 So, Pro-Mare, we finally get to it. Here's what is the deal, right? Studio Trigger, the makers of such fine anime as Kill La Kill, Little Witch Academia, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The studio that saved anime. Yes, they made a full length animated motion picture. Now, this is their first one. And as we say, if there's an anime movie in the theater. That's not a sequel? Even if it's just like brooms, you should go. Brooms. Yeah, there aren't that many anime movies that are feature length, full production value, released in theaters and are not a sequel to like Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh or something. And not like One Piece Movie 12 or some shit like that. Yeah, the second piece. Or, you know, compilation movie of existing anime TV series. Yeah. Ones that are original stories, you know, things like that. They're pretty rare. So, if you're an anime fan, you know, it might be hard to go back in time and watch all of them, but you should go back in time and watch all the great ones. It won't take that long. There's not too many. And if you live in a major city in the U.S., they're all in the theater. Right. It used to be that, you know, back in the day, you could only see them really at like in New York at like, we used to go to like IFC or stuff like that, right? But now, thanks to what they call the Fathom Events and whatnot, you know, a small company, a small distributor like G-Kids or Funimation can now through that Fathom Events, put their movie on the screens in theaters around the country for like one or two nights only. So it's not even like, oh, go to Manhattan to the weird theater one night only. It's like, go to the movie theater we normally go to in Queens. Yeah. We went to just a normal old multiplex that shows all the, you know, but it's like, all right, they're showing the dub on one night and the sub two nights later and that's it. They got your back. They know what's up. They know. Yep. So you can go see this, the sub, which is the appropriate thing to do. You may or may not have missed your chance to see it in the theater in the U.S. I saw some talk that there are certain, there are still some screenings out there, I believe in some markets. They extended Promare's theatrical release because it was popular. I think it's made like a million dollars. The U.S. box office. It's doing well as far as I can tell for a extremely limited run and non English anime movie in the U.S. Yep. So before we get into like the full review, the TLDR version is just go see it. Of course. I mean, even before I saw it, I would tell you that because we said it's an anime movie. But now that I've seen it, go see it. Yeah, seriously, like so all I knew was that this is a movie by Studio Trigger. So I had expectations based on what I know about Studio Trigger, but this basically is even beyond like not only did it meet the expectation. It basically was too on target. It is literally Studio Trigger the movie. Yep. Like the way I put it is they just went in. They went all in on what they are good at and who they are. They didn't try to do anything new. They just did what Studio Trigger does as hard as they possibly could. It's like the opposite of what happened with Mary and the Witch's Flower. It's like, hey, we're going to make a Ghibli movie, but not be Ghibli. And they made a not that good Ghibli-esque movie. Yep. But this is literally like Scott said it best. This is Studio Trigger the movie. And if they made a Promare 2, I would go see it. Yep. It's the way I would describe it before we even get into the details is that is, you know, like an anime movie has like the first act, the twist, the second act, the big climax scene, and then the denim on. Take that big climax scene and literally make that the entire movie and never fucking stop. Pretty much. There's like a few scenes where it slows down a little and they're not even that long. This movie just, it just shoves anime into your face as hard as possible. Take the biggest action scene in Giant Robo and make that an entire movie. And I loved every second of it. The other thing is it's the plot is there are firefighters. The plot is nothing. The plot is there are firefighters and there are fire terrorists. Yep. Well, the whole world, the plot is actually something weird happened that we can't explain. Whereas some people were suddenly on fire. The entire world got set on fire, literally. And the post apocalyptic, you know, reborn society. Firefighting is really important. There are still some fire people around. So there are, you know, the societal structure has basically firefighters who go out and deal with the fire causing people as well as a Gestapo, a separate Gestapo like police force that arrest the fire people and prisons them. And then that Gestapo literally starts arresting people who are obviously immigrants effectively. Yes. They have like, they use ice weapons literally. And then, and if you go non-white worker in a restaurant making pizza, he's making the best pizza and all he wants to do with his firepower is make the best pizzas. And then they find out that he is a, you know, fire person and they come and arrest him while he's working. They're making pizzas. Like if you all the racist people in the restaurant are like, Oh, I don't like this pizza anymore and leave except for the firefighters who aren't racist. There is zero ambiguity that it is ice. No, but yeah, it's a, the plot is not much of a plot. Well, the plot. So it's basically the plot they need to set things on fire and have giant robots. But the plot in terms of like, forget the animates, but like what the major characters are doing and why, I'm not saying