The task sounded easy enough and shouldn’t have warranted any stress whatsoever. All that was needed was to venture into Sendai, take care of a few errands and then sit down at the local theater to see Promare for a review assignment. The movie had already been released two months ago and had since left the larger theater located in the shopping mall just outside the train stations. Yet, luck would have it that a smaller theater was still showing it on the weekends. After an hour-long train ride, I arrived at the theater three hours early to grab my ticket only because Japan is still predominately a cash-based country. To my surprise, of the 83 seats in the theater, all but 6 had already been reserved.
This was rather odd to me, even knowing the general rules of how movie theaters worked in Japan. Most of the time, even for the premier, there would still be at least a single ticket for me to reserve, five minutes before the film began. The only reason I was early was because I didn’t want to lose track of time if I got caught up in other errands. Regardless, I was able to secure a space in the second-to-last row at the far end, and put it out of my mind until it was time to return to actually see Promare.
Keep in mind, Japanese is my second language, and while I am capable of functioning in my daily life, sitting down and listening to a near-two-hour length film can be mentally taxing. Nothing can be second-guessed, and if I’m unable to translate dialogue then it’s lost to me. Normally, this isn’t so much of an issue, since contextual clues and my general grasp of vocabulary allows me to fill in the blanks.
Now, as I expected, I lost track of time and didn’t get back to the theater until right when the film was about to start. Finding my seat in the crowd was no problem… because just about everyone in the audience was holding two neon glow rods, and it was easy to see even with the theater lights out. I dismissed it as a gathering of very excited fans, perhaps a Studio Trigger fan club. They were just as eager to see the film as I was, but surely that wouldn’t be a real issue, right?
Wrong.
As usual, we got the title cards of the animation and production studios that made the film possible, each earning a loud cheer from the audience in unison for Toho Animation, XFLAG, and Studio Trigger, complete with waving of glow rods and stomping in their chairs from the audience. If that wasn’t enough, both the director and cast each got their own obnoxious screams of praise during the opening credits, audience members shouting ‘arigatou’ a number of times. Finally, the film began. Surely, now that the opening credits were over and the actual film was starting, this overly excited behavior would simmer down and we could all just relax, right?
Wrong.
It never stopped. From the first line of dialogue until the very end, everyone there, in that mass of glow rods, was shouting every word, every catchphrase, and even wordless battle cries in tune with the characters on screen. During dynamic fight scenes, everyone waved their glow rods around like swords — occasionally almost hitting each other, even stomping on the floor, and kicking seats in front of them (mine included). If there was a vocal track on the OST then you can bet they were singing along. In combat, they were cheering characters on with a loud “ganbari” or an “otsukare sama,” every time as if the characters were aware of the audience watching. If there was a potential kiss scene you can bet everyone was yelling “KISS! KISS!” Funny enough, every kiss scene was only a teaser until the very end of the film, where instead of kissing his love interest, the hero had a very intimate and dramatic kiss with another male character in an act of CPR, to which everyone was suddenly very silent and unenthusiastic. Oh, and when I say ‘every line of dialogue’ was repeated by the audience, I mean every line of dialogue. It was very clear that nearly everyone present had already seen the film three, if not five times already.
When Promare’s ending credits started to roll it was just like the start all over again, audience members shouting “arigatou” to the director before one person declared “Let’s do this again next week!” Everyone agreed.
It’s hard enough watching films in a second language normally. Now, there is no expression in either English or Japanese I can use to describe how stressful it is to do that with 75 adult-aged screaming otakus. I have been to multiple other anime films since I moved here to Japan, even ones with big followings on premier night, such as Pokemon or Fate/Stay Night. Not once, until now, has the experience been so negative. And this is a film that had no prior manga, game, or anime. If I had to compare it to anything from my home country, it’d arguably reminded me a little of conventions in America during the ages of yaoi paddles, glomping, and pre-Cosplay is Not Consent notions.
Moral of the story? Wait until it’s in the DVD rental store. Yes, those are still a thing, here.
