Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Is Fire Force Worth Watching?
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Vanadise
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For my piece, I've got no problem with fanservice. Heck, I'm the biggest Utawarerumono fan in the USA, and the first one of those was an eroge and the sequels are well-known for their bath scenes.
The problem with Fire Force isn't fanservice, it's how it treats its female characters. At least within what we've seen so far, they don't have any agency and they don't have character arcs. They get abused so that the male characters will have some motivation, and they get molested for the titillation of the audience. You can have fanservice while still having well-written characters, and this doesn't, which is what I dislike about it. |
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StarfighterPegasus
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Kuzu
Posts: 149 |
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The show in general is rather lacking on ALL of the characters; but there's a clear difference in how characters like Arthur are treated, and how characters like Tamaki are treated.
Arthur is a dumbass, but he still gets to be a badass despite that and cut down enemies with impunity. Tamaki...gets manipulated, beaten, and sexually assaulted. And can do nothing during all of this besides call out for help and stand helplessly on the side as our protagonist dukes it out with the baddie. Can you see the difference here? It's mostly egregious with Tamaki, because unlike Iris who is a non-combatant, Tamaki is a frontline fighter, and has powers similar to Shinra and Arthur. By all rights, she should be their equal but... I heard the author has had trouble adjusting from Soul Eater's monthly schedule to this one being weekly, which might explain the pacing issues. Fast plot development is rather common in monthly series to keep reader interest every month. That doesn't really translate well to a weekly series, so I hope the pacing slows down and actually starts developing the cast a bit more. At the very least, give me some characterization for the girls if all you're gonna do is sexually exploit them. Fairy Tail doesn't treat it's female cast much better, but at least they have characters worth caring about. |
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CrowLia
 Posts: 5528 Location: Mexico |
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But an aesthetic choice by whom? By Tamaki or the author? Note it's not just regular cat ears, but /fire/ cat ears; her power manifests as cat ears (and a tail I think?), but for what purpose? Does it help her fighting infernals? Or does she just like cats and decided she wanted to have cool/cute cat ears made of fire to match her fire tail. Because even that would be a pretty acceptable explanation, just like how we see that Maki likes making cute fireball pets with her powers just because she thinks they're cute; or how Arthur has this idea of being a honorable knight, so he has a fire sword he named Excalibur. But Tamaki doesn't seem to have even the smallest depth as a character that we would be able to tell if she likes cats. And since we haven't really seen her fight (except for like a few seconds against that Joker dude?), it's hard to even say what her fighting style and powers are, which is kind of odd considering how often we've seen her fire cat powers. It just strikes me as the kind of thing a writer should think about when designing a character: "I want her to have cute cat ears, so I should come up with some sort of in-story reason why she has them". Kind of like that famous video of Stan Lee roasting younger comic book creators for their inability to actually think when they create a character. But anyway, my question wasn't so much a criticism as it was a question. Was wondering if any manga fans had any of those "it gets better later" explanations as to why Tamaki's fire powers look the way they do. Seems like there isn't one, so I guess it is a sort of criticism in the end |
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Dardre
 Posts: 166 |
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Fast paced being unusual? Have you watched or read any other Atsushi Okubo series? He doesn't really do "monster of the week" to buy time to establish his characters or world. I mean, iirc, when Soul Eater starts, Maka and Soul were on their 99th soul and then were looking to get a witch's soul. I think Medusa shows up around episode 3 or 4 and the main plot kicks off.
He shows enough to give the audience a taste of the "monster of the week" grind but that's it, because the story isn't about that grind.
Because every fire user seems to have a supernatural/mythical reference to them. Shinra has the "Devil's Footprint", Arthur is a direct and obvious reference, Maki can make her fire into familiars (like the witch she's literally called in the second episode). As for Tamaki, she calls her power Nekomata, and she has two tails. Moving on from fire users, the name of the perpetual thermal generator is called Amaterasu. It's pretty clear there is a theme going on here. |
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Jen Bigby
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Gender demographics are something America has been trying to move away from for over a decade now. It's considered exclusionary today to say something is for men or for women. ESPECIALLY in regards to why you do things like put sexy women in your show or comic. So saying shounen anime is aimed at boys so you should expect them to have fanservice in them isn't something these types of people accept even though it should be the only thing that needs to be said on the issue They point to how Marvel and DC comics stopped drawing the female heroes as sexy and changed their outfits to be not revealing and write them as more in your face so they now expect anime and manga to do the same and don't understand why shounen anime still has fanservice or focuses on things men like. They expect anime and manga aimed at men to lockstep like American media for men has. So similarly shoujo manga is mostly romance and drama because that's what girls like. All the most popular shoujo manga are about drama and romance. |
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Meongantuk
 Posts: 360 |
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A bit of both. The controversial part is of course the treatment of women in the series, I honestly think it was pretty bad but ANN tends to over-reacts with things like this so.... Beyond that, the article missed the point of story premises and complaining about something that isn't really there which makes the article bad. |
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ShatteredWorld
 Posts: 265 Location: ATL |
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this has the same energy as people telling me to "stick with Girls, because it gets REALLY better in season 2 and 3!" look: if a show's FOUNDATION isn't good, it's perfectly valid for people to not want what comes after. |
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Kuroi Ren
Posts: 151 |
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There's plenty of anime that are reverse Harem and many Bishounen anime have that trope. I don't complain and moan. I just don't watch it. Like I said, I don't particulary enjoy fanservice but judging a series by it is not smart. Also, I keep saying it but it's more of a comedy. It ain't necessarily sexist since there is a hulk-strong female in the cast. And the fanservice doesn't really "affect" how good a character is. It's more to add something for the viewers. She will still develop, fanservice or not.
