English Dub Review: Fire Force “Those Connected”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Obi and Vulcan continue their fight against Giovanni and Lisa, AKA Feeler. While Vulcan tries to reach Lisa with his words, Obi puts together a plan to combat her magnetic flames. They manage to get close, but Giovanni’s conditioning keeps her from fully surrendering. He then uses her as a bargaining chip to get Vulcan to shoot Obi. Reluctantly, Vulcan agrees, but once Lisa is safe, it’s revealed that Vulcan’s upgrades protected him from the shot, as well as giving Vulcan a penguin-shaped ramming helmet. Despite this, Giovanni remains loyal to the Evangelist’s cause to destroy humanity, noting that the Adolla Burst that both Shinra and Sho have is actually the source of the Infernals they’re all fighting, while Lisa is someone who has been bitten by the Infernal bugs but gained pyrokinesis from it. Giovanni then flees, leaving Lisa behind.

Meanwhile, Shinra feels another Adolla Link between himself and Sho, seeing terrifying visions of the past in the process. He and Licht follow this link to an empty chamber where Sho awaits them. Their fight begins, but while Shinra has learned to become much faster, Sho’s ability to slow and stop time makes him impossible to touch. He is apparently “in control of his own universe” and decides to show Shinra just what that means.

OUR TAKE

We’re creeping ever closer to the end of the season as we check off the last of pre-final battles. The two on two Giovani-Lisa versus Obi-Vulcan throwdown is quite an interesting watch…in parts. The fight (along with the segments of Shinra’s visions) have a lot the author’s preference to be super creepy and weird in style, which is actually what helped the other series based on his work, Soul Eater, stand out to me back in 2008. When Fire Force started earlier this year, I was very eager to see more of that unique weirdness pop again, which we have thankfully gotten to here. And it’s best shown through the character of Giovanni, who is probably the most unapologetically scary and disturbing bastard amongst the villains thus far.

WITH THAT SAID, this author also seems to be falling back hard on some rather cliche and reductive means of writing regarding his female characters here, in this case being Lisa as essentially a brainwashed and abused slave to Giovanni that Vulcan must save and take back, even being used as a hostage near the end instead of a willing combatant with agency and her own ideas to follow. She’s even taken out of the actual fighting portion rather quickly, becoming not much more than a prize to be fought over for the majority of the episode. I’m not saying it necessarily needs to make Giovanni much more than a mustache-twirling villain (though a little more elaboration on how he got swept up in this might help), but just add more to Lisa. It almost feels like she isn’t quite a character yet herself since she is now likely to join up with the Fire Force herself and begin her character development as an individual once we get there, which probably won’t be this season.

But yeah, now that everyone else has gotten to be in a battle first, it’s time for the big confrontation between Shinra and Sho, which certainly begins with a stylistic flourish. And given that Licht isn’t exactly super fleshed out himself actually helps him to serve as a good audience viewpoint character as things escalate without us being distracted by him on his own. I feel like I’ll have much more to say next week once we learn more, but I can say as of now that I’m very interest to see where it goes. We’re down to the last three episodes, so I’m hoping for a really big fireworks display to close things out.