Tamaki Kotatsu Deserved Better

This used to be a fan site. Then the prequel crap happened. Managed by @soul-dwelling

[fire-dwelling]

"As Tolkien said, in an interview in 1968, ‘human stories are practically always about one thing, aren’t they? Death. The inevitability of death.’"

...Goddamn it, Ohkubo...

[fire-dwelling]

With the anime finale, time to ramble again about why Fire Force doesn't work--for what may be the last time I devote this much attention to the franchise, and move onto whatever else I work on next.

So, one (badly formed) argument by someone I'm subtweeting seems to be, to paraphrase, that this is a series all about feeling over thinking, so that should be how you enjoy the series.

Maybe this could be my last rant ever and I get back to focusing on more important work, because anything I'm going to share here will summarize what I have already said online about Fire Force, Soul Eater, and even as wide as my philosophy of literature.

Three problems:

First, "feel over think" still doesn't hold up when there is enough in the story that crosses a line that takes you out of the story, whether because it exposes the stitches keeping a barely-held-together story together, or enters into an author's diatribe that disrupts the flow of the story all for the sake of a hack writer insisting his philosophy is ethical and not at all horrifyingly misogynistic and misanthropic.

Second, on a related note, you can't say "feel over think" when, again, the entire story is trying to communicate a set of morals that of course will make you stop and think.

Finally, as a story depending on nostalgia-bait, and for this particular reviewer that I am once again sub-tweeting, that it makes them feel good and will look back on fondly and will re-watch and makes them want to open Soul Eater again, that means the story is at its best because of the initial reaction it gives you. I'm not one to talk, as re-engaging with Soul Eater (more so the anime than the manga at this point) can tap into initial memories, or times when I enjoyed it because life was better or when it gave me a reprieve from bad situations, or let me meet friends or come upon new insights. However, the "feel, don't think" approach also means "don't think about the work of nostalgia"--and given my research, writing, and experiences, I'm not able to turn off the part of my brain that analyzes how a story works--and how it doesn't work.

The nostalgia-buzz does wear off. And it's difficult to call something nostalgic when the thing persists. Soul Eater was still around and as easily available as Fire Force during its entire release. I understand that one understanding of nostalgia is that it is utopian, seeking to get to something that never technically existed in the idealized form you imagine--but it's hard to be nostalgic for Soul Eater in itself when, again, it is on the same platforms to watch and read. I haven't tracked the merchandise and the ease of fan products to buy, but at least Soul Eater got a couple of video games to play on actual consoles as opposed to just smartphone games whose end of service will come at some point.

(And I am the one who made a fan blog that re-blogged quite a bit of content that I hope serves as an archive of what the fandom created and what the zeitgeist was with regard to how people viewed the series, the anime's ending, the manga's finale, all of NOT, the announcement of Fire Force, where the prequel structure went wrong, and, to a smaller degree of important, where I was in my emotional and analytical regard towards Soul Eater. So, with all of that re-blogging, organizing, nitpicking, and hyper-analyzing, I'm not one to talk about getting bit by the nostalgia bug.)

I'm losing track of my argument here, but what I'm trying to say is that "it makes me nostalgic" is a flawed way of analyzing whether a work of art is good. (I think an archive of a franchise and reactions to it can exist separately from an analysis of whether that franchise in itself constituted good art: a lot of the fan creations are good art, I think the first anime was pretty much excellent from beginning to most of the ending, I don't think Ohkubo's oeuvre has held up.) "It makes me feel nostalgic" is writing about your experiences with that art--but it's not in itself analysis of the art. It is a valid form of personal essay writing, and it can transition to analysis as to why a story still holds up. But to insist, again paraphrasing way too loosely the original review, "This story reminds me that Soul Eater exists, therefore it's good," is a really crappy argument.

(All of this also exposes a failure to define Shinra as a character: "he's just a dumb goofy shonen guy with a good heart who does the best he can to save the world" exposes that the character was lacking as a protagonist across the entire run, a set of cliches stitched together into a character. "But the entire series was about how shonen archetypes are good actually to help new readers understand the world!" That detail made up the last third of the manga, if I'm being charitable, which means two-thirds of the manga are trying to make you care about lost family, trauma, the rumor mill, and judging a book by its cover--before shrugging with a laugh and saying, "LOL actually this is about how you should boil things down to simplified storytelling ideas just to feel better about life and ignore terrifying situations of real life." Augustine this ain't. Hell, as many problems as I'm starting to have with Digital Circus, at least that series debates answers to these questions, not always coming up with answers I like--Jax is difficult to redeem as a character, pending whatever last-episode revelations we get--but acknowledging that people are messy and we are stuck having to choose whether to hold onto a grudge or let go for the sake of getting on with our lives. And, yeah, kind of the thought I need to take away to close the book on Fire Force, this franchise--and move on with my life. This franchise felt like it had potential to play with its own ideas about "external appearance versus interior self," "religion as both a danger and a tool"--and instead got reduced to fan-pandering for a reboot that probably will never come.)

[fire-dwelling]

Real classy to ride this entire finale off of nostalgia-bait--and not even pull off the last frames correctly.

Okay, so we're seriously going to stick to the "Next: Soul World" ridiculous final message so to be faithful to the manga? That sucks. (See my earlier post: enough with sticking so close to the manga that we might as well read the manga instead.)

But, okay, we added the Soul Eater logo--cool, good tip of the hat.

