I didn't know much about Firefighter Daigo going in. I might have seen some posts, some recommendations. Overall, I heard that it was a more realistic take on firefighting compared to Fire Force and that it was a shounen anime. What I got was something where there were parts I enjoyed, but they were quickly overtaken by the flaws in this anime. There will be some spoilers in this review, but I'll indicate when they begin and end.

Characters: 7/10

Daigo as a titular character was a bit of a Mary Sue. He's as if Jesus was a firefighter. He somehow can detect things like earthquakes or he just somehow creates miracles all the time. Granted there are a couple times where he fails, which is nice. But the awe and hero worship from the other characters for him are a bit excessive. We did get a very interesting background for him and I wish that could've been explore more. It really shows why he's motivated to reach perfection all the time. His character design was a bit different from the usual shounen male character with is long eyelashes. I do like the bromance he has with Onoda (or perhaps it's something more ;) ).

Onoda is how we mainly view everything. Most of the time we follow him as he goes through training and on rescues. I personally liked him a lot and he made the show much more exciting and endearing. He definitely has flaws, but his perseverance shows he is a hero too. I think he's a bit too confused though, when it comes to anything Daigo does. There's a lot of "What are you doing, Daigo?" and "What's going on?". This could be part of the story writing though rather than a character flaw. It's hard to tell.

Yuki is the obligatory female character when there's 3 main characters. She does have an interesting backstory, though it could've been used in a better way for the overall story. It really felt forced when it came to her special training and instead of making her look cool, it just seemed like she was thrown a bone for being left out.

Anime: 5/10

There's a couple things about the anime itself that really hinders the whole thing. The music was overly dramatic at certain scenes that made me lose focus on what's going on. Or the music would cut off oddly. Editing for this anime overall seems a little subpar. What is the biggest offense though, was the constant flashbacks and recaps!

The episodes are 24 mins long, but with recaps, opening song, and ending credits, I estimate that we lose up to 8-9 minutes!!! IT'S INSANE! WHY?! And then within the episode, we sometimes get flashbacks of events just recapped. Or just repeated scenes from multiple episodes. It's obvious that the animation studio struggled or something to expand episode length.

There's also very stiff animations or LONG periods of characters just breathing/gasping while someone is potentially dying at a rescue scene. It makes it so much more frustrating rather than building suspense. There's a lot of staring from Onoda when the guy is supposed to be taking survivors out of a fire! It also makes him look like an idiot as if he wasn't trained for this. It was also impossible to tell whether a character was confused unless it was like Onoda constantly asking "What's going on? What are you doing?" The animation for faces were pretty lackluster even when their faces were covered by firefighting masks. The repeated animated scenes and some wonky running animations make me think that this anime had a low budget or had some production problems.

Story: 6/10

I really enjoyed it wasn't just fires we see the rescue team involved in. It's interesting to see the different methods of how firefighters address various problems and what kind of rescue jobs they're actually involved in. I really wished to see more of just the regular rescue parts since I liked some of the educational parts and I liked the building bromance with Daigo and Onoda on these missions.

__MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW
__

And then for some fucking reason, they decided to throw in this random shinobi/ninja firefighter storyline. Yuki gets recruited to this special squad where apparently it's experimental and it might be dodgy when it comes to permissions for things. I was somewhat okay with this, except there was no legitimate reason why 1) they need to be in the shadows 2) the special squad being at a rescue site seems important for rescuers to know so PEOPLE CAN BE SAVED!! WTF. Why is it so important to remain anonymous if you aren't saving people which is the whole point of the special squad?? That was just such a dumb storyline. But apparently what's even dumber is this anime CHANGING GENRES?! In the very last episode, episode 23, they suddenly throw in this part where the OG Daigo firefighter somehow either sees the future or can travel the future and a disaster is going to happen where they need an army of firefighters to counter this.

This is so melodramatic and I really don't understand why it exists. But if it does exist, why are we only seeing this right now AT THE END?? Why was all that fucking time on recaps when you could've used that time to build up to this part of the story. Explain more, build up more of the suspense, develop character stories, ANYTHING would've been better. I just don't get it!

__
SPOILERS END__

TL:DR: Firefighter Daigo had potential to be super cool. Learning about firefighters, seeing the different types of rescues that aren't just fires, and some of the characters were pretty good. But the animation quality and the bizarre story with poor editing just dragged down the show a lot. I managed to get through the series to the end, and I don't know how this anime relates to the manga, but it's confusing. There's very little time spent on developing the story and character relationships that it felt pretty shallow. I wanted to enjoy this anime, but the recaps, repeated flashbacks, and 10 second long frames of just someone gasping/staring really just annoyed me. Anyways, give it a shot, but just don't expect much.