Promare is a sci-fi story in a world not too unlike our own. It stars a crew of firefighters trying to do their best to help people in a world that is changing around them in complex ways. The details are different but the themes of dealing with disasters we don’t understand and the way it interacts with governments and their goals will be very familiar to anyone dealing with ever changing realities of the present day. I’ll start by setting the scene for you before we get into plot and characters.
Decades ago pyrokinetic people called Burnish who were once normal humans awakened spontaneously around the world and many lost control. Massive sections of the globe were utterly decimated by the massive fires no one was prepared to fight. Long after the initial disaster our protagonist is a member of one of these firefighting crews called, Burning Rescue, using the latest tech to combat the fires started by these pyrokinetics. Things seem pretty peaceful for a city at war with pyrokinetics due to all the technological innovations in firefighting prompted by the disasters, but there is more going on under the surface.
Spoiler warning going forward!
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The firefighter Galo Thymos, a charismatic goofball that doesn’t give up.
The Story Proper
The story opens with a brief exposition covering the events that lead to the current situation, discussing the massive world burning event that took place. It covers the sudden appearance of Burnish people and smoothly transition to a fire that is occurring in the present.
Galo Thymos and the rest of his crew or on their way to an out of control blaze that is spreading up the top of a skyscraper. Automated fire retardant turrets on the building activate before being put out of commission by the blaze. As Galo’s team approach they ready their mechanized firefighter suits for launch.
We get taken through the rescue operations step by step. Galo gets launched into the heart of the blaze while other teammates start to get civilians out of there using a shielded carrier on the back of one of the mechs. Galo stays on top to try to stop the source of the blaze, who we find out is the leader of the terrorist organization Mad Burnish.
Galo immediately gets hot-headed, he claims that you must be crazy to want to go around starting fire and that he’s going to stop the Lio Fotia no matter what it takes. Going against several orders he engages Lio in some intense one-on-one fire versus firefighter combat. Lio can construct objects and equipment out of fire but Galo’s mechanized suit has a few tricks of it’s own.
Leader of the organization Mad Burnish
After a really excellent action scene, they capture Lio in some handcuffs that restrict his fire abilities and celebrate the win. The joy is short lived as the special forces known as Freeze Force show up to arrest Lio, they loudly proclaim that they are responsible for the capture and Galo mutters that they love taking credit for other people’s work. The leader of the special forces, Vulcan, hears this and threaten to arrest Galo for interfering with Government operations. Galo’s squad leader, Ignis steps up to say that he is responsible for Galo and he can take up any complaints with him personally after Ignis finishes the report.
Vulcan trudges away to take Lio to a special holding prison for the Burnish and Galo gets a medal for capturing a terrorist leader from his father figure who is also governor of the megacity, Kray. Afterwards, the Burning Rescue crew goes out to celebrate with some pizza at their favorite place in town. They are relaxing after a lot of hard work which is contrast against Lio being taken to the prison. You get to see the personality of the rest of the crew in scenes like this, they are all very well done and lovable but I don’t think we have time to get into the specifics of everyone. While they relax you get to know their thoughts on current events in the city while they chat about this being the best pizza in town. At some point, the owner stops by and mentions that he appreciates everything they do but he also hopes the terrorist group Mad Burnish having their leader captured might help with the Burnish having a bad reputation and the team agrees they are probably mostly regular people.
Before their snack is done they are interrupted by seeing the Freeze Force helicopter landing outside the pizza restaurant and the special forces start swarming the place. The pizza cook is a secretly a Burnish and has been using his fire controlling powers to cook the pizzas, he tries to fight them briefly before they overpower and capture him. The owner of the pizza shop jumps in front of the Burnish pizza cook and tries to explain he has never committed any crimes and just wanted to make good pizza. This tips off Freeze Force that owner was knowingly harboring a Burnish which makes him guilty of aiding a terrorist.
Our heroes try to stop the arrest by using some legal codes but Freeze Force use their own interpretation of the law and the protagonists are threatened with arrest themselves. They end up being forced to let the innocent Burnish and the old man protecting him be arrested. This is the first peak at the real story, the law enforcement with special privileges and legal powers disappearing people based on things they have no control over and declaring them terrorists. This is also our first big hint that there may be a deeper message than the surface one as we see people gagging at the idea they ate food made by a Burnish person.
We now cut to Lio, he is being brought to a special holding facility filled with other Burnish. Up until now the cruelty of Freeze Force has been signaling that all is not as it seems but now we have proof, the conditions are inhumane beyond belief. There’s no food and a lot of people are heavily injured. Burnish people heal by burning and so the handcuffs that extinguish them as soon as they start a fire also force them to slowly waste away. Luckily, Lio has a plan.
Lio has especially powerful flames and is able to burst out of the handcuffs and free his compatriots as well as the innocent people captured. He fights his way out of the holding facility and while his lieutenants find a truck they can fit all the injured in. More great action scenes, I won’t linger too much because there is so much to cover but you can be assured this movie will bring the choreography. The other Mad Burnish find a truck so everyone can make it out safely (though this is not shown it felt weird to move to the next scene without noting).
