I watched this weeks Fire Force right after and episode of Dr Stone that I absolutely adored but that also made me cry so it stands to reason that it tainted my experience. So in a way, looking over all these screencaps with you (and there are many) is a way for me to reset my brain and my interpretation of the episode before I write my review for 100 Word Anime
The very first thing I did when putting this post together is set my gif as a feature image and admire it a bit. I made it yesterday and I just wanted to make sure it was ok. And man, Fire Force is just great looking. That colour palette the forced perspective, the fake fisheye upshot that gives a curve to the skyline of the buildings. Basically this composition rocks. It just does.
The beginning of the episode takes place at dark night (which means fighting is afoot because all action in Fire Force takes place in darkened environments), and…everybody’s fighting.
I like how visually isolated Benimaru is. Every scene is either brimming with people or showing Beni all alone. It really sets the character apart and imbues him with a sense of awe and importance. He’d so grand, no one can even share the screen with him!
And this is probably just me, but I fond the one exposed arm look to seem particularly heroic here. Not sure why. Maybe it’s because the pale colours show up so much better againt the background creating a different silhouette.
I still love the fact that Shinra shows distress through smiling. In fact, throughout Fire Force, smiling has been a sign of trouble. With the exception of the wonderful Maki and delicate Iris, everyone else seems to be more the sadistic smiler types and you’re usually in trouble if you see them cheerful. (Twins included)
What’s with Shinra’s leg bones…He seems to have a rib cage where his calves should be.
I like that the twins are some form of fire kitsune. It’s just adorable. That’s all I have to say about it. I enjoy the visual, I hope we see them again!
We go from a dark cool night to a blood red one but oddly the red signifies that the fighting is over and peace has returned. It’s a rather unusual colour story. This said Fire Force really does use colour in some great ways, and always has.
I hope we get to see some glowing green soon. You know what I mean. Certain characters have glowing red eyes while others have blue. The same blue as the Fire Force uniforms. By keeping to accent glowingt colours very restrained they make them really pop. But I think there’s place to add in green and it would really stand out as it clashes with most of the palette of the show.
This week though, I notice some pretty obvious drop in art quality with distance. Some of the characters looked pretty wonky!
I don’t see it…I think Benimaru’s smiling face looks great. Is it just me? do you guys know what they’re talking about?
I should probably pop in every now and then to say how much I appreciate these threads. Summarising the show in pictures like this really does give you a pretty good appreciation of visual story telling.
I was wondering about Shinra’s leg bones, too. I’m thinking they allow for more jet blast? Maybe? So these flame-bugs can actually mutate you? These are burning horns rather than horns of flame on the Oni? Hm…
At this point I think I’m just writing these for us two and I am 100% o.k. with that.
I do think the bugs cause spontaneous jump mutation and you could justify it through some type of aggressive recombinant DNA dynamic… I doubt we’ll get an actual explanation but it’s fun to come up with one