i am sorry to the promare likers. but it is bad. beautiful, but bad.
this review isnt going to make sense unless you have seen this movie and its filled with spoilers.

The Good:

• promising concept for the world.
• the animation. it is so delicious.
• the designs. they are so delicious. the shape language so angular and cohesive.
• the colors. (when they get the contrast right)

but it ends there lol.

The Bad:

• the tone doesn't match the subject matter. at it's core it is a story about oppression and genocide, and it never gets treated as such. you cant take genocide and make it a bandai toy commercial.

it's great when movies don't take themselves seriously and embrace the genre. this doesn't need to be like Attack on titan or anything. but it would have been appropriate to have some solemn moments given the fact that AN ENTIRE RACE IS BEING USED AS FUEL FOR AN ENGINE?? this is never treated with the weight it commands!!! in fact, the genocide aspect the Evil Villain's actions gets fucking DUNKED ON on by the PLOT TWIST(tip: its not a plot twist) that the Evil Villain once murdered One Man and stole HIS plans for Genocide. so. then all the evil grunt characters are like OMG what this man MURDERED someone he worked with?? he's EVIL? like YES BITCH! HE HAS BEEN DOING GENOCIDE FOR THE LAST 30 MINS OF THE MOVIE!!!!!!!! and this is supposed to motivate a huge character change for a tertiary grunt character? gross.

• geography in scenes are hard to follow because the camera moves are needlessly crazy. movie gave me headache.

• simple conversation scenes are ruined by poor framing. why is everything framed SO tight? why can we never have eye trace?

• can't see anything half the time because they didn't choose contrasting colors.

• no character moments between each other are earned. because no one is characterized.

• instead of discovering information with characters and getting to see them react, we are fed exposition throughout the movie. or informed by a character that they just had this "defining moment" but off camera. ie. the main conflict of the burnish people (having to respond to the will of the flame) is a throw away line and is not SHOWN through character behavior. so the intrinsic motivation the burnish have to destroy, and the big reveal with how their power works at the end of the movie fall flat. if the movie had shown us the agony the burnish hear when they hear the fire's cries, their plight would be way more sympathetic. honestly this goes for so many moments in this movie.

• FINALLY WE HAVE ARRIVED..... GAY PEOPLE...... honey i know we are hungry. but come ON. studio trigger, im sorry but if you were trying to queerbait me, ME, who ships LEOPIKA (togashi's least favorite characters in hunter hunter! ), this should have been EASY. and yet. galo and lio have no real conflict with each other. this is fucking crazy considering it's a text book enemies to lovers/"friends" set up. he was a fire starter. he was a firefighter. he was the sun. he was the moon. and yet we NEVER get to see the two of them truly butt heads on their ideologies (galo cave moment too glossed over and we never see galos internal struggle so CheckMate GaysTM dont come for me), or bond over the injustices each have faced at the hands of the Bad Guy. we don't even get to see them really be clumsy when they begin to work together. it's just instantly, ya, they work together and sometimes there are cute quips between the two of them. i mean ok. if they werent meant to be rivals (which i do not believe and neither should you) then just make them friends right, shippable friends???? but... they arent friends. we dont see them do anything friends would do except give CPR as complete and total homies.

so uhhhhh yeah idk sorry promare i hope you like your new asshole whatever i hate movies

3/10.