually revealed to be a burnish himself who betrayed the rest and hides his true nature. He's an exceptionally sharp, sensitive, and gifted character, but rather than allow his innate gifts/inclinations to flourish, he builds a life around forcing himself to be normalfag of normalfags.
And rather than use his knowledge to save the world in a harmonious or natural state, his plan to survive the coming disaster is to abandon the world as they know and build a new one, part of this plan involves taking other burnish and hooking them up to machines to serve as living batteries. The image of these brilliant guys being painfully drained of life to fuel a deranged dream of a future society that will never work I think is the key to getting this movie. This is the first world as experienced by sensitive misfits.
So far we have a movie about a rogue nerd (or burnish) who suppresses his nature and enslaves the rest to chase a retarded utopian dream. Framed this way do you see how this could be about Bill Gates?
Back to the heroes, Lio and Gallo realise that they're quite different, but also that their ideas of living their best lives don't necessarily clash anywhere near as hard as what Foresight has planned, and by finding the work of Prometh (the other vision of the future their society didn't take) they learn that it's possible to save the world if the burnish lean further into their nature than they ever dared before.
While Lio and Gallo fight Foresight we go back to the image of the burnish trapped in the machine, only now rallied behind Lio they can willingly coordinate for one big burn that doesn't hurt them, or anybody else. Hierarchy, planning, and cooperation don't hurt these guys, they can peacefully work inside a greater vision, it just has to be one that agrees with their nature.
End of movie the corrupt, life-denying plans of Foresight are revealed and the big free burn harmonises the natural energies of the world and ends the apocalyptic threat without hurting anybody. The whole world is briefly engulfed in flames but nothing burns or dies.
Promare, like Attack on Titan, is vision of a fuller life that's denied to us. That, I think, is why anime keeps winning over all other popular culture. Why I think that Promare is particularly interesting is that it's so recent, and it's so optimistic. "If we set our best free from the machine we'll be fine". I don't know if I believe it, but I think it's neat someone could suggest that in our time.