Anime Spotlight #81: Fire Force (2026 Update)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Animeister.

In my neck of the woods (a phrase that is biologically impossible, if not also psychologically scarring to imagine in a literal, body horror sense, especially if you take into account the arboreal hydra that would be given shape by multiple points of view, but I dye grass when I'm overcaffeinated), I can breathe the smoky flames of Canada as we speak. But I did not choose this Anime Spotlight update for July because of some future-sighted state I achieved by tapping into a parallel Hell dimension; rather, it was because July is the month of independent rebellion (in at least two countries), which we celebrate with fireworks. Fireworks, Fire Force; it was as simple as that.

And then I started watching the third (and final?) season of Fire Force, and was reminded of the rebel authority role that Company Eight has in the series and how the themes of the new season comment on modern government, politics, and culture. So Fire Force fits with July 2026 far better than I expected, and blew my mind by the end.

But before I get to my experience with Fire Force Season Three, let's go back TO August 15, 2022 (Anime Spotlight #10: Atsushi Ohkubo) for a quick look at the first two seasons, accompanied by a blurb on Soul Eater FROM December 14, 2020 (Anime BAWklog: Finished Series A-Z Part IV): For those who don't know who he is, Atsushi Ōkubo is the mangaka behind Soul Eater and Fire Force, and mentor of Gachiakuta mangaka Kei Urana (a.k.a. Kanaru). For reasons that will be clear later (unless you're already aware of the connection between Ōkubo-sensei's works), 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 (December 14, 2020): 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, shōnen anime from the same mangaka who worked on Soul Eater, and with now three 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 shōnen structure (see quoted review above), Fire Force did well enough to warrant three seasons of amazing fight choreography (granted, Soul Eater had some good sakuga for its time, and its single season was fifty-two episodes, equivalent to the length of two Fire Force seasons), suspense, and sociopolitical intrigue. Our main character this time (with a "sharp-toothed protagonist" design also seen in Soul Eater and homaged in non-Ōkubo 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 supposedly 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 (the Great Cataclysm) destroyed what we think of as modern society. Not only did technology get some kind of retro-advancement out of the Great Cataclysm (using a human girl as a thermonuclear power source, by the way), 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 Infernal 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 Infernals and put their souls to rest. The usual shōnen 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 Ōkubo-sensei's works.

Okay; SPOILER WARNING! for those who want to experience the twist for themselves.

Ōkubo dropping such a big, microphone-shaped bombshell on the audience with so much story left to tell (and my procrastination-fueled bingeing being a factor) put me in an impatient mindset for the new season. Not only had I been sitting on the insane information that Fire Force is a Soul Eater prequel for almost four years, but now I had to carry that knowledge for roughly thirteen hours of viewing time as Season Three hit me with reminders of things I forgot about the first two seasons (the existence of sentient, half-Infernal animal mascots, the Eighth teaming up with some of the Fire Companies they were formed to investigate, the MCs training for access to "Hysterical Strength"—a concept more colloquially associated with women, and mothers specifically, because "hysteria" originated from a Greek word with vaginal connotations, so of course it's used here to help two dudes get stronger by using their pyrokinesis until they get beaten unconscious and almost die, meanwhile the actual female characters get stronger through friendship, prayer, and nudity), flipped the power dynamic on its head by allying the Tokyo Empire with the White-Clad and branding the Eighth as fugitives because the nebulous integration of church and state has never historically led to anything worse than my sarcasm, and ran through the expected shōnen battle beats (including some inventive, sometimes bullshit-meets-batshit things that can theoretically be accomplished through heat manipulation, like causing earthquakes, altering time and gravity, perceiving the future, turning yourself into a literal dragon, changing the Curie Point of gold to manipulate other metals, etc.). Oh, and there are also some high-concept sociopolitical commentaries baked into the world-building that would make Studio Trigger (specifically with respect to Gurren Lagann and the Gridman Universe) hold Ōkubo-sensei's beer like a mixed-media drink cozy on psychotropic substances.

Yeah; "basically," Adolla (the parallel Hell dimension that Doppelgänger Infernals come from, and which gives Pillars like Shinra and his brother their reality-warping pyro abilities) is the home of collectively idealized copies of everyone on Earth who cause spontaneous combustion events when the boundary between Earth and Adolla is broken and the Doppelgänger attempts to replace the "original." Except, no one is really the original versions of themselves because the Tokyo Empire in Fire Force is a manga/anime-fied mutation caused by the Great Cataclysm remaking the real-world Japan 250 years ago (which is this year's anniversary of American Independence Day; told you it fits!) based on human suffering, religion, folklore, and the cartoonish impressions of ourselves that we present online (or that are imposed upon us by public opinion). Therefore, we eventually learn that Shinra was cosmically destined by the Fire Force world and its Adolla counterpart to be the virgin-born savior son of the series villain's human Doppelgänger, able to rewrite reality by forming a Trinity with his defected White-Clad brother and Infernal mother. These are things that happen in Fire Force Season Three, people!

But aside from the mind-melting, literal meta-commentary and Jesus allegory going on, we do eventually get our answer to how Fire Force's world became Soul Eater's (Shinra created it as a way to reduce the multidimensional backlash of collective human suffering and increasingly conscious fatalism, including the fear of death by making it a fun, silly, mentor-like Reaper deity figure), and some cool Epilogue Easter eggs (like Arthur—Shinra's progressively less annoying idiot rival with a medieval hero complex whose delusions make him stronger, which makes him absolutely broken in a world built on the power of the mind—being the first Weapon Meister, the Evangelist's despair becoming the Kishin Asura—though information between the series' timelines conflicts on this point by multiple centuries, their designs are similar enough—Medusa possibly being Shinra's granddaughter with Inca—despite his many youthful objections, Shinra managed to...get around in the course of twenty-five years and have two daughters, the other by Iris—and cameo appearances by cat-form Blair and child versions of Death the Kid—whom Death/Shinigami states he created in Shinra's image—Black Star, Soul, and Maka.

I may revisit the Ōkuboverse if inspiration sparks, but for now, I'm riding out the hype, I'm late publishing, my brain hurts, and I need to be otherwise occupied this week (like starting the Dressrosa Arc of One Piece, compiling my Volume Thirteen Omnibusted post, watching Godzilla 2000, and planning for August). So please Stay Tuned for all of that, and continue to support me and what I do by Becoming A Ticketholder because you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because perception can be costly, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

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Animeister,

Látom.