Spontaneous Human Combustion: a chaotic phenomenon that has plagued humanity for years, randomly transforming ordinary people into flaming, violent creatures known as Infernals. While Infernals make up the first-generation accounts of Human Combustion, the second and third generations became known as pyrokinetics—people gifted with the ability to manipulate and control their flames while remaining human. To combat the Infernal threat and discover the cause, the Tokyo Armed Forces, Fire Defense Agency, and Holy Church of Sol produced their answer: the Special Fire Force.
Young and eager third-generation pyrokinetic Shinra Kusakabe, nicknamed Devil's Footprints for his explosive ability to ignite his feet at will, becomes a member of the lively Special Fire Force Company 8. Upholding the brigade's duty to extinguish the blazing Infernals and lay their souls to rest, Shinra is determined to become a hero who will save the lives of those threatened by the flame terror.
However, this is not the hero's game Shinra imagined. The Fire Force is a fractured mess of feuding brigades, abnormal Infernal sightings are increasing all over Tokyo, and a shadowy group is claiming to have answers to the strange fire that caused the death of Shinra's family 12 years ago. Faced with many obstacles within and outside the Fire Force, Shinra fights to uncover the truth behind the burning mysteries that have kept him in the dark.
[Written by MAL Rewrite]
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Comentários
Johan__Liebert_
Fire force is a story about people with fiery hearts fighting fire with fire. Set in a world where people spontaneously combust and turn into mindless burning zombies the Fire Force is responsible for controlling the damage caused by these “infernos”. Many people in this world are bestowed upon by Solomon the ability to control fire. After watching the first two episodes I really thought I would be able to enjoy this, but shortly afterwards the enjoyment I found in the bombastic nature of the first two episodes was burnt and tossed into oblivion. This is probably the worst directed and worst framed show to comeout this year. Riddled with sudden cuts, weird framing, stupid fanservice and soulless jokes and characters every bit of potential that the show held was thrown into the nether. Plot elements are pulled out of the author’s ass at very inappropriate times with characters making a sudden appearance and then disappearing just as quickly. Characters are brought into the show and thrown away for the duration of 5-6 episodes until they’re needed again to exposit about the world or the plot.
The characters are, quite frankly, shite.
“Gone are the days when authors wrote personalities and traits and then implemented those traits and associated mannerisms onto the avatar affiliated with the personality in question thus birthing an actual character instead of lazily creating an empty husk decorated with cliché.” – Douchebag Chocolat
The above quote perfectly describes the characters in this show. Instead of giving the characters a personality, they’re provided with certain traits and stupid mannerisms in order to deceive the audience into thinking that each character is somehow different than the next. Unfortunately, except maybe two or three every other character is basically the same. Even the protagonist, Shinra, has a certain habit of “smiling in the face of danger because his face muscles tense up”. There’s another guy who calls himself a knight just because his name is Arthur and he wields a sword. Seriously, this guy is so obsessed with the idea of becoming a knight that his power will literally increase if he even thinks that he’s riding a horse and has a duty to protect someone. The cat girl, Tamaki’s only purpose in life seems to be to get her boobs or ass in someone’s face “accidently” and then to call them a pervert. Iris almost does nothing but blush, the lieutenant is always grumpy and scaring his subordinates. There’s also Maki who can only utter the phrase, “Who are you calling a gorilla cyclops” even when no one has addressed her as such.
The characters don’t have much drive to do anything. Only Shinra and the commander of the 8th division are given any motivation as to why they do what they do. As for the other characters’ motivations and goals, the show usually gives us a half-assed backstory and is done with it. Most female characters like the dark-skinned girl, or the cat girl are used for fanservice. At one time the show almost tuned into a harem as every girl at whom Shinra even looked at started to fall for him.
Personally, I don’t care about the characters, except Joker, he was pretty cool, but it’s a shame that he only gets about 2 seconds of screen time in the whole show. I like the Joker cause he’s cool, not because he’s a well-constructed character. He’s brought in to tell Shinra about the main events that concern the plot and then he disappears.
Almost forgot, there’s also Shinra’s brother, Sho, who was separated from Shinra at a very young age and now he’s a bad, bad guy working as the Evangelist to bring about a third impact and Shinra must pilot th-… oh, wait, wrong anime.
The comedy is… there. The “comedy” usually consists of - a girl slipping out of her clothes for no apparent reason; Shinra and Arthur threatening to kill each other; a girl showing her tits or ass; Arthur claiming to be a knight but being ignored and a girl being molested. All these three situations are used to provide “comic relief”. The comedy also includes Maki shouting about someone calling her a Gorilla Cyclops. This joke was funny the first time, but after a 100 times, it became pretty annoying.
Watching the first episode, I remember thinking to myself “Man, this show is sure going to have some fire fights”, but only the first episode has any good fights. The fights that occur after the first episode are so badly choreographed that neither you, nor the characters can figure out what’s happening. I, in most fights, had no idea as to the spatial relations between the characters who were fighting. One scene they’re having a stare down, the next scene they fly towards each other, the next scene we see Shinra’s feet and then the fight is settled. After that the camera focuses on someone’s face for a bit too long and then abruptly cuts to another fight happening somewhere in the vicinity.
I never gave directors the respect they deserved for properly framing the characters until I watched this show. The camera either lingers on a particular subject for too long, or abruptly cuts to some other subject too quickly. This weird camera work usually happens after someone cracks a joke or when someone pisses someone off and was probably intended for us, the audience, to realize the awkwardness the characters were put in; but all it did for me was make me aware of the fact that I wanted to fast forward through the episode.
Not every fight is awkwardly animated. Some of the fights are really good, like Benimaru, the strongest fire bender vs a demon; Shinra vs the red-haired guy from the 1st division; Shinra vs a demon, but starting from the middle of the show the fights became pretty hard to follow.
The music didn’t appeal to me, but that’s subjective. I did like the first opening and the first ending, the second OP and ED were horrible. The music was tone deaf at times and sometimes the choice of music didn’t fit the scene it was being used for.
Should you watch Fire Force? I’ll leave that judgeme(n)t up t(o) you.
Marinate1016
Fire Force offers one of the more original takes on Shonen, instead of being about a kid out to get stronger or take on the world, we get a story about a world in which humans live in constant fear of suddenly exploding and turning into flame monsters. As someone who has been following the manga since the start, I was quite excited for this adaptation and was not disappointed at all. The source material was perfectly adapted and pacing was never an issue throughout. Characters and the world are properly developed and after the series gets going, you really do become attached to themain cast and genuinely become invested in their individual stories.
The fight scenes are the main selling point of any battle shonen and they’re done extremely well in this series. Gorgeous animation and amazing sound design/ost to compliment them.
I will say this, there have been many complaints on twitter and other social media about the amount of fan service particularly as it relates to Tamaki. Personally, I have no issue with fan service and don’t see why anyone would mind it, but if you do, you may find parts of the show difficult to get through as her fan service is often used as a plot device and in a later arc actually proves very decisive.
Personally, my one complaint with the series are the camera shots that seem to linger after a person has finished talking. For instance, if Shinra and Arthur are talking and Arthur finishes his sentence, for some reason the camera stays on him for like a full 5 seconds which for me creates a cognitive dissonance. Probably a minor thing, but I felt it was important enough to mention.
TL:DR Fire Force is at the front of the new gen, interesting premise, cool characters, Soul Eater author, cool fights and music(minus OP 2) and a story you’ll get sucked into. Check it out.
Stark700
Many people say Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is the hottest new show of 2019 and it’s no understatement. Then, there’s this show called Fire Force where reports told that it had only sold 107 blu-ray disks in Japan. On the other hand, Demon Slayer sold more than 11k copies in its first week. What went wrong? First of all, I don’t want to actually compare the two shows because they are actually not very similar. Both shows deals with supernatural entities to survive in their world and that’s where the similarity ends. But why did Fire Force suffer so much from popularity? Judging bythe show on its own, Fire Force actually has a unique premise, one that deals with death by fire. It’s one of the most fearful ways mankind can die since the dawn of time. The thought of being burnt alive is beyond chilling, a way of death that no one wants to happen to them. Unfortunately, in the world of Fire Force, that’s part of a dark reality. People meet the risk of becoming beings known as “Infernals”, where they eventually meet their demise by burnt alive. The three words “Spontaneous Human Combustion” is designated as words of fear.
