The series focuses on the Super-Fire Specialist Team, a newly-created division of the United Fire-Defense Agency (which Rescue Force was a part of). Due to global warming, an insidious group of demons known as the Fire Tribe have been released from captivity inside the polar ice caps. The Fire Tribe have the power to create "Super Fire", which conventional fire-fighting methods are useless against. Bring on Rescue Fire and their ice-powered Wave Motion Guns!
It's just as Merchandise-Driven as Rescue Force was, but the level of sheer undiluted awesomeness is just as high as ever.
Tomica Hero Rescue Fire contains examples of:
- A Day in the Limelight: Episode 34 is Tama-chan's time to shine.
- Adorable Evil Minions: The Jakkast are a constant threat to the public, but that doesn't stop them from engaging in humorous background events, such as filming Choukaen's cooking contest, spying on the heroes with binoculars and generally performing their minion duties in a rather cute fashion.
- Adventurer Archaeologist: We first meet Naoshi and Asuka Taiga winching an ancient tablet out of an Egyptian ruin and backflipping away from perceived danger, not to mention the various adventures they become involved in whilst assisting Rescue Fire.
- A Father to His Men : Captain Taiga is young enough that this is more A Brother To His Men, but he is repeatedly shown to care deeply about the welfare of the team.
- He assures Jun's father that he will look after his son as part of Rescue Fire, as the lives of rescuers are also precious lives to be protected.
- He also berates Tatsuya on several occasions over his reckless behaviour and at the end of episode 17 makes it clear that he will not accept such a method of rescue again after he deliberately exposes himself the the Extreme Fire illness.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: In episode 47 Joukaen takes Mie-sensei, Captain Taiga, and a bunch of cute kids hostage so that he can take control of Fire Phoenix.
- Always on Duty
- Amnesia Episode: The basis for Episode 20, where Q-Suke experiences a data memory problem as the Framing Device for a Clip Show.
- Animal Mecha: GaiaLeon, a sentinel and prideful giant robotic lion who helps out with the team and will only listen to whom he acknowledges.
- Arc Words: The villains keep saying they'll turn somewhere into a "Sea of flames".
- Armor Is Useless: Averted. Despite the various explosions, fires, building collapses and giant monsters, none of the Fire Suits fail at any point except when the villain trio perform a last ditch attack during the finale.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Almost Once an Episode, as the Revenge Kaen performed by the villains turns various animals, foodstuffs and vehicles into giant, fiery monsters which wreak widespread havoc.
- Badass Arm-Fold: Captain Taiga has a fondness for these whilst delivering orders from base.
- Badass in Distress: Captain Taiga is taken hostage during episode 47 along with Mie-sensei from Himawari School, and ends up chained to the ceiling of his own command centre.
- Badass Normal: Though Captain Taiga Riku is incapable of wearing a Fire-suit after testing them all himself, this does not stop him from taking on a powered up Sakaen.
- Also any and every Rescue Worker that doesn't work for the UFDA is shown to be this.
- Banana Peel: One Monster of the Week used these as an attack. Lampshaded by Tatsuya and Yuuma. "No one does that gag anymore!" Naturally, Ritsuka falls for it seconds later.
- 30 episodes later, the monster is brought back with added mariachi dancing skills. Ritsuka has learned her lesson and stops before running over the pile, and has no choice but to do an implied facepalm when Tsubasa runs by her and falls for it himself.
- Beach Episode - Episode 21 featured the team training on a beach. They were just wearing shorts and T-shirts for the most part, though Tama was in a bikini. The episode also featured plenty of sunset-watching soft focus imagine spots.
- Baseball Episode: More like sports episode, as the team spend episode 39 in an activity centre. Various team building antics with go-karts, bowling, volleyball and 5-a-side football ensue.
- BFG - An incomplete Great Wyvern, called the Wyvern Cannon, can be used by Rescue King as a giant ice cannon in an alternate formation.
- "Be Quiet!" Nudge: Ritsuka receives a be quiet dogpile in episode 43 as the team dive on her to stop her from speculating about whether the captain is going to leave right as he walks in the door. Hilarity Ensues.
- BFS: King X-Basher, the sword used by Rescue King.
- Big Damn Heroes: In Episode 38, the team are without their transformation trinkets and need to get through a bridge jam-packed with mooks. Then Hikaru and Ishiguro arrive in a Gunship Rescue and kick ass.
- Bloodless Carnage: It doesn’t matter how serious a fire the team respond to, no injured party will ever have more than some dirty smudges or a limp.
- Borrowed Catchphrase: Various characters like to hijack Taiga’s Once an Episode ‘Mission Clear!’, especially his siblings!
- Bouquet Toss: At Yuuma and Tama-chan's wedding. Tatsuya and Tsubasa fight over the bouquet so that one of them can marry Ritsuka, but Jun rescues it and gives it to Ritsuka herself.
