Skip to main content

Click "Archive" or "Labels" in the sidebar to browse reviews, or use the search bar to look for a specific title.


Review: Fire Force, Vol. 1

Fire Force, Vol. 1 Fire Force, Vol. 1 by Atsushi Ohkubo
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Banner

Yoooo.......... Ooohh. Yeah, it stings. 2 stars, eh? Yeah.... Unfortunate, but this was an extremely mediocre, cliché and unoriginal first volume. It kind of reminds me of another series... *cough* Black Clover *cough* ... Too bad I forget which...

One good thing about this series that I'll throw out there right off the bat: It's not another manga about kids in a super-special-magic academy, it's about what happens after their education when said kids join the workforce with their newly developed super-special-magic powers. I thought that was a neat thing to do, to show the "after", what all that academia amounts to. Too bad that's where the originality ends hahahahajajajajajajaj

Here's the lineup of this manga's cast:

image of lineup

Guest who's the: Leader of the troupe, mean smart guy who bullies the main character/everyone, main character, main character's rival. (The girl characters are both generic girl characters there for the fanservice so I'm not including them.)
ANSWER KEY=> (view spoiler)

The whole cast is just a collection of stereotypes that we've already seen in every anime and manga ever created ever. The main character is some super special twerp with a face that annoys me everytime I see his stupid grin, and who shouts "I wanna be a hero!!!!!" almost literally every other lines he speaks, and who of course has a sob story background. He has a smug rival from the academy who is also powerful and has a strong case of eighth-grade syndrome. The 1st in command of their firefighting troupe is the supportive, inspirational, strong guy whose quirk is that he likes working out all the time. The 2nd in command of their troupe is the cliché mean smart guy with glasses and short bangs that bullies the main character/everyone. I hate how you can tell exactly what kind of character he's going to be just from his character design. Actually, I can also say that for literally every single character in this manga, which is why I made that little game up there.

THE CHARACTERS WERE SO BORING! AND FRUSTRATING! And also kind of trippy, I'm not going to lie. I couldn't believe that Ohkubo was literally just throwing characters from other manga at me, BUT HE LITERALLY WAS!! I almost still can't even believe it. I'm getting war flashbacks from Black Torch which was another completely recycled piece of shonen disappointment.

Also one last note on the character designs: They are the epitome of a letdown. I mean--obviously--given what I said above. But on top of that, the designs are also just honestly nothing! They're so plain! Just compare them to Ohkubo's character designs for his Soul Eater manga:

image of lineup

Like? Are you kidding me? Those blow the character designs from Fire Force out into another dimension, never to be seen again (I wish).

So yeah. The characters=shit. How about the ~story~? Yeah honestly I can't even say much about that. We see the MC go on a couple firefighting missions, learn his sob story, and the introduction of a ****TOURNAMENT AAAAARRRCCC****. Which, you know what, disregard this whole review because honestly the only thing we really truly need in a shonen series is to have a tournament arc, so show's over this is already a 10/10. i am being sarcastic please end me

Now, I know what you're thinking: With all of this being said, how in the world did this illustrated garbage manage to salvage 2 whole stars from me? Well you know what, I have no idea how, but it still had some semblance of entertainment value and actually made me want to keep reading throughout the whole volume. Granted, a lot of that last part was because I couldn't believe it could be this bad and I was trying to find out when it would start getting better.

Still! Even after finishing this volume I want to read more, and lucky me, when I bought the first volume I also bought the SECOND volume because I'm just that far ahead thinking y'all. I thought this was supposed to be a good series from the coveted Atsushi Ohkubo, okay?! So yeah. Prepare yourselves for that review. It may or may not be coming soon, since I'm terrible. The suspense! *Edit:* It's out! Read it for yourself below!


Please consider giving this review a "Like" if you've made it this far, it helps me out a lot! And follow me if you want more!
Click to read my other Fire Force Reviews:
Volume 1* | Volume 2

*Current review


View all my reviews
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Review: 寄宿学校のジュリエット（３）

寄宿学校のジュリエット（３） by 金田陽介 My rating: 5 of 5 stars Brb, crying. Not actually, though. Like, I didn’t shed any actual tears or even get close to it, it’s just that this series… is so good . The romance between Romeo and Juliet is still weirdly innocent, but the actual story is so engrossing and entertaining. It also seems like almost literally every single character is complex and interesting and multi-layered. (Only the background characters like Maru’s lackeys are undeveloped, but honestly they really don’t need any development anyway.) The relationships between characters keep getting more and more complex, and the situations that the characters have to deal with are also super juicy. This is such an addicting series. My initial problem with Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was that it seemed pretty unhealthy and one-sided to me. Later, I found it very weird how sexually immature they both are, and how un-intimate their relationship is. What is interest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Lulu Is a Rhinoceros

Lulu Is a Rhinoceros by Jason Flom My rating: 3 of 5 stars The second I saw the cover of this book and read the synopsis I immediately thought that this was going to be a book that uses animals to create an allegory about transsexuality, as another installment in the growing genre of kid’s LGBTQA+ books. The whole "that's what she sees when she looks in the mirror" business felt really on the nose, and I feel like the authors purposefully used this wording in order to generate buzz around this book. In actuality, this felt like any other normal kids book. You have a character who feels misunderstood by their peers, and so they go on a "journey" to find and/or prove themselves and eventually end up finding peace with who they are and/or a group who accepts them. To me, the story was told in a way that presented Lulu like any other silly character in a children's book that had a silly problem stemming from their silly misco...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Bossypants

Bossypants by Tina Fey My rating: 3 of 5 stars Let me set the scene: Last week I was in Phys Ed class playing the ol' badminton. Our school only has one gym, and my class 60 kids. So you can imagine how cramped it was. Each team had 3 people on the court at a time, and yes, it was a mess. And then one of my partners slammed me in the right eyeball with their racquet. My glasses broke into three pieces as they tumbled to the hardwood gym floor. This was the second time my face had been assaulted resulting in broken frames, so you could say I was a broken-glasses veteran. With my experience I didn't freak out, just was slightly annoyed. Nothin' some good old super glue can't fix, right? So I tried to continue playing but I quickly realized that I could no longer keep my eye open. It felt extremely irritated and even if I shut just the one and kept the other open, it still hurt. When I closed both of them, then it was a little better. Re...
Post a Comment
Read more