Anime Spotlight #10: Atsushi Ohkubo

Article by Sean Wilkinson,
a.k.a. the Anime-BAWklogger

AniMonday is back on schedule! And this week, we'll be looking at the works of Atsushi Ohkubo. For those who don't know who that is, Ohkubo-sensei is the mangaka behind Soul Eater and Fire Force. I'd like to give the latter its time in the Anime Spotlight, but first (and so you can opt out of the linked post above if you choose, because opting is a choice, duh), here is a reprint of my thoughts on Soul Eater:

"High school students with magical powers and goals that amount to “be the best.” People who transform into weapons. Supernatural villains of the week. Ancient, all-powerful villain buried under the school. Teachers with mysterious pasts. Heroes struggling with their dark side. Channel friendship and punch really hard for a guaranteed win. If you’ve seen one show like this, you’ve seen this show before dozens of times. However, in the face of often-tread territory, Soul Eater does a good job at carving out its own identity. The characters are interesting and memorable, there are some decent character development episodes and arcs that lead to progression down that character’s path to “be the best whatever,” and the animation style is innovative once you get used to it. Altogether, Soul Eater isn’t a Bad anime. But if you strip away what makes it unique, the bones of the series are just Average."

Ticketmaster's Note: Everyone I've looked into who reviewed Soul Eater has criticized the anime's ending for "just being an ass-pull, friendship punch" that was tacked on because the manga hadn't been finished yet. In retrospect, I was too ambivalent and harsh when it came to the anime's predictability and tropes. Not to give anything away, if you consider the main character's lineage and the mechanics of the series, the "ass-pull, friendship punch" has established reasoning behind it that has nothing to do with friendship. And if not for Soul Eater, I never would have thought to check out Fire Force. It's an innovative, shonen anime from the same animation team (and manga writer) who worked on Soul Eater, and with two seasons of engaging storytelling under its belt, I highly recommend it.
So here it is!

Like Soul Eater before it, Fire Force benefits from its simple art style, unique world, and creative character designs. But where its predecessor was produced as a single-season adaptation with a very by-the-numbers shonen structure (see quoted review above), Fire Force did well enough to warrant at least two seasons of amazing fight choreography (granted, Soul Eater had some good sakuga for its time), suspense, and sociopolitical intrigue. Our main character this time (with a "sharp-toothed protagonist" design also seen in Soul Eater and homaged in non-Okubo works such as Black Clover and Blue Exorcist) is a pyrokinetic and new recruit to the titular organization's eighth company, whose mother and brother were killed by a fire demon when he was a child. But because he has fire powers and an Arthur Fleck-like nervous condition (instead of laughing, he grins maniacally when stressed), the public holds him responsible for their deaths, and he joins the Fire Force under an initial cloud of suspicion, until his rocket feet and explosive, break dance fighting style prove effective in battle (and very cool to look at). The world of Fire Force is an industrialized, post-apocalyptic version of Imperial Tokyo that made steampunk use of fire after a global inferno destroyed what we think of as modern society. Not only did technology get some kind of retro-advancement out of the Great Cataclysm, but pyrokinetics soon emerged, and it was discovered that fire had a level of sentience, to the degree that human beings randomly (or when infected by members of the series' villain group, a fire-worshipping cult called the White Clad) undergo spontaneous combustion and transform into demons (like the one that killed the main character's mother). Enter the Fire Force, a combination police force/fire department/church comprised of pyrokinetics and technologically enhanced humans who investigate fires and use their abilities to exorcise fire demons and put their souls to rest. The usual shonen trappings like multi-episode fights and training sequences are here, of course. But when the fights aren't busy looking awesome and the main character isn't discovering that he has a direct connection to the source of all fire that lets him fight at speeds beyond time, the cast are investigating corruption amongst their ranks, engaging in some decent-but-repetitive physical comedy, and uncovering a cult/government conspiracy to cause a second Great Cataclysm. Oh, and stay through the second season finale's credits for a mind-blowing reveal that will change how you view Ohkubo's works.

I watched Prey over the weekend, so stay tuned for a new Just the Ticket on that, and next week in the Anime Spotlight, I'll be tackling another series with an insane second season cliffhanger that involves pop idols and the walking dead.

Anime-BAWklogger,

out.