Enen no Shouboutai

Spontaneous Human Combustion: a chaotic phenomenon that has plagued humanity for years, randomly transforming ordinary people into flaming, violent creatures known as Infernals. While Infernals make up the first-generation accounts of Human Combustion, the second and third generations became known as pyrokinetics—people gifted with the ability to manipulate and control their flames while remaining human. To combat the Infernal threat and discover the cause, the Tokyo Armed Forces, Fire Defense Agency, and Holy Church of Sol produced their answer: the Special Fire Force.

Young and eager third-generation pyrokinetic Shinra Kusakabe, nicknamed Devil's Footprints for his explosive ability to ignite his feet at will, becomes a member of the lively Special Fire Force Company 8. Upholding the brigade's duty to extinguish the blazing Infernals and lay their souls to rest, Shinra is determined to become a hero who will save the lives of those threatened by the flame terror.

However, this is not the hero's game Shinra imagined. The Fire Force is a fractured mess of feuding brigades, abnormal Infernal sightings are increasing all over Tokyo, and a shadowy group is claiming to have answers to the strange fire that caused the death of Shinra's family 12 years ago. Faced with many obstacles within and outside the Fire Force, Shinra fights to uncover the truth behind the burning mysteries that have kept him in the dark.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kusakabe, Shinra Main

Kajiwara, Gakuto Japanese

Boyle, Arthur Main

Kobayashi, Yuusuke Japanese

Kotatsu, Tamaki Main

Yuuki, Aoi Japanese

Iris Main

Ichimichi, Mao Japanese

Oze, Maki Main

Kamijou, Saeko Japanese

Oubi, Akitaru Main

Nakai, Kazuya Japanese

Hinawa, Takehisa Main

Suzumura, Kenichi Japanese

Shinmon, Benimaru Supporting

Miyano, Mamoru Japanese

Joker Supporting

Tsuda, Kenjirou Japanese

Hibana Supporting

Lynn Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer, Associate Producer

Kamei, Hiroshi Producer

Iijima, Emiko Producer

Herek, Samantha Assistant Producer

Reviews

Mar 28, 2025

BerryBlitz

Recommended

Fire Force was actually my first shonen anime, and it ended up being a lot better than I expected. Everything about this show is very solid, and at times, downright awesome. The story is compelling with interesting world-building, and the fire-based abilities of the different characters are really creative and fun to watch.

I found all of the characters enjoyable. Shinra is a kind-hearted but occasionally reckless protagonist with a strong sense of justice. Arthur, while sometimes annoying, still adds a fun dynamic. Iris is sweet and endearing, providing a calming presence. Ōbi and Hinawa are excellent leaders and mentors, both strong and reliable. ... Maki is both cute and badass, bringing a great mix of strength and charm. On the other hand, Tamaki mostly feels like she’s there for the fan service—her frequent clothing malfunctions became so common I lost count.

The animation, sound, and music are all top-notch—especially during the fight scenes, which are some of the best I’ve seen. The fluidity, effects, and intensity during battles really elevate the action, making them incredibly engaging.

Overall, Fire Force really surprised me with its quality. The combination of a well-crafted story, a likable cast, and stunning action scenes made for a fantastic experience. I’m definitely looking forward to continuing the series.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Mar 9, 2025

FinemAni

Mixed Feelings

Fire Force is a show with an amazing concept that is held back to an embarrassing degree due to many factors. As a huge fan of Atsushi Ohkubo's previous work, Soul Eater, I came into this expecting something of similar quality, but at the end, I was left with a sense of mediocrity. While the show has some cool concepts and fantastic fight scenes, this show has mediocre to terrible characters, strange directing decisions, and a unimpressive story, all of which I will cover,

Story: 6/10

The overarching plot of the story revolves around the mysterious nature and nature of the Infernals, as well as those who ... aid them. The antagonists of the show range from rival companies, to cultists who directly support the Infernals in mysterious ways. While mysteries can be very entertaining, Fire Force's approach to its mysteries is lacking. Fire Force sets up interesting mysteries but fails to give the audience many pieces to put things together. Instead, most of the mysteries just tell the audience the answer after a long wait, without giving the audience any reasonable ways to put things together. Furthermore, much of the plot revolves around the lives of the main characters being threatened, but most of this has no weight, as Fire Force's characters are... bad.


Characters 4/10
I have never felt so much apathy or hatred to an anime series until I watched Fire Force. Most of the characters have one-note personalities or are just aggravating to stand. I will go through the characters who stood out the most:

Shinra, the protagonist, is likeable enough to not be annoying, but his character conflict of "Am I a hero or a devil?" feels generic and uninspired. Thankfully, he does manage to be a somewhat likeable character in the second half, and I did like his nervous smile tic andfire abilities

Arthur Boyle is Shinra's friendly rival, as well as one of the "comic relief" characters. Arthur's gimmick is that he believes himself to be a knight of the round table, and the more he is in his delusions, the more powerful he becomes. An interesting and humorous concept, but most of the gags involving Arthur just aren't that funny. However, he does have a likeable personality because of how much of an idiot he is, his relationship with Shinra is also decently entertaining.

Oubi is the commander of the Fire Force company of the cast, and, due to not having any fire-related abilities, he has to rely on clever tactics and gadgets to win. As the leader, he's one of the few smart characters in the show, and his backstory is actually quite compelling. Furthermore, his fights are almost always entertaining due to the variety of gadgets he uses. Overall, he's probably my favorite character in season 1.

