Review of Fire Force

A shonen disappointment, sadly. I love the artstyle and overall idea of characters, no surprise since I already enjoyed watching Soul Eater which is created by the same mangaka. The fighting scenes are great and the superpowers are fun, especially the sound design with it's ridiculous deep "oompf"s add a satisfying tone to the punches. The story itself starts promising, a conspiracy and lots of mysteries to unfold. But unfortunately everything drops faster than you'd expect. Here's three points that annoyed me the most: - The anime fell apart soon. After a short while we just get these "recruitment" segments: the hero's find a new character andthen they spend a couple of episodes to solve that characters problems and get them to join the team. Rinse and repeat with the next "character of the week". It feels very disconnected and at some points erratic to the main plot. Storytelling patterns start to repeat fast and things become just more and more nonsene the further you go, ESPECIALLY at the end of S1. You will find a fight there which isn't only painful to watch, but also makes zero sense, which is why there is one guy who keeps explaining, or rather tries to sell, to the audience what is happening for the entirety of an episode
- Animaton quality went down noticeably towards the last 5 episodes, it was so clear to see that you just felt bad watching at some point, very disappointing to the great fights we got at the beginning.
- Tamaki. I hate everything about Tamaki. Her only role is to be the fanservice/"sex pun" girl for the entire show and, as much as I do like fanservice here and there, it's really really terrible in Fire Force. Not only does the "ooh my hand slipped" joke grow old fast, it also appears at the most annoying moments possible. Imagine a really dramatic, serious scene, people die, really messed up stuff happens, the hero fights the bad guy, suddenly she slips in and we get the "funny sexy oh no my clothes/hands slipped"-jokes in the middle of a scene that is supposed to be serious and dramatic. Absolutely kills the atmosphere for a lame, weak joke. And she keeps doing that along the entire series, it's agonizing.

First OPs song is great though, it deserves a better cut intro video.

If you love shonen animes and Soul Eater, sure, give it a try. But be warned that the anime is a very flawed gem that promises much but doesn't deliver much towards the end. Especially at the end. Boy did I give up trying to stay interested in the last few episodes which all the plot nonsense, cheap animations and whatnot at the end. What a letdown.