Now we return to Galo and company. They are commiserating over how awful it was to see an innocent Burnish hauled off and discussing that it’s even more messed to see a man who sheltered him hauled off as well. They know Burnish cause a lot of harm but they also personally knew these two men and neither was violent or criminal outside of the harsh laws imposed on Burnish people. Galo is a very straightforward type of fellow and while everyone is bummed about what happened Galo takes it on himself to take a ride on his motorcycle through the forest.
Aina, the helicopter pilot on his crew, chases after him to try and calm him down. She finds him at a massive lake of ice that is frozen solid to the core where he comes to cool down emotionally and physically. Aina attempts to have a romantic moment with him but Galo is distracted by seeing Lio fly through the air and drops her (a running theme is he is much more invested in Lio than other people). He sends Aina to get backup and grabs his fire retardant pistol so he can check out the place he saw Lio landing.
They see Galo coming from a mile away and capture him immediately. Upon arriving at the cave shelter with Galo he immediately starts trying to argue with Lio. Lio shushes him and tell him they are trying to eat. Galo says he’s surprised Burnish need food and Lio snaps that they are human just like him.
This is where we really get to the emotional core of the movie. Galo is a headstrong firefighter who hasn’t stopped to think about the fact the people he fights are human too and Lio is a man who has lost all faith in the world due to his people’s treatment. They start to affect each other by opening up Galo’s world and helping Lio rediscover hope. This next part always give me chills.
The woman injured from before is not doing well. She lies on the ground panting so she can try and get a deep breath. Galo asks what’s wrong and Lio says she’s dying because of the experiments being done by Kray. Galo greatly respects Kray and is upset at that, but Lio tells him that if he wants to stay ignorant that is up to him.
Lio proceeds to give her mouth to mouth and try to share his fire with here but he can’t get her spark started. She fades away to dust as the musical theme Ashes plays. Galo asks where she went and Lio explains the fate of the Burnish is to burn away to nothing when they die. The fire sustains their bodies and if they burn too hard or long it can make them incinerate. He tells Galo if he doesn’t believe him he should ask Kray himself and leaves with his group of Burnish.
I included a link to the theme because it is gorgeous and brings a tear to my eye every time.
This is the second time we start to see the way government repression can dehumanize people and make us act more cruel than we really are.
Galo’s team show up to rescue him from his bindings and he resolves to talk to Kray. Galo directly presents all his evidence that the Burnish are being oppressed and asks if he is indeed doing experiments on the Burnish. Kray answers by giving him a tour of his facility that does just that, they are finding ways to extract the energy the Burnish create to power interdimensional travel. Kray explains that the Earth is doomed to be destroyed in the next great burning event that will happen in a year or less because the other one was just a precursor and the only way to save humanity is by taking the best of the best on a spaceship to another galaxy.
Galo immediately has concerns, what about the people that don’t fit on the spaceship? Kray explains they are a necessary sacrifice and this is the only way to save any part of humanity. Galo already can’t accept that or the human experimentation on Burnish (they literally burn them alive in an engine) so Kray has him locked up.
We jump back to Lio again, he has returned to a settlement of Burnish living in some old city ruins. We see him get home and they joy of the refugees as more people have been saved. Kids are playing despite all the injured people. The peace will not last as an old man from the Burnish prison leads Freeze Force to the settlement.
They take out the support beams holding up the foundation to dump all the Burnish on the ground in front of them. Lio is ready to fight back but that same old man put a freezing device on his back to catch him off guard. He’s then shot with a chain reaction freezing bullet that continuously spreads ice on the victim until they are frozen solid. To show how cruel they are they freeze the old man that betrayed everyone and throw him on the pile of “fuel” with everyone else.
The Burnish are surrounded but Lio’s lieutenants manage to make a cannon with with their fire to launch Lio away. They say that he’s their best hope and they’ll make sure he gets out so he can come back for them. Lio pleads for them to stop but is in no shape to protest with all the freezing injuries. They manage to launch him into a volcano but the freezing bullet keeps him encased in ice even there.
From here we move from Lio back to Galo’s crew, they have been looking for him high and low but can’t find him anywhere. Aina encounters her sister who works for Kray and tells her how scared she is, her sister only replies that Galo has been arrested as a terrorist and she needs to forget about him. She goes on to say she will contact Aina soon and she needs to listen to her no questions asked. Galo’s crew mulls over what this could mean while we get a peak at Galo in prison.
Aina’s sister tells him he was dumb to fight back and if he kept quiet he could safely be on the escape ship like Aina is. Galo says he knows she’s better than this and that she can’t trust Kray at all. She defends herself by saying that she would do anything for her family and he couldn’t understand.
Eventually, we cut back to Lio in the volcano and we hear the intro to another great song, Kakusei. I am a really big fan of the music in this movie if you couldn’t tell.
