I laughed at the
Matoi armor.
I saw this in Boston with subs last night and was naturally the oldest person in the theater. There was one guy who might have been in his early forties. Everyone else was well under thirty.
After the first twenty minutes I worried whether the whole film would proceed at the same torrid pace the opening sequence does. Would there ever be a quiet period where we could relax for a moment? But Imaishi puts them in there as well -- eating pizza, skating on an ice lake -- to pace us.
I watched the staff roundtable at the end. The character designer said that SUSHIO was animation director on the film. He was the character designer for Kill la Kill, but he showed his chops as an animator in his music video of
KISS vs MCZ. The character designs in Promare are pretty similar to those in Kill la Kill and Gurren Lagann.
The seiyuu cast include some of the great veterans we heard in Kill la Kill as well, and some excellent newcomers like Saotome Taichi who voiced Lio. Koshimizu Ami transforms herself from hot-headed Ryoko to a cool, introverted scientist. Tetsu Inada (Gamagoori) and Shintami Mayumi (Nonon, Haruko in FLCL) also appear.
I'll have to listen to Sawano's score separately to evaluate it. I thought it stood out less than his score for Kill la Kill, but I thought that made it a better score in some ways.