- Britain Is Only London: The while world is under threat? Cue Extreme Fire monsters wreaking havoc on one repeating shot of Big Ben, and one repeating shot of the Sydney Opera House.
- Burn the Orphanage: Ukaen attacks and burns Himawari School, where Tatsuya stayed after losing his parents, in order to specifically target him.
- Calling Your Attacks: A standard part of any toku, but Rescue Fire has them being yelled through a megaphone.
- Cape Swish: Joukaen likes to do these with his cape, especially to make a Dramatic Entrance.
- Cat Girl: Tama dresses as one while visiting a zoo.
- Christmas Episode: A two-parter starting in episode 37. Surely the villains will take Christmas off? Cue Joukaen sending a video message to Rescue Fire, wearing a santa hat as he hijacks a shuttle to take him into orbit and crash a large meteor into the Earth.
- Class Pet: A plot point in multiple episodes, ideal for leaving various children in danger for Rescue Fire to save.
- Clingy Jealous Guy: Tsubasa to Ritsuka
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Taken literally with the 'cool' part. When the big bad punishes his underlings, the punishment always has something to do with ice, since the villains are fiery demons
- Not always, in some episodes they also get a punishment related to their last scheme.
- Combining Mecha: Much like the season before it. One of the big combos of the year is Great Wyvern, which combines five rescue vehicles into a lightning-spouting dragon.
- And that's nothing. Great Wyvern can combine into an even bigger combo, Great Wyvern GX, courtesy of additional vehicles X Dragon and Gaia Leon. Tomica Heroes surely like One-Upping themselves constantly!
- While Great Wyvern GX is still their Big Guns, Fire-1 now has the Keroberos Dragon, Fire Dragon combined with the auxiliary vehicles from Rescue Force.
- Crossover: With Tomica Hero Rescue Force near the end of the series, albeit limited to R1 and R5. (R2 to R4 are just in suit.)
- Color-Coded Characters: As is standard for Tokusatsu shows. Due to the Fire and Rescue theme however, some of the traditional colours have been changed:
- Fire-1: Orange
- Fire-2: Silver
- Fire-3: Green
- Fire-4: Black
- Fire-5: Light Blue
- Captain Taiga: Gold
- Cuteness Proximity: Ritsuka for animals of all kinds.
- Dancing Theme - The second ED theme.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Ritsuka.
- Exact Words: During the hostage situation in episode 47, Taiga bargains with Joukaen to let the children go in exchange for his own freedom. He lets them go... down one corridor where they are immediately captured by Jakkast mooks at the other end.
- Fastball Special: A fastball-within-a-fastball. Dozer Dragon tosses Fire Dragon up into the air, then Fire Dragon launches its car, Rescue Dash 1, out at the enemy.
- Finishing Move: Final Rescue.
- Genki Girl: Tamami Sugiyama, super-happy cafeteria worker.
- Giant Enemy Crab: Kanikaen, which later becomes Kanitankaen.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: The second ending has the villains dancing alongside the heroes.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Jokaen does a Heel–Face Turn in episode 48, and then attacks Donkaen after learning that the reason for his original Face–Heel Turn was Donkaen's fault and not the humans'. Donkaen, who has fully revived by this point, almost literally swats Jokaen like a fly, making the attack rather ineffective, and making the Heroic Sacrifice toe the line with Heel–Face Door-Slam.
- Hot-Blooded: No pun intended. (Though Yuma/Fire-2 is more Hot-Blooded than the others, even using the good old "Ora, ora, ora!" battle cry.)
- Humans Are Bastards: The Jakaen's motivation.
- I Found You Like This: In episode 36, when Tatsuya exhausts himself while swimming and Ritsuka pulls him out and makes sure he's okay (creating a rather cute scene). Once he wakes up, however, even as she's being kind to him while he catches his breath, she essentially kindly berates him for doing something that stupid before walking off.
- Infernal Retaliation: If only while this show is on the air, every Monster of the Week can have the words "on fire" added to it. The first enemy is a giant firebreathing one-eyed sentient motorcycle with a tail. That is on fire.
- On the rare occasion the villains work together, we end up getting a fire death tank crab. It's destructive and fun to say.
- Informed Ability: Ritsuka is known as "Miss Perfect". In training she gets perfect scores, but so far on the field she's been slightly less than effective.
- Kill It with Fire
- Kill It with Ice: Rescue Fire. Just about every single Finishing Move they use follows this, with the only exceptions being Fire 2's Axe Storm, Fire-4 and Fire-5's Sky V Slash, Great Wyvern's Infinite Thunder, and X-Dragon Robo's X Meteor Punch.
- Lady of War: Ritsuka Yuki/Fire-3.
- Last Breath Bullet: What the three commanders do after getting beat for real, resulting in Yuuma being given a free trip to Death's door, with Ritsuka, Tusbasa and Jun not doing so well ether.