Then it burns a bit like a fireball. Um...Okay? If you ended it there, that'd be fine, a good blending of past and future, looking at what came before in the timeline (Fire Force) with that influence persisting into the new timeline (Soul Eater...even if pretty much nothing from Fire Force persists in any meaningful way that wasn't already self-contained in Soul Eater, making this prequel link even more pointless).

But nope, got to erase the entire Soul Eater logo to replace it with one of Pusu Pusu / Sputter. At best, it's giving Fire Force a last bow and the last word; at worst, it's again erasing Soul Eater, such that, even when this is supposed to be the start of its story, it gets snuffed out and Fire Force gets to ride on its coattails yet again.

Just...fuck.

[fire-dwelling]

As I only went quickly through everything in this finale: in the Japanese dub, did they not bring back any of the main four to even do a grunt or, for Maka, a small "oooo" for the last scene?

This already doesn't speak well to how the English dub will handle this.

Having not sat through this anime, I'm trusting what I read online that, okay, makes sense that you will not bring back Mignogna--thank God--as Spirit for that stupid cameo in the Assault episode, and bringing in Johnny Yong Bosch actually sounds like it would be a good fit. But did they not bring back Leah Clark as Blair for that same episode? (That Blair then pops up in this finale also doesn't encourage me.)

And I get that you likely can't afford or can't schedule Troy Baker back as Excalibur.

But it just seems shitty that it is incredibly likely that, if the main four didn't talk in the Japanese dub, then, yeah, probably not getting Solusod, Karbowski, Haberkorn, and very definitely Bailey back one more time for some quick reaction noises in the last minutes of this series.

"We'll get them back for the reboot--" No.

I'm staring at the list of voice directors for this English dub. (Like, most of these directors are good at what they do, but it is bizarre how many different ones this series went through, I hope just because of scheduling). Was it really impossible to just get the Soul Eater director back? Zach Bolton even came back to work on NOT; I know many of us, for good reason, did not anticipate Fire Force being a prequel (because that was, and still is, a stupid idea), but once you figured that out, and had a change in directors anyway, why not bring Bolton back? Looking at its credits in the last two years, I'm guessing his work as producer kept him busy (...although still annoying they didn't have him produce Fire Force when it was already produced in part by Funimation/Crunchyroll itself...).

[fire-dwelling]

If you're adapting a manga, shouldn't you, you know, adapt it? Because this final episode, visually and in terms of storyboarding, dropped the ball on that detail once again.

"But isn't it cool that we got GIFs now of the main cast as little kids and get to see Maka's mom?"

In the last three years, almost any of us could've colored those manga panels and moved the "camera" across the panel to evoke the same idea to make similar GIFs. That's not an insult to the work animators put into these scenes; it's a reality that we didn't get something that we could've done with fewer resources--it's a choice made for the sake of doing the bare minimum, and it is not deserving of the over-praise fans are giving the direction of those scenes.

What is with this trend of just making the anime always look identical to the manga panels? That's lazy.

At least My Hero Academia in the first two seasons knew which panels were iconic and needed to be storyboarded almost exactly to the original manga panels.

But now we're getting a new One Piece, and the fixation is, "Let's make the scene of Zoro and those two kids on Usopp's island look just like the manga panels, because we don't like the Toei version"? Oh, yeah, sure, why do something different that might tease out a new interpretation, when you can just draw the scene, barely animated, to look just like the original manga panels--genius! No one has ever done that with basic Adobe software for dubbed "motion comics"--I am so fucking glad we get to recycle One Piece yet again and just make it the same thing we already got in manga and anime form--fucking genius!

Ugh.

At least the live action One Piece tries to vary the story beats.

This, by the way, is also why I have zero confidence today for a reboot of Soul Eater: it'll just be, "Here, it's just like the original manga panels!" No. I want what works. If the original panel works for a storyboard, cool, go with it. If it doesn't work, then you better change it to suit the different medium that is animation.

[soul-dwelling]

Do you think Ohkubo having a War on Terror analogy in Soul Eater yet then justifieng the Bush analoge in that situation - Lord Death - reveals his reactionary tendencies that lead to our current day cheeto hitler?

As a hater against Dubya, it is still galling to me that I missed the analogy in Soul Eater.

I think in part it is my resistance to reading flaws in Lord Death, especially as, hell no, I am not about to compare Lord Death to that blood-soaked Iraqi-killing illiterate fascistic dumb motherfucker.

But, even as I'm resisting that reading, that does mean I have to ask what that moment is doing here to comment on Lord Death, or, like we unfortunately got later with the Tamaki stanning at the end of Fire Force, whether this is Ohkubo on his soapbox and forcing his message through Kid and/or Lord Death without thinking how this doesn't match their characterization and is just an excuse to get his message to the reader.

And, yeah, as you suggest, the moment does read as justifying Dubya's bullshit. So, are we saying Lord Death is similar to Dubya? Does that mean Lord Death, regardless what we like about him, still has, at best, flaws and, at worst, is not a good guy? Or, is does it mean that, because we like Lord Death, and now Lord Death is acting like Dubya, that we should like Dubya? The former is compelling because we know Lord Death has flaws and has fucked up, so of course we need to face that he has screwed up and may still be screwing up, so comparing him to that dumb Republican stooge works. But if it's the latter, hell no, trying to make Dubya look good by comparing him to the high-pitch goofy school master and Kid's father is a non-starter.

