(tldr at the bottom)
The only positives about this season were the character designs and animation of the fights and somewhat interesting story. While the pacing was slow, it wasn't as bad as the Chimera Ant arc from Hunter X Hunter, Dressrossa arc from one piece (Anime version), or even the large amount of Naruto fillers that I sat through.
But speaking of characters, I honestly don't know why shows tend to introduce more characters when it hasn't even finished fleshing out the original cast, especially in fire forces case where the characters are one dimensional, plus are based on gimmicks. Especially the female characters, mainly Maki and Tamaki who seem to only be used for comedy or fan service, which is a shame. The villains also give off Saturday morning cartoon villain vibes, which leaves a ton of room for improvement that we probably won't be getting/seeing.
Regarding the fights, despite the crisp animation, they honestly feel so hollow with nothing at stake, but to make matters worse, who thought it was a good idea to insert comedy during tense fights, like Tamaki's lucky pervert trope or a serious injury that wasn't a serious injury (My bad for the confusing wording, but that moment was not only confusing but also annoying). If the writers themselves aren't taking these fights seriously, then why should we as the audience care at all about what happens?
Shinra's obsession about becoming a hero is almost as annoying as Asta's screaming from Black Clover, as it only comes off as creepy specifically when he was trying to force himself on the supposed victim that he was trying to save, not only did this waste a bunch of episodes but did Shinra even learn anything from this ordeal besides a new move?
Shinra's whole hero obsession is honestly more of a hero complex, but why didn't the author at least try to set or create a character that defines what a hero is in this setting or have Shinra's definition of what a hero is change over the course of the story, something we've yet to see. Not only this, but a lesson that could've been taken away from the whole 'I' incident (Only used the character's initial to avoid spoilers), is that not everyone wants to be saved or that you can't save everyone no matter how hard you try. Since fire force went on a spree of introducing characters it would have been nice if a mentor was introduced for Shinra as was the case with Naruto and his goal towards becoming Hokage.
I hate to use comparisons, but action/fighting shounens nowadays are a shell of what they used to be, the only one that I really liked was MHA as despite being full of cliches, they worked for the setting that was chosen, plus the cast of characters was built from zero all the way to hero.
TLDR: I don't remember season one being this bad as I managed to finish it, but it's extremely disappointing since certain characters have sort of taken a back seat, plus the stakes don't feel real or that they even exist. If you want an action-packed show as a time killer, then I would recommend this show, but other than that your time would be better spent somewhere else.