- The Load: Sawayaka Sayaka in Episode 22. She runs into Tatsuya, knocking his Rescue Megaphone out of his hand. Then when he builds a fire for her in a cold dead end, this alerts the Jakaen to their location.
- Magic Skirt: No matter how many times Ritsuka drops down a five-story chute to her vehicle with the camera framing her from below, you will never see anything. For situations where the skirt loses its magic powers, she naturally wears convenient undershorts for further "protection".
- Said shorts have been nicknamed "Rescue Shorts" in the fandom.
- Megaton Punch: X Dragon Robo's aptly named X Meteor Punch.
- Monster of the Week: Started out like this but previous Monsters Of The Week are getting used instead alongside the Quirky Miniboss Squad in Powered Up forms.
- Motion-Capture Mecha: X Dragon Robo. It actually has its own AI and can fight well enough on its own, but it goes into mo-cap mode when doing its Final Rescue (seen above). Its combination with Fire Dragon, Rescue King, actually is piloted by Fire-1 X, and is a true mo-cap mecha.
- Once an Episode: "Mission Clear!"
- Even though episode 13 didn't use it. It's still a cool catchphrase.
- Photoshop Filter of Evil: In Episode 10, Chukaen gets a close up of her face with the colors inverted.
- Playboy Bunny: Tatsuya imagines Ritsuka dressed like this in one episode. (The illusion shatters when he remembers her personality.)
- Power Trio: Qsuke, X-Dragon and Gaia Leon form an odd one. They're "Brothers" in a sense though they don't showcase it it seems that Gaia Leon is The McCoy since he's passionate and animalistic, X-Dragon being stoic and mechanical unlike the other mecha of the series would be The Spock which leaves Qsuke as The Kirk (Which seems to fit as he's passionate and has a rescus soul but works to balance out Tatsuya).
- Put on a Bus: The original Rescue Force has been "sent overseas".
- Roar Before Beating: Normally this is an enemy trope, but all of the friendly mecha do it here as well.
- Rule of Cool
- Ship Tease: Thanks to early Tatsuya/Ritsuka shippers, the writers have all but bowed to the fandom and have given the two a lot of "Moments" in that latter half of the series. Not that this stopped them from including Tsubasa/Ritsuka moments as well.
- Shock and Awe: Great Wyvern's Final Rescue, Infinite Thunder.
- Shout-Out:
- In Episode 7, a woman falls and spills oranges.
- The Big Bad's fate is the same as Kars' in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency: He gets frozen solid and forced to drift through space for all eternity.
- Sixth Ranger: Fire-4 and Fire-5, the Sky Team.
- So Last Season: Both Rescue Striker, originally given to Fire-3, and the Rescue Breaker start out being used fairly often, though they're not good for much. The Rescue Breaker is slowly phased out in favor of the Tri-Basher, and Ritsuka eventually gets her own new vehicle in Turbo Dragon. Though Rescue Striker — specifically, Drill Striker — does get one grand last usage to defeat an evil version of Rescue Drill.
- The Rescue Breaker is still Fire-2's preferred weapon of choice. Fire-1 is Tri-Basher Sword while Fire-3 is Tri-Basher Gun. Their backpacks hold both weapons though.
- Rescue Striker, Rescue Diver, and the combined Super Rescue Max come back in a Crossover team-up worldwide Combination Attack. [1]
- Super Mode: Fire-1 X. He fights with a sword called the Ryudoken, which sounds very familiar...
- Talking the Monster to Death
- Theme Music Power-Up
- The Real Heroes - The Nagoya arc mostly focused on the fire and rescue team of Nagoya, who did just as much lifesaving as Rescue Fire.
- Transforming Mecha The vehicles alternate into "Scramble Mode" and "Rescue Mode". X-Dragon is the only one to transform into Humongous Mecha .
- Transformation Sequence: However only Fire-1 and Fire-4's are ever shown in full.
- Verbal Tic: Chukaen, Ukaen, and Sakaen have the tendency to end all of their sentences with "de shii (C)", "de aru (R)", and "de eru (L)" respectively.
- If you look into it a bit closely, each of them represents their position. Chukaen literally translates into "Centre Fire" Ukaen literally translates into "Right Fire" and Sakaen translates into "Left Fire".
- Wave-Motion Gun: Ice Tornado.
- Wave Motion Sword: Blizzard Slash, Tenkuu V Ji No Giri (Sky V Slash) and Ryou X Giri (Dragon King X Slash).
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue:
- Jun starts up his own Helicopter rescue unit.
- Tama accepts Yuuma's proposal and they get married, Some time later she becomes Pregnant.
- Yuuma goes back to being a Megumi.
- Tusbasa becomes a actor making recruiting ad's for the UFDA.
- Ritsuka becomes an Instructor at the Rescue Fire training center.
- Taiga lecturers about Global Warming.
- Tatsuya spends all his time Walking the Earth teaching people about fire. He was in Canada last time we saw him.
