Fire Force

A manga about a world destroyed by a great disaster and the survivors live in fear of spontaneous human combustion that transform them into flaming demons known as Infernals. The story follows Shinra Kusakabe, a new recruit of the Fire Force: fire fighters who specialized in pyrokinesis to battle and extinguish Infernals.

I’ve never read Atsushi Ohkubo‘s previous hit series Soul Eater so I didn’t have any expectation for this series when it started in Weekly Shonen Magazine. I was really surprised how great Ohkubo’s art was, especially his stylish action scenes. The world of Fire Force is also super engaging with lots of mysteries about the great disaster that decimated the lands. It’s got great characters with lots of personality.

However the character Tamaki is extremely problematic. Her character quirk is that her clothes keep falling off, making her a walking epitome of “lucky fanservice”. While she has her own agency and strong pyrokinesis powers, every appearance is accompanied with nudity. I find it extremely off putting that female characters in shonen are usually reduced to these kinds of representations. We’ve talked about this on the podcast as well but whether it’s for popularity sake or it’s mandated by the editors, many shonen action series seem to be stuck in an endless cycle of including fan service characters and I honestly wish it would stop.

I enjoy Fire Force a lot but it also really reinforced my issues with shonen manga in general. It’s available from Kodansha Comics.

~dakazu