Firefighter Daigo #01 — Welcome to the Apocalypse

September 30th, 2023

 

We'll be doing calisthenics.

I'm out for a while. Ragna Crimson will come quite a bit later.

Impressions:

Yeeeeah. This opens with the city in the grip of what would be the biggest national disaster in the world. Literally an entire city in flames, buildings everywhere falling over, all as stills in the background. To which our hero heroically rushes in like a hero to a burning building and saves another person to the consternation of his fellow firefighters for his reckless behavior, and then they take a well-deserved sitdown. Never mind that the entire city is in the grip of an apocalyse that would put disaster movies to shame. And then, we flashback for the rest of the episode to be essentially a training montage. Not of firefighter stuff, but for qualifying for Sasuke/Ninja Warrior. What are you going to do if you need to shimmy through the air? Well, since you're wearing like 50 pounds of protective clothing, carrying another 20 pounds of equipment, and the buildings are on fire, I think the answer is that you die. Or your training focuses instead on how to not find yourself in that situation.

It's just silly. It's a disaster movie that didn't put even the slightest bit of effort into actually looking up what being a firefighter or the like entails. They probably watched some disaster movies and decided those are the baseline, then looked up some specific firefighting equipment so they could have an announcer excitedly scream out an explanation of what it is. Which is always what people are looking for in their disaster relief melodramas; yelled factoids about the equipment. 

     

Next Episode:

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Posted in Firefighter Daigo | 2 Comments »

2 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • residentgrigo says:
    September 30, 2023 at 8:17 am

    Both the original manga and this loose sequel are obviously well-researched but the point of them is to be an over-the-top Shounen sports drama so all the little details and factoids end up as background radiation 90% of the time. The insane amount of back-to-back disasters befalling exactly one precinct of Tokyo is also laughable but that was more of an issue with the original series. Like Gotham City but with fires, earthquakes, highway crashes, tankers about to explode, high rises falling, etc. The official translation is out there.

    The big difference here is the lack of a romantic plot and women being allowed to be capable. The original is still more memorable.

  • residentgrigo says:
    September 30, 2023 at 8:32 am

    The 1999 special adapted a random case from somewhere in the middle of the OG manga. A hotel fire if I remember correctly taught a noisy reporter how bad it is to question a hot-blooded rookie firefighter. Loose canons are the real heroes! It´s their way or the highway.