TAMAKI. Oh how I HATE THIS CHARACTER. She's such a bad character that she's probably THE primary reason most people stop watching the show from what I've seen. Besides conventional fire powers, Tamaki has a special "gimmick", Lucky Lechre Lure, an ability which causes her to to get naked in some form and usually end up in a compromising position. None of the instances of this happening were ever funny, and its even more absurd when this ability happens in situations that the audience should be taking seriously. Definitely the worst character in the show and one of the worst characters I've ever seen, period.


ART: 8/10
Fire Force's arstyle is pretty good. The buildings and locations have a unique realistic look to them that makes them feel more realistic. The character's have pretty decent character designs, and overall the individual frames of the show are pretty good to look at. However, Fire Force's biggest flaw in terms of art would definitely have to be its bipolar animation. Most of the fights in the show are pure eyecandy, with extremely fluid animation and dynamic camerawork. However, during the inbetween moments, there are multiple prolonged instances without any animation. While I understand that animation is not cheap and most of the budget went into the fights, having frequent, undetailed still shots kills the shows pacing whenever it happens. Overall, the show's art has some high peaks, but low lows.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Overall, Fire Force is a mediocre show that is carried mainly by its cool concepts and flashy fight scenes. Its extremely disappointing, really, as the show has so many cool and flashy ideas, such as the infernals and the various pyrokinetic techniques. However, the lackluster excecution of these concepts and ideas makes this show hard to recommend. If you can stand all the shows various flaws or just want something to turn your brain off to, then go ahead and give it a watch. Thankfully, so far as of writing this, the show's second season is shaping up to be much better than the first season, so if you do decide to finish season 1, you will definitely like season 2.

Thank you for reading.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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Mar 25, 2025

ggol

Not Recommended

Informative

Brief overview: Not worth watching, unless you like fighting anime

This review will be based on seasons 1 and 2 as both seasons are pretty much the same at the time of 31/08/2024

Introduction
Set in a world where at all times there will be cases where a normal human being will be infected with a flame virus that causes them to turn into monsters. A military force that mainly consists of fire force users is established to eliminate the threat of the monsters.

Characters 3/10
So the character here is more like what the fuck because look, ok you have this priest girl that basically does nothing, but pray ... to the enemy for forgiveness. The problem is what does the praying benefit do in the midst of the battle? It literally does nothing and she is there for nothing. The character is also so fucking cliche to the point that it is frustrating and there is also so much dumb fan service that just pops out of nowhere. This cat girl for example, whenever she does something she will always be accidentally stripped naked by her surroundings area because her clothes just somehow fall off. The villains here are also so cliche to the point that are badly represented. At first, the villains look like a well-established and organized group that trusts each other and believes each other. However, when fights break out between the fire force and the villains there are so many times when the villains are fighting both the enemy and amongst themselves for no reason. And, somehow 1 villain also intentionally injured another villain in the midst of a fight.
SO LONG WORDS SHORT: The characters don't make much sense most of the time

Story 4/10
The story of Fire Force is not interesting because most of the time the story is about the fights which have no build-up or interesting points to lead towards that. Throughout seasons 1 and 2 the series is stuck in a time loop where there is little progress made or achieved. It's all about the Fire squadron doing small task missions to eliminate a group of infected or training amongst themselves most of the time. It's strange that they introduced his deceased brother Sho in the first episode then straight after the first episode one of the villains pointed out that his brother is alive. This is not a spoiler because there is no fucking build-up to that point when the brotherly narrative is only like 2 seconds briefly shown. There are also so many unnecessary points in the story such as the factions and religion because they don't serve any meaningful purpose to the story. For example, the fire force is inspired by firefighters, but they look more or less the same as firefighters, not a special military force. What's worse is that most of their uniform don't represent a clear regiment on what they are. The Latom religion is basically Christianity and is weird that they want to segregate both those things into different meanings because its basically a copy and paste. What's worse is that religion in this anime doesn't have a clear reason for being there. I give you a good example of a religion in AOT of Ymir Fritz. All the people of Eldia worship her because they believe she is a god and she is an important aspect of the narrative on how Titan is born, but religion in this anime doesn't serve or add up to the story which is not a good inspiration. To keep it short the story adds so many inspired elements like Christianity and firefighter that don't serve any meaning in the story which makes the narrative very boring. The only narrative that is interesting is Joker story. He is such a cool character and everything about him is so mysterious which has brought so much build-up and attention for the audience. And others are just plain boring. However, if your into more of a fighting type of narrative than this series does bring quite a lot of good fight scenes but for story focus its not that interesting

Animation 9/10
The animation is the only greatest aspect of this anime. The animators put a lot of time and effort to make this animation into the top tier anime. It is at the movie quality level and it shows that a lot of effort has been put into it with so many dynamics around it and colorful paintings.

Conclusion
Most of the time the story focuses primarily on the fights than the story. For some anime like Demon Slayer its fine because they do give us likable characters with a very intriguing background story. However, the characters in Fire force are questionable at best and most of the background stories of them are not very fascinating. The one thing they did right was the animation. It is a movie-quality animation and you can see a lot of effort has been put into it. However, this doesn't exempt from the poorly told story that hugely degraded the anime.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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