What is mankind’s solution? It’s called the Special Fire Corps, consisting of individuals who can actually control fires to destroy the Infernals. Think of them as supernatural firefighters dealing with abnormalities. In a world of fear, you’d think mankind would fight for survival. This is where we meet Shinra Kusakabe, the Second Class recruit with a desire to discover the truth behind his family’s death. Being a hothead protagonist, Shinra adapts an impulsive personality that you can find in some dark fantasy shows. And it doesn’t take long for Shinra to start making a name for himself, albeit for some rebellious reasons. While watching Shinra, I come to realize that he is a good natured kid at heart but deals with problems too impulsively that sometimes puts others at risk. His early relationships with his crew such as Arthur and Maki often gets into bickering and arguments that can be best described as very high school-ish. But like I said before, Shinra is fundamentally a courageous young man who we shouldn’t overlook for his actions that speaks louder than words.
And because Shinra is part of the Special Fire Force Company 8, it becomes the most prominently featured group in the show. Not every character will be likable in this group and often times, ideals clashes between their members that results in a ton of silliness. Company 8’s early missions deals with typical assignments to eradicate Infernals but as the show evolves, so does their role. In fact, the true role for the company may be to investigate the other companies in case any of them are hiding something from the world. However, company 8 is symbolic for being rebellious due to the nature of their formation. This often puts their squad in odds with others but that doesn’t stop Shinra to discover the truth. Fire Force sometimes works as an urban fantasy as our main character and others seeks to discover the truth that is hidden from them. The plot gets more complex as each episode ventures on and with 24 episodes, the anime becomes more than fighting fire with fire.
At its best, Fire Force can keep the fans engaged with some of its fluid ideas. As this anime consists of dark fantasy, it also contains settings with thrilling secrets, such as the Netherworld. There’s a sense of curiosity that this show wants us to always be on the lookout for hidden motives. When watching the characters, I also came to realize each them have their own agendas and purpose. Not every character get their significance though so bear that in mind. There are some minor characters that have been easily discarded and be forgotten such as the Infernals early in the show. Others such as the Knights of the Ashen Flame serves as an iconic cult shrouded with secrets. This season only scratches the surface of their roles so it’s an unfortunate case of adaptation issue. Other companies are less featured even with roles of some of the more prominent characters such as Hibana from Company 5 and Captain Benimaru from Company 7. The creators of the show had Shirna and his company to be the group to carry the plot together. It’s a bit disappointing at some instances where I find characters such as Benimaru more fascinating than the main leads. This is especially true for the commander of the Knights of Ashen Flame, Shou Kusakabe. He may be young but Shou is a cold character with a lack of empathy for others. He stands as a major obstacle for Shinra and the others to overcome and in one of those episodes, we see the difference in their fighting skills.
At its worst, Fire Force’s storyboarding suffers from balance. Sometimes, the show can be emotional and make us feel sympathetic for the characters such as the case with Vulcan and Lisa’s relationship. Other times, they seem wasted with endless workplace comedy being dumped into our faces. I get it. Fire Force anime has to keep the mood lighthearted sometimes but I find the cartoony humor unsuitable for this type of show. This doesn’t help but Shirna’s weird condition related to his forced smile, the uncharacteristic fan service gags (mostly thanks to Tamaki), or other elements. Shirna’s character personality can be unbearably annoying at times when you realize how hotheaded he is. Even in battle, he doesn’t hold back and often fights like a maniac on fire. However, I will say that Shirna’s “Devil’s Footprints” skill can be quite a showstopper thanks to the cinematic choreography he delivers.
This is accomplished with the help of David Production and their talented staff. Fire Force’s cinematography commands attention and is described simply as spectacular. Director Yuki Yase had previously worked on unorthodox projects such as Mekakucity Actors, Nisekoi, and Monogatari Series. Granted, you’re not going to see Shaft’s head tilts but there’s plenty more this anime does show you. For instance, every big fight this anime throws at you concentrates on the fire being animated as if it’s alive. Watching the flames burn in various battles shows the complexity and dangers of fighting fire. These fire abilities are also distinctive that takes on different shapes and every one of them can cause devastation. By cause and effect, being burnt alive is a morbid thought to think about and this anime amplifies that feeling to maximum heights. Fire Force also contains visual coloring of is setting and decorative outfits, in particular the company members. The audience may also feel a bit of familiarity for those have read or seen Soul Eater, one of the author’s prominent works. In contrast, the Infernals stands above as the symbolism of horror and despair. Watching their mere presence alone should sent the messenge that they are what mankind truly fears for what they may become.
Fire Force clocks in at 24 episodes, a 2-cour show that’s paradoxical for celebrating the consequences of fire. This may be a dark fantasy but somewhere down the line, you’re going to have some laughs at this show for its innate humor. But seriously, I wouldn’t say Fire Force is a masterpiece or even close. It’s another one of those anime built with a wealth of ideas but drops the ball. The phrase “if you play with fire, you’re going to get burnt” just took on a whole peculiar meaning.
rtil
Let me take you back to 2003. Atsushi Ookubo, creator of Fire Force, is making waves with Soul Eater, a manga that would go on for 10 successful years - sparking an anime adaptation and a spin-off series. Soul Eater was a stand-out shounen that excelled in not only having a fascinating universe, but also characters that were compelling by having...well, personalities. And while Soul Eater did have characters with wacky quirks - most notably Death the Kid's OCD, used as the butt of many jokes - they weren't the epicenter of every character's existence. 2 years after Soul Eater, Ookubo started Fire Force. And in almostevery way, it feels like he has de-evolved as a storyteller. Characters in Fire Force are defined by singular traits, and you're bashed over the head with them constantly. Female characters especially, in the form of unfunny and blatant fanservice. Villains are comically evil mustache-twirling, monologue-spewing characters that are so blatant you can point them out the first time you see them.
There is little to no nuance in Fire Force. It has moments where you start thinking "wow, maybe this will actually get good now!", and then it falls right back into its tired, repetitive devices. And it's a shame - because there's no question that Studio David went all out with the action animation in Fire Force. But no matter how elaborately animated the fight sequences may be, it can't save Fire Force from barely scraping the surface of mediocrity.
I don't want to bash on Fire Force entirely - it's not a trainwreck. It is awkward, stilted and has weak convictions. But it does have moments of genuine tension, character growth and curious lore. Fleeting as they may be, they are there. So let's start with the good.
THE GOOD:
The Asakusa arc takes place in the middle of the anime, and it is by far the strongest arc in this season. Why is it so much more satisfying than anything else that happens in the series? Because it advances the plot in meaningful ways, and the ways in which it does it are EARNED. Characters do things for believable reasons, and conflicts are resolved in sensible ways that give strength to the plot. I thought the anime did a 180 for the most part during this arc, and had high hopes for what came after. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
The fighting animation is fantastic. It is also complimented by the sound effects used to add impact to the fire-based fighting. Altogether, it's easily some of the best choreographed and heart-pumping sakuga out there. The characters of Fire Force shine their brightest when they are fighting. Mostly because they dialogue is so weak, but hey - you get what you can take.
The universe and lore of Fire Force is pretty interesting - when you get some. There's clearly something sinister on a cosmic level that's going on in Fire Force that slowly gets revealed as time goes on. And i'm sure there will be more of that in the 2nd season.
Unfortunately, that's about it for the good.
THE BAD:
The direction outside of the fighting scenes is weirdly robotic and disjointed. Shots are flat, uninteresting and tonally confusing. Conversations are punctuated with a lot of awkward silence, still shots are held for too long, and you're often left wondering if there was supposed to be a punchline. It's worth noting that a lot of David Pro have come from Shaft, where many worked on the Monogatari series. While this is pure speculation, I can't help but wonder if the decision to use the same directorial stylings of Monogatari on Fire Force was due to this, because you can definitely make some parallels here. Unfortunately, for a shounen, it really doesn't work - especially when we get to the next bad thing: the humor.
Comedy is important in shounen. It can help sometimes to break up serious moments or sadness with a little bit of humor. But it's also easy to stretch a joke too thin. Fire Force is tirelessly overdoing its recurring gags. I get the feeling Ookubo might find his jokes a lot funnier than they actually are - and he uses the same ones over and over. As mentioned earlier, a lot of characters have a singular quirk that is shoved in your face over and over. One of the worst ones is easily Tamaki's. Her character is repeatedly shoved aside for a single joke that is played out to excess - her clothes are constantly falling off and she always finds herself being accidentally groped by the MC Shinra in the most impossible situations. Now, this would be fine if you were making a brainless ecchi fanservice show - but Fire Force wants you to take it seriously quite often. So it's tonally bizarre when at one moment there is death, tragedy and destruction, then suddenly some girl is squeaking while her bra and panties magically pop off and her boobs are in some guy's face. This kind of stuff happens more often than it really should, and for me almost none of the humor landed.
