English Dub Review: Fire Force “Plot for Extinction”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Shinra and Arthur continue their fight against Giovanni, who rants and raves about how the White Clad and the Evangelist will eventually succeed in their plans to destroy the world, which is somehow for the benefit of mankind. He also mentions that Sho has been “neutralized”, as in now completely catatonic, explaining why he hasn’t been around this whole season. Enraged, Shinra uses his faster than light attacks to surprise Giovanni, using his Adolla Link to find him. But Giovanni is overjoyed that they have the link at all, leading Shinra to question the other time he felt this link with Lieutenant Konro of Company 7.

Meanwhile, those still able to fight try to defuse the plan to collapse the Nether, but they’ll need more Second Generations to get it done. Thankfully, Maki returns to help out, much to the dismay of her brother. Luckily they’re able to redirect and stamp out the flames by sending them into the ground below. Maki then tells her brother off for his overbearing sexism and rejoins Company 8. Giovanni escapes and the companies mourn their losses, but celebrate their victory.

OUR TAKE

Another Fire Force arc is in the books and it definitely knew how to end in a bang, culminating in Maki and her brother joining forces to save the day, finally putting to rest his doubts about her being part of Company 8. One small problem with that: it comes after Maki has been sidelined and barely involved in this arc that spent a considerable amount of time discussing her. Or rather, spent much of that time with a bunch of guys discussing her and her barely having much to say on the matter until the end. I’m glad that she got to be part of the climax and save the day, but the point that the story seems to want to make about letting women make their own choices is muddled by the fact her brother’s opposition to her involvement is (deliberately) comically nonsensical.

His reasoning for wanting to keep her out of danger is that she can’t handle herself and that she’s a girl, but is he somehow not aware of all of the highly competent women in the Fire Force, two of which being captains of their own companies? Or heck, is he somehow not aware that Maki’s pretty much held her own the entire time we’ve seen her on screen? Again, it’s a fine message, but this was a pretty major fumble in how to introduce it. At the very least they could have had Maki on the mission to show her brother TO HIS FACE that his worries are pointless…but then we wouldn’t get him chewing out Hinawa I guess? Seems like an acceptable loss to me. But thankfully it’s over now, at least.

We also got some hints about where the remainder of the season will take us, specifically Shinra now needing to find out how Konro is connected to Adolla and Tamaki now wanting to better herself after Juggernaut was injured protecting her. That alone is pretty sufficient to fill out the last two episodes and will most likely set up what will be the initial focus of a potential third season. There’s been no confirmation of that so far, but the material is there to adapt and it seems to be just enough to finish out the story, so I can’t imagine they haven’t at least thought about it by now. But first we’ll see how this season begins its wrap up when the last arc begins next time.