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Last season I promised to release mini analyses of the running anime that piqued my interest/gave us stuff to talk about. Unfortunately life got in the way. It's actually happening this time around. These threads will be updated regularly and may become essays. FIRE FORCE S2Permalink On twitter.com
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So long-time followers of my work would remember that Fire Force was an essay I wanted to write but didn't because Fire Force is not an interesting show. I still maintain that it's not that interesting thematically, but the finale of season 1 was better than I thought the show..Permalink On twitter.com
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... was capable of, so I'm willing to give the next season a chance.Permalink On twitter.com
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At some point the main cast enter a nude calendar competition. See, I thought this was, like, a joke. It's not. I don't know what else to say other than it's very funny. And if I wanted to make it political it's nice to sexualize your male characters every once in a whilePermalink On twitter.com
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See, my issue with Fire Force is that I like Maki but I know better than to delude myself into thinking she'll do anything ever. AnywayPermalink On twitter.com
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There's a black dude, y'all I'm very easy to pleasePermalink On twitter.com
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I'm just struggling to pin down what Fire Force is "about" after all this time. It's "religious" in that there are Nuns and churches and they talk about heaven and hell, but it's not making any arguments.Permalink On twitter.com
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At one point there was talk about the accountability of the Fire Soldiers. Corruption and collusion with the corporation but that's been dropped. It's just pretty fight scenes and somewhat likable characters.Permalink On twitter.com
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Except Princess Hibana. Fuck herPermalink On twitter.com
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Ben Shapiro enjoying AOCs feet idk it's like 4am I don't know any good feet punsPermalink On twitter.com
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Like stuff just sorta happens in this show. Like evil Shinra is cool I guess but... why? How does this benefit his character? It's cool but cool does not a good story make. "The adula link allowed the first pillar to posses" man what the FUCK does that mean and why care?Permalink On twitter.com
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o no my only weakness attractive people in happy relationshipsPermalink On twitter.com
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So Arthur's parents went to buy cigarettes and never came back. I'm not sure this was supposed to be funny but it was hilarious.Permalink On twitter.com
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Anyway whether or not Fire Force will be good depends entirely on whether or not we get more of the black dude (We will not get more of the black dude)Permalink On twitter.com
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Fire Force, like Re:Zero, continues to have the same general problems as its first season. Mainly because shows don't radically change as much as people think they do.Permalink On twitter.com
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Fire Force knows how to do very pretty action set pieces. And when you're watching a pretty action set piece, you're almost tricked into believing the show is good. And then you see the stuff between the pretty action pieces and it's like "wow there's nothing else here huh"Permalink On twitter.com
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There isn't a lot to talk about since I started this thread because there hasn't been a ton of story. Lot's of great action in episodes 4 and 5, but without the writing to make any of it meaningful.Permalink On twitter.com
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I can say Tamaki continues to be the worst character in the show, given her powers are literally stripping naked by accident and getting groped by "accident" And those never stop being her powers, even when it doesn't fit the rest of the scene. *sigh*Permalink On twitter.com
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While we're on the subject of female characters, can we talk about Maki? She's supposed to be insecure about her body because she's tall and "muscular"... but she's cute, right? She's like a little cinnamon rollPermalink On twitter.com
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She's in an obviously male-dominated line of work and she kicks harder ass than a lot of the guys around her. She's cool in the fight scenes too. If the show committed to this maybe we might have an actual character on our hands or something oh wellPermalink On twitter.com
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Okay so It's been a while since I've seen this show so I had 3 episodes to catch up on. There are two vastly different arcs to comment on so I'll try my best.Permalink On twitter.com
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We end the whole Inca arc. I don't actually think it's being handled well at all. The set-up here is that Inca is very powerful, and she's allowing herself to be kidnapped by the bad guys who want to end all life on Earth.Permalink On twitter.com
