Review of Fire Force

If you're just reading this to decide if the show is worth your time or not, let me start by putting it into a single sentence for you. Fire Force is my personal favorite anime of the year, watch it. This show has pros and cons, but I'll be breaking this down into a few categories to make it a bit cleaner. First, the story: A classic shounen storyline, with simple enough character arcs, easy to follow power scaling, and minimal depth. The positive here is that it's widely accessible, but the negatives are clear too in that you won't find any deep philosophical arguments being made here.Not everyone is looking for a deep dive into a psychologically complex argument every time they watch a show, I personally love those kinds of shows and they have a place for sure, but this show isn't one of them. Thankfully, this show is well aware of what it wants to be, especially in this category, which I think helps it stay focused and entertaining. Things move at a very good pace, and I wasn't bored with the plot a single time throughout. Expect an interesting mystery, an exciting journey, and a comfortable closeness with the characters. My main reason for giving this a high rating in this area is its excellent pacing. 7/10

Side Note:
This doesn't really fit anywhere else the way I structured this review, but I absolutely love the world building and the power system here. It's amazing just how much you can accomplish with heat energy when you think about it, I love it. Yeah, some things were a bit of a stretch, but Viktor is my spirit animal and if you watch the show you'll get what I mean.

Sound:

The first OP to this show is max hype! With that out of the way, the rest of the OP and ED are (in my personal opinion) slightly above average. The music used within the series is mostly bland and understated, though in some rare cases it's used extremely well. The voice acting in the sub was average, and the voice acting in the English dub was above average for a dub these days but still only on par with the sub. The choice of translation sometimes felt awkward though. What this show really does great here is the sound effects. The impacts really have a resonating effect on you while you watch, and a big part of that is the sound work. I absolutely loved the choices made for the fire and rubble sounds especially. 7/10

Characters:

This is the weakest part of the series for me. The show makes an effort to endear the main character Shinra to the audience, but it never sank in for me. Shinra's development specifically comes off as very shallow. In lots of cases we're given a backstory to justify the actions of the characters but never really given enough emotional interest in them to care much. The characters also heavily use common tropes and shortcuts which can come off as lazy writing. All that aside, the characters are surprisingly likable and the actual dialogue is good. Many of the characters run off of the "rule of cool" like much of the series, but again this show knows what it wants to be and it achieves that end. The characters are fun, memorable, and overall still pretty interesting despite their simplistic personalities. For a show like this, I think that's enough. 7/10

Finally, the art:

By now you may be noticing a trend, and a discrepancy. I've given the series as a whole a 9/10 and yet every category has a 7. That can't be right, can it? Remember when I said this show has pros and cons? Yeah, the art is so good it more than makes up for anything I could possibly say bad about it, humor me for a minute here.

I won't pretend that every frame of animation is gold here, there are a few scenes that admittedly look like garbage especially if you were to pause and take a closer look. But when it's good it's great! At its best, the show is nearly unmatched in shot composition. The easiest way to describe it is that in certain parts of the series every single shot is something I'd absolutely buy as a poster and put on my wall. It's clear that David Productions understands the framing used in the source material and fully understands what is and isn't visually appealing. The characters are framed stylistically in each shot, in a way that acts to not only convey the important story information but elevate it with emotional weight and importance. Everything from the color palette to the use of negative space is masterful in many of these shots, and in many cases these will come in rapid fire succession seamlessly for long runs. This is, without a doubt, the strongest part of the series. It is UNMATCHED in this regard. Kudos to the team for this masterpiece.

There are other things worth noting in reference to the art as well. Each character has a unique and powerful silhouette, making them memorable and fun to look at. The number of different techniques used for the fire in this series in insane, and all of them are used to incredible effect. The "choreography" as I'll refer to it, is at times a cut above. Every impact has weight to it, the animation team clearly had a fine grasp on the fundamentals. Everything tends to feel uniform and even at the low points nothing jumps out as particularly jarring. And none of that is even getting into the cool use of lighting and contrast here, which is honestly the best I've seen in a while.

The animation here is somewhat on the cartoonish side, but stylistic and undoubtedly masterful. If you're looking for the maximum realism you'll be disappointed, but otherwise I humbly suggest to pay some close attention to the way visuals are used in this series, you won't be disappointed. Art, a resounding 10!

Enjoyment, overall, and final thoughts:

Clearly I enjoyed it. It's hard to summarize exactly why though. The visuals don't carry the series exactly, but they take what would have been a 7 and make it a 9, they're just that good. Nothing about this show particularly put me off, except that Shinra isn't really all that interesting to me at some points just due to his personality. I found myself excited for each episode and craving more at the end every time.
Enjoyment: 9
Overall: 9 (I don't give a 9 very often)

If you're a fan of shounen this is a must watch. If you liked Soul Eater, you're gonna like this. If you like stuff that makes use of the "rule of cool" you'll like this. If you pay attention to visuals and it annoys you when that close shot cuts off Chris' forehead and why is everything so washed out and no I get that it's supposed to be realistic but I don't feel like I'm there I feel like I'm look through the lens of an amateur's 2003 canon personal camera... You'll like this show a lot, it really makes sure you're visually pleased at every turn. To every fan of cinema, WATCH THIS SHOW

That's all I have to say about it for now, thanks for reading.