April 21st, 2020 
Charles Solomon 
Fire Force is set in a future Earth that was ravaged by The Great Disaster decades earlier, when much of the planet was rendered uninhabitable by terrible conflagrations. Many survivors took refuge in the Tokyo Empire. The Tokyo Emperors brought together personnel from the Holy Sol Temples, the Fire Defense Agency and armed forces to form the independent companies that make up the Fire Force.
The Fire Force has its work cut out for it: Humans are spontaneously combusting, becoming “Infernals,” fiery entities that can only be destroyed with a combination of weapons and prayers. While they live, the Infernals suffer horribly, even as they destroy nearby humans and buildings.
Shinra Kusakabe, the hero of the series, is a third generation “pyrokinetic” youth. At the Academy, he earned the nickname “Devil’s Footprints,” because he can ignite his feet when he choses. The flames enable him to achieve super-human speed and leaps. During a fire 12 years earlier, Shinra’s mother was killed and his younger brother Sho was abducted. Haunted by his inability to protect his family, Shinra joins the Special Fire Force Company 8, determined to become a hero and atone for his weakness.
Like many other heroes in shonen (boys’) anime, Shinra commands formidable powers, but he’s still learning how to use and control them. He’s also socially maladroit: When he’s uncomfortable, his facial muscles contract into a smile-like rictus, baring his sharp teeth to create a smugly evil expression.
Company 8 is charged with ending the Infernal’s suffering, extinguishing their blazes, comforting their survivors—and investigating possible corruption in the other Companies. Shinra joins warm, understated Captain Akitaru Obi; no-nonsense Lieutenant Takehisa Hinawa; Maki Oze, who can manipulate fire; and blonde Sister Iris. Shinra’s initial uncertainty and discomfort are exacerbated by the arrival of his nemesis from the Academy, Arthur Boyle.
Fire Force began as a manga published in Weekly Shonen Magazine in 2015 by Atsushi Okubo, the creator of Soul Eater (2003) and Soul Eater Not! (2011). Both earlier manga were adapted to popular animated programs by the Bones studio; Fire Force was animated by David Production in 2019.
Despite its interesting characters and ideas, Fire Force fails to match the earlier adaptations of Okubo’s manga. The artists at Bones pushed the characters’ jagged, spikey appearance. The David artists pulled back: Shinra looks like a tamer version of the star of the earlier series, Soul Evans, but with short, darker hair.
Similarly, the storytelling seems less assured. Shinra experiences too many flashbacks of his mother and little brother in the first episodes: It would have been more effective to let the viewer discover his past gradually. A fan service shower scene of Maki and Iris feel gratuitous and out of place in the opening episode.
But Fire Force gains added interest from its underlying references to one of the most horrifying events in recent Japanese history. The series opens with an Infernal igniting in a Metro car, part of a rash of burings linked to a doomsday cult led by a woman known as The Evangelist.
On March 20, 1995, members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinkikyo released deadly sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subways, killing 13 people and injuring more than 1,000. The cult, led by Shoko Asahara (who was hanged in 2018), had already carried out terrorists attacks. But the poisoning and the inadequacy of the government response horrified the Japanese people—who were still recovering from the devastating earthquake that had struck Kobe two months earlier. Novelist Haruki Murakami, who interviewed survivors and cult members for his insightful book “Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche” (1997) concluded, “These twin catastrophes will remain embedded in our psyche as two milestones in our life as a people.”
Fire Force has also been caught up in recent events: The broadcast of the series was interrupted in 2019 after the arson attack on the Kyoto Animation Studio. A second is scheduled for release in July 2020.
Fire Force: Season 1, Part 1
Funimation: $39.96 4 discs, DVD and Blu-ray
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