Fire Force initially hooked me because of its interesting premise, or rather it´s interesting setting. The idea of all the powers being related to fire, the idea of infernals and instantaneous human combustion, and the MC being in a Fire Force all sounded interesting. It´s still just a different skin on other shounen anime (Everyone having unique powers, the MC being in some sort of a squad, and there being monsters they have to defeat isn´t exactly new after all), but it is a unique and interesting one, nonetheless. I was especially interested in the different types of powers the author would come up with, since they all have to have the same basic premise: fire. (I´ll talk about the powers themselves later in more detail)
The first two or three episodes didn´t disappoint. The first episode was just frontloaded with sakuga. It looked incredible, and it delivered everything in terms of introducing the main characters and the premise that I needed it to. The scene in the second or third episode where they encountered the dude who got infernalized but was just sitting quietly in the living room, trying to hold it in to not hurt anyone, just waiting to be killed, was really good as well. We had some solid character-building moments for Obi, Arthur and Shinra there as well. Basically, Obi teaching them the importance of their job. That was solid. But then the problems began, and I´m gonna do my best to illustrate what these are in the following paragraphs (well, I do have a couple of positive things to mention as well):
I´m not going to address every single little thing, that would go beyond the scope of this review. But I want to address some core problems I have with the character writing, the story writing and also certain scenes or segments. So, let’s just start with the first big one. The character writing in this show is quite terrible.
The characters don´t have personalities, they have a personality quirk that makes up their entire general personality. If we´re lucky we might get a backstory and/or motivation for a couple of them, but that´s it. Shinra smiles when he is nervous and wants to be a hero, Arthur is dumb and thinks of himself as a knight, Maki is muscular but cute, Iris is nice, Hinawa is serious but cares about his teammates, Tamaki is fanservice, like, you get the idea. These things are decent bases for a character, but not enough on their own.
This segment will be me talking about some characters specifically:
Shinra is about as generic as you can get with a shounen protagonist.
His tendency to smile when he´s nervous and therefore being called a devil is interesting, the problem is that we never go beyond this stuff. It´s just a quirk to set him apart from other similar characters. And his yelling about wanting to be a hero gets quite annoying after a while.
Arthur literally never does anything beyond being dumb and blabbering about his knight stuff. It´s hard to hate him, I´m not gonna deny that his idiocy is kind of endearing, the problem is that just that doesn´t make a compelling and good character. I´m sure that at some point later in the manga there is going to be some sort of backstory for him, but I don´t think throwing in a backstory after like 100 chapters or whatever excuses him from being a one-dimensional piece of cardboard for everything before that. You can write a multifaceted character without throwing an elaborate backstory at the reader immediately.
My problem with Iris is that after she was sort of relevant in the whole Hibana thing (which I´ll get to specifically) she just kinda hangs around afterwards without doing much, since she is not a fighter and the author doesn´t seem to know how to make her relevant without the ability to fight. Again, I´m sure there might be a point in the future of the manga where she does something semi-important again, but as before, I´m not sure that excuses this. It´s not just a problem with her, it´s that way with multiple side characters. The author seems to have a tendency to drop and bring back characters whenever he maybe has an idea what a certain character could do. I just don´t think that that´s good writing. If it´s a rather unimportant side character that´s fine, you don´t have to have every character in your story do something at all times, but I´m talking about characters from our (very small) main squad.
Let’s keep going, Maki next. In the way her character was handled I was also pretty disappointed. I was ecstatic when she was introduced in the first episode. A cute but muscular and capable girl? Uh, yes please. Now let’s just keep building on her character an- What´s that? She barely gets any focus? Oh… Like, I honestly think it´s a shame. I think we get like one sentence on her motivation: That she´s the daughter of a captain but wants to prove that she herself is capable. That´s fine, we never see any of that from her specifically though. She´s always stuck in the archetype of the cute but strong girl that gets angry when someone comments on her strength, but the funny twist this time is that she gets angry at something that wasn´t even said. That joke was funny the first time, but not the next five times. We never go beyond that, not once.
