 The city of Tokyo is plagued by a deadly phenomenon, spontaneous human combustion. Luckily, a special team is there to quench the inferno. The Fire Force, the Fire Soldiers at Special Fire Cathedral 8, are about to get a unique addition. Enter Shinra, a boy who possesses the power to run at the speed of a rocket, leaving behind the famous Devil's Footprints. Kenshinra and his colleagues discover the source of this strange epidemic before the city burns to ashes. Hi everybody, welcome to another exciting episode here at A Week in Geek, them on YouTube. I am your host, Yvonne Vanundez, and we're talking manga today. In this case, Fire Force Volume 1. This was a complete random purchase, a blind purchase, as the kids like to say. I had no idea that this was a thing, and it's already several volumes in that have been collected. I didn't know anything about it, I think I saw it on a random video, somebody posted a haul of something and it caught my eye. And it had to do with the graphic design, the character, how he looks, and the color palette, and all of that. And I don't know man, I thought it was pretty freaking intriguing, plus the idea that it's in a nutshell, if you don't know what Fire Force is, the best I can do is tell you Fire Force is a manga about firefighters fighting spontaneous human combustion. I wish I could be making that up, but I'm not, it really is about that stuff. And that's sort of what I love about manga slash anime and just the oddball craziness that you can create a topic for an action packed, I guess it's a shonen type story, correct me if I'm wrong, a shonen type story with something so mundane quote unquote as firefighting, and you are able to give it almost a supernatural and even spiritual twist. You see these characters are called infernals, if I am remembering right, and at first the spontaneous combustion thing would happen and they would burn up and eventually you know they would get mad crazy and just look essentially like a fire demon. And these group of people trained in the art of killing essentially are spread across Tokyo in the year 100 something solar era. So that indicates it's sort of like an alternate version of Earth where it's very steampunkish Victorian inspired era of Tokyo with trains and everything is you know with the big bronze pipes and that type of construction work that it's going for, it's really attractive. The art in it is fantastic. This book is done by Atsushi Okubo, he is the creator of the mangaka of Soul Eater, a very famous manga that was adapted into an anime and he is known for his visual style, his flair if you will, it's very emblematic. A lot of people love Soul Eater because of the art, of course the story is great and all that stuff but the art really catches your eye. It's very vibrant, it's very pop-ish and with Fire Force he does an even cooler job because the characters seem to be alive. Even though it's in black and white you get a richness in the depth perception, the way the characters are drawn, the backgrounds, how they interact with each other. It's very clean, concise and you understand what's happening. Like there would be a fight and you still know what's happening. Like for example I would read another manga and they're fighting and it's just a freaking blur effect with caption dialogue or effect boxes or something like that and you don't really know what the hell is going on but with Fire Force 97% of the time you get what's happening. Now I don't know what happens beyond volume one, I've only read the first volume but for what I've read it is that way all throughout the manga book itself it's pretty interesting. I really really enjoyed that. It was a breath of fresh air in a world where people like to bombard pages with as much murkiness and action as possible. It was a breath of fresh air to see something really cool looking because let me tell you some of the character work in this is fascinating. The infernals, this right here is the character explanation of what the infernals are and yeah they basically look like fire, ghoul, zombie-like creatures. It's pretty interesting. Basically this unknown force is causing this epidemic or it is a sickness. I don't know quite yet but yeah people are bursting into flames and this is one of the earliest examples in the book. You got this guy on this train and all of a sudden bam there you go instant combustion time and there you call the fire force. I love the design of these characters. They look really cool. You get the fire force involved and they put the monster away. Basically they kill it and a nun is involved and there is this sun god which I assume you know it's a parallel with Judeo-Christian symbolisms and all that stuff because they are working instead of a fire station they're working at a cathedral and the nun does chant and they kill off the infernal monster creature and they put him to rest with a prayer and it's all really cool. It's this mishmash of demonology, science, technology, all these elements coming together to form a cohesive unit that I thought was pretty cool. It's fairly standard Shonen stuff. Don't get me wrong. You get a very formulaic plot. You get the character, our main character Shinra, he wants to be a hero. His reasoning to be a hero while it's a little cliched is still pretty great and pretty wonderful and he comes from a very tragic background like most shonen heroes. You get the whole tire system of cathedrals. Each one has a structure and there are like three types of fire force fighters. There's the first class, there's the second one that has pyro-kinetic people that are able to manipulate fire and then there's the third one that are able to actually use the fire itself like superpowers. Shinra is a third class. He's got the devil's footprints because yeah his feet as you can see they burst into flames and he's able to jump and kick like a rocket, like a human rocket and do awesome cool shonen hero stuff. It's somewhat cliched because you've seen all of these tropes before in other manga and other anime series and all that stuff but what works with fire force in my honest opinion and I have only read the first one. I will continue reading the series. I'm very interested in finding out what's happening in this world but what sets it apart to me is that it is a simple world building exercise like other books like say One Piece or Naruto or whatever. They have this huge ensemble of characters. Everybody is somebody in those worlds. Here you get like I think it's like four how many were there? By the way this is a great example what I mentioned even though it's busy you get that it's a building on fire and you have the main protagonist just in awe of what's happening in the scene. That's sort of what I was talking about earlier about the depth of the drawings and what Okubo does with the backgrounds. Yeah basically for the first volume these guys are your main heroes. You got Shinra, you've got Obie, Maki, Iris and Takahisa and below you can see their ranking and what they do and in this volume the head captain of the squad squad 8 if you will Cathedral 8. He mentions the fact that they're understaffed that they need like a scientist and an engineer and something to round out the team. Later you get a rival for the main character that joins the team and what not. It's very standard manga stuff but it's fun because it's small scale aside from that you don't really go beyond the city of Tokyo or at least for now and see what else is out there. You just have this problem and these characters are trying to solve it in a very super heroic kind of way and I think that's what I like most about this book. By the way one of the character quirks each shonen hero has to have a quirk. Shinra he gets nervous so he grins and he's been bullied because they think like he's the devil's child because of something that happened with the loss of his family and all that stuff and his fire powers so he grins a lot and they either say he's crazy or like he's demented and stuff like that so you sympathize for him because of the loss of his family and he always promised his mom that he wanted to be a hero and save everybody and what a better metaphor I guess than being a firefighter because they are today's superheroes along with the police and soldiers and all that stuff that keep us safe. Those are real life heroic professions so I like that. I like that idea. Overall fire force is pretty interesting I cannot wait to read a little bit more. It might be a little bit too cliched so maybe that's why I'm not head over heels over it but I'm nonetheless I am very much interested in knowing what is going to happen next. We do get hints of other characters manipulating the infernals and all that stuff so I'm very interested in knowing and of course how the characters continue their evolution. Guys have you read fire force let me know down below if not let me know what would you do if you were a pyrokinetic I'm sure you'll come up with some interesting answers. As always you can follow me on your favorite social media platform like comment subscribe do all that wonderful stuff that you guys do thank you thank you once again I will catch all of you on our next video.