You refer to Ohkubo as reactionary; I don't know whether he is. I appreciate that we should separate author from artist. However, it is difficult to do so for two reasons. First, there are consistencies across his works--the soapboxing with Lord Death and Kid, the soapboxing with Tamaki--that are so much a part of style and content that it is difficult to act like those are not his actual beliefs coming into the text. And second, each moment stops the story dead in its tracks such that it is hard to read either moment as done to inform us about plot and character and instead are there to speak about a contemporary moment: Dubya's fascistic murderous campaign in the 2000s, the anti-feminist misogyny that persisted and worsened post-2016 and existed well before 2016.

It is one thing for a story to be of its time and to have its political message be so obvious; it's another for such a story to remain timeless. Low-blow on my part to praise one story for aligning more closely with my beliefs and values than another, but the Lord Death moment was not as well done as, say, "Patriot Act" was done in Justice League Unlimited. Obviously "Patriot Act," like all of the Timm Justice League series, is a product of its time, so certain references will be dated; hell, that gag about Clinton in Superman about "it touched the President's lips" / "what hasn't" is of its time. But even as "Patriot Act" was obviously commenting, by the title alone, about governmental overreach, it still resonates even today and is timeless enough even if you don't immediately think how Rumsfeld-like Eiling is in his mockery of Stargirl and Shining Knight. "Patriot Act" still holds up for me; something about Lord Death's moment just doesn't. And yet, "Patriot Act" was reacting to its own larger political zeitgeist--that is absolutely reactionary.

But to get back to your question: I say all of this not sure that Ohkubo is reactionary, even as I just pointed to two cases of him responding to contemporary details, Dubya and the post-2016 Me Too movement. I don't want to call him reactionary because, as I said, just about all art responds to its cultural moment, as Justice League did.

But Ohkubo is a self-described misanthrope. (I can't blame him with how badly so many people are acting, but we are not the same: he thinks so little of humanity period, I hate specific people for not behaving at the bare minimum of what it means to be human.) And that unfortunately is what I have taken away from him since Chapter 113 of Soul Eater: I think he expects the worst of people, and it's how we get him pretty much shrugging about what Dubya did, shrugging about why girls and women may be just a wee bit fucking furious at the misogyny and are not going to take kindly to how he writes Tamaki, and why I think Soul Eater and Fire Force have such cynical endings ("reduce desire for parental love to just a boob fetish," "religion is bad, but people are dumb and need religion to feel better or they get depressed and full of despair").

This is what makes Fire Force so unappealing as an ending and why I think the anime's adaptation of that finale is going to be so demoralizing: it is still perpetuating a despair that things just such and, even as you remake the world, the shit is still there, so you just overlook it and put a shiny new coat of paint on it to ignore the actual problem or solving the problem. At least when The Life of Brian ends with "Bright Side of Life," that is grim and dark and has dimensions about whether you actually are supposed to look at the bright side of life or, as the song also says, life is really just a piece of shit. I don't get that dimensionality with Fire Force; I get an ending that rushed everything so that we can have fans debating over stupid shit like whether those two kids are both Shinra's and which one is the child of which mother.

And as I said elsewhere recently, it's not only that his tendencies led to Orange Hitler--it's two things: yes, his tendencies led to Orange Hitler, but only insofar as he was in this global atmosphere contributing to the factors that led to Orange Hitler. He is both a creator and a responder: he is creating stuff that led to him, and he is using his art to respond to what led to him--it is not as simple as "he created this" or "he is the product of it," it is a continuous cycle that reinforces what is already there. The misogyny is already in our culture: Ohkubo contributes to it, he is influenced by it, he is both perpetuator of it and victim of it, he is both contributing to that Nazi getting into the White House again and influenced by that Nazi's fascism and misogyny being normalized.

[fire-dwelling]

...

Okay.

This is definitely me being self-indulgent after posting pretty much nothing on my fan blogs for a year--but, yeah, I anticipated what was obvious and just followed to the logical conclusion that of course "are those Shinra's kids" would be pretty much the second-most talked about point of that finale, because that finale was lacking in substance.

(If you want an example of how empty this finale was, look up a certain article that refers to it as the new standard for shonen finales--because, God no, it isn't, and the fact that that particular article is pretty much just repeating that same thesis statement without evidence, whether for fear of spoilers or just lack of evidence, makes it miserable reading.)

It's just that, it is a bit (dryly) amusing that this post is from almost a year ago.

And sure enough, as I said above: "I get an ending [in the Fire Force manga] that rushed everything so that we can have fans debating over stupid shit like whether those two kids are both Shinra's and which one is the child of which mother."

And from what I have seen online: if people aren't clamoring still for a reboot, it's still, "Are those Shinra's kids," with the anime deciding, "Sure, hair color says so, why not."

Like, a year ago I said, "We're just going to end up hearing everyone asking whether those kids are Shinra's," and that is the major takeaway people have from a bad ending--because there is nothing else there to this ending.

Don't even get me started on what that says about Inka and Shinra.

And that is pretty much one of the only major questions people had--when they aren't glazing over an underwhelming finale that still, for me anyway, wrecks a lot of what made Soul Eater good.

(And as furious as Fire Force makes me, and as tiresome as I said it is to see people clamoring for a Soul Eater reboot, I don't have the wherewithal, energy, or bitterness to be negative on a Soul Eater blog and accidentally directing any ire at Soul Eater fans who, I hope, got something good out of this shitty finale, and I hope don't take away from that shitty finale the shitty messages and ethics it is trying to pass along.)