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The show creates this dichotomy where Shinra wants to respect Inca's autonomy while the White Clad kidnap her by force. However, Shinra is more or less forced to try and arrest her for the good of the world.Permalink On twitter.com
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It's an interesting case of individualist ideology. In truth, Inca's bodily autonomy stops when she makes decisions that put others in harm's way. You can't use "personal freedom" as an excuse for mass murder. But the show seems incapable of considering this?Permalink On twitter.com
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The writing is honestly really muddled here. We know the White Clad want to end all life on Earth but we don't know why and because we don't we can't really compare their ideals with our protagonists.Permalink On twitter.com
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HOWEVER the next arc FUCKING OWNS IT'S SO GOOD I'm really shocked! This arc is the best Fire Force has been in a long time, I think. The show is just suddenly doing really well. It almost feels like someone else took over the writing for a while.Permalink On twitter.com
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First of all Montgomery is back. And, as I said, the show will always be good as long as my brother is on screen.Permalink On twitter.com
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Second, we actually get character motivations for everyone. We know the villains are suffering Infernals who crave death and can only get that death by destroying the world around them. We know the animals just want to live in the Oasis they've been given.Permalink On twitter.com
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We know the Fire Force is here to gather information, but they also can't sit by and watch innocent people get hurt or Infernals suffer. And now that we know what's going on everything's INTERESTING WOW WHO COULD'VE THOUGHTPermalink On twitter.com
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Third, the chemistry between all these characters is really great. I think this is the first time I don't hate Tamaki since she's not naked every 5 fucking seconds.Permalink On twitter.com
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Fire Force should be this show all of the time instead of whatever I had to sit through a few weeks ago. I'm like, excited? For the next episode? It's a weird feeling for me. youtu.be/3B-tXqw_fW4Permalink On twitter.com
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... So anyway we need more Ogun Montgomery in our lives right nowPermalink On twitter.com
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I'm a little disappointed in this episode, in that it felt like a lot of it was padding for time. The stuff I was looking forward to last week looks like will take place next week. But we got to see the only black character, I think out of any anime I'm watching rn, look sickPermalink On twitter.com
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With everything that's going on in the world right, I've found a rather unlikely refuge in Fire Force. In its subtle, simple, but effective reminder that black people can be cool as shitPermalink On twitter.com
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Listen I'm not stupid. I understand that the number of black people per capita in Japan is far lower than in the States, and that it's unreasonable to expect the same level of representation in Japanese media as in ours. But also...Permalink On twitter.com
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In other equivalent fantasy/shounen anime, a character like Ogun would most certainly be white. And the fact that he's not here, and the show treats him the same, means a lot to me? Yeah. That's it. I can't vouch for the rest of Fire Force but I will stan Ogun MontgomeryPermalink On twitter.com
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Would've been even better if Tamaki got some love too. She had a little moment, but I wanted more. Still, I'll take what I can get!Permalink On twitter.com
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Wow it's been a while since I updated this. I guess that's alright.Permalink On twitter.com
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I dropped Fire Force towards the end of season because it felt "thematically vacuous". Some dialogue from the show feels like its stripped from a better show that has something to say about religion, heroism, friendship, corruption, family, or power...Permalink On twitter.com
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...but the show itself doesn't commit to any one idea long enough to do anything noteworthy. The writing feels like a little kid in a candy store, briefly things off the shelf because they look cool before dropping them off again.Permalink On twitter.com
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I think these last view episodes after the Chinese Peninsula arc are the first time the show has really bothered to set a theme down. I'm going to complain about it now because I hate the theme.Permalink On twitter.com
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Fire Force dips its toes into an ideology I've taken to calling "anime individualism" until I do more research. It's a kind of base-level individualism that makes a good anime plot because it pits the protagonist against an unfair and cruel world.Permalink On twitter.com
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Anime individualism distrusts the very notion that people can work together to accomplish things. Any kind of collective action is seen as corrupt or hypocritical. The world may be unfair, but there's nothing anyone can do to change it.Permalink On twitter.com
