Fire Force – 3 [The Rookie Fire Soldier Games]

This week’s episode of Fire Force has obvious implications beyond anime – the KyoAni fire. I’ll be addressing this episode as it was without wading into any of the horrific tragedy or any censoring/changes that may have occurred.

Episode 3 starts off with long winded exposition and world discussion. Surprisingly, we meet the bad guys, the state of Earth, and the major players behind the scenes in the span of 15 seconds. Not my favorite way to introduce setting – I would rather be shown than told. From there we are thrust into the newbie online diner games, which I actually liked. Instead of typical shonen overblown tournaments for the local nose picking competition, these rookie games were something that felt like an inter departmental team building exercise – a nice realistic touch.

Then the cat girl appeared and ruined the day. This character’s introduction was handled poorly in every aspect but the art. The best we can hope for is that the character designer is struck by the lightening from Demon Slayer and gives her something of a personality.

This episode’s fight scenes also looked odd to me. They appear haphazardly edited and have moments of greatness, like episode one – but then get disjointed with some awkward continuity. (Also no one can escape the 20 second still shot of the burned out building – the symbolism is pretty raw there). It’s a real shame because I think this was a pretty important episode in terms of introducing the bad guys and setting up the Devils hero complex.

At any rate, I hope to get on to the heart of this season, which I suspect will be a fire a week as we unravel the deeper mysteries at work (with the mysterious corporation undoubtedly being behind it all). So I give this episode a pass, due to the circumstances. This show really does have potential and beautiful animation so I’m sticking around.