(Oh, and far more important than any of the above, I have little to add about my earlier remarks a year ago regarding the state of politics in the United States. Yes, voters, thankfully, have done the correct thing and voted for Democrats in special elections--after most of those shitheads couldn't be bothered to just vote for Democrats in 2024. Nothing has gotten better under Republican control of government and economics as they destroy world peace. So, fuck you. Fuck all y'all that still couldn't listen to this message two years and decided screwing over Biden and Harris was worth it in order to hurt people. "But can't we just talk about manga and--" No: fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.)

(And now, aside from some quick pissy comments I'll post in a moment, time for me to hide away from fan blogs until any time I got something substantive to say: later.)

[fire-dwelling]

The death drive of the American Nazi Party (also known as the Republican Party), and their Iowan senator saying it is fine to eliminate governmental services and their funding because everyone is going to die anyway, is part of what is just so flat-out annoying with Ohkubo's later work: we are not here to be close to death, we are here to live, we are here to help each other, "make death closer" is not a fucking answer.

Like, I'm resisting just typing "Ohkubo, handshake emoji, Joni Ernst," but that is about where things are. I don't write this to say he endorses this shit; I write this to say he is both responding to a zeitgeist and feeding into the problems within this current moment, a product of the moment and a cause of it in a vicious cycle.

(The Republican Party lies about the Affordable Care Act / Obamacare leading to "death panels" while they create Elmo Muskrat's meme panel to decide who lives and who dies like Crow T. Robot, and it is so fucking miserable.)

[fire-dwelling]

The fact this same web site posts news about a webtoon site using AI to animate its comics, but the post reads like a press release and offers no insights as to why this may be a bad thing, is also why I wouldn't play well with others: if I saw that on my site, I'd call its inclusion on my site absolute shit.

[fire-dwelling]

In addition to a reply to at least one submission, I'll have to write about a review of the new season, because--oh boy--the coping.

The review I read even had to go so far as to say what sounded as if the writer was saying that things are much worse because of COVID and United States fascism, so don't take this admittedly lacking series from them--and, nah, I'm not here for that.

I said what I said before, let people enjoy what they enjoy. But this still ain't it: that kind of talk is the same nihilism as this series. We're in this mess because of the kind of misogyny in our world that this series trades in, so, no, you don't get to say, "Let me enjoy what I enjoy," when you still need to interrogate the mess we are in. What, we're just supposed to shrug as if we are, to repeat myself, Juggernaut and Honda shrugging at how weird the world has become? Hell no.

Fire Force should not be the story of our times: the series is so pessimistic as to inspire zero confidence how this world moves forward.

[fire-dwelling]

I know I should follow the advice, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

But this particular reviewer at a big enough web site (yeah, I'm subtweeting instead of naming names) writes just dog-shit reviews.

And it is galling, especially when I think about reviews I have written about certain comics and films and TV series, and I think they have a unique perspective, are distinctly me, and actually dig into the art of what is presented--the animation, the illustrations, the paneling, the acting, the music, the plotting, the character progression.

But what I write never gets clicks and never leads to additional opportunities. I'm aware of some of the reasons, whether my writing is too academic, that I don't simplify my points and summarize them with a number score or letter grade, or, as the following is going to demonstrate, I ramble and don't dig down and focus on a few key points and, as demonstrated above, let petty grievances get in the way of collaborative work.

In other words, some of my annoyance with the dog-shit reviews I read is personal petty jealousy. But some of this is also my ongoing counter-argument against claims that Fire Force is at all good. As such, I hope there is something a bit objective in what I have to say about how this particular set of reviews of this final season are just flat-out bad.

Even the weak argument that, according to this reviewer, Tamaki's fanservice was used effectively in this episode and is so over-the-top that I can't help but laugh, is just not true. It isn't used effectively. It is bizarre how this particular person claims they never liked the Tamaki gags--but then turns around and suddenly finds this funny enough now when, as I'll elaborate, there is nothing there--the gag isn't even good, and this reviewer seems to have lost so much enjoyment in the current slate of what is out there that this morsel is enough. That they even cite a better work by the same studio, Undead Unluck, that does the same fanservice gags but better, is even more annoying.

And, weirdly, as offensive as Ohkubo is, it never goes far enough to circle around to be audacious, creative, groundbreaking, norm-smashing, sex-positive, life-affirming, or at all good.

I brought up Undead Unluck because this reviewer brought it up--and that series did all of these details so much better, if I may spoil that series: an approaching apocalypse, defying God Themselves, rebooting the world, remaking the world to make it fair, amassing a team of bizarre quirky characters, plenty of attractive characters and sexually charged energy and fanservice gags that in some cases cross the line before finally growing up and stopping with that shit--and it's all from David Productions. Like, stop watching Fire Force--Undead Unluck is right there. I mean, don't give Disney money to watch that, but at least you can read the actual manga.

If I may go on a diatribe, I remember attending an anime convention and striking up a conversation with one of the artists/vendors, around the time Kill La Kill came out--and she, with absolute sincerity, praised that show up and down for being so over-the-top and, in her opinion, hot. I don't quite have that same mindset about Kill La Kill (certain moments cross lines that take me out of the show). But I can at least point to that show, and even Keijo, and call those so over-the-top that, yes, that is too silly and audacious to not get attention regardless whether it is done well and regardless how offensive it may be. Kill La Kill had effort; I can't stand Keijo but it at least tried; Undead Unluck was shockingly good; Fire Force didn't even try.