it's complex, but it's more than you would expect. Like the villain has fairly complex and interesting motivations, like more so than I expected. Scott, did you ever actually see all of Giant Robo? Uh, yeah. So all I'll say, if you have seen Giant Robo the end and like what the real plot is and like the final moments of this movie are so, so parallel directly to the end of Giant Robo. I don't think it's actually, I don't think it comes from Giant Robo. I think it just comes from the same source material as Giant Robo, which is old Giant Robot animates. Yeah, but more the like, what did you, it's that, what did you expect me to do with this moment from Giant Robo? Similar sort of situation in Promare. Yeah. I mean, there's so much sort of situations in like, you know, Gigant or Masinger and whatever. Yeah, but Giant Robo kind of from the same cloth. Yeah, but Giant Robo really crystallized it. Anyway, so yeah, this is not a spoiler, even though it is a thing that happens near the end of the movie. This is a movie where a robot that is so enormous it put the entire earth is on fire. This robot punches the on fire earth and the entire solar system sets on fire. Yeah, that happens. That is as a thing that happens in this movie as not a spoiler, because what the fuck can you make of that? Yeah, but that's the kind of movie you're going into. You know, so you know, you're in the gun drill through the earth insanity. Or, you know, like the open like Giant Robo starts in media res. It literally just starts with this crazy train and a giant action. Yeah, this starts with after they explain the history of the world briefly. Yeah, there's building on fire. The firefighters are going with their robots to fight the fire. Yeah, and all the fire like hydrants on the street are actually like little mecha things. Yeah, the city is very Evangelion nerve city where the whole construction of the city is designed to help fight fires in the same way that, you know, the nerve city or whatever. It's called Tokyo Seven. I don't fucking remember. Every character is a ridiculous over-the-top character of something like they're, they're as ridiculous as you could possibly imagine. Right, and a lot of them use, they're basically transplanted characters from other trigger anime, right? Which I like. There's like the big dude. Yeah. The Gamagori. It's just Gamagori. And then, you know, the sciency girl who handles all the tech stuff. It's like, she's obviously just the hat girl from Kill I Kill. All those characters in the firefighting team, I was getting these vague like bubble gum crisis vibes a little bit. Like it almost made me wanna go watch bubble gum crisis again. Well, the, also the chief guy with the mustache. Yeah. You know, plus all the vehicles gave me a lot of tank police vibes. Yeah, it was especially there is literally a scene where a fire truck starts rolling through a hallway that is narrower than the truck. That is like the iconic scene in tank police. Well, the second most iconic scene. The most iconic scene is all the penises, but this movie is just ridiculous and over the top to the point that I am hesitant to try to describe anything about it beyond that. Well, I also gotta point out, you know, this is for all the peoples out there. This movie is pretty gay. Yes, but, but here's the important point. There is no romantic subplot. No. Which I am very, that is refreshing. There is a female love interest and a male love interest. Right. There is a brief scene where they obviously, the camera work is done in such a way to make you think, oh, main character dude is gonna kiss, you know, the hot girl that is also a firefighter. And like she likes him and there's stuff. He basically just gets on his motorcycle and drives away. And then there is another scene where it's like, oh, he's good. Oh, he's gonna give, you know, it's that old mouth to mouth resuscitation situation. You know, but there's basically it is inferred in such a way as like, yes, there's something there. And you know, they don't make it explicit, which is main character is either gay or bisexual. It's a show openly. Right. It's a shame that they don't make it more explicit, but they clearly the, you know, via the, it is unspoken that like, yeah, he is not interested in that girl. He is interested in, you know, the dude, I guess what I, what is refreshing though? I'm glad that was like in Darling in the Franks, which I haven't even watched, but I know that like, yeah, there's a dude in the girls all bent over in front of him. Here, the two dudes combine in the robot. All right. Not that the girl doesn't combine in the robot with the other dude. Yeah. Okay. The two dudes combine in the robot, but I'm glad there's no romantic subplot only in the sense that I hate that that just is in everything always. The fact that it's not actually a subplot and it's just about these people, but at the same time, their attraction to each other is not in any way hidden. It's just there. It's also a movie like, I almost want to just send this to my dad and be like, Hey, it's a movie about fireman. No, it's not. It technically is, but no, this is, it's just firefighting is merely the, you know, facade for which it is a, you know, tactical. They literally fight fires. Super hero team. They fight fires with fire trucks. It's like, it's like if you just repainted gatekeepers and put like a fire emblem, FDNY on the side of the gatekeepers vehicles, that doesn't make them firefighters. They're still. The other thing I really appreciated was that it's such crazy over the top action. The colors are amazing. Like the colors, the lines, like everything about the aesthetic they managed to combine the