The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange

The story of how three young firefighters destined to save Japan grow in spirit! Toake Daigo burns with remarkable talent and unparalleled determination. Onoda Shun struggles against the walls blocking his own path. Nakamura Yuki hopes to become one of the few female members of the special rescue corps known as "Orange." When these three young firefighters who share the goal of becoming members of Orange come together, the story of how Japan will one day be saved begins... and what looms before them is a crisis that endangers the entire country!

Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange is based on a manga of the same name by Masahito Soda and Kuro Tomiyama. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

On one hand, there's something to be said for an anime that doubles down hard on realism. There are no mecha or superpowers here—not even people doing things that are highly improbable. This is simply a show about the men and women who head into the worst disasters to pull people out. Yet, while that is the show's strength, it is also a weakness.

When it comes down to it, this loving look at high-level fireman training left me largely bored and uninvested. One reason for this is because, while I'm eternally grateful that firefighters are out there and think they deserve to be treated as the heroes they are, I really don't care about their day-to-day lives or the technology they use. The other reason—and perhaps the more important one—for my apathy in regards to this show is that I feel little-to-no connection with our characters.

Shun, our viewpoint character is an insecure mess. He's used to being the best and has finally found out he's not the biggest fish in the sea. Rather than emulating those better than himself, he instead looks for ways to tear them down—in his head, if not in reality. Meanwhile, Diago is basically a brick wall. He has some “mysterious past” but I'm sure it will turn out to just be that he was rescued by a firefighter (probably his trainer) when he was a kid.

The most interesting character hands down is Yuki. Not only is she the only woman in the top 50 firefighters of the year, she's number 2 among them all. There's an awesome story there but thanks to being stuck in Shun's viewpoint, we get none of it. Rather, we get a dose of toxic masculinity where he both can't stand being worse than a girl and yet feels she has unfair advantages by being one—in one of the most physically demanding jobs on the planet… Yeah, it's some misogynistic BS. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure he'll get over it as the series goes along but I won't be here for it. If firefighters are your thing, I bet you'll really enjoy this one but as I'm not one of those people, I'm out.

You know what I love? Anime dramas about adults doing adult things. No magical twists, no fanservice, no multimedia gacha game tie-ins, no contrived rom-com shenanigans. Don't get me wrong; I love me some silly, magical, sappy cartoon BS, but we get a lot of that in this business, and it is always nice for a palette cleanser that appeals to members of the audience that don't necessarily want to stay trapped in the realm of high school daydreams and hyper-dramatic genre fiction all of the time. Just like its titular character, Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange arrives, and the fall season is all the better for it.

One of the few childhood truths that isn't irrevocably shattered by the cynicism and disappointment of adulthood is this: Firefighters are friggin' badasses. There is an inherent, mythic drama that comes with a profession that requires people to rush into the most dangerous situations imaginable to save lives, and Firefighter Daigo understands this. It has all of the usual hallmarks of a good edutainment anime: Plenty of well-researched and story-relevant factoids about the firefighting profession, a cast of characters who embody all of the different traits required to explore the facets of the career, and just enough of that heightened anime drama to spice up an already interesting premise and highlight the cool factor of the proceedings.

Of course, no matter how much I might be inclined to enjoy shows like this, Firefighter Daigo wouldn't be any good if it didn't succeed at a show's most fundamental directive, which is to tell a worthwhile story. Thankfully, everything seems to be in place for the show to do just that. Daigo strikes the right balance of being earnest, talented, and flawed to make for a compelling lead, and characters like Yuki and Shun look like they'll balance him out with their perspectives and skills. I'm intrigued enough to check out more of this one as the season progresses.

This may sound silly, but there is a lot of sirens and high-pitched beeping noises in this episode. Yes, yes, it's about firefighting – of course there are. But I mention it for two reasons: one, it sent all of my pets running for another room in a mad scramble, and two, if you're sound-sensitive like I am, that can make parts of this very hard to stomach. They disappear after the opening scenes, but be aware they're there.

With that out of the way, this is a reasonably solid episode, and the fact that eighty percent of Tokyo appears to be on fire in the beginning is certainly a good hook. We don't know why it's burning, but we do know that the firefighters have their work more than cut out for them, especially ostensible leads Shun and Daigo. The two are engaged in a particularly tricky rescue: not only is the skyscraper they're working with on fire, but it's also tilting dangerously, making it difficult to align the rescue basket properly with the roof. Seeing the two men pull off what they're attempting is fraught for the entire time because we know that even if they survive, there's no guarantee that the people they're rescuing will or that they'll be able to find all potential survivors in the billows of smoke. Even if a building on fire isn't your personal nightmare, this is very well done.

Things slow down after the opening theme in more ways than one, and seeing the rigorous training that the men (and token female firefighter Yuki, who gets no lines) had to go through isn't nearly as engaging. In no small part, this is because they've all ended up in the training squad of fire chief Yamagami, a man who gleefully tells them that his training methods have been expressly banned as hazing while continuing to employ them. It's meant to show that he's a tough instructor and will make Daigo, Shun, and Yuki top-notch firefighters. Still, it's also not an approach that ought to be glorified, especially since we can see that Daigo is already inclined to push himself beyond the bounds of sanity. We have yet to find out why because despite the title, Shun is our point-of-view character. That's an interesting choice that may end up paying off, but in this episode, it mostly exists to show us the contrast between the two nineteen-year-olds. Both want to do their best, but Daigo is extraordinarily driven, while Shun is working hard at what is a job.

The art and animation show the level of exhaustion everyone pushes themselves to, and physical fatigue is particularly well shown. Oddly, There's not much actual action yet, and honestly, this feels like a sports show with firefighting and rescue replacing soccer. I won't be watching more because of those high-pitched beeping sounds, but if you like sports shows or are a fan of firefighters, it's worth checking out.

This premiere has two distinct sides: character drama and demonstrating the nitty-gritty details of fire rescue and all the training it entails. The latter is where it excels, delivering some of the most detailed examples of real-life rescue training you can find outside of actual instructional videos. The former is a big fat question mark at the end of the episode because the premiere spent so much time on all the training.

It's to the point where, when the episode ended, I was sure there would be a second part immediately after. By the time credits rolled, our main cast had said maybe five sentences to one another between their arduous training, and I'm pretty sure Yuki hadn't spoken a word. For a show purportedly about the “destined three” in the episode title and predicated on the drama of them surviving dangerous emergencies to rescue others and themselves, that's not a great foot to start out on. All I know about our cast so far is that Shun is cocky and chafing against the laborious training for the Rescue corps, Daigo is super good at their training, and Yuki is a woman. Everything else is a mystery, and not in the tantalizing “I need to know more” way, but rather like the show ran out of time to complete their introductions.

That said, the show's other half may be novel and exciting enough to make up for it. All that focus on the cast's training and a flash forward to a Tokyo-wide disaster where they're all full-fledged Rescue Corps members demonstrate a lot of research into the high-stakes, stressful realities of emergency response. The opening scene of Shun stepping into a collapsing building off a shaking crane basket is harrowing while being grounded. The arduous physical training may feel like boot camp, but it demonstrates how demanding it is to take other people's lives into your own hands. It emphasizes the dedication and endurance necessary to be a firefighter, which does a lot to sell the premise.

I'm still unsure if I'll follow up on this, if only because of how busy this season looks to be, but if I do, it will be the firefighting minutiae that did the trick. If the show can also find time to develop its cast and make me care about them, then it has what it takes to be a solid, unique kind of drama, so here's hoping.