After a few months of seeing this movie on my feed I was always curious to see how this movie looked all the way through. I eventually came to understand basic plot elements but I never knew the entire plot so I was interested in seeing how my first impressions since the release of the original trailer to all the fan art I see time and time again.
Overall the animation is superb, Trigger on their A-team rarely ever miss a beat and this is no exception, and the overall design philosophy they've taken to on this project is clear, while still having several nods to prior Trigger/Gainax works ala Kill La Kill/Gurren Lagaan/Luluco/etc. The soundtrack is also really great, with Sawano doing stellar work.
So from an aesthetic and sound perspective this movie is top fuckin' notch. However from there, most other aspects are just fairly average. From a story/character perspective there's not too much to really pick up on, and I feel as though parts of the first half were trying to pick the audience up on an entire cour of episodes we just never saw. Lio and Galo get their time in the sun to shine, and that's great, I believe these are two really good characters to come out of this. However at the beginning we're introduced to an entire entourage of characters and barely any of them get time to do much of anything outside of Aina. So from a story perspective its kinda meatless, and much of the thematic backbone to this is kinda traditional at this point for a trigger animation. Differing circumstances but parallel to some prior works of Imaishi.
Overall I didn't really feel disappointed by the movie, moreso surprised that so many people blew up about how great the movie is when it first premiered. Not that it doesn't have it moments however as someone who's semi-grown with trigger since their works in the early 2010s it feels fairly standard for a work of theirs. If you decide to watch it, watch it for the visual/auditory spectacle that it is, and you wont be disappointed, it's what Trigger does best. However I wish that I found myself more interested in the world that the team has written here as I did when I watched works such as KLK, LWA, or TTGL. Even for a longer animated movie, almost two hours isn't really enough to fully establish the world that is set out in Promare, which is a shame because I feel as though something like a 12 or 25 episode series could fit that world quite well.
Still a high recommendation if you mostly just want a fun and exhilarating movie that defines Trigger's style.