Fire Force

Johan__Liebert_★ 3

Fire force is a story about people with fiery hearts fighting fire with fire. Set in a world where people spontaneously combust and turn into mindless burning zombies the Fire Force is responsible for controlling the damage caused by these “infernos”. Many people in this world are bestowed upon by Solomon the ability to control fire. After watching the first two episodes I really thought I would be able to enjoy this, but shortly afterwards the enjoyment I found in the bombastic nature of the first two episodes was burnt and tossed into oblivion. This is probably the worst directed and worst framed show to comeout this year. Riddled with sudden cuts, weird framing, stupid fanservice and soulless jokes and characters every bit of potential that the show held was thrown into the nether. Plot elements are pulled out of the author’s ass at very inappropriate times with characters making a sudden appearance and then disappearing just as quickly. Characters are brought into the show and thrown away for the duration of 5-6 episodes until they’re needed again to exposit about the world or the plot. The characters are, quite frankly, shite. “Gone are the days when authors wrote personalities and traits and then implemented those traits and associated mannerisms onto the avatar affiliated with the personality in question thus birthing an actual character instead of lazily creating an empty husk decorated with cliché.” – Douchebag Chocolat The above quote perfectly describes the characters in this show. Instead of giving the characters a personality, they’re provided with certain traits and stupid mannerisms in order to deceive the audience into thinking that each character is somehow different than the next. Unfortunately, except maybe two or three every other character is basically the same. Even the protagonist, Shinra, has a certain habit of “smiling in the face of danger because his face muscles tense up”. There’s another guy who calls himself a knight just because his name is Arthur and he wields a sword. Seriously, this guy is so obsessed with the idea of becoming a knight that his power will literally increase if he even thinks that he’s riding a horse and has a duty to protect someone. The cat girl, Tamaki’s only purpose in life seems to be to get her boobs or ass in someone’s face “accidently” and then to call them a pervert. Iris almost does nothing but blush, the lieutenant is always grumpy and scaring his subordinates. There’s also Maki who can only utter the phrase, “Who are you calling a gorilla cyclops” even when no one has addressed her as such. The characters don’t have much drive to do anything. Only Shinra and the commander of the 8th division are given any motivation as to why they do what they do. As for the other characters’ motivations and goals, the show usually gives us a half-assed backstory and is done with it. Most female characters like the dark-skinned girl, or the cat girl are used for fanservice. At one time the show almost tuned into a harem as every girl at whom Shinra even looked at started to fall for him. Personally, I don’t care about the characters, except Joker, he was pretty cool, but it’s a shame that he only gets about 2 seconds of screen time in the whole show. I like the Joker cause he’s cool, not because he’s a well-constructed character. He’s brought in to tell Shinra about the main events that concern the plot and then he disappears. Almost forgot, there’s also Shinra’s brother, Sho, who was separated from Shinra at a very young age and now he’s a bad, bad guy working as the Evangelist to bring about a third impact and Shinra must pilot th-… oh, wait, wrong anime. The comedy is… there. The “comedy” usually consists of - a girl slipping out of her clothes for no apparent reason; Shinra and Arthur threatening to kill each other; a girl showing her tits or ass; Arthur claiming to be a knight but being ignored and a girl being molested. All these three situations are used to provide “comic relief”. The comedy also includes Maki shouting about someone calling her a Gorilla Cyclops. This joke was funny the first time, but after a 100 times, it became pretty annoying. Watching the first episode, I remember thinking to myself “Man, this show is sure going to have some fire fights”, but only the first episode has any good fights. The fights that occur after the first episode are so badly choreographed that neither you, nor the characters can figure out what’s happening. I, in most fights, had no idea as to the spatial relations between the characters who were fighting. One scene they’re having a stare down, the next scene they fly towards each other, the next scene we see Shinra’s feet and then the fight is settled. After that the camera focuses on someone’s face for a bit too long and then abruptly cuts to another fight happening somewhere in the vicinity. I never gave directors the respect they deserved for properly framing the characters until I watched this show. The camera either lingers on a particular subject for too long, or abruptly cuts to some other subject too quickly. This weird camera work usually happens after someone cracks a joke or when someone pisses someone off and was probably intended for us, the audience, to realize the awkwardness the characters were put in; but all it did for me was make me aware of the fact that I wanted to fast forward through the episode. Not every fight is awkwardly animated. Some of the fights are really good, like Benimaru, the strongest fire bender vs a demon; Shinra vs the red-haired guy from the 1st division; Shinra vs a demon, but starting from the middle of the show the fights became pretty hard to follow. The music didn’t appeal to me, but that’s subjective. I did like the first opening and the first ending, the second OP and ED were horrible. The music was tone deaf at times and sometimes the choice of music didn’t fit the scene it was being used for. Should you watch Fire Force? I’ll leave that judgeme(n)t up t(o) you.

Marinate1016★ 9

Fire Force offers one of the more original takes on Shonen, instead of being about a kid out to get stronger or take on the world, we get a story about a world in which humans live in constant fear of suddenly exploding and turning into flame monsters. As someone who has been following the manga since the start, I was quite excited for this adaptation and was not disappointed at all. The source material was perfectly adapted and pacing was never an issue throughout. Characters and the world are properly developed and after the series gets going, you really do become attached to themain cast and genuinely become invested in their individual stories. The fight scenes are the main selling point of any battle shonen and they’re done extremely well in this series. Gorgeous animation and amazing sound design/ost to compliment them. I will say this, there have been many complaints on twitter and other social media about the amount of fan service particularly as it relates to Tamaki. Personally, I have no issue with fan service and don’t see why anyone would mind it, but if you do, you may find parts of the show difficult to get through as her fan service is often used as a plot device and in a later arc actually proves very decisive. Personally, my one complaint with the series are the camera shots that seem to linger after a person has finished talking. For instance, if Shinra and Arthur are talking and Arthur finishes his sentence, for some reason the camera stays on him for like a full 5 seconds which for me creates a cognitive dissonance. Probably a minor thing, but I felt it was important enough to mention. TL:DR Fire Force is at the front of the new gen, interesting premise, cool characters, Soul Eater author, cool fights and music(minus OP 2) and a story you’ll get sucked into. Check it out.