English Dub Review: Fire Force “Firecat”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Shinra and Hibana head to Asakusa to talk to Konro about his possible connection to the White Clad, but find him confronted about one of their goons. He makes quick work of them and later explains things. During the fight that led to his Tephrosis, he faced a Demon Infernal who seemed to match his movements entirely. He was able to defeated with his signature move, Crimson Moon, but the demon marked him, which seemed to give him a brief look into Adolla. Much like Captains Burns and Hague, as well as Joker, their Adolla Links gave them a marking, and this link might be being targeted by the White Clad now that Giovanni knows about it.
Shinra also discusses new training with Benimaru and brings Arthur and Tamaki, the latter of whom is eager to get stronger. But while Benimaru handles the boys (by nearly burning them at the stake), he has Hikage and Hinata test Tamaki. She reflects on her time in school and how her fire powers manifested, as well as her Lucky Lecher Lure, which gave her a lot of trouble. But once she got her flames, she got pushed to be better. When Rekka betrayed her, she was moved to Company 8, where she actually found stronger friendships than in Company 1. In the present, her cat tail flames start to form a more complete shroud, allowing her to almost surpass the twins.
OUR TAKE
The penultimate episode of the season pretty much covers what I expected it to last time, specifically explaining what’s happening with the Adolla Link stuff and providing some development to Tamaki. Much needed development in my opinion. She’s obviously never been my favorite, mainly due to her running “gag” of being the fanservice character, which attempts to satirize those kinds of tropes but just ends up playing them straight to increasingly aggravating effect. Up until this point, her character has pretty much just been that gag along with being a possible love interest for Shinra, who already has way too many. Here though, we finally get some motivation for her to improve herself for her own reasons, mainly the typical shonen reasoning of wanting to get stronger, but it’s still a start. Also interesting that they decided to examine the “lecher lure” thing more critically in how it would mess with her life and cause trouble…except for the fact that it’s another case of the show not knowing what tone it wants to take with her AND it kind of implies harassment that women face is just something they cause and have to deal with. Which isn’t a great look.
And of course the other main issue is what we’re learning about Adolla Links, something that has been getting more light shed on it throughout this season. It took the implied mention of the others for me to remember (since this season’s dub has been coming out over nearly nine months now) but we’ve met at least a few other people who have had Adolla Links and how that’s effected them. Burns and Joker have become essentially resistance fighters thanks to their shared link, while Hague has become slightly unhinged, and Konro hasn’t changed much mentally but did end up losing his abilities to tephrosis. Though we have a new wrinkle here in the form of Infernal Dopplegangers, which is apparently the case with the one that Konro fought. This is a bit confusing as Infernals, as far as we’ve learned, are just people who have been spontaneously (or deliberately) turned into them, so this is a bit of weird addition to their lore. But hey, if it goes somewhere interesting, I’m all for it. But now, we await the final episode of Season 2. It’s been a long road, especially with all of the delays, but all good things must come to an end. See you then.
"There are also other characters that come and go (also owned by the Warner Bros. Discovery conglomerate media company)."
Huh. Is that just referring to other characters from the show itself, or is this implying that the new season is going to have cameos from other WBD IPs