CG, right? And the, you know, the regular non CG animation in such a way, right? That is not the way that a Spider-Man, Spider-Verse does it, right? Like a new and different way. That's pretty, you know, it just has just like tons of energy in it. I don't know. The one thing is, what was I going to say? In the early part of the movie, the city itself looks very CGE and sterile. And I fed to the point that I thought that was on purpose and there was going to be a plot around that, which there wasn't. No. But otherwise, like it just looks so good. And in the midst of all this chaos, that what is actually happening on screen still like makes sense, which a lot of thing, a lot of anime and even live action movies that try to go crazy like that tend to lose this, like Transformers movies are the perfect example. It doesn't actually make sense what's happening. Well, I mean, if you go on Twitter, right? You know, an Anna Twitter, people often post like these gifts of like a brief cut from an anime to show you like the insane animation in that sequence that somebody did by hand way back in the day, right? You'll always see like the one from Macross where it's like, all right, the plane, they're fighting outside the Macross and then they're in the city and then the Transform and then the chase and then there's also the scene where like they're falling and the cockpit opens up and they fall out and then they come back in and he grabs and closes it, right? And it's like these, if you watch those old anime that have these scenes in them, it's like most of that show will be the cheapest, barely moving cut, low budget animation, just talking heads and stuff like that. And then during the action scene, they'll have this one sequence they put tons of effort into that you can then clip and make an animated GIF for Twitter. That will be amazing. In a while, look at that incredible animation. This entire movie, you could basically pick any starting and stopping point and the whole thing will be, you know, Twitter GIF worthy. It's just nonstop anime Twitter GIF of amazing animated action sequence. Also, I cannot stress enough the absolutely bumping soundtrack. And if it ever pauses for a moment and there's no action, instead you get like breathtaking, beautiful, still background kind of scene. Every frame of this movie would be a fine desktop background. Every single frame. But the music is fantastic. Well, I mean, it's the same composer that you heard, you know, in Kill I'll Kill and all the other studio trigger things with that same kind of energy. But the animation is like really set against the music very well and the music is varied within the confines of the movie. Yes. Like to the point that I've just been listening to the soundtrack at work. So it's on YouTube. Yeah. The other thing along all those lines is that despite all this nonsense and like all this crazy, crazy, there's a ton of humor and like little jokes and like little bits that would be easy to miss. And the movie, and I really, really appreciate this because it's so rare. They trust you to just notice this shit. It's so fast. If you don't notice it, you're gonna miss it. Yeah, but like the movie trusts you to notice all these really little jokes without going back and like, hey, did you get the joke? Did you? Did you get it? Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is like it moves crazy fast but it's not crazy fast like Excel saga or what was that other one? That was crazy fast. Oh, the one where, God, this is so long ago. The Elf Princess Reign? Yeah, something like that, right? Where it's not just like. Who the fuck listening to Geek Nights remembers the Elf Princess Reign? Isn't that I'm so cool. I'm so smart. Yep. That's the one. Yeah. But yeah, it's crazy fast. There's another one we forgot that has a similar thing but it's not like this ridiculous breakneck speed that it's like, you know, you're listening to a record and it's spinning too fast. You can't tell what any, what the lyrics are. It's like, it's going. It's like a podcast on 2X where you can get all the words in and it's still fast but you 100% can tell everything that was said and it's perfectly clear. And I guess you might miss some things if you don't pay enough attention or you slip, you know, doze off or get distracted but otherwise is totally good. And they managed because of that speed to cram in a ton of stuff, right? I didn't feel like there was anything that was like that they introduced that was lacking screen. It's not like, it's not like, oh, not too many characters, not not enough characters, just the right number of characters, just right number of, you know, scenes and twists and things like that. Yup, like every side character as crazy as they are has just enough screen time for you to enjoy that character. Yup. Even like really minor characters, like they get enough. And everyone's like rotten tomatoes, like this movie is making money. It's like the reviews are all great for the most part. What did enemy news networks say? Promare is a refinement of the trigger formula to the point where I honestly believe it has outdone the classics that inspired it. Yeah, probably. The only thing I can say about this movie that would be negative besides the fact that the plot is basically nothing. Yeah. It's just anime plot the anime, right? I like anime plot the anime. I do, I love anime plot the anime. But relatedly, I think if you are not... Just like I like Guy Ritchie movie, the movie. Right, I think if you are not anime fan the weeb, this movie will just be like, what the fuck? Yeah, because the... This movie will just blast right, it might blow you away, right, physically. But then