English Dub Review: Fire Force “The Time to Choose”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With the Demon Infernal taken care of, it’s just Arthur vs Haumea and Shiro vs Charon left. Haumea retreats and signals Charon to take Inca, so Shiro tries one more time to get Inca to come with him. However, Inca decides to give herself completely over to her new abilities, which currently aren’t telling her to kill the White Clad, not to mention going with them will put her in the most danger, which is what she craves. Shiro’s pleas to keep her safe fall completely on deaf ears, so he vows to her that he’ll be coming to kill her one day, which she finds intriguing. Though before she leaves, Panda, her other friend, tries to save her, but she burns him to death instead.

Shiro and the Fire Force are feeling pretty low, even after receiving thanks from the surviving civilians. Besides losing Inca to the White Clad, there were 19 dead, 58 injured, 134 buildings lost, and 39 Infernals, along with a response time that was near laughable, even if they were ultimately able to save the town. Things could have been a hell of a lot worse, but this was still quite the loss. And with three other pillars yet to appear, they can’t afford to just be playing catch up. As such, another joint operation is put together, this time being a trip to the Chinese Peninsula for further research the Great Cataclysm that the White Clad are trying to recreate. This will be guided by Company 2’s Jaga Noto, whose parents live there. Of the 8th, Shinra, Arthur, Tamaki, and Licht will be going, along with a couple of men from the 4th.

OUR TAKE

The arc with Inca passes the torch onto the Chinese Peninsula arc rather quickly, to the point that this episode doesn’t feel much like an ending or beginning of either. It’s mostly a wrap-up and epilogue of the previous arc with the remaining time leading into the next. Inca is officially on the White Clad team, even deliberately killing her friend to put her squarely in the villain camp, so now the Evangelist is scoring 3-1 on Pillars in play (not counting the mysterious First Pillar, who seems to be neutral in this fight so far). This isn’t particularly surprising given what we’ve seen from her so far, especially with her fetish for endangering her life, but it does show how she is a character with very odd priorities. She’s given a chance to escape being captured with these weirdos and live a peaceful life, though at the cost of paying for crimes of robbing the people she’s saved from the fires. But it’s not dealing with the consequences of her own actions that deters her, but that she would be safe, which simply does not appeal to her. I don’t know when we’ll be seeing her next, but it goes to show that she is a pretty dangerous individual even without her new powers.

And the other part of the episode leads us into the next arc, which will be a notable change of pace by being in an entirely new location from the rest of the series thus far. While it hasn’t been totally apparent most of the time, this setting is a post-apocalyptic one, that apocalypse in this case being the Great Cataclysm of 200 years ago, which shaped the geography of this world forever and led to this fire-based society. I was initially wary of that bit of world building when set in a location that didn’t really reflect many changes there, though it soon became clear that the Tokyo Empire just happened to be better off with some clear reasons, one of those being its perpetual thermal engine. But now, with the chance to travel outside of the empire for awhile, we can get a clearer picture of the world, as well as how much worse things might get if the Evangelist gets their way. Specifically what that means is unclear right now, but the next few episodes will do a lot to fill that picture in, along with a lot more that is a bit surprising, even for this show.