If you were to ask me “What is the most boring thing you can find when watching anime?” Some may say it is random menial activities or an uninteresting story, however for me; it is meaningless fights that fail to carry any sort of emotional weight with them. Fire Force is not a series I wanted to hate, in fact, it is the exact opposite. With an interesting and unique premise as well as it being made by both the author of Soul Eater and by the studio, David Productions which is well known for its work on the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure franchise; it would not be a stretch to expect some worth in the show. Fire Force instead, left me disappointed and clueless as to what the point of the series was after the 48 episodes of both season 1 and season 2.
Fire Force is not entirely bad, starting with the good, it has a very unique premise surrounding infernals and how the characters in the show relate to/fight with them. It also has no shortage of great voice actors, including the likes of Kazuya Nakai who plays Akitaru Oubi, Mamoru Miyano who plays Benimaru Shinmon, and Kenjirou Tsuda who plays Joker. It does not fail in the production department either, fights are backed by stellar animation and sound design that gives them Impact. The side characters tended to have great development in their own respective arcs, examples includes Benimaru, Nataku, and even Joker. Additionally, the openings and endings are consistently amazing in their animation and songs, and the powers are creative in their use of fire in most cases. This however is where the good of the show ends, despite these points, Fire Force somehow manages to fail in every other aspect.
The characters in Fire Force are extremely generic and underdeveloped. Shinra has your basic “hero” archetype that barely gets expanded upon until the series passes the first season’s two cour mark. The entirety of the 8th division is not much better, from Arthur to Takehisa to Iris; I feel completely zero attachment to any of them. Instead, Fire Force decides to develop NOT the main cast, (which you are with for most the run time of the show) but it decides to develop the side characters who after their respective arcs, barely show up afterwards and sometimes never again. The characters in the show are characterized with shallow archetypes and the show seems to think that backstory is equivalent to development of the characters. Not to mention that the show itself keeps adding more characters on top which results in MORE characters to not care about. In episode 2 of season 2, Arthur is fighting Shinra after being possessed, the show proceeds to tell his backstory that was surprisingly missing from season 1, but after the fight, it did not feel like anything changed about him. This is constant throughout the show with the worst offender being Tamaki’s backstory where they attempt to display her “lucky lechery” as an important point of her character, (which is stupid but I’ll let it pass since I’ll take anything for Tamaki to not be a useless character who is only inserted into the show for brain dead ecchi fan service) however all of that work is instantly undone after her backstory, and she is turned back into the ecchi fan service character she was before. Speaking of Tamaki, she is easily THE WORST character in the show, devoted only to ecchi fan service that undermines the show as a whole. She contributes nothing to the betterment of the show but is actually a detriment, especially in season 1 where she wins an important fight BECAUSE SHE ACCIDENTALLY UNCLOTHES IN FRONT OF THE ENEMY.
Moving on to fights, due to the absolutely boring characters, there is literally no fight in the show that carries any form of emotional impact or meaning. The fights in this show are personified by the idea of “cardboard cut-outs fighting other cardboard cut-outs” with the occasional good animation. This made Fire Force a slog to watch because the fights are extremely prevalent and they are all almost always boring. It’s like ordering a sub at Subway but instead of getting the sub, you only take bread, except the bread is cold and hard with a dab of salt sprinkled on top. The fights’ attempts at being impactful just end up as a laughable mess, the final fight of season 1 with both Shinra and his brother Sho was meant to be the climax of the season but it, like the rest of the show is a directorial disaster with bad cuts, framing, and pacing. The bs this fight pulled took away from my investment and attention I had when watching this fight by making it possible for fire to stop time itself. The problems with Fire Force also compound on each other in the Juggernaut vs. Orochi fight where it tried to make Juggernaut’s death impactful and to be a device to forward Tamaki’s development but because of his severe lack of character; I could not care less.
The plot is not much better and is incredibly tone deaf, having extreme whiplashes of seriousness and stale comedy or ecchi fan service. Not to mention the jokes have awful delivery, timing, and presentation, pretty much everything that makes a joke a joke is not there. Season 1 was all over the place in terms of plot but season 2 managed to focus the plot a little more (this is actually good thing by the way). However it continues to suffer from withholding information and being vague for no apparent reason, it neglects giving thorough explanations on the world, enemies, and concepts to the detriment of the viewers’ understanding of the show. On top of this, the plot twists are extremely forced and lack any sort of emotional weight tied in with cheap drama. The reveal of Rekka being evil in season 1 was incredibly weak as the viewer had no time to care for Rekka as a character for the twist to be effective. It also tried to create drama with Tamaki and Rekka but since we as the viewer know nothing about either of them at this point, it ends up horribly failing. This same thing happens later in season 1 during the Vulcan arc where it was revealed that Lisa was an informant meant to spy on Vulcan and later rat him out to Giovanni. I could not hold back laughter at this point in the arc because not only did she have no development for me to care about her, Vulcan did not even have any either. But somehow Fire Force thought that by showing a 1 minute backstory of her, we as the viewer would care??? It only resulted in a shallow interaction that left me wondering if the story was being serious or not.
Now I would like to take the time here to talk about the final scene in season 2, revealing that Fire Force and Soul Eater are connected was one of the stupidest moves I saw in the entire series. It was like a f*ck you to the viewer, showing how desperate the series is trying to pander to its audience. Showing that they have to rely on Soul Eater to make the plot interesting and just screams like a move only for the cause of earning a little more cash.
In conclusion, Fire Force was a directorial mess that cannot stand on its own. Failing to deliver on its unique premise, it instead presents generic characters, forced plot developments, and tone deaf comedy that makes the experience very boring and hard to watch. After watching these 48 episodes, I have not taken away anything meaningful from this series or its underdeveloped cast of characters.
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Inferno, Veil, Spark-Again, and Torch of Liberty are all total bops though :)