And the biggest sin of all: We never even see her fight or do all that much. She was their when they invaded the base of the 5th department, but I don´t think she did much aside from like three punches, Hinawa was the one who took most of the normal dudes out. The only real fight we see Maki in is when she was fighting the flail guy close to the end of the season, and that was pretty amazing. Why couldn´t we have gotten more of that?
And now, the worst character, bar none: Tamaki. She is genuinely one of the worst things I´ve ever seen an author inject into their story. And I´m calling her a thing because that´s exactly how the author treats her. Not as a character, but as a vehicle to put fanservice in the show. Not only is that fanservice incredibly annoying (which I´m aware of is a subjective opinion), it´s also often completely misplaced and used in the middle of fights or other important scenes, completely ruining the tension that has been built up in the scene. Is it really necessary to burn her clothes away right after a scene where she was crying her eyes out because the man she loved betrayed and beat the shit out of her? Is it necessary to have Shinra faceplant into her boobs in the middle of an important fight?
And one of the worst and most ironic sequences I have ever seen, when she finally seemed to have a moment that can make her shine that doesn´t involve her getting naked, when she was fighting that Slaughterer guy. She talks about how she is a fire fighter herself, and doesn´t always want to be saved by others. I was like “great, even though it´s late maybe the author will finally make the step and actually give her a decent character moment.” And what´s the way she defeats him? Not by showing that she is a skilled, capable fire soldier, but by the bad guy accidentally grabbing her boobs, being flustered, and then getting struck down. I couldn´t believe what I was witnessing when I saw this. I was just dumbfounded. Just a horrible, horrible way to handle a character.
The other characters are mostly the same. The best character is Benimaru Shinmon, we actually get to see his backstory, motivation and him behaving differently at different times. He doesn´t always behave the same way. It´s almost like humans are that way. I also appreciate the backstory on how Obi and Hinawa founded the 8th, it fleshes them out a little bit more as well. None of these characters are fantastic, but at least there is something there.
Now let me talk about the story itself a little bit.
For the most part its what you´d expect from a shounen. It´s honestly nothing too special. But there are glimpses of something interesting every now and again. The mystery surrounding the world is generally pretty good and makes you want to know more about it. I said it before, I like the whole idea behind the setting. And I don´t hate the whole Adolla Burst and Adolla link thing. It especially makes room for some interesting theories about how the perpetual power plant, Amaterasu, works. Based on what we´ve got I have a pretty good idea on how it works, and if what I´m thinking is true, that´s just really fucking cool. (But I don´t wanna go into that here) The way Shinmons district “celebrates” people becoming infernals is also an interesting idea.
But, after the initial good couple of episodes, there was a stretch of like six or seven episodes that was borderline unwatchable, either because of how dumb or because of how boring it was. The training/infiltration thing was just boring until the Rekka dude started murdering children. And the Hibana arc is something I want to talk about in more detail.
The whole Hibana arc was where the show started to go wrong for the first time. Simply because I cannot believe her character. The way her backstory and everything was executed just doesn´t work, I think. Hibana is shown to be a very arrogant, prideful character who looks down on everyone, and has some very strong ideals/beliefs and some very strong feelings about hew views on this world. We learn why that is in her backstory. Well, in concept we do. Let me explain what I mean by that. She saw all the other nuns burn to death, and only she (and Iris) survived. And since she never took praying as serious as the other nuns, she believes that God doesn´t exist, so it must be the devil. And if she and everyone is a devil, she should act like one. (I don´t remember it exactly but it was something along those lines). I understand in concept what we´re going for here. But I don´t think it works the way it´s shown in the anime. I get that she has trauma, but she is shown to go from a caring person to bat shit insane evil in a matter of seconds.