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The only thing you as an individual can do is make sure you're strong enough to end up on top, and make sure you're strong enough to protect the people you love.Permalink On twitter.com
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The church and the state are often antagonists in "anime individualist" narratives. (I should write an essay on this actually) If you read my second Shield Hero essay, you might actually recognize this idea from that show. youtube.com/watch?v=PW26KEfEPbMOn twitter.com
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Fire Force does the same with its edgy anti-hero Joker. He was abused by the church, and denied the idea that he was an individual or in any way special in favor of abstract ideas around equalityPermalink On twitter.com
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Joker's story, then, is about asserting his autonomy as an individual over the collective. The "individual" represents freedom while the "collective" represents abuse and subjugation.Permalink On twitter.com
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To be clear, Fire Force also doesn't trust its large corporations either. It doesn't trust the state. It doesn't even really trust the larger Fire Companies. The show basically asserts any group that's larger than you and a few friends is corrupt and power hungry.Permalink On twitter.com
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What makes FF more interesting than something like Shield Hero is that it also seems to want to understand why society is as bad as it is.Permalink On twitter.com
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As a communist, obviously I don't take too well to this kind of thinking, given that my ideology requires mass movements to be put into practice. But in the context of Fire Force the result is still confused.Permalink On twitter.com
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The reason why "the world sucks" as the show puts it are because there are systems of control and social forces that benefit some at the expense of others. But the show refuses to engage with that idea. So we're supposed to accept that there's this one bad guy...Permalink On twitter.com
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..."the evangelist", rigging everything from behind the scenes. Forcing people into collectives when people naturally exist as atomized entities that never interact or collaborate. Y'know, like real life.Permalink On twitter.com
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The religion of Fire Force was one of its most interesting aspects. Because after a calamity as seen in the show, faith really would be different than what we can imagine. But now it turns out it was just one guy who made everything up. And we gotta punch him. Less interestingPermalink On twitter.com
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(her outfit is cute) (moving on)Permalink On twitter.com
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The problem with anime individualism is that, by ignoring the systems that create oppression in the first place, you actually end up supporting them by failing to challenge them.Permalink On twitter.com
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This is actually hilariously demonstrated in Shield Hero. Naofumi buys slaves and makes sure to treat them "well" in order to make himself stronger. He becomes strong enough that he doesn't have to face oppression by the state and church.Permalink On twitter.com
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However he rejects to end slavery, even when given the opportunity. AND we're told by using slaves as successfully as he has, he's acted as a walking advertisement for slaves across the country, further proliferating the systems of oppression in his world.Permalink On twitter.com
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In real life, we could draw parallels to Black capitalism. This idea that if we could get individual black people to start the next Amazon or be the next Bill Gates, we'd solve oppression through "black excellence" as it were.Permalink On twitter.com
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But all that does is give black people the reins of a system that oppresses black people. You've failed to address the system and are now upholding it. If Fire Force sticks to this idea for more than 5 seconds, that's kind of how it'll end up too.Permalink On twitter.com
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Aside from that, we now return to Fire Force's generally weird way in which it handles female characters. And by weird I mean grossPermalink On twitter.com
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Despite what the Medium comments to my Uzaki-chan essay keep telling me, I'm not anti-fan service. This specific scene wouldn't necessarily be so bad. The issue is objectification is the ONLY way Fire Force knows how to relate to its female cast. That's why it's badPermalink On twitter.com
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Fire Force does objectify its men -- sometimes. But its men are also allowed to be people? Its women are not. Ahhh the Fire Force I know and love from before the Chinese Peninsula arc is backPermalink On twitter.com
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Look at the absolute WIDTH of Vulcan's shoulders tho👀 Bro's got gainsPermalink On twitter.com
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I think that's it for Fire Force for now, right? The show has a lot of problems, but it hasn't burnt me out like Re:Zero, or sent me into a flying rage like Misfit or Rent a GF. So I'll stick around until it finishes. Peace, y'allPermalink On twitter.com