That's what is so galling about Fire Force and certain reviewers defending the choices. Even the most offensive stuff in Fire Force is still so lazily done.

If I may diatribe again, it feels like the equivalent of that white supremacist telling anti-Puerto Rican jokes at Madison Square Garden to campaign for Orange Hitler in 2024. Ignore Jon Stewart cheering on that fucking racist because they're buddies and fellow so-called comedians (in the year of our lord 2025, Jon Stewart is not a comedian, he's a hack). And set aside that Jon Stewart's white supremacist buddy was flat-out racist (I haven't even gotten into his racist remarks about Black people). Set aside all of that--he just was hacky and not funny. It's not just how inhuman, offensive, racist, and un-American that fucker was--it's offensive also because it is so lazy, hacky, boring, and cliche. It's bad enough to be a bigot; it's also bad to be bad at your supposed job. This is the inverse of Britta saying "I can overlook bigotry but I draw the line at [X]": the bigotry is bad, but being a bad comedian is also bad craftsmanship. I hate citing Seinfeld, but it's that gag about the dentist: it's offensive not just on grounds of bigotry, it's offensive to comedy itself.

That is what Fire Force feels like with Tamaki: it's offensive not just because it's offensive, it's offensive also because it's badly done. It's just a bad joke, cliche, not creative. It's trying to be Mel Brooks, and it takes such an amount of courage, creativity, comedy, and something substantive to share to get to that level that Brooks is at--and it just doesn't work because it's not courageous, it's not creative, it's not funny, it has no message--it's just some pathetic man deciding this stupid fanservice gag needs to be shared.

[fire-dwelling]

It should've been "Shinra time traveled, and that created the Soul Eater world."

By which I mean, when Shinra came back to his present, it was now the Soul Eater world, and whatever changed in the past is what led to everything up to the "present" of Soul Eater, including Asura already being sealed--because it is such a mess to say "Shinra changed the world, 800 years pass, and somehow the world 800 years later still looks pretty much the same."

And this is along with somehow JFK and other historical figures having existed--meaning, based on what Ohkubo originally wrote in Fire Force and Soul Eater, there was our real world where JFK existed, then Shinra rebooted the world, and now there is another iteration of JFK to appear in Granny's report in NOT.

[fire-dwelling]

To understand my argument--or, rather, whining--about the problems of nostalgia in Fire Force:

Read Edgar Allan Poe's "Tamerlane"

Read Servamp and look at Tsubaki's melancholia

Watch the MGM short "The Little Mole"

It's all about escape to the past.

Tamerlane wants to get to the home he no longer has.

Tsubaki wants to get to the home he no longer has.

And "The Little Mole" is the literal Shinra problem: "Go back to the familiar, even if it's just an illusion."

[fire-dwelling]

My friend elliotthezubat had it right when they figured out what Joker needed: if this is the Batman of this series, give that man his own Bat-family of sidekicks.

Joker needed more than just Viktor as his Alfred/Lucius.

Heck, make Joker more like Sherlock with the Baker Street Irregulars.

It would even help clarify the multiculturalism of the new post-apocalypse Japan--including the failure of a society to do enough for all who are marginalized in their society.

This series already was lacking in a serious interrogation about what happens when Japan becomes the new center of the world and all the cultural tensions within it. At most, we get lip service about Ogun's ancestor and the obvious inclusion of people with non-Japanese surnames, as well as Benimaru's reactionary uber-nationalism.

But imagine if this was more like Bungo Stray Dogs, with so many orphans around (...who don't just get killed off for drama), and Joker has his lot as his informants, keeping an eye on things, scrounging like Yu for the tech they need, and being the eyes and ears he needs around town to know what is going on. It'd be a bit of worldbuilding that clarifies how Joker is able to know all that he knows. Plus, it fills in the gaps about just which kind of people from different parts of the world are in Tokyo but may not have been able to assimilate as well as others, and why we want Shinra to win and why this current world needs to be destroyed and rebuilt--so that there can be a more stable new world where there aren't a ton of orphans without families, homes, and futures. Hell, it'd fit with what Shinra and even Arthur went through, becoming practically orphans themselves.

[fire-dwelling]

In addition to a reply to at least one submission, I'll have to write about a review of the new season, because--oh boy--the coping.

The review I read even had to go so far as to say what sounded as if the writer was saying that things are much worse because of COVID and United States fascism, so don't take this admittedly lacking series from them--and, nah, I'm not here for that.

I said what I said before, let people enjoy what they enjoy. But this still ain't it: that kind of talk is the same nihilism as this series. We're in this mess because of the kind of misogyny in our world that this series trades in, so, no, you don't get to say, "Let me enjoy what I enjoy," when you still need to interrogate the mess we are in. What, we're just supposed to shrug as if we are, to repeat myself, Juggernaut and Honda shrugging at how weird the world has become? Hell no.

Fire Force should not be the story of our times: the series is so pessimistic as to inspire zero confidence how this world moves forward.

