Fire Force features one of the most unique stories in all of anime. It imagines a future where the whole of humanity lives in fear of random spontaneous combustion. Those afflicted by the mysterious phenomenon become monsters of fire known as Infernals, and the Special Fire Force is tasked with putting these Infernals to rest while investigating the mystery behind the sudden immolations. If that didn't make the anime enticing enough, most of the Fire Force have incredibly powerful flame-related abilities. However, what stops this series just short of greatness is how it employs the self-insert trope.

Self-inserts are usually a benign addition to stories. They're often characters who are imagined as an idealized form of the author participating in a story of their own creation -- or someone whom the audience can imagine themselves as -- whether it's a passive observer to the strange happenings or the one creating them all. The self-insert character usually finds themselves in enviable situations or with unique abilities that set them apart from the rest of the cast.

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Fire Force certainly isn't the first story to adopt a self-insert protagonist. This trope single-handedly carries most fan-fiction of beloved stories, and is popular enough in anime to have a whole genre about protagonists getting transported into other worlds -- who doesn't love a good isekai adventure? In fact, many anime lead seem designed so shonen enthusiasts can project onto them. They're likable, hardworking young men with complicated pasts, world-breaking abilities and lofty goals they will stop at nothing to achieve.

Fire Force's Shinra Kusakube is the picture-perfect shonen protagonist. At the story's beginning, he's a newly minted fire soldier earnestly searching for a solution to the spontaneous combustion problem that plagues the land. Unlike most other fire soldiers, Shinra aims at becoming a hero who can save people from suffering the fate of an Infernal, and finding out the true cause of his family's death during his childhood. He's exactly the kind of role model you'd expect from a story targeted at young boys. The problem isn't that he's a self-insert character, but rather how often the trope is corrupted for cheap fan service.

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tamaki kotatsu topless in fire force

Despite Fire Force's many great qualities, a lot of fans can't get past how often the show's female characters get sexualized, and how unnecessary it always is. Shinra is often placed in situations that would seem more at home in a harem anime than an action-adventure tale, and they serve no purpose except perhaps for viewers to project onto. He's frequently a "victim" of Tamaki Kotatsu's Lucky Lecher, which only means he gets to grope her inappropriately -- and it's written off as mere accidents. It's a frustratingly common occurrence, especially when it happens in the weirdest of situations, such as in the middle of big fights.

Tamaki may be the most obvious example but none of Fire Force's women are immune to this bizarre trend. Even Princess Hibana -- captain of an entire company of Fire Soldiers and a third generation pyrokinetic who built herself up from literally nothing to become one of the story's most powerful and influential characters -- becomes little more than a Shinra fangirl after just one fight with him. Her sudden infatuation with him makes no sense, and is never explained in-universe. It doesn't add any substance to the story and severely undercuts Hibana's character before she gets the chance for any growth at all. One can only hope that later seasons of Fire Force will fix these issues.