English Dub Review: Fire Force “Weapons of Destruction”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Companies 8 and 2 make their way into the Nether, with Maki’s brother Takigi tagging along with Hinawa’s group and having some major beef with him. Tamaki and Juggernaut end up in the same group, much to his excitement, though that turns fast when a new group of White Clad members, the Knights of the Purple Haze, start attacking. One of the knights, Orochi, one of Juggernