English Dub Review: Fire Force “The Spark of Promise”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shinra enters the Company 5 base to find Iris and face Hibana. Once he arrives, Hibana makes him feel Heat Syncope, which makes him feel a type of vertigo caused by a heatwave, but Shinra fights it. Next, she throws fire in the shape of flowers at him, which is hard enough to dodge with vertigo. Lastly, she creates a projection of fire shaped like a cherry blossom tree, using the “petals” to create a “blizzard” (weird when referring to fire) to overwhelm him.

While they fight, Iris tries to plead there is true salvation that can save people, but Iris went to the same church as her. Hibana used her Third Generation Pyrokinetic abilities to entertain the other kids and even encouraged Iris to break out of her shy shell, but she never quite cared for being a nun. Yet despite all of their praying, every girl in the church except for Iris and Hibana became Infernals. It was that incident that taught her that there is no god, as well as that she’ll only succeed by her own efforts. She then discarded her humanity and threw herself into her research. Eventually, she gave her findings to Haijima on the condition of becoming a captain.

Being a victim of Infernals himself, Shinra tries to relate to Hibana’s trauma, but she just continues to attack him. Still, he gets back up every time, vowing to help her and be a hero, finally managing to break through knock her out with one punch. Once she wakes up, she and Iris reconcile and they all make things right between Companies 5 and 8. It also seems that Shinra’s ramblings about being a hero have led to Hibana taking a shine to him.

Meanwhile, Obi finally gets ready to go help the fight, only to find out that everything’s been wrapped up.

OUR TAKE

Fire Force seems to be turning out to be more of a conventional shonen show than its older sister series, Soul Eater. There were definitely signs of it in the first few episodes, but this one had it on full blast. Is the main protagonist with abandonment issues constantly vowing to be a role model? Check. Saving a kidnapped dainty female main character from a hostage situation? Check. Villain ranting about how a traumatic event taught them to only look out for themselves. Check. Main protagonist beating said villain so hard that she suffers brain damage, learns the power of friendship, and starts to be attracted to him? Check, check, and check. This is about as “paint by numbers” as shonen storytelling gets, so thank god we have some great animation to keep it feeling fresh.

That aside, this fight did have a lot going for it, particularly in Hibana’s move-set of creating flame constructs for her attacks. Certainly, the most visually interesting power we’ve seen and likely not the last we’ve seen of it, which is good because it shows the dual nature of fire that offers a lot of interesting insights into how these characters use it. We’ve seen many times throughout this show so far (and real life, sadly) that fire can be a destructive force if used maliciously or hastily, but it is simultaneously true that fire is known for keeping people warm, cooking food, making dazzling shows with fireworks, and stuff like that. Both these sides are reflected in Hibana from her past and present, which in turn reflects her feelings of hope in the past and cynicism in the present. Now that she’s come around, it will be interesting to see how those sides mix.

Though hopefully the next Company to face, which seems to be Company 1, won’t be taken down so quickly and with a few flowery speeches. As much as I like seeing positivity winning over negativity (which is basically what Shonen is all about most of the time), I would appreciate it if each subsequent fight is more of a challenge for Company 8 than this was, both in combat and psychologically. Then again, we’re already a quarter of the way through this season, so we probably won’t be able to fit many more of these resolutions in here, but at least now I have some reasonable expectations set for the near future.