But you can still make an argument for that. I don´t necessarily think it was executed well, but I can at least understand it to some extent. Now, the way she turns back after Shinra punches her once, I cannot understand. He talks to her about needing a hero because she´s given up on the concept of heroes and some more of the typical shounen talk-no-jutsu stuff, punches her, and bam, she is not very evil anymore (though her arrogant nature remains at least to some extent) and she´s in love with Shinra, because of course she is. This bullshit I can not make an argument for. The way she flip flops from being normal to evil to normal is just bad character writing. You cannot show me a character who has such a strong conviction in their philosophy of the world and then have her just abandon all of that in a matter of seconds. Either have this be a very slow process over the course of the series or show her having doubts in her beliefs from the beginning. The way it was handled is just bad. I´m not going believe a character who goes from talking about how she needs to be evil and exploit everyone for her own good to fondling Iris´ breasts in the shower to see how she developed in the matter of an episode. Just. No.
Let me quickly talk about the villains. The infernals are pretty cool, I love their designs, but the big bad guys are obviously not them. The villains are mostly alright, but since every villain is part of this cult, their motivations are always the same, which gets quite boring. None of them seem to have any goals beyond the motivations of their cult.
The next point I want to talk about: the powers themselves. For the most part, I think the author succeeded in making the powers unique and interesting. Shinra being able to shoot fire from his legs isn´t exactly a revolutionarily creative power, but I think it´s totally fine, since it means we´re gonna get a different stye of combat from the main character. It´s not all that often that we get a main character who´s power is based on mobility, not raw strength. So, in this aspect the fights have a certain uniqueness to them compared to other shounen. Powers like Arthurs Plasma sword, Hinawas ability to control his bullets, or Hibanas ability to basically make you pass out because she overheats you, all of these are cool and creative applications of the fire premise.
But there are some powers that I´m not quite a fan of. At a certain point it felt like we were moving farther and farther away from the premise that the powers need to be based on fire, and more to the premise that the powers just need a fire aesthetic. Like one character (Lisa) who just has tentacles. And they don´t seem to burn people, when she was holding Shinra (I think it was him?) in one scene with them he didn´t get burnt. And I don´t think it´s because of natural fire resistance or whatever, Hibanas cherry blossoms were very much able to burn him. Also, correct me if I´m wrong, but I don´t think solid fire is something that exists. So, what are these tentacles made of? They are just regular tentacles, but they are red, so it´s a fire ability. Same thing with this one guy who has a fire flail. The fact that it´s fire doesn´t mean anything as far as I´m aware. Another one I don´t quite get is the power of the captain of the 6th. She has a fire serpent that can heal people. How? Maybe it´s explained later.
The animation is very good, but also very inconsistent. In the action scenes they deliver good animation most of the time (although still to varying degrees), in all of the other scenes it often looks very static and not a lot is going on in terms of animation. Character designs are good, and I like the art style, although it does weird me out that most male characters seem to have the exact same face. I don´t know why, but it looks like this to me. Maybe because the eyes are always drawn in a very similar way and their heads have the same shapes. Well, whatever.
The sound design is stellar. The sound effects are quite amazing. Voice acting is good, music is pretty good, first OP is a banger, second OP is decent as well. I don´t really have any complaints on that front.
That should cover most of what I wanted to talk about. I can see the appeal of this show. If someone´s into all of the classic shounen tropes and just wants an action show with pretty fight scenes and flashy powers that you don´t have to pay a whole lot of attention to, this show is probably a perfect fit. However, I was looking for some substance behind the nice production, but I just couldn´t really find much of that. Fire Force has a nice shell, but sadly that shell is mostly empty.
I was at least not bored most of the time, it´s hard to be completely bored in this show if you like action, because at least on that front Fire Force has some great scenes, but I also never found myself being terribly interested in what was going on. The most I could muster was acknowledging “that´s a really nice-looking fight scenes”, but since there was nothing to be invested in for me, I just wasn´t more hyped for anything that was going in. It feels like I wouldn´t really lose anything in terms of enjoyment if I just watched the fights without context on YouTube.
In summary, it was an interesting premise for a shounen ruined by shallow characters and a fairly average story that was saved from getting a worse score than it got from me by having good animation and sound, some interesting mysteries about the world and very few interesting ideas in the story. So, the final verdict is 5/10. I know that by calculating the average of the scores I´ve given the different components of the show (characters, sound etc.) it´s closer to a six, but I just can´t value something like the sound as highly as the characters. So, it ends up being a 5/10 from me.