you... I don't think you're gonna penetrate. If you're a non-anime person, it'd be like a hurricane rolled through and you're like just thrown around and you don't know what's going on. What the fuck was that? Yeah, then it ends, you're just like, what? Right, whereas an anime fan would be... It's like, imagine two people riding a roller coaster and one person's like, roller coaster. And the other person's like, oh my God, what the fuck is this? I don't know what a roller coaster is. Here's where I put it. Compare this. Why are the turnings all good? Compare this to Red Line. And then one person gets off and it's like, that was awesome and another person gets off and it's like, what the hell was that? Compare it to Red Line, which is a pretty... I was also thinking about Red Line, but I think Red Line... Red Line is actually sent like a normal movie that has more speed up and slowed out, right? It's not full speed the whole movie, right? It's like, there are the scenes where the racing and crazy racing actually happen. But then there's the scenes where like the characters are developing and having a quiet night. Right, and then there's talking in between, right? And there's a whole lot of setup before the race and stuff like that where this is just non-stop. To be fair, Red Line too. Red Line actually has a pretty nuanced set of character arcs and the plot is actually more complex than... Red Line has a plot that is way more advanced than the plot of Pro-Mare, which is just nothing. Yup. But if I take like random person and show them Red Line, they'll understand it as a movie. Yes, a normal person can watch Red Line. Only a weeb can watch Pro-Mare. I would be very surprised. I would love... This is why I want to send this to my dad and be like, hey dad, it's a movie about firefighters from Japan. Yeah, they might hate you though. But I would love to just do like a test with like a room of non-webs of various sorts of people, but non-webs and have them all watch Pro-Mare as maybe their first anime ever. And just see what the fuck they think about it. Like kids might be like, woo! But I think adults who have closed or, you know, minds might be like, what the hell? I mean, the first anime I ever saw was Vampire Hunter D. And all I remember is that I'd never encountered anything like that in my life. No, no, it's just a vampire story. Yeah, but it was crazy, ultra gory event. Like it was way gory than anything I'd really seen up to that point. Yeah, that's true. It's Halloween time. Watch yourself with Vampire Hunter D. Yeah. If you haven't. We ever reviewed the original Vampire Hunter D? I haven't watched it in forever. I remember like, all I remember was there was like a... Oh, I remember almost nothing. Usually every year around this time, Nighthawk Cinema will do a midnight screening with food. Midnight though. On a weekend. Bike there at midnight, that'll be fun. I'll do that. Yeah, maybe. So yeah, if you are listening to this episode of Gignites. That means you can probably go watch Pro-Mare as long as you get the opportunity. 100%! If you are hearing these words, just stop listening and go find out how you right now can watch Pro-Mare. You might have to wait for it to come out and stream to you or something like that. I almost just want to watch it right now. We can't easily. Yeah, I'm sure I could find it somewhere. It's possible. But difficult. It might still even be in theaters in New York. I'll have to go check on that. Maybe. Yeah, this... You know, this movie does have more of a plot than the original Vampire Hunter D. Maybe, but I'm still saying it really does not have, you know, a story. Yeah, but this is already like, world was on fire. Why? Like that's the plot. And at the end, you will know why the world burned down. Right. And it's actually a pretty interesting plot that was more than I expected it to be. Yeah, but it's not, you know, you're not getting any meaning or... No, you could, because one of the aspects of this movie is actually very relevant. Well, two of the aspects are very relevant to current day, like real world problems. The two things I'm thinking of are one, anti-immigrant, anti-refugee like bullshit. Yeah. And number two, rich people wanting to give up and start over and leave all the pores behind instead of using those resources to fix the world. Those are two very core, very real themes in this movie. But they are just, they're just like put right out there. Yeah. The plot is just, yeah. Those anti-immigrant people are bad. There is no, Jeff Bezos, bad. There is no subtlety whatsoever. There is no, right? It's literally just... But that is still more... I think they thought, when they made this movie, I think there was like an interview with them at the end, but they didn't say too much. But it did come across like, we decided we wanted to make a studio trigger movie. About fire. About fire. And then they pretty much has made up a plot in order to support the scenes that they wanted, including, like I said, robot so big, it punches the earth that is entirely on fire and solar systems that's on fire. They even hinted at it, because they were like, with Kill La Kill, we wanted to make a movie about clothes. And then they even cracked them. It was like, no. About clothes. Yeah, but then they cracked themselves. They were like, well actually about fabric. Specifically fabric. So this is the fire movie. And it's great. And you should go see it. And we truly live in a golden age of animation. Geek Nights is distributed under a Creative Commons attribution 3.0 license. Geek Nights is recorded live with no studio and no audience. But unlike those other late shows, it's actually recorded at night.