English Dub Review: Fire Force “Hero’s Tale”
OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)
Shinra Bansho Man solidifies his changes to the world, and those who choose to live on in it make their peace with the path ahead. Spontaneous Combustion is no more, life and death are fundamentally different, new heroes rise from the ashes of the old, and everyone lived happily ever after.
OUR TAKE
And we’re done! This last episode is pretty much just wrap up and filling in more blanks for this new world that Shinra, as well as fully connecting it to the story of Soul Eater, which is revealed to take place decades after this. Naturally, this has drummed up a lot up a lot of demand for giving Soul Eater the FMA Brotherhood treatment since the manga is long over, and I know I’d be down to watch that, but this is still a review of a Fire Force episode, even if it does turn into a Soul Eater episode by the end. And as a finale to all of Fire Force, it still hits just about as good as last week. Shinra, who grew up in a world where fiery death could come for everyone around him at any moment, used the hope in humanity he had gained from his adventures to recreate the world into one where even death is not necessarily the end, which even manages to win over Haumea, the Despair Saintess. Not everyone chooses to make the jump over, however, as Sumire and Amaterasu decide to simply stay dead for…reasons. Sumire says she doesn’t think she should live through three eras and Amaterasu says that Iris should live for her, but those sound rather shallow when the whole point is that this a new starting point for everyone, though I suppose having the choice to opt out of the new world is also part of giving everyone a chance to make a fresh start. Hopefully it means their souls are at rest now, at least.
As for everyone else who DOES choose to stick around, they quickly find that there are new rules. For one, no more human combustion, which also means no more pyrokinesis, at least not in the way they’re all used to. It seems like no one is fully sure what the new sources of power are, other than that they’re tied to SOULS, so while the Fire Force is naturally disbanded due to no longer being needed, the new HERO FORCE sets out to explore this new land and learn more about what makes this world tick. This is where the knowledge of where things go in Soul Eater comes into play, as we know in hindsight that the manipulation of souls and the power that comes from them becomes basically the replacement for pyrokinetics, though we don’t get any hint here at the eventual appearance of evil souls or the possibility of Kishins. Perhaps there are some potential stories to tell about this interlude period as more of those later concepts come into play. What we do see is Inca as the first Witch while continuing to pursue Shinra’s…genes? A battle which she apparently wins at some point based on the jump ahead twenty five years to see Shinra has blond AND pink haired children, so congrats to her I guess. We also get hints of certain other Fire Force characters turning out to be the progenitors of things that certain Soul Eater characters would come from, like Rekka going to learn martial arts and eventually making the Star Clan, which then leads to Black Star. And of course, Death, the god Shinra invents to hold authority over this new world, creates Death the Kid in Shinra’s honor, and Maka Albarn reads a story with her still married parents about the legend of the Great Cataclysm, a totally age appropriate story.
Overall, as an episode, I feel the need to mark it just slightly below last week’s climax, if only because, as much as I enjoy seeing Soul Eater character connections (as well as the surprise use of that anime’s third ending song to play us out), they can’t help but feel a bit more indulgent than they should. If you’ve seen the recent Wicked movies or the play, you may know about how it tries to tie itself into more of the original Wizard of Oz story in its second half, but only ends up tangling everything up with the unintended implications that it doesn’t want to deal with properly. Likewise, I don’t know if I can fully swallow that Shinra remade the world less than half a century prior to the seemingly fully fleshed out world of Soul Eater, when presumably plenty of living Fire Force characters would still be alive and active but simply didn’t appear or do anything. But putting that aside (even if that’s a LOT to put aside), as a resolution to everything we’ve seen with this cast since the beginning, it is ultimately pretty satisfying, so I’ll give it that. Now all that’s left is to look back on it all to see how it stacks up. And wait patiently for hopeful news of a Soul Eater remake.
