Review of Fire Force

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.