This song slowly ramps up as Lio fights the freezing bullet off. He is in extreme pain (which we later learn upsets the creatures that cause the pyrokinesis) and very enraged at the betrayal. He slowly burns hotter and hotter until he can finally escape the ice prison and crush the part of the bullet causing the chain reaction. By burning this hot he ended up forming a dragon out of flame that starts making it’s way back to the city.
There are some great action moments as he tears through the city and it’s anti-flame defenses. The same turrets we see from earlier are completely ineffective against his dragon’s flames and he is planning to confront Kray directly. The only hiccup rampage actually manages to free Galo from his prison so he can meet up with his firefighting crew and try to keep Lio from burning down the city. Galo gears up and confronts Lio’s dragon directly.
Lio is about to get his deathmatch with Kray when Galo knocks him of course to stop his dragon. He barely manages to try to slow it down but luckily Lio isn’t trying to outright vaporize him. He gets Lio’s dragon form to disperse so that he can smuggle Lio into Aina’s helicopter. They continue going at it but Lio shows enough restraint to now just incinerate them all and continue. While they fight Galo points out that burning all those innocent people to get revenge is obviously wrong and that get Lio to calm down for a moment.
Taking the chance, Aina dumps them into the lake of ice we saw before and the massive quantity of ice rapidly becomes steam while still cooling the two of them off. The bottom of the lake turns out to contain a secret laboratory. A famous researcher discovered what gives the Burnish their power, interdimensional aliens with a desire to burn things. They got stuck in our dimension and attach to people that connect with them.
That is why magma activity has been accelerating, because the more Burnish get experimented on the more these Promare aliens hurt and the stronger the fire becomes. Kray’s plan to abandon humanity using a spaceship powered by incinerating Burnish people is actually the cause of the incoming great fire and if he tries to fully activate it that will trigger the world wide magma eruption. These two people with very different experiences and very different reasons for protecting people come together and decide to use the technology left by the professor that Kray murdered to fight him without harming the rest of the city.
Kray has a giant robot he’s been developing to terraform the new planet and our heroes have an engine that harnesses the power of Lio’s fire withour harming him. They trade blows for awhile until they are out of their mechs and in the heart of the engine that incinerates Burnish. Lio gets baited into trying to burn Kray but it turns out Kray is Burnish himself and he absorbs Lio’s attack. He has hidden it his whole life and he looks down on other Burnish with less control. He plans to use Lio to replace the damaged parts of the engine.
Kray tries to burn Galo but Lio sends his flame to protect him. This moment is especially poignant to me because Lio’s anger wasn’t enough to harm Kray but it was enough to protect Galo. Galo catches up with his smaller mech and Kray tries again to burn him. The mech burns away but Lio’s flame protects Galo. He uses that fire protection to physically beat up Kray and get Lio out of the engine.
While he resists Kray there is another emotional scene punctuated by The Gallant Ones song.
Lio is fading fast, Galo tries chest compressions but large portions of him have already started to fade away. He thinks back to the girl that dies earlier and puts the flame he got from Lio into his mouth before kissing him to return the flame.
The scene where Galo saves Lio.
Finally we get to the Boys’ Love! You may have been wondering if it was going to show up at all, but personally I think that is part of what makes Promare a great love story. The way these two men have so much passion for their values and initially butt heads but then come together to improve each other is incredible. It’s one of my favorite examples of a romance being woven in with the broader plot elements despite the romance being more low key. It really feels like a plausible enemy to lovers relationship that also satisfies the need for a larger plot and has reasons for them to grow closer. There’s even a funny little scene where Galo says “You made me start a fire for the first time in my life!”
From there, they Galo and Lio team up with the rest of Burnish to burn the whole world with protective flame. The aliens called Promare have a desire to burn and until that is fulfilled that they will be unable to return home. Their solutions is to combine Lio’s desire to burn with Galo’s desire to protect people. They cover the world in a blue flame that protects people from the spaceship (that is currently falling to pieces without it’s engine) and other destruction caused by Kray.
This satisfies the aliens and they return to their home dimension, leaving all Burnish as regular humans. The Burning Rescue crew ropes Lio into helping with the cleanup now that there’s a big mess from the struggle.
I love this story a lot. It is a heartfelt story of how discrimination and government lies can lead to oppression and discrimination. It doesn’t parallel real life discrimination very much besides the broad strokes, but I think that works better in fiction where you don’t want to parallel the struggles of a specific group too much and make it half-assed attempt at recognizing their struggles that creates misunderstanding or presumption. It’s better to make a fantastic group that is discriminated against if you don’t want to use a real group you are basing your story on as it tokenizes their suffering to remove specific situations from their original context.
Despite being about the suffering of imaginary groups, it very clearly parallels how demonizing people leads to mistreatment and it manages to fit that message in a great love story. If you haven’t seen it yet it is one of my all time faves and highly recommended.
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BL series and movies in upcoming stories
| Story date |
Series or Movie |
Episodes |
Where to watch |
| April 22 |
You Want Some? |
Originally 50 episodes of 2 minutes each, now compiled into a 1h:12m movie |
Youtube
Bilibili
DailyMotion
|
