My burning fireman's soul is much hotter!

Promare’s narrative is a mess because it starts out being a VERY blunt but effective parable about racism and how societies demonize that which is different (pretty powerful narrative to come out of a Japanese anime but the Trigger crew seem to have a greater understanding and appreciation of the various cultures outside of Japan) and then the movie drops all that to be about wormholes and aliens from parallel universes and never really follows through on any of the thematic elements it sets up In the first hour. Like if you summarize the movie’s narrative focus it’s “People are different and what other cultures (Burnish) do may feel dangerous and even threatening but racism is wrong and we should not judge a whole ethnic group because of the actions of a few and what we need to do is work through our differences to find a way to live beca-ACTUALLY WE’RE ALL THE SAME AND ALIENS FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION ARE TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING WRONG IN SOCIETY!!” The filmmakers themselves seem pretty open about it being a mess because literally the never before mentioned Exposition Character shows up for one scene, says “I’m here for exposition” and another main character is all “Aliens? Whatever. When do we fight Again?”

As a 24 episode TV series the messy storyline wouldn’t be perfect but would probably work better since it could spread out and delivered piece by piece - I would not be surprised to hear this idea started out as a full TV series - but as a film it’s just a poorly constructed skeleton of an idea that exists simply to get the set pieces. I think the movie stops cold at least four times to deliver exposition heavy moments that have nothing to do with the characters emotional journey and purely exist to say “Here’s the reason why this stuff is happening for the next 20 minutes and here’s the MacGuffin.” Thankfully those set pieces and the general construction of the film visually Is a delight (again, I think the characters as written are terribly thin and only one - Aina’s Sister who isn’t introduced until about an hour in - actually has a character arch, but as designed and animated the characters are delightful) so the movie is a success. I have no issue with the story being a thin vessel for the visual splendor of the film’s look and feel.