[fire-dwelling]

yeah I think, and I hope that was not Ohkubo's intention, a real cynical intepretation of the Fire Force ending, of it being basically pro totall escapism and nostalgia pandering. Especially with things like Dragons being more emphasised, where as Soul Eater, even if it had magical creatures like fairys, to me allways had a more creepy than "magical" in the sacherine atmosphere. What I mean, it was a world of actually evi witches, of actuall monsters, urban legends, serial killers, dark experiments, lovecraft creatures, lynchian stuff even. But the Fire Force ending has the tone of "look at all the fun dragonquest stuff, haha its like a dungeons and dragons session, lets just live like that forever, do not grow up and go into the workforce, just larp with your friends that you are heroes while the real world gets taken over by reactionarys and techno fascists" Maybe the actually brave, yet probably controversial response knowing how incels and other trolls rejected Joker 2 for that reason, would have been if the Soul Eater world was what either the villians wanted or a bad compromise, with the story actively rejecting this warm escape into the familiar and then ending back in the real world, paying off the mixed-media stuff. Yet maybe I'm being too critical, still I just felt that return-to-the-womb flavor in Ohkubo, especially when the work seemed such a thematic sequel, with the charachter ages and graduating school and all, so yeah the loop is kinda depresing, especially with Ohkubo seemingly giving up on making manga - it seems that the ending is even more sadder "Ah, its too hard, I'll don't try anymore and just cling to the one work that everyone knows me for" Again, I shouldn't attack him for that even if it where true, because we probably all struggle with some sense of wanting to return or stay stuck in a comfortable rut... Still I hope one day Ohkubo one day does a work that not only evolves what he did previously, while not doing the same problematic mistakes, so he can finally grow but maybe this is just a childish hope in it's own way. (also for context, Joker 2 was basically about how the whole hype for Joker was an unhealthy escape fantasy that ignored the real human behind the make up, and just like the "fans" in the movie rejected the man so did the real world "fans" reject the movie for ruining their wanton fantasy, so yeah probably many would have been angry for Ohkubo "rejecting soul eater and it's fans")

(In which my response ends up spoiling today's Daredevil finale, DuckTales 2017, Black Lightning, Archie Sonic, and throws in some remarks about Dan Da Dan--because evidently there is a lot of pop culture stuff that has been on my mind, so I'm just going to ramble about that stuff, too.)

Yes, as the ending of Fire Force came across to me as saying escapism is great, it fails for me on its own merits as an ending and also ends up contradicted by Soul Eater anyway where the problems Shinra supposedly stopped either came back (the Evangelist may as well just be the Madness of Fear) or take on new forms (as you bring up, witches--and even that is hinted as a problem Shinra could’ve stopped, but he didn’t stop Inka, and that has its own uncomfortable implications, that if Shinra had eliminated Inka, which may still not have solved the problem, or impregnate her, which he may have actually done given all the debates who his children are, so that also didn’t solve the problem of witches). 

And yes, it is nostalgia pandering, as we have discussed--and it will be tiresome to me how much people really want this Fire Force ending to get people into Soul Eater when, sorry, Soul Eater can stand on its own merits, it already attracted a large audience, Fire Force will of course keep bringing new people to Soul Eater but not because of the prequel connection but because people will say, “I like this manga, I wonder what else its author also made,” making the prequel shit pointless because of course someone who enjoys Fire Force would check out literally anything else that the creator of Fire Force made. 

It is bizarre how few dragons appear in Soul Eater. We got the ones trapped in Noah’s book, and we got Maka in color chapter art strapped to one to go flying--that’s it. This is the equivalent of a story having one really bizarre rule so that their series avoids a cliche: for DuckTales 2017, they didn’t want a mine chase because, weirdly, they said that was unrealistic (...you’re a talking duck show), and Ohkubo had few dragons, whether because he really did have an idea for Fire Force long ago and was playing a decades-long long-game, or, more likely, it just wouldn’t be as interesting as all the other stuff he added. (And there was the dragon that Crona killed in the anime.) 

But yeah, Soul Eater was always magical but creepy about it. Even the artwork leaned into that: as much as people will find Maka adorable, there is always something off and unsettling, in some cases just because of how she is drawn: Ohkubo’s style has always been in development, about the only version of humans he drew that looked, for lack of better words, generically “normal” or generically “anime-like,” were towards the end of Soul Eater, throughout NOT, and up until the big prequel reveal in Fire Force. And of course Studio BONES did the skull-head redesign for the characters, all of which made even the humans look as frightening as the otherworldly stuff they were encountering. That all worked for its style and, as you pointed out, meant that even a supposedly normal girl like Maka still fit in visually with monsters, urban legends, serial killers, dark experiment, Lovecraft, and Lynch. This isn’t Dan Da Dan, which, while excellent, definitely angles its humans to look typical, even if a bit cartoonish in some spots, especially with hair, with any other surprising visual details to their design being within the realm of "it's an anime, of course people will have weird hair." And it’s not like putting Bonnie Hood into Darkstalkers to look, in most cases, normal compared albeit from a fairy tale compared to the others she battles. No, Maka always looked a little off, and even if that’s not intentional--just a reality that no drawing will ever look entirely realistic--it still helped sell the visuals of Soul Eater: everyone is off here, this is a different world even as it resembles ours, it is magical. And it just feels like Fire Force over-explained all of that with its “the world was once 3D, now it’s more 2D, and finally it’s just a cartoon.” It’s like a bad Garth Ennis story (...which explains that awful Dick Dastardly comic years ago). 

If any of the dragon stuff persisted from Fire Force to Soul Eater, I think I would have been impressed: “Oh! Fire Force explains this thing in Soul Eater that seemed like it had one and only one answers but was never answered--that’s great, so glad to have that answered!” But Soul Eater rarely explained anything, leaving it to readers to imagine their own back stories, such that whatever the prequel did would never match readers’ expectations. In other words, if Fire Force was to answer something about Soul Eater, it at least better be a good answer--and it wasn’t. Now you’re telling me there were dragons, but, whoops, no more of that, got to go to the Soul Eater aesthetic: that’s worse, because now you made Soul Eater more boring, and you killed off any dragon sightings. If Ohkubo could not think of a creative spin of dragons, who cares, just put dragons in, that sounds awesome. 

