Review of Fire Force
Let me take you back to 2003. Atsushi Ookubo, creator of Fire Force, is making waves with Soul Eater, a manga that would go on for 10 successful years - sparking an anime adaptation and a spin-off series. Soul Eater was a stand-out shounen that excelled in not only having a fascinating universe, but also characters that were compelling by having...well, personalities. And while Soul Eater did have characters with wacky quirks - most notably Death the Kid's OCD, used as the butt of many jokes - they weren't the epicenter of every character's existence. 2 years after Soul Eater, Ookubo started Fire Force. And in almostevery way, it feels like he has de-evolved as a storyteller. Characters in Fire Force are defined by singular traits, and you're bashed over the head with them constantly. Female characters especially, in the form of unfunny and blatant fanservice. Villains are comically evil mustache-twirling, monologue-spewing characters that are so blatant you can point them out the first time you see them.
There is little to no nuance in Fire Force. It has moments where you start thinking "wow, maybe this will actually get good now!", and then it falls right back into its tired, repetitive devices. And it's a shame - because there's no question that Studio David went all out with the action animation in Fire Force. But no matter how elaborately animated the fight sequences may be, it can't save Fire Force from barely scraping the surface of mediocrity.
I don't want to bash on Fire Force entirely - it's not a trainwreck. It is awkward, stilted and has weak convictions. But it does have moments of genuine tension, character growth and curious lore. Fleeting as they may be, they are there. So let's start with the good.
THE GOOD:
The Asakusa arc takes place in the middle of the anime, and it is by far the strongest arc in this season. Why is it so much more satisfying than anything else that happens in the series? Because it advances the plot in meaningful ways, and the ways in which it does it are EARNED. Characters do things for believable reasons, and conflicts are resolved in sensible ways that give strength to the plot. I thought the anime did a 180 for the most part during this arc, and had high hopes for what came after. Unfortunately, that was not the case.
The fighting animation is fantastic. It is also complimented by the sound effects used to add impact to the fire-based fighting. Altogether, it's easily some of the best choreographed and heart-pumping sakuga out there. The characters of Fire Force shine their brightest when they are fighting. Mostly because they dialogue is so weak, but hey - you get what you can take.
The universe and lore of Fire Force is pretty interesting - when you get some. There's clearly something sinister on a cosmic level that's going on in Fire Force that slowly gets revealed as time goes on. And i'm sure there will be more of that in the 2nd season.
Unfortunately, that's about it for the good.
THE BAD:
The direction outside of the fighting scenes is weirdly robotic and disjointed. Shots are flat, uninteresting and tonally confusing. Conversations are punctuated with a lot of awkward silence, still shots are held for too long, and you're often left wondering if there was supposed to be a punchline. It's worth noting that a lot of David Pro have come from Shaft, where many worked on the Monogatari series. While this is pure speculation, I can't help but wonder if the decision to use the same directorial stylings of Monogatari on Fire Force was due to this, because you can definitely make some parallels here. Unfortunately, for a shounen, it really doesn't work - especially when we get to the next bad thing: the humor.
Comedy is important in shounen. It can help sometimes to break up serious moments or sadness with a little bit of humor. But it's also easy to stretch a joke too thin. Fire Force is tirelessly overdoing its recurring gags. I get the feeling Ookubo might find his jokes a lot funnier than they actually are - and he uses the same ones over and over. As mentioned earlier, a lot of characters have a singular quirk that is shoved in your face over and over. One of the worst ones is easily Tamaki's. Her character is repeatedly shoved aside for a single joke that is played out to excess - her clothes are constantly falling off and she always finds herself being accidentally groped by the MC Shinra in the most impossible situations. Now, this would be fine if you were making a brainless ecchi fanservice show - but Fire Force wants you to take it seriously quite often. So it's tonally bizarre when at one moment there is death, tragedy and destruction, then suddenly some girl is squeaking while her bra and panties magically pop off and her boobs are in some guy's face. This kind of stuff happens more often than it really should, and for me almost none of the humor landed.
On the subject of Tamaki, I have to unfortunately give a knock to the female characters of Fire Force. It's not like Soul Eater wasn't full of fanservice, but at least it had an incredible female lead by the name of Maka Albarn, who wasn't a constant source of cheap sexual gags. Fire Force seems to treat every female character as a certain type of fetish - like strong girls? There's Maki. like scantily clad ones? There's Tamaki. Like femdom? There's Hibana. Like the innocent type? There's Iris. Outside of maybe 2 or 3 scenes, these characters are thoroughly shoved into their corner of pandering to something so juvenile that it's honestly just sad - especially considering that they (with the exception of Iris) are incredibly powerful fighters that deserved better.
Not only that, but the way some of these characters are treated ranges from disappointing to downright disturbing. Two examples that come to mind are Hibana's "turn" to join the 8th Company during her fight with Shinra. Shinra does a little talk no jutsu, punches her in the face, and just like that, she completely changes her mind about her life's ambitions AND - as an added bonus - falls madly in love with Shinra. It's the first arc in the series and really takes a lot of the wind out of your sails, because it's supposed to be the climax of the arc and it falls totally flat. The second one is when Tamaki finds out someone she idolized is actually an evil person. That evil person proceeds to mercilessly kick the shit out of her while she cries and does absolutely nothing to defend herself, despite being entirely capable. It's uncomfortable to watch and comes off as weird fetishy torture porn.
The male characters are not much better, just that their one-note quirks are inherently not sexual. Shinra is the main character. You see, he's a hero, so he has to say that all the time - just in case you forget. Arthur fancies himself a knight, and so he has a lot of jokes about being a knight. When he feels like a knight, he fights good. When he doesn't, he fights bad. To be fair, the male characters can be decidedly more well-rounded than the female characters, because they actually take the time to give them some backstory. So there's that.
Finally, the villains range from comically evil to downright incompetent. I'm gonna have to give "dumbest villain of the year" award to none other than Giovanni - a man with a plague mask who mostly just stands around talking - who managed to incapacitate his cult's #1 target, then proceeds to leave him alone in a forest with no guards instead of taking him somewhere where he couldn't escape. Then - of course - he escapes, after Hibana finds him somehow - and proceeds to get kicked in the face while he is busy talking about how evil he is elsewhere.
At the end of the day, a lot of these plot contrivances can all be chalked up to one thing - lazy writing. I don't know why Fire Force ended up being such a huge step backwards from Soul Eater narratively. There's a lot of reasons to speculate, but it doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, Fire Force is what it is - the most baseline of shounen action, coupled with awkward humor, bizarre scene direction and stunted characters. For every moment you're pumping your fists, you get ten where you're rolling your eyes or raising an eyebrow in bemusement. All in all, it's kind of exhausting to sit through.
Should you watch Fire Force? Maybe if you've got nothing better to do. It struggles to even elevate itself to mediocrity. And in a genre as over-saturated as shounen, a lot of viewers are looking for something better. And there's plenty better out there than this - including the author's previous work.