Maybe it’s some sort of obscure nostalgia for the shows I grew up watching as a kid, but I’ve always been incredibly fond of Japanese media from the Mid 2000s - Early 2010s. It feels like during these awkward teenage years of humanity, filled with a blend of positivity and optimism for our future, yet with an ever-lingering taste of anxiety and uncertainty, Japanese animation fell into a nice, comfy niche that produced some of the finest pieces of media out there, albeit often criminally underrated ones at that.

I had heard of Fireball before, but as nothing more than a casual fleeting mention, in both Western AND Eastern-focused animation discussions. After all, “Did you know Disney made a CGI anime about robots once” IS a great conversation starter, I’ll give them that.

I’m not sure what inspired me to actually sit down and watch the show, but if I recall correctly, it was a conversation I had with some friends about character designs that are similar to Hatsune Miku, which in term caused me to have a Proustian moment where I flashed straight to Drossel von Flügel’s design in all her twin-tailed blue eyed android glory. After some very brief research (Little more than just Googling “disney robot anime”) I landed on a Youtube upload of Fireball Special, a non-canon(?) side chapter to the show’s first season which serves as a sort of in-universe behind-the-scenes episode. I was instantly captivated by the show’s strange humour, as well as its characters and setting.

Once I found out the show’s episodes last a total of 1 minute and 30 seconds each (Including the opening and credits!) I bit the bullet and watched the entire show in one sitting. I wasn’t expecting much, but my expectations were blown right out of the water.

Fireball is a skit-based comedy anime with a heavy focus on absurd and deadpan humour as well as nigh-untranslatable Japanese wordplay (Seriously, the translator’s notes in some of these episodes cover more screen real estate than the actual credits under them!) The show centres around Drossel von Flügel, a female android dutchess, and the funny situations she gets into with her servant Gedächtnis, a large industrial foreboding-looking robot, who is actually, despite his menacing appearance, very kind and sweet. It takes place in the 47th millennium, inside a huge mansion in a city inhabited by robots. The backdrop of the series is a war between humans and machines, and between each episode there’s a major time skip of up to 16 years, thus making it so the first season alone takes place across a 144-year time frame, throughout which we often catch glimpses of the current state of the war, although the conflict is never really the focus of the show, acting mostly as just a backdrop to generate funny and interesting interactions between the characters.

The show ran for 4 seasons (Although, for some reason, certain places online often count the behind-the-scenes special as its own season) but it had a VERY sporadic release cycle, with the first series, Fireball originally airing in 2008, season 2, Fireball Charming came out in 2011, after a stupidly long hiatus Fireball Humorous, the show’s third season came out in 2017, and finally, in 2020 Fireball Gebäude Bäude, the fourth and what was largely marketed as the final season of the show released.

Despite being mostly a pretty silly gag anime as I mentioned earlier, the thing that made this show resonate with me so much (aside from the impeccable aesthetics and deeply kurocore vibes, of course) is that it uses some genuinely incredible storytelling writing and lore building techniques which can very easily fly right over your head if you’re just approaching this show as “funni haha didney animoo” (or if you’re part of the show’s target audience of Japanese elementary schoolers)

The show’s overall tone is very unique too, and though at times it can be somewhat hard to follow, it’s personally right up my alley. Perhaps due to its extremely short-form episodes, the show is a constant rapid fire of dad jokes, japanese puns, and at times shockingly deep cut references, which have led me more than once into Wikipedia rabbit holes.

If this show seems at all like something that would interest you, please check it out! As of writing this, the anime is available to watch on Japanese Disney+, and shockingly with an English dub at that! Which is surprising given how heavily the show relies on Japanese wordplay and cultural references. However, it’s not available anywhere else in the world other than in its origin country, though that’s nothing a VPN can’t fix. You can also find it in most “alternative anime streaming platforms” if you catch my drift and don’t feel like paying for the services.

-Kuro

(Something fell out the neighbour's window halfway through writing the closing paragraph to this and she screamed "SHE FELL OUT THE WINDOW" very loudly. Thankfully it was a pair of flip flops (?) but that scared the shit out of me I thought she was talking about a child or an animal or something lol)