Review of Fire Force

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