On the subject of Tamaki, I have to unfortunately give a knock to the female characters of Fire Force. It's not like Soul Eater wasn't full of fanservice, but at least it had an incredible female lead by the name of Maka Albarn, who wasn't a constant source of cheap sexual gags. Fire Force seems to treat every female character as a certain type of fetish - like strong girls? There's Maki. like scantily clad ones? There's Tamaki. Like femdom? There's Hibana. Like the innocent type? There's Iris. Outside of maybe 2 or 3 scenes, these characters are thoroughly shoved into their corner of pandering to something so juvenile that it's honestly just sad - especially considering that they (with the exception of Iris) are incredibly powerful fighters that deserved better.
Not only that, but the way some of these characters are treated ranges from disappointing to downright disturbing. Two examples that come to mind are Hibana's "turn" to join the 8th Company during her fight with Shinra. Shinra does a little talk no jutsu, punches her in the face, and just like that, she completely changes her mind about her life's ambitions AND - as an added bonus - falls madly in love with Shinra. It's the first arc in the series and really takes a lot of the wind out of your sails, because it's supposed to be the climax of the arc and it falls totally flat. The second one is when Tamaki finds out someone she idolized is actually an evil person. That evil person proceeds to mercilessly kick the shit out of her while she cries and does absolutely nothing to defend herself, despite being entirely capable. It's uncomfortable to watch and comes off as weird fetishy torture porn.
The male characters are not much better, just that their one-note quirks are inherently not sexual. Shinra is the main character. You see, he's a hero, so he has to say that all the time - just in case you forget. Arthur fancies himself a knight, and so he has a lot of jokes about being a knight. When he feels like a knight, he fights good. When he doesn't, he fights bad. To be fair, the male characters can be decidedly more well-rounded than the female characters, because they actually take the time to give them some backstory. So there's that.
Finally, the villains range from comically evil to downright incompetent. I'm gonna have to give "dumbest villain of the year" award to none other than Giovanni - a man with a plague mask who mostly just stands around talking - who managed to incapacitate his cult's #1 target, then proceeds to leave him alone in a forest with no guards instead of taking him somewhere where he couldn't escape. Then - of course - he escapes, after Hibana finds him somehow - and proceeds to get kicked in the face while he is busy talking about how evil he is elsewhere.
At the end of the day, a lot of these plot contrivances can all be chalked up to one thing - lazy writing. I don't know why Fire Force ended up being such a huge step backwards from Soul Eater narratively. There's a lot of reasons to speculate, but it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, Fire Force is what it is - the most baseline of shounen action, coupled with awkward humor, bizarre scene direction and stunted characters. For every moment you're pumping your fists, you get ten where you're rolling your eyes or raising an eyebrow in bemusement. All in all, it's kind of exhausting to sit through.
Should you watch Fire Force? Maybe if you've got nothing better to do. It struggles to even elevate itself to mediocrity. And in a genre as over-saturated as shounen, a lot of viewers are looking for something better. And there's plenty better out there than this - including the author's previous work.
twinktaro
*contains minor spoilers* I wasn't expecting much when I started Fire Force. I'd already heard about the excessive fanservice, so I knew this wasn't going to be a high quality show, but somehow Fire Force reached lower than my already low expectations. First off, the pacing was atrocious. The first four or so episodes were jam packed and nonsensical, so much happened over the season that I barely remember. We're introduced to all the main characters, except for the fanservice girl, in just the first few episodes. The world is barely established before we're thrust right into a tournament arc that lasted maybe two episodes. During thoseepisodes we're also introduced to a villain, given a bit of the Shinra's backstory, and we're told that the Fire Force may not have good intentions. It's entirely too much information way too quick. This terrible pacing does improve slightly as the season goes on, but frankly, it's still terrible.
Secondly, the characters. They're all flat, uninteresting, and undeveloped. The women are especially frustrating. Each one fits a specific trope: Maki is the masculine but wants to be feminine with the typical anime girl body, Iris is the pure virgin with the typical anime girl body. Then there's Haibara, the 20 year old femdom who's lusting after a 17 year old. Fanservice girl is the most insulting. Tell me why she's from the 1st district Fire Force team yet we never see her fight or even be semi useful? Instead she's reduced to a dumb, disgusting joke of a character who is constantly groped or stripped without her consent. I thought we had moved past such moronic, misogynistic tropes, yet here we are. Why make her a 3rd generation fire user and then make her absolutely useless in a fight. She became a fire fighter for a reason?? Even when she was isolated with Iris (who can't fight because she has no powers) during later episodes we didn't get to see her fight the bad guy. Instead she was useless the entire time. Honestly, I'm incredibly disappointed to see such sexist depictions.
Thirdly, this may be because I watched Fire Force in dub, but oh my god the dialogue was some of the worst I've ever seen. It was on par with High Rise Invasion in terms of quality. Not only was it cringey, it was just pathetic. Characters info dump, they say ridiculous one liners no one in their right mind would say and metaphors that are just cringey, state the obvious, and just repeat the same lines over and over. I'd be willing to bet that at least half of Shinra's lines are something along the lines of him being a hero. Don't get me started on Arthur and his dumbass knight persona. The reason the cringey dialogue didn't bother me as much in HRI is because it didn't take itself nearly as seriously as Fire Force. HRI is well aware of how goofy it is. Fire Force tries to make its plot and world deep, but the writing quality just isn't up to the task.
Overall, this show is not worth watching, not even for the flashy fight scenes. I like Benimaru enough to watch season 2, but frankly I wouldn't recommend this show to anyone. It's complete trash and a waste of time.
TakaCode
Fire Force was my most anticipated anime of 2019. As a person who loves Soul Eater, I was looking forward to seeing another of Atsushi' works animated in its beautiful and charming glory. I really wanted to love Fire Force just how I loved Soul Eater. I genuinely don't know what happened to Atsushi between the years 2013 and 2015 because I felt like degraded as a writer and a comedian between the 2-year gap of Soul Eater and Fire Force and it really shows from his character handling especially with the females, story structure, pacing and writing. The biggest problem you will notice right out thegate is the pacing. The Fire Force has absolutely no idea of what pacing is since everything from start to finish was either rushed or dragged out. The show moves at an inconsistent pace meaning it's really hard to get invested in anything that the writers were trying to present to us.
Due to this, the show has frankly destroyed itself because how can I get interested with the characters, the world, themes and conflicts if the pacing is broken?
Pacing can make or break a show and unfortunately, the pacing totally broke Fire Force. What's the point of an anime like this if the writers don't allow me time to comprehend it?
It doesn't really matter since the plot is an unbearable cliche storm.
By the way, you will be hearing the word unbearable a lot throughout this review. Anyway, just by watching the first three episodes alone you can spot over 25 cliches on a notebook.
MC family gets killed by a demon, MC is late on his first day. MC wants to become a firefighter because of tragic backstory reasons. MC saves a female from danger, constant flashbacks about his dead mom, (what is this shit, the Quiet Man), inner monologues about his motivations, you know the drill. It's incredibly irritating and it really cheapens the writing in general. Once you get past the cliche storm first episode, the writing only further deteriorates to a point where the story becomes a tedious chore.
This has got to be the most tedious shounen I have ever seen in a long while and I watched the Black Clover anime. Despite that show having a lot of standout moments, especially the current intriguing elf/black devil arc but when that show got a tedious slog it became a tedious slog with its sluggish pacing, hamfisted unfunny comedy and shallowly written arcs.
Fire Force takes it to a whole level. Every single arc in the series has been done better in better shounens. The writing is soulless, lazy, and overall uninspired.
The nail in the coffin for this pathetic excuse of a story is the insufferable comedy I have never seen comedy and humour this tasteless and unfunny in my life. I know that Atsushi Okubo has an intellectual taste of comedy as shown in his previous work Soul Eater, but he didn't have to crank it up to unbearable levels.
Mindless boob/butt jokes, cringeworthy insults, gorilla cyclops and showing butts and boobs for no reason other than sick pandering. What makes it even worse to a point where I literally wanted to punch my computer monitor on the screen was that the show was actively pleased about it.
There's no self-awareness nor any remorse behind the tasteless comedy. Episode 9, in particular, takes the atrocious comedy to the next level. During Shirma and Rekka fight the show had the nerves to shove in fan-service in the middle of the fight where Shirma bumps into Takami breast.
Completely breaking the tension just for tasteless fan-service because that's what the horny teenagers desire these days. Screw having consistent pacing, character development, compelling themes and stakes am I right.
Do you know what the show does after that scene? The show decides to not only decide to burn Takami clothes to a point where she almost flat out naked but it decides to have Shirma bump into Takami yet again but this time kissing her head while his left arm is hugging Takami breast.
It was that point where I drew the line Fire Force and everything that I stood for. Even if the show does have some redeeming qualities, nothing can unbearable episode 9 because that episode perfectly highlights just how downright sexist and incompetent this show is.
Never before have I seen a shounen that treats the viewers like incompetent retards, a show that treats its female characters as sex objects, a show that prioritises sex appeal over story and characters. Fire Force storywise is an end product of arrested ambition and not giving a damm.
The cast of Fire Force had the potential to be fun and engaging as much as the Soul Eater cast, but the horrendous writing and pacing have sent the cast to the shadow realm.
Shinra is the typical lead that you have seen before. Want to become a hero to overcome his tragic past and false self, has overpowered abilities, loves flirting with girls, do I see to say more?
The rest of the cast range from generic to downright awful.
Arthur is the stereotypical cocky dumb hero who lacks common sense.
Iris is a dense nun and fan-service device for the show's amateur hour humour.
Hinawa is a generic strick guy with glasses.
Captain Obi is a typical friendly, loyal tough dude.
You may think I'm just half-fasting my thoughts on the characters, but that's all they are. You frankly know what type of tropes these characters are going to be the minute they show up in episode 1. This is soulless writing at its finest, and it makes the show even more tedious to watch, especially when many of the characters don't develop for shit.
The only character that I liked in Fire Force was Maki a Tomboy who's a capable fighter. I also enjoyed her personality a lot. She may be the typical tough chick but at least it was well executed and she plays off with other characters very well.
It's such a shame that the writers had to degrade her to the most cringest gag since Gauche sister complex nosebleeding gag from Black Clover.
Every time someone calls her a Gorilla Cyclops. I get insulted because she doesn't deserve this. There's nothing wrong with being a tomboy yet the show thinks that tomboys are a bad thing.
The worst character in Fire Force is by far Takami. I absolutely detest this bitch from beginning to end. She's got my nerves very quickly due to how annoying she is.
She's not interesting at all, she has no character development through this 24 episode pile of sexist waste.
Her powers are utter shit as her fire powers make people do sexual things with her because we haven't found enough ways to further degrade our female characters.
On top of this, she's a knock off Maka from Soul Eater. Actually, I take that back calling her a knock-off. Maka would be an insult to her character because unlike this annoying sack of shit Maka has character development as well as a likeable personality. If the tedious pacing did not kill Fire Force for me, then it was Takami. The unbearable poorly written dipshit. So yeah screw this character.
By the time I finished the first half of the Fire Force, I had gotten a massive headache because the characters were so atrociously written to the core.
To cure my headache caused by Fire Force I decided to pick up Soul Eater from my anime DVD collection and watch it in its entirety. Just by watching the first five episodes of Soul Eater was enough to cure my headache because Soul Eater, not only the characters, were memorable but the writing and pacing were on point. Sure, the cheesy ending had much to be desired but the amazing character dynamics, consistent pacing, attention to detail with its world, humour and mostly top-notch writing make up for it.
Soul Eater is a fun and intriguing show that has a lot of passion and heart into it. Fire Force is a lazy and uninspired mess that has no passion or heart.
Even without the Soul Eater comparisons, the character would still be terrible but comparing it to Soul Eater only sunk this show further into terribleness.
I honestly hope to God the second season maybe redeems itself because as of right now the story and characters are putrid.
If Fire Force had any redeeming qualities at all it would be the visuals and music for the most part. David Production did a fantastic job with the character designs, scenery and animation, especially how the show animates fire. It feels like I am watching a well-choreographed action flick which is only enhanced by the excellent sound design which I talk about in the bit. It's such a shame that the direction outside of the fight scenes was not up to par. It wasn't outright horrible as many people say it is but you can clearly tell the show prioritise its animation budget fight scenes. Because of that, we get a tone of awkward shots and still frames.
Finally, we have the soundtrack for Fire Force and it's excellent. The tracks are all memorable in their own right and they fit the anime perfectly. Notable tracks include Fire Force Main Theme, Joker, The Shots Fired, The Dark of Hibana, Heart Sound of the Determination and Bright Red. The excellent mix of orchestra and bass music score make the soundtrack let alone the anime feel alive. This is easily my second favorite soundtrack from the talented Kenichiro Suehiro who did the soundtracks from Re:Zero, Golden Kamuy and Goblin Slayer.
The sound design, on the other hand, is fantastic. I feel like the sound staff behind this show truly understand sound design and I picture them recording actual fire, so they can use that as the actual sound effect of the anime instead of using a stock fire sound effect from some sound effect programme. Due to this, the Fire sound effect in Fire Force sounds like actual real-life fire. Other sound effects are also good but not as impressive as the Fire sound effect.
The first opening theme Inferno is a kickass upbeat song that perfectly captures the setting and tone of Fire Force both in rhythm and presentation. Easily my second favorite anime opening of 2019 only losing to Vinland Saga's MUKANJYO.
The same cannot be said for the second opening theme MAYDAY by coldran which is hands work the worst opening theme of 2019. Not only the song was uninspired with to its generic rock score but the opening visuals felt like a badly produced AMV video from the last decade.
The first ending theme Veil is a well-composed upbeat song that fits the anime nicely, especially with the visuals.
Unlike the second opening theme, the second ending theme Nounai is decent in terms of the song itself but the ending visuals scream lacklustre.
The English dub done by Funimation is astounding.
Even I don't care about the characters I feel like the voice actors really tried their best to make the characters feel alive. On top of that, the audio quality and the script is good. It's one of the better Funimation dubs I heard in 2019. I just wished the pacing, writing and characters were just as good as production values and English dub.
I desperately wanted to like Fire Force. It has all the ingredients for a fantastic series. It was done by the person who made one of my favorite shounen series Soul Eater and it was being produced by David Production, the same studio that gave us Jojo. It had a lot of amazing ideas and concepts but none of its ingredients wasn't balanced enough where any of it works, which was unfortunate because I felt like the staff were very passionate towards this project. It's such a shame the script, characterization and especially the pacing wasn't on par.
Maybe season 2 will redeem it, but as of right now I recommend skipping it unless you have nothing to watch then again there's Soul Eater which is a much better option than this.
wahmalele
the story was average at best but the fan service was unbearable and incredibly distracting. just go watch hentai at this point. a promising anime ruined completely by boobs jiggling in your face in every shot possible 😑 the story was predictable nothing new honestly art style was really pretty but wasted the animators potential on stupid shit all the time this might as well have been a 5 minute music video or something. the editing community will have a good time doing epic AMVs to imagine dragons but the actual anime is not worth watching just watch the AMVs or a few edits of thefights and thats all you need cuz there isn't much else worth watching for
RadaSmada
This is my first review that I've ever taken the time to write on Myanimelist. I am doing this because the ammount of people that are misunderstanding the directors approach to the show is just absolutley mind blowing. This is one of the most original shounens to come out in quite a long time. Just to cut to the chase, I am seeing tons of people complaing about how the show is directed. How the camera jump cuts at weird times. So I'm guessing no body has ever watched a Shaft show in their life? The Director, Yuki Yase, has worked on a ton ofStudio Shaft shows, and it definitley shows in Fire Force. Just because something is different, doesnt mean its bad. It's an artisitc choice, and I for one am happy to see a nice artistic change in the way this Shounen story is told. I'm getting the impression most people that are upset about this have just not seen this different sort of direction in an anime, and I urge these people to just go into this with an open mind. The directing is extremley artistic, and check out some other Shaft works while you're at it. Now that that's out of the way I will get into the rest of the show.
The animation is beautiful as well. I will admit, theres definitley certain episodes where you can see most of the budget went, even the not as nice animaition scenes are still on par with most anime coming out today. And on the scenes that really go all out, are really something that I will remember. This show has some of the most stylistic fight scenes I've seen in recent years. And without spoiling anything, episode 22 and 23 are episodes I will be remembering for a long time.
Can we also talk about how this show has some of the most creative sound design I've seen in anime? Crazy sounds when Shinra is blasting into the sky, the sound when Aldolla Link is activating, all of these sounds are crazy, weird, and threw me off every time they came on and I love it. Definitley watch with headphones to take it all in.
The story is strong and emotional, the characters are likeable, the comedy is very ironic and self aware, and the show gets serious when it needs to. there isn't much negative to say about this show. The only thing I need to say is GIVE IT A CHANCE. ITS NOT YOUR TYPICAL SHOUNEN
SneezySaturn
Fire Force is the most criminally underrated anime in existence. If someone said it was an 8 or a 9, I could understand. But this show being this low rated and nearly every written review being under 5 and talking about hating the show makes absolutely no sense. This show at the very, very minimum has amazing action sequences, so if you somehow hated everything else about it, you could at least say it looked pretty and had cool fights. But no, this seems to be a very divisive show, with a very loud hate base. As a fan of both shounen and story driven anime, andhaving a friend group that are fans of both as well, we all share the opinion that Fire Force is amazing and underrated to bits.
My/Our Review:
Fire Force is a beautifully animated shounen that has a unique world, entertaining characters, and dark political/religious undertones interwoven into the current world and the past. The power system isn’t mind blowing, yet it has really unique moments (ie Sho, Karim, Kurono, etc). They do a good job of making every single person feel powerful, yet somehow it all feels balanced and makes sense. They do don’t do the crap of only the protagonist and his group is special, no almost every power is unique and there are a plethora of powerful characters. The story is pleasantly complex, and the history is mysterious and dark, while at the same time, the show can definitely have it’s funny moments. The only cons about the show is the fan service and the sometimes over the top cliche protags. If you can survive those two things, there’s no way you won’t find something to like about the show.
Dukino
Another new shonen has ended its first run thus making it's mark on the genre. Talk about a flashy finish with Shinra vs Sho being absolutely stunning to see animated. David Production I applaud them for how this show has looked. No matter what you say about the story you cannot in any way discount the art and animation. Every one of the many fights had your jaw on the floor with the fluidity and dynamism being put on display. A feast for the eyes if nothing else, and I'd say there's a good deal else. The characters I think made the show a lotof fun even when it was middling in the story. I know many people didn't like the whole situation with Tamaki especially when Rekka came around in like episodes seven through ten. Personally didn't find it awful or worse than the fan service in many other shows that people openly enjoy but whatever. Anyways the cast on whole is very enjoyable. Shinra as our lead doesn't get a ton of character development until the second cour but the whole first half with his single mindedness of wanting to find his brother and get revenge for his mom only amplifies the impact the events in the Nether have on him. The others of Obi, Maki, Benimaru, Arthur, Hibana, Vulcan, Tamaki are all character I liked spending time with in the story.
The story itself also kind of takes a while to get itself going with the first half being very small scope having Company 8 simply taking down Infernals and corrupt Fire Companies. Doesn't shine until we get to Asakusa and the White Clad are truly given center stage to battle with the Fire Soldiers. The story then only getting better imo with the Vulcan arc and the Nether arc. Each showing just how vile the White Clad can be, how many lives they've destroyed to appease this Evangelist. Of course we also got many badass fights along the way. Mad she so happy each time we saw a company member kick was against a White Clad.
This is a shonen that probably would've has more success and critical praise about ten years ago if I'm being honest. It very much feels like an early 2000's type anime. Which isn't a bad thing because many of those tropes and styles got is to where we are now with these newer shonen. All this to say that Fire Force might be taking a tired approach to shonen in this modern climate but it still has an immense amount of value to be seen.
The anime has taken a pretty good manga and made it look incredible with how it's animated and shot. The director has a very particular they're using in the cinematography that's being used which adds to the ethereal feel of this world. The power of the flame is vast as we've seen. Overall I probably enjoyed this more than most. Has some problems and stumblings yes but a tour de force visually with a cast that's loads of fun. Could not be more excited that Season 2 is coming in just six months!
8/10
AnimeBW
Anime’s had a lot of ups and downs over the course of 2019, but I don’t think this year will ever give us a better reason to say “careful what you wish for” than Fire Force. Another story from the author that brought us Soul Eater, brought to life by the talented folks at David Production? With a healthy glug of Blue Exorcist thrown in for good measure? You could practically hear me salivating at the thought when it was first announced. But then it actually started airing, and within three episodes, I realized I’d just wished upon a monkey’s paw. Fire Force is agoddamn catastrophe, one of the worst shows I’ve had the misfortune to suffer through this year. And it’s a catastrophe precisely because of all the reasons it seemed so exciting at first glance. It’s a mangled, twisted effort composing all the worst tendencies of everyone involved in its creation, so much obvious ambition and talent squandered on a hackneyed, juvenile, amateurish, thoroughly unpleasant endeavor. I’d say it feels like it was made by a twelve-year-old, but that would be an insult to twelve-year-olds, because as someone who was writing fiction back when I was twelve years old, I can guarantee that as sloppy an author as I was back then, my stuff was eminently more thoughtful than this.
The story? It’s a few hundred years after a great fire-related catastrophe that shook the world to its core, and now, society has been rebuilt around protecting humanity from the scourge of spontaneous human combustion. Humans have begun exploding in flames for unknown reasons even since that catastrophe, turning into mindless beings of destruction called Infernals that only seek to burn the world around them. To combat this scourge, there exists the titular Fire Force, an elite squad of firefighter-soldiers who, well, literally fight fire with fire, blasting their way through fire demons and their acolytes with pyrokinetic powers that range from simple fireballs to summoning lesser fire elementals to breakdancing an inferno into existence. Shinra Kusakabe, our hero, lost his family to a rampaging Infernal as a child, and he’s just joined up with the Fire Force to help fight back against the flames. But it’s quickly revealed that, of course, everything is not as it seems, there’s a conspiracy at play behind the seemingly random combustion incidents, and the Fire Force itself may be a part of it. So Shinra must work closely with his fellow members of the 8th Company to uncover the secrets behind the fires threatening the world, all while honing his own skills to become the best fire soldier he possibly can. A simple enough premise, but one rife with potential for engaging characters, worldbuilding, and action alike. If I was a producer and you sent me that pitch, I’d be stupid to not at least ask for a first draft.
So how did it all go so goddamn wrong? Well, like I said above, the creative forces that got me excited for Fire Force ended up being the very forces responsible for its downfall. And to explain why, I need to talk about Atsushi Ookubo, Fire Force’s original Mangaka.
Ookubu is not a talentless writer. I’m a huge fan of Soul Eater, for its creative aesthetics, strong sense of purpose, and everything about Crona. But as much as I love Soul Eater, I also acknowledge that its quality is unevenly dispersed. There are some things it does very well- action, aesthetics, nightmare fuel, emotional character writing, theming- and some thing is does very poorly- exposition, worldbuilding, tonal consistency, obnoxious fanservice, cheap gimmicks. It’s a show that works because it’s got enough unique, worthwhile strengths that they offset its consistent weaknesses, but it’s never able to fully escape having those weaknesses. At its best, Soul Eater is a riveting, exciting, hype-you-up action spectacle with fantastic moments of catharsis and a soaring treatise on the nature of overcoming fear. At its worst, it’s a ten-year-old problem child hopped up on Pixie Stix trying to annoy you into giving it attention. It’s probably been a while since some of you watched Soul Eater, but do you remember how obnoxious the characters were back in the first few episodes? They were all defined by surface-level catchphrases they would repeat ad nauseum in lieu of actual characterization. Soul wanted to be “Cool”, BlackStar called himself “Big”, DK was obsessed with “Symmetry”, and they would repeat those phrases over and over again to the point of annoyance. They didn’t feel like characters so much as gimmicks, reduced to that one obnoxious trait they would pound into the ground until it lost all meaning.
Of course, as the show went on, all these characters did flesh out into more complete characters, and they would use those catchphrases far less often as they developed more interesting nuances to explore. But that tendency to write characters as obnoxious gimmicks was still an obvious struggle to get away from. And unfortunately, whatever effort Ookubo put into restraining himself in Soul Eater obviously didn’t go into Fire Force, because this show is essentially what would’ve happened if Soul Eater never developed beyond those gimmicks. Shinra’s told he must choose between being a “Hero” or “Devil”, but that conflict is conveyed solely other characters repeating the words “Hero or Devil” to him over and over again while he keeps saying “I’m a Hero” over and over again. And that’s the extent of his characterization, unless you count coming up with purposefully-stupid attack names on the fly as characterization. I wish I was exaggerating, but that’s seriously all the character Fire Force’s protagonist is ever given beyond the most generic “I must fight for my family” backstory imaginable.
And I can sum up the entire cast in similar ways. Maki is a musclebound girl who’s self-conscious about not being feminine, and her entire character is attacking people because she mistakenly thinks they’re calling her “Gorilla Cyclops.” Captain Obi is a friendly, loyal jock. His lieutenant Hinawa fights with a gun. Iris the nun is such a ditz that she can’t even tell two similar-looking people apart by their very different voices. Arthur Boyle, Shinra’s would-be rival, is so comically stupid that he forgets to fight with his dominant hand. Also, he thinks he’s a knight and praises loyalty. I know it sounds like I’m punking you with these brief descriptions, but that’s seriously all there is to them. I’m honestly astounded how flat this show’s entire cast is; not a single person feels developed beyond a single dimension, no one has unique motivations or interesting backstories, and in lieu of developing them, Fire Force just pushes their gimmicks so absurdly far that they cease to feel human in any sense of the world. It’s annoying, it’s aggravating, and it just makes you hate every single one of these cheap emojis masquerading as people. Arthur’s stupidity, in particular, is so overplayed that you start to wonder if Ookubo based him off someone in his life he had a grudge on and wanted to get back at. He doesn’t even feel like a rival, despite the show constantly insisting he and Shinra hate each other’s guts; everyone is so flat and lifeless that the only time they feel like rivals is the rare occasion when the story suddenly remembers they’re supposed to be rivals and throws in a random conflict where their rivalry is getting in the way and they need to learn to work together, despite this never being a problem unless the show suddenly decides it is.
And then there’s Tamaki. Dear sweet fucking lord, Tamaki might be the worst thing to happen to anime all year. Her gimmick is that her fire powers make people involuntarily molest her, because isn’t it funny when female characters are sexually assaulted and degraded for our enjoyment? Isn’t that just fucking hilarious? And it doesn’t even make sense within the context of the show, because every time it happens, Tamaki just acts like any other anime tsundere who gets accidentally groped, screaming “pervert” and slapping the offender around, but, like, wouldn’t she know? If we’re actually supposed to believe this Lucky Lecher bullshit is a part of her life, wouldn’t she know it isn’t the guy’s fault when they pull her panties down by mistake? Wouldn’t she be at least a little sued to dealing with this issue and kinda be over it by now? Wouldn’t her reactions to suffering this bullshit be anything other than the same fucking dogshit overplayed tropes that all anime have? Apparently not, because the only reason Tamaki exists at all is to give the humiliation perverts something to masturbate over, so it doesn’t matter how illogical the actual mechanics of this all are as long as she’s reduced to tears and blushing and has her tits jiggling around, often right in the middle of an otherwise serious action scene. Hell, let’s have all the female characters have moments where they’re stripped and/or sexually degraded as the camera leers at them dropped right into a supposedly dramatic moment. Because who cares about actually treating your story with a degree of respect when you can pander to the lowest common demoninator and sell a million fucking dakimakuras off of the most sexist garbage since Fairy Tail?
But hey, I hear you saying, I don’t care about all that character and plot stuff, I’m just here to see cool action shit blow up real good. Well, if that’s what you’re here for, you’re gonna be disappointed to. Yes, Fire Force has moments of absolutely breathtaking spectacle, where the fire effects and momentum and color design (seriously, this show’s color game is on point) are so pitch-perfect that they kick your ass ten different ways to Sunday, action scenes that stand among the best of the year... some of the time. The rest of the time, this is one of the most incoherently directed shows I think I’ve ever seen. Shots cut in and out without purpose, the camera lingers meaninglessly for shots that drag on far too long, there are so many weird, random, disconnected cuts that completely ruin your orientation in the scene, characters jump between poses in a single cut, and a lot of the action just doesn’t have any sense of flow or momentum thanks to some seriously incomprehensible editing that completely takes you out of it. It’s also a depressingly static-looking show most of the time; there is so little actual motion in the average episode of Fire Force- no character movement, no camera movement, no environmental details shifting- you’d be forgiven for assuming your computer wasn’t stopping and starting throughout. Let’s be honest, David Production has never had the most fluid animation, and their work on Jojo’s has been successful mostly thanks to the strength of its dynamic camera angles and strong blocking of scenes. But Fire Force doesn’t even have half that level of skill, and the whole thing just becomes an impenetrable slog of disconnected shots, inconsistent action, background art so cluttered the unmoving characters are nigh-impossible to spot in it, and laughably botched attempts as Shaft-style artsy directing that only highlight how artless the entire damn affair is.
I realize I’m kinda describing this haphazardly, but that’s how the entire show feels. Everything is so half-baked and underthought that it all ends up wrapping back around to infuriating and you end up hating the whole damn affair. Tone comes and goes without any consideration for time and place, characters’ gimmicks become so stupid and Flanderized that they completely destroy any sense that these people could actually exist as functional human beings, the pacing drags on and on with nothing of interest happening, Ookubo keeps loading the cast down with more and more cardboard cutout gimmicks desperately trying to fool you into thinking they’re characters, motivations shift on a dime, and there’s no fucking consistency to any of it. A villain’s introduced early on monologuing about her superiority, then Shinra punches her and she instantly turns to the good side and falls in love with him. Once again, I cannot stress enough that I am not exaggerating for effect; this is seriously how it plays out in the show. How am I even supposed to react to that? How am I supposed to make sense of writing this utterly broken and thoughtless? I say again, even I, writing at the ripe young age of twelve, put more thought into my characters and plot than this. I know Ookubo’s capable of better, so he has no excuse for how abysmal this turned out.
But I think I’m gonna have to cut my rant short there, because otherwise I’ll be going for another ten paragraphs. Bottom line, Fire Force is a complete disaster, a baffling, obnoxious, often infuriating waste. It’s annoying to watch, it’s exhausting to think about, and it’s tragic to consider just how much obvious talent and effort, from color designers to animators to especially voice actors (god, Aoi Yuuki does not deserve this), is being pissed down the drain on a show that can only squander them. Just watch the best action cuts on SakugaBooru or something, because that’s the only part of this mess worth engaging with.
zed_baciu
This anime is ok. The concept is interesting, but everything is based on fire in this world, even though this element has destroyed the world all the fire is a basic element in this anime. People's abilities come from fire, but where does God have them from? Nothing is explained about this. I can resemble this anime with BNHA, but instead of quirk we have fire, but I saw something strange in the last episode as someone had electricity powers an element that is not related to fire and I have a question, where the logic disappeared in this anime? The animation is extraordinary, the music is good, butyou still have to work on the story and the characters.
Hibana, for example, is a poorly written guy because he was initially the enemy of Brigade 8, but Shinra comes and punches him and falls in love with him as if nothing had happened.
Shinra is generic and boring, Maki is annoying with her fan service and the villains have a pretty generic purpose because they want to destroy the world.
Not all the characters are weak and there are some good ones: Tamaki, Vulcan and Arthur.
Fire force also has good parts, the animation, the music, the comedy (as good as in the Soul eater) and the action scenes very well done.
They prolonged the fight between Shinra and Sho, about 3 episodes, at one point it became boring and predictable the conclusion of the fight of the two.
In conclusion the anime is fun and enjoyable to watch, it can become better in season 2.
ggol
TLDR: Not worth watching, unless you like fighting anime This review will be based on seasons 1 and 2 as both seasons are pretty much the same at the time of 31/08/2024 Introduction Set in a world where at all times there will be cases where a normal human being will be infected with a flame virus that causes them to turn into monsters. A military force that mainly consists of fire force users is established to eliminate the threat of the monsters. Characters 3/10 So the character here is more like what the fuck because look, ok you have this priest girl that basically does nothing, but pray tothe enemy for forgiveness. The problem is what does the praying benefit do in the midst of the battle? It literally does nothing and she is there for nothing. The character is also so fucking cliche to the point that it is frustrating and there is also so much dumb fan service that just pops out of nowhere. This cat girl for example, whenever she does something she will always be accidentally stripped naked by her surroundings area because her clothes just somehow fall off. The villains here are also so cliche to the point that are badly represented. At first, the villains look like a well-established and organized group that trusts each other and believes each other. However, when fights break out between the fire force and the villains there are so many times when the villains are fighting both the enemy and amongst themselves for no reason. And, somehow 1 villain also intentionally injured another villain in the midst of a fight.
SO LONG WORDS SHORT: The characters don't make much sense most of the time
Story 4/10
The story of Fire Force is not interesting because most of the time the story is about the fights which have no build-up or interesting points to lead towards that. Throughout seasons 1 and 2 the series is stuck in a time loop where there is little progress made or achieved. It's all about the Fire squadron doing small task missions to eliminate a group of infected or training amongst themselves most of the time. It's strange that they introduced his deceased brother Sho in the first episode then straight after the first episode then one of the villains pointed out that his brother is alive. This is not a spoiler because there is no fucking build-up to that point when the brotherly narrative is only like 2 seconds briefly shown. There are also so many unnecessary points in the story such as the factions and religion because they don't serve any meaningful purpose to the story. For example, the fire force is inspired by firefighters, but they look more or less the same as firefighters, not a special military force. What's worse is that most of their uniform don't represent a clear regiment on what they are. The Latom religion is basically Christianity and is weird that they want to segregate both those things into different meanings because its basically a copy and paste. What's worse is that religion in this anime doesn't have a clear reason for being there. I give you a good example of a religion in AOT of Ymir Fritz. All the people of Eldia worship her because they believe she is a god and she is an important aspect of the narrative on how Titan is born, but religion in this anime doesn't serve or add up to the story which is not a good inspiration. To keep it short the story adds so many inspired elements like Christianity and firefighter that don't serve any meaning in the story which makes the narrative very boring. The only narrative that is interesting is Joker story. He is such a cool character and everything about him is so mysterious which has brought so much build-up and attention for the audience. And others are just plain boring. However, if your into more of a fighting type of narrative than this series does bring quite a lot of good fight scenes but for story focus its not that interesting
Animation 9/10
The animation is the only greatest aspect of this anime. The animators put a lot of time and effort to make this animation into the top tier anime. It is at the movie quality level and it shows that a lot of effort has been put into it with so many dynamics around it and colorful paintings.