You point to how this is like a story about not growing up. Is there any Peter Pan motif that could have made Shinra’s behavior and this ending more meaningful and poignant? Depending on intertextual references and literary allusions isn’t enough, but it’s not as if Ohkubo didn’t shy away from them, whether they amounted to much (Lewis Carroll references pop up in the Book of Eibon arc, but they seem perfunctory rather than helping clarify details or enrich that story). It's also weird for Shinra: yes, he modeled himself as a typical shonen hero, complete with a Kamen Rider motif, but compared to other shonen heroes, some of whom are far older than him, he never struck me as an over-grown kid playing out a childhood fantasy. Even as a character who was dealing with childhood trauma, he never felt like he was stuck in arrested development and refused to grow up, so his insistence on making the world edgy and cool is either my misunderstanding of the character or a failure of the story to give Shinra enough characterization so that this is something he would obviously do or something he would never do and as such this is bad writing or to send a message that something is wrong with Shinra.

I refuse to sit through either Joker movie, especially after the director’s obnoxious remarks for the first film; same reason I despise how people use the images from that film for their reaction images when, no, that is not your hero. (Spoilers, but I swear, after the Daredevil finale today, there are going to be people misunderstanding why Fisk is the fucking bad guy and instead are going to act like what Fisk is doing is admirable and cool.) But I can’t ignore that, yes, the second Joker film was definitely a middle finger (correctly) to the fans who liked the first film for the wrong reasons. I appreciate the second film having a different message and one that is more meaningful and not encouraging the worst behavior out of the worst people. I don’t know whether Fire Force has a message as dangerous as I think the first Joker film did, but as someone in the US, I see Joker having more direct influence on the US audience. (I'm sure there is something to say about how we have a Joker in both, well, Joker and also Fire Force. However, beyond being a Batman within Fire Force, I don't exactly know why we needed him to be called Joker, have the playing card motif, and so on aside from being, ahem, a wild card.)

You’re onto something about what if the Soul Eater world was like that because of a bad compromise. That could’ve worked, that what Haumea was asking for was going to have drawbacks later down the line--but Ohkubo can’t bother with that, got to contradict what Haumea’s characterization was up to now to rush this ending, make her the most precious bean that gets off the hook, and bring back Inka to wreck havoc. (Funny how Sumire and the First Pillar look at this new Soul Eater world that, by the idea you present, should suit them--and nope the hell right out to utter oblivion rather than live through this setting.) 

And yes, the villains getting what they want would help pay off the mixed-media stuff, and maybe even the meta stuff.  

Your idea is similar to how the Archie Comics, badly, rebooted the Sonic comics after the Ken Penders problems. I am no fan of Ian Flynn’s writing--but at least the reboot had it be “Eggman did it and ruined everything,” with what started as lasting repercussions…before everyone just has to forget that stuff and move on with more funny animal shenanigans. It’s as bad as Black Lightning in its final season struggling with a recast and having the older adult figure pretty much say, “This is the new Jenn, just deal with it and move on,” before, spoilers, even back-tracking on that. 

And, yeah, I am still going on with my shit that I wanted Ohkubo to move on and grow with his art. We go from Maka and company being still in school to Shinra and the others pretty much being near or out of school (which, again, is why having Tamaki at 17 but still perved on is gross and, while still would have been misogynistic, utterly stupid that you don’t just make her an adult if you’re going to keep perving on her). And yet it never feels like Shinra and others are dealing with young adult problems. I know this is a shonen fantasy, but why the change of ages if you’re not growing with the story? 

We’ll have to see what is next for Ohkubo: he likely will keep making art somewhere, even if for himself or commissioned for another game or someone else’s story. 

[fire-dwelling]

Ohkubo would probably try to say that the samey uniforms are there to reflect how in the adult world, there is a sense of conformity or something - but the reality, and I don't blame him for that, is probably him realising that switching from a monthly to a weekly timeframe will mean that elaborate costumes will get really tiring so he did something that one can easily do without too much stress - think that also explains the whitness of the look of the series in general, less time spent on colouring in shading etc.

And as a prequel to Soul Eater, it again becomes, "Isn't this new world Shinra made more exciting, where you don't have to dress same-y?" Then I could be reading Soul Eater instead of same-y Fire Force--shocker that I prefer Soul Eater.

The adult world idea is a dimension I didn't think about and bothers me: it again is this refusal to grow up, to say "things change, you get older"--it's why the retreat to being a Soul Eater prequel bothers me, it refuses to move forward and implies that you can't retain anything from the past, it's all or nothing, either you are full-blown nostalgic or you put everything from childhood into the closet. That's not how life works: you live, you learn, you retain what you like, you keep practicing what values you learn, life is a continuum of time and each stage of your development from child to adult is on that timeline and not subject to a goddamn reboot where suddenly you magically instantly transform. (It's like that Camp Lazlo gag: puberty doesn't suddenly immediately transform you into a new being.)

Yes, the reality of keeping up a weekly format is also part of it. Soul Eater also had its large swaths of white space in some parts, although it didn't bother me as much because, first, I wasn't reading monthly so much as only getting into the series when it was at its final chapters, and second, as you point out, there were enough other intricate details in the art that I'm going to focus on how cool a pose or costume looks over worrying about white space in the background or coloring.

