Review of Fire Force Season 3

I was pleasantly surprised when this season was announced. But sadly the final execution was like having one's head chopped off. The franchise was incinerated with a flamethrower. Spontaneously combusted in an orgy of production malfeasence The artwork was par from previous seasons. While the animation started out fine, apparently the director burned through the budget much too quickly. The last two eps were complete disasters, with clumsy 3D renderings, crappy manga scans haphazardly inserted as stills, and way too much panning across still shots substituting for real animation. It trainwrecked the entire season for me. The character writing was vastly improved for the antagonists, butcertainly little was done with the protagonists. It wasn't bad, but I was expecting a lot more regarding members of the 8th. The writers never delivered.

The narrative was a bit sloggy as the season wore on. Decent pace at first, but seemed to wander off the path in the middle episodes. It's the best season for world building and back stories. Overall, the writing was OK, if not inspired, until the finale. Then things completely jumped the shark the last two episodes. Shinra, our supposed MC, spends most of his frickin' time unconscious. Then there was the constant parade of side characters from previous seasons and episodes, who didn't need to be there, except to eat up time in the episode. We barely got to see any of the members of the 8th. They spent their time watching the climax on TV. WTF was that shit? In the final appraisal, the narrative fell right off a cliff. It was dreadful.

The voice acting was OK. Shinra's VA tended to be a lot more noisy than was necessary. The rest of the cast did a decent enough job. The direction certainly didn't live up to the legacy of the first two seasons. Between average VA work and the animation disasters, the direction pretty much sucked.

This season leaves us with ash and cinders. It started out good enough, around a B+, but kept sinking further and further until it hit a brick wall. I can't see fit to give this any better than a D+ at 68/100. And that's being generous, due to the first two seasons. It wasn't a complete failure. But it tried hard to be a bust, before all was said and done. Play with this fire at your own risk.