Conclusion
Most of the time the story focuses primarily on the fights than the story. For some anime like Demon Slayer its fine because they do give us likable characters with a very intriguing background story. However, the characters in Fire force are questionable at best and most of the background stories of them are not very fascinating. The one thing they did right was the animation. It is a movie-quality animation and you can see a lot of effort has been put into it. However, this doesn't exempt from the poorly told story that hugely degraded the anime.
JaxonFiles
Enen no Shouboutai, or in Fire Force in English, is quite possibly one of my favorite anime of this year. Let me explain why. Story: 8/10 The story has a well-written, properly-conceived plot. It's easy to understand and you are pulled into the progression of the story as the anime continues. The focus of the story is also very unique: there aren't many anime or manga about firefighters. And the world-building that the anime does is excellent, and the subtleness of hints regarding the secrets of the world only bring the audience to want to learn more about the world. The pacing of the revelations is alsoexcellent.
Art: 8/10
To be expected from David Productions and Atsushi Okubo. DP has given us classics like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and Okubo is the creator of the fantastic Soul Eater manga. This combination sold me on this anime right away, and I was not disappointed whatsoever! I love the character designs and how the animation flows. The background is well-developed and any CGI is done perfectly and seamlessly. Each character popped out at me and they all had different designs from their core face to even their uniforms.
Sound: 7/10
The voice actors are amazing. They did an excellent job portraying the emotions of the characters. I could really feel the emotion! The first OP is memorable and probably one of the best openings. The sound and animation for it was amazing and one of the reasons I decided to check out this anime. I don't pay attention to many anime openings or endings, but this one was incredible. The reason I gave it a 7 is because of the second opening, which was a bit more disappointing after the first one.
Character: 8/10
All of the characters have their own unique personalities. Shimura's drive and ambitions are notable as well. He is not a static character either. As the story progresses, so to do his ambitions. But he still sticks to his ideals and wants to live up to the promises he has made. The way the anime continually circles back to his past shows that his history does in fact play a major role in driving the plot, which is something I love in an anime. When an anime brings the past of a character into the story, I want it to mean something! I want it to be there to have us relate to the character, to understand their thought process, rather than just using it as feels-bait as many anime have done in the past.
I also love the comparison of devil and hero in this story. Shinra is the perfect character for this theme, and his motivation and the plot are shaped around this as well.
Enjoyment: 9/10
I loved this anime. I enjoyed watching every minute of it! The characters are all fun and quirky, and I couldn't stop myself from watching it. Every week I anticipated a new episode release, and as soon as I did, I wanted more. I would definitely rewatch this series repeatedly, it was such a fun ride!
Overall: 8/10
Let's do the math! 8 + 8 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 40. 40 / 5 = 8. So, my overall score is an 8. What solidified this score is the anime itself. It leaves you wanting more, and you won't be disappointed. I sincerely recommend this anime, and I am hyped for season 2!
KenLC2muchLight
I thought this anime had potential. But while the story and world building was quite original, the characters just lacked personality and the fanservice was just excruciatingly bad and sexist. But I'll be starting with some positive vibes here: The first intro was great. I loved the song so much, it even ended up in my Spotify playlist. There are much better shows with much worse intros out there. (But I'd rather give the budget to those) Also the whole concept of fire fighters and spontaneous combustions was a refreshingly new take on action anime. The aesthetics were great too, with lovely backgrounds and detailed designs of thebuildings and surroundings.
The puffy firefighter outfits with the light blue stripes that shone in the dark (and contrast the red flames) were genius.
And what really kept me watching was the mystery of the combustion phenomenon. I'm just a sucker for mystery elements.
But all that can't nearly make up for those boring, bland and unoriginal characters.
It was hard to form any attachments or even tell them apart at some point. Maki and Tamaki? Come on, do you name your girls after different types of sushi? And even sushi gets treated with more love and care.
Sexism and fanservice against women (and men) in anime is one of my biggest problems with the genre. And the portrayal of girls in this show was just sexist to the point I felt bad for watching it. Tamakis lucky lure was just annoying and degrading the girl to pure fanservice. There was just everything wrong with it. Then Makis thing was to be shallow about her looks ("who are you calling a gorilla cyclops?") and Iris only job was to blush and waiting to be saved by others. Bohooo.
The main character Shinra just kept repeating himself, saying that he wants to be a hero and save others - and while that seems to be a common shonen main character thing, in this anime it just fell very flat.
And the story with his brother? It failed to have any dimension and couldn't make me feel any emotion except boredom.
That's about it.
I watched the show to the end, cause apparently my taste levels have reached a low point, but I don't really recommend you to do the same.
The sexism was the worst part of it.
Now I'm gonna listen to the intro and dream of strong female anime main characters
ArchangelEST
Fire Force is an absolutely solid shounen, all but guaranteed to appeal to most fans of the genre. It doesn't break much new ground, but the story and world building is quite interesting. Animation / Art / General Visuals - 8/10 ----------------------------------------------- Good quality stuff. Backgrounds are detailed, fight scenes are flashy. The animation in general high quality. Some of the fight scenes are very impressive. Sound / Music / Voice Acting - 8/10------------------------------------------
Can't make any complaints. Good OST, solid voice acting across the board, good secondary sounds.
Story - 8/10
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The story has many shounen tropes, but it is quite interesting in its uniqueness. The entire world went up in flames one day, and the survivors, having re-established themselves, are now stuck fighting against people who randomly combust and go on fire filled rampages.
The story revolves around on dude who lost his family to such events, and is now determined to fix the world. A pretty standard shounen motivation. Bad stuff went down, they're angry that it happened, now want to fix everything.
It doesn't break much new ground. But again, the overall story and worldbuilding is interesting. A world of human combustion and superpowers that completely revolve around fire is pretty cool.
Characters - 7/10
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A pretty standard shounen cast. Got a teenage dude as the MC, another dude as a rival/friend. A few older father figures. Some potential love interests. Some comedic roles.
Most of the characters do get their own backstories but none are particularly fleshed out.
The MC is good natured, but not overly so. He does very much prefer to kick ass and ask questions later. More in Asta's and Luffy's school of thought, rather than Naruto's.
Villains are mysterious. Their motivations take a while to come into light, but after season 1, it's still a bit early to say how ridiculous those are. They do seem a bit too crazy, but we'll have to see.
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Total - 8/10
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Fire Force is an enjoyable shounen. Not much things to surprise a veteran fan of the genre, but the fundamentals are good and plenty of fun to be had.
EclipsedArchon
If you're just reading this to decide if the show is worth your time or not, let me start by putting it into a single sentence for you. Fire Force is my personal favorite anime of the year, watch it. This show has pros and cons, but I'll be breaking this down into a few categories to make it a bit cleaner. First, the story: A classic shounen storyline, with simple enough character arcs, easy to follow power scaling, and minimal depth. The positive here is that it's widely accessible, but the negatives are clear too in that you won't find any deep philosophical arguments being made here.Not everyone is looking for a deep dive into a psychologically complex argument every time they watch a show, I personally love those kinds of shows and they have a place for sure, but this show isn't one of them. Thankfully, this show is well aware of what it wants to be, especially in this category, which I think helps it stay focused and entertaining. Things move at a very good pace, and I wasn't bored with the plot a single time throughout. Expect an interesting mystery, an exciting journey, and a comfortable closeness with the characters. My main reason for giving this a high rating in this area is its excellent pacing. 7/10
Side Note:
This doesn't really fit anywhere else the way I structured this review, but I absolutely love the world building and the power system here. It's amazing just how much you can accomplish with heat energy when you think about it, I love it. Yeah, some things were a bit of a stretch, but Viktor is my spirit animal and if you watch the show you'll get what I mean.