Exactly. And the fanservice issue is also similar to Soul Eater. You had a nude witch in EP 1 and yet people like that show and hate on this.
That's what I mean. The story is not about fighting infernals but figuring it out the cause. You summed it up quite nicely.
I still don't get why anyone would complain about something as trivial as "cat ears"
The ones you mentioned above are not the generic type of shounen. Heck, some are even quite dark for Shounen so Fanservice wouldn't fit
People tend to not focus on the good and only focus on the bad.
You don't have to watch it. If you dislike it, that's fine. I was merely voicing my opinion that the bad opinions are misplaced. I think the foundations ARE good [/quote]
Sorry. Is the above fine? |
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 5163 |
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I'm still enjoying Fire Force but I do feel like it has a lot of potential it's wasting. I enjoy the show the most when it's focused more on emotional moments and the cool action scenes and world building. I think one of my biggest frustrations with the fanservice is when it's used to interrupt scenes that are supposed to be dramatic and serious versus a show like Soul Eater where it's a more over the top comedy so the fanservice doesn't feel as out of place. As far as newer shonen shows airing this year goes, I feel like Promised Neverland and Dr. Stone had much stronger starting arcs with stronger characterization and better pacing. But Fire Force still has enough going on to keep me watching every week that I can overlook the flaws but it's definitely not a show for everyone.
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Kuroi Ren
Posts: 151 |
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A good balanced review. I definitely agree with the interrupting fanservice being annoying but I guess its just that type of anime. They'll probably tone it down as it progresses |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3028 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Yep, thank you! |
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nargun
Posts: 930 |
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When you set up a story you start with basically a clean slate. With nothing else on the table it's easier than it'll ever be to tell a story in that setting. If a series is crap at the beginning it means that the writers failed at the easy hurdles and so will probably fail again when things get harder.
A real-world example: Soul Eater. Soul Eater starts pretty interestingly: disconnected one-ep vignettes that show the characters and the settings while explicitly having little to do with the longer-term planned narrative. So you see the character conflicts and themes straight-up, just not the context it'll play out in. Ths is why you usually only need one ep, not three: one ep tells you if the creators have basic storytelling skills. More eps reveals more about long-term narrrartive plans (or the title might be dramatically restructured on the fly, which isn't that common) but the basics still show. (well, you only need the one ep if you've got some literature and analysis theory. Which is a good reason to pay attention in class so's you can avoid wasting your time watching Kado when its flaws were obvious from the get-go, say) |
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Top Gun
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Disregarding the rest of the bad takes in this post, doesn't the fact that this series is primarily intended for younger male audiences make its treatment of its female cast even more disturbing? Like, when the hell did "shounen" become conflated with "copious fanservice"? Certainly the majority of the globally-popular long-runners of the past few decades haven't featured any real egregious fanservice at all. It's one thing to throw this sort of content into late-night broadcasts consumed by adult otaku, but when you're making a show for young teenage boys, you sure as hell shouldn't be exposing them to some super-toxic messages about sexuality and gender roles. Japan has enough massive issues as a society about those as-is.
The massive, glaring difference here is that Blair was a grown-ass woman who owned her own sexuality, not a teenager being repeatedly molested against her will. She also swiftly became a bit character who didn't appear anywhere near the more serious portions of the series. Like Gina said earlier, when people keep referring to the fanservice in Soul Eater, my reaction is always, "...wait, what fanservice?" If it was there, it was hardly noticeable, at least compared to Fire Force's ham-handed usage of it. |
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CelestialEmpress
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Ah yes, who can forget that beloved. classical myth of GUN. Tamaki is a bad character. She's not interesting, what little personality she has isn't enjoyable, and seeing her trip tits-first into yet another molestation gag just makes me wonder why I'm spending my finite time on Earth watching this. I don't think you can really use "IT'S ONLY BEEN NINE EPISODES, JUST WAIT IT GETS BETTER." as an excuse when you compare it to what other shounen have done in the same time frame to give us an interesting hook: One Piece was introducing Usopp and setting up the very enjoyable Kuro plot. Over in Hunter x Hunter, we were already decently into the exam and learning about the Phantom Troupe. Bleach had gone through Orihime's depressing brother, seeded hints about Rukia being in trouble with the Soul Society, and was playing out Ichigo fighting his mom's killer. Hero Academia introduced an entire class of delightful kids (and also Mineta) and was launching into the USJ fight. Jojo told all of Phantom Blood in nine episodes flat. Even Naruto was chugging right along in that bridge arc. Soul Eater had the first fight against Crona, introduced Medusa, and was giving us the greatest gift of all in Excalibur. Fullmetal Alchemist did so much within nine episodes of both shows I can't even list it all. Nine episodes is plenty of time to get some kind of a footing and maintain an enjoyable experience for your audience. Don't use it as an excuse for bad writing. |
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