English Dub Review: Fire Force “The Woman in Black”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

The Woman in Black gives Shinra the one minute of Grace she has, which he’s able to make use of with his Adolla Burst abilities to destroy Tempe far away from the oasis, as well as learn how Tempe was made an Infernal centuries ago by the Evangelist. But in terms of how the Woman in Black relates to her, it seems they don’t have much of a connection beyond being from the same place. Regardless, the joint Fire Force team finishes their work and heads home, now armed with the very strong theory that Amaterasu is probably powered by a living person and not just a strong fire like they were led to believe, as well as knowing the Evangelist really does plan to recreate the Great Cataclysm that changed their civilization centuries ago.

OUR TAKE

This wraps up the Chinese Peninsula arc with a literal bang and quite a bit more info to chew on moving forward. We now know just a bit more about the endgame villain of the series, but everything is still clouded in such mystery that there’s still so much farther to go. We already pretty much knew the Evangelist planned to burn everything to the ground, especially since so much of the White Clad told us as much over the course of last season, but we had yet to see it go into this much detail. And while the second half of last season did show us those portions of the “prologue” for the established history of the Tokyo Empire, we now see them in a bit of a different light as that history becomes more and more challenged, which will only escalate further in the next arc. Though this is probably the first time we’ve gotten to see much of a perspective right after the Great Cataclysm, as seen through Tempe, who apparently was a very influential person in the old world prior to it, you know, burning down in flames. Perhaps we’ll get to see more of that moving forward, or at least dig deeper into the origins behind the Empire, hint hint?

Regarding this arc, it actually reminds me of a story arc from the anime of this author’s other well known manga, Soul Eater, which also involved characters leaving their country to enter a risky foreign area in order to learn some crucial backstory and retrieve information about an ancient weapon. This also forced the main character to face an enemy that was hundreds of years old and gain a sudden burst in power in order from a risky source in order to defeat them. That’s not to say that this is a rip off of that story, but more that it’s interesting how it has these parallels, as well as basically being in the same spot episode wise. Soul Eater and Fire Force share a lot of DNA of course but are both fine shows in their own right, yet it’s always neat to see how they line up like this. And even putting that aside, this arc was plenty of fun and action that led to a great climax and sets the stage for plenty of awesome stuff to come. For now though, it seems we’ll be taking a bit of a break from the main cast to focus on some characters who haven’t gotten a ton of love lately.