Sound:
The first OP to this show is max hype! With that out of the way, the rest of the OP and ED are (in my personal opinion) slightly above average. The music used within the series is mostly bland and understated, though in some rare cases it's used extremely well. The voice acting in the sub was average, and the voice acting in the English dub was above average for a dub these days but still only on par with the sub. The choice of translation sometimes felt awkward though. What this show really does great here is the sound effects. The impacts really have a resonating effect on you while you watch, and a big part of that is the sound work. I absolutely loved the choices made for the fire and rubble sounds especially. 7/10
Characters:
This is the weakest part of the series for me. The show makes an effort to endear the main character Shinra to the audience, but it never sank in for me. Shinra's development specifically comes off as very shallow. In lots of cases we're given a backstory to justify the actions of the characters but never really given enough emotional interest in them to care much. The characters also heavily use common tropes and shortcuts which can come off as lazy writing. All that aside, the characters are surprisingly likable and the actual dialogue is good. Many of the characters run off of the "rule of cool" like much of the series, but again this show knows what it wants to be and it achieves that end. The characters are fun, memorable, and overall still pretty interesting despite their simplistic personalities. For a show like this, I think that's enough. 7/10
Finally, the art:
By now you may be noticing a trend, and a discrepancy. I've given the series as a whole a 9/10 and yet every category has a 7. That can't be right, can it? Remember when I said this show has pros and cons? Yeah, the art is so good it more than makes up for anything I could possibly say bad about it, humor me for a minute here.
I won't pretend that every frame of animation is gold here, there are a few scenes that admittedly look like garbage especially if you were to pause and take a closer look. But when it's good it's great! At its best, the show is nearly unmatched in shot composition. The easiest way to describe it is that in certain parts of the series every single shot is something I'd absolutely buy as a poster and put on my wall. It's clear that David Productions understands the framing used in the source material and fully understands what is and isn't visually appealing. The characters are framed stylistically in each shot, in a way that acts to not only convey the important story information but elevate it with emotional weight and importance. Everything from the color palette to the use of negative space is masterful in many of these shots, and in many cases these will come in rapid fire succession seamlessly for long runs. This is, without a doubt, the strongest part of the series. It is UNMATCHED in this regard. Kudos to the team for this masterpiece.
There are other things worth noting in reference to the art as well. Each character has a unique and powerful silhouette, making them memorable and fun to look at. The number of different techniques used for the fire in this series in insane, and all of them are used to incredible effect. The "choreography" as I'll refer to it, is at times a cut above. Every impact has weight to it, the animation team clearly had a fine grasp on the fundamentals. Everything tends to feel uniform and even at the low points nothing jumps out as particularly jarring. And none of that is even getting into the cool use of lighting and contrast here, which is honestly the best I've seen in a while.
The animation here is somewhat on the cartoonish side, but stylistic and undoubtedly masterful. If you're looking for the maximum realism you'll be disappointed, but otherwise I humbly suggest to pay some close attention to the way visuals are used in this series, you won't be disappointed. Art, a resounding 10!
Enjoyment, overall, and final thoughts:
Clearly I enjoyed it. It's hard to summarize exactly why though. The visuals don't carry the series exactly, but they take what would have been a 7 and make it a 9, they're just that good. Nothing about this show particularly put me off, except that Shinra isn't really all that interesting to me at some points just due to his personality. I found myself excited for each episode and craving more at the end every time.
Enjoyment: 9
Overall: 9 (I don't give a 9 very often)
If you're a fan of shounen this is a must watch. If you liked Soul Eater, you're gonna like this. If you like stuff that makes use of the "rule of cool" you'll like this. If you pay attention to visuals and it annoys you when that close shot cuts off Chris' forehead and why is everything so washed out and no I get that it's supposed to be realistic but I don't feel like I'm there I feel like I'm look through the lens of an amateur's 2003 canon personal camera... You'll like this show a lot, it really makes sure you're visually pleased at every turn. To every fan of cinema, WATCH THIS SHOW
That's all I have to say about it for now, thanks for reading.
JCopZoro
I see way too many negative reviews for this show and not enough completed reviews that I strongly agree with, so here goes. Fire Force is an awesome show that captures the cool action, fun characters, and powerful emotions I look for in anime. I was skeptical of this show due to its mixed reviews, but I’m pleased to say it was fun and exciting show from the start. In just the first episode this show had me on the edge of my seat. Many of the following episodes would proceed to push me even further to hop off my seat onto my feat. Does thisnormally happen with me when watching anime? Very rarely. That is a testament to just how hype this show is.
The stakes are high, as are the emotions at many times. Fire Force establishes a world where some unfortunate humans turn into infernals, demon-like creatures who became a danger along with the fires that must be stopped by the fire soldiers. Our main protagonist Shinra lost a lot to these fires in the past, and has made it his mission to become a fire soldier who can save the day for others so no one has to experience the pain he has. Some of this premise may sound generic, but if you are a fan of the shonen action genre I think you will find that Fire Force does a good job in executing what the genre does best. I found Shinra, although cheesy at times, overall a cool and endearing protagonist must akin to his contemporaries such as Deku, Asta, and Tanjirou.
Along with Shinra, Fire Force has a cast of lovable characters that you meet within the Fire Soldiers, as well as some interesting antagonists. The main cast around Shinra were a nice team, with each member being a character who adds value to the show that made the overall dynamic great.
The plot of this story actually explores some interesting directions that I wasn’t expecting it to go. There is a lot of mystery to this world with random human combustions and various fire force factions that may be pursuing their own ambitions and hiding secrets from each other. In this first season of Fire Force I was happy to see this world explored to a fair degree in having a glance into several factions within the world in order to unravel more of this mystery.
The biggest kicker of this show that I must reiterate, its so freaking hype! The fight scenes in this show are downright amazing. The animation is consistently crisp making these fight scenes look even cooler. The sound effects were awesome which added even more punch to the fights. The power system has more depth and diversity to it than what I was expecting considering it mainly revolves around fire. Watching Shinra with all of his acrobatic moves along with his fire powers brought me back to the days of watching firebenders in Avatar, which was an absolute joy. The hype moments are so well executed in building up emotions and delivering epic payoffs.
Opening 1 is an absolute banger btw.
My complaints? I have a few. My primary complaint is that there are some awkward fanservice moments that pop up in the show. Luckily, these moments of fanservice aren’t too constant in the show, but when they do take place they sure are cringy to see. Next, I will say there are a couple particular moments I can think of where the writing is a bit uneven and awkward, but thats bound to happen in almost any show. Aside from that, there aren’t too many other complaints I have with this show. It does a pretty good job overall in every category of story, characters, visuals, and music. (especially visuals!)
After watching Fire Force, I can safely say it's worth giving a try. I think there are a bit too many negative reviews of this show out there which may give the impression that this show is not good or not even worth trying. I skipped over this anime until now because of this, but after watching let me just tell you to give it a shot! Don’t make a preemptive judgement and let others decide what you think before trying it out for yourself!
I'll end by saying I’m grateful for this show. Fire Force meets that wonderful feeling of a exciting, emotional, action-packed anime. This show was an absolute blast and so entertaining every single episode. I witnessed some of the coolest fights I’ve ever seen in anime. I experienced some of the most adrenaline filled moments I’ve ever felt in anime. I strongly suggest you give this one a shot if you enjoy this type of anime.
BabyGirl06301
My biggest pet peeve when it comes to anime has got to be when the story could be killer, but the lack of consistency just ruins it. Unfortunately, Fire Force is in that category. There was *so* much wrong with this series. The plot felt like it didn't know where it was going. You'd have something minor happen that had a lot of emphasis put on it, but then something important would happen in the blink of an eye. Certain characters were introduced through a poorly written backstory, and others were given three or four episodes to fully join the cast. There was an elementof "talk no jutsu" in this series that totally flopped as well. Back to characters for a second, many of them had character traits that just got plain annoying after a while. That coupled with the fact that the story wasn't told smoothly at all, made a lot of this series agitating to watch.
However, now that we've got all the cons out of the way, I wanna explain why I think this series could be really bomb. For one thing, the art is gorgeous. The colors and effects are done so well, and it almost has a comic book feel to it. The architecture, too, was to die for. As far as the score/music choices for the anime go, it wasn't always perfect, but I thought a lot of the music was put together really nicely. A lot of it was able to make a big scene feel even bigger. The characters were developed poorly, but they were all good fun. The humor was showcased so well through them, and the humor itself was so unique and entertaining. I don't think the elements this series gave itself were executed perfectly, but a lot of the story pieces got me really excited. This season alone should've been twice as long to really delve into the developments of the story because the foundation of Fire Force is very strong.
So, in the end, it was really rushed and poorly put together, but I still think it has the potential to become something amazing. I'm glad I got to experience it, at least, because if Fire Force can capitalize on some of the outstanding work it did in this season, it could be an anime I want to show my friends. I guess we'll find out next season!