[fire-dwelling]

but now when I think about it, was any of the main Fire Force cast more compelling than any of the main Soul Eater cast? Especially Shinra seems a kinda boring protagonist, with even his insecurities feeling very tame and as the bare minum of "look he is not a generic self-insert shonen guy"

As much criticism, appropriate or not, that fan works get for catering to what the audience wants, I get more enjoyment from what fans produce because it's actually engaging with who the characters are, even if it doesn't serve the plot as well as it should. Hibana hardly interacts with Iris after they make up and is just perving on underage Shinra; Maki has her arc with her family and that's it; Akitaru's back story is just that he was a firefighter and we don't even know the name of his chief; Takehisa had a compelling back story but it is "Aizawa's back story in Vigilantes" levels of unneeded and undeveloped. (No wonder Aizawa's back story has so many Trigger allusions: I'll get to this later, but nothing like making Aizawa's back story function more on style than substance, so of course you refer to Trigger, a studio that thrives on style more than substance. Oh, and just pure coincidence the same English dub actor is both Takehisa and Aizawa.)

I'll get to this later about Shinra could have been either a celebration of the generic guy or a subversion, but this all feels like Ohkubo thumbing his nose at the audience; he literally had the second Nether arc kill off three barely-named people and made sure to give two of them the most cliche back stories (one being an expecting father) and the third a silly one (he really wanted to try out his new running shoes) as if to tell the audience, "This is all a story, it is paint-by-numbers, there is no depth or challenge--it is generic to talk about how every religion has the same generic storyline," and then he doesn't do enough to subvert those storylines, so you're readnig a story that is about how stories are all cliche and boring--which then makes Fire Force cliche and boring.

When the only excitement is probably Arthur versus Dragon, and that is only mere spectacle, who gives a shit? And it is going to gall me when the anime watchers see that fight adapted and lose their minds over "how well animated it is" instead of realizing this was all leading to a substanceless story.

Fuck, I still haven't watched Promare, but reading a recent blog post elsewhere, it really is what Fire Force could have been in terms of actually saying something--and that came from Trigger, which, yeah, not going to make any friends here, is at worst overly hyped or at best correctly hyped but is the very definition of a company that thrives on spectacle and style with little thought into substance, meaning, or purpose. (Let's see how the Panty and Stocking sequel thrives in our post-Me Too post-2024 fascistic era.)

In other words, just about every character in Fire Force has that potential--and then the story itself doesn't work.

Shinra should have cried more as a teen. I remember reading TV Tropes calling it "narm" how little kid Shinra crying looked just awkward and even like a devil and horrifying. That kid just lost his mother and brother--that reaction is so disturbing not because Shinra is devilish but because he is heartbroken--it is horrific because that is how much pain he is in. I think that engagement with just crying would have worked better: if you're going to rip off of Rin from Blue Exorcist, then go 100 percent, don't half-ass it, make him have strong emotional reactions to things so we get that he is a feeling person, which then makes his glee at reuniting with Sho all the stronger. Hell, the story even failed at making his reunion with his mother have any weight. All of this made him feel so like a typical shonen stereotype--and the story acts like that was the point all along, between people misunderstanding him (Naruto) so they imagine him as his doppelganger, his devil motif and even facial and body type design (Blue Exorcist), and then when the story seems like it is talking about the roles characters have in this story (Tamaki as fanservice, Akitaru as the idealized hero, Arthur as the knight), it just fails to say, "Yes, Shinra is generic for the sake of storytelling" or subvert that to say, "You thought he was this kind of a guy, but he's really this kind of a guy."

[fire-dwelling]

still think the best direction for fire force would have been if it just stayed on quasi-realsitc scenarios with the "saving the world" thing being literally saving others on your job while the overall plot would be about trying to reform the corruption of the wider society, which would have more realsitic reasons and not some interdimmensional nihilsm cult.

That's kind of what I wish we had more with My Hero Academia: "None of this feels like a realistic response to how the world would handle this kind of corruption."

The problem being that MHA eventually did become realistic--in that, I kept thinking, "How are the Pro Heroes this bad and this dumb at dealing with a conspiracy by the PLF?" and then I had to see in real life how badly people respond to encroaching fascism.

I am not a firefighter, I know no firefighters, and yet that detail felt like window-dressing (for design choices--which just made everything look boring and, back to that well, fascistic where there is no variation in costume designs--more on that in a moment) rather than actually elevating firefighters to superheroes. There are other firefighter stories out there I need to try, especially in manga and anime; Fire Force wasn't it.

And to go back to window-dressing and design choices: as much flak as Fullmetal Alchemist gets, and well placed given Mignogna's fan army, at least the point of many of the protagonists being in military garb and the leader being literally called Fuhrer was to show that they were the ones resisting from within and staged an intervention to stop him. In other words, you had people all dressed the same for a purpose to the story. I never got that with Fire Force--it just seemed like a lazy design choice. Even the Spartoi uniforms in Soul Eater had enough variation so that they didn't all look identical. Hell, the point of the DWMA dress code in NOT was a joke: "We have a dress code requiring uniforms--but seeing as there are, like, eight different uniforms and people get to wear their regular clothes, it doesn't matter." It just makes Fire Force always feel like the anti-Soul Eater: "Soul Eater had such variety in designs, costumes, and styles--so let's just make everyone in Fire Force wear boring orange jumpsuits and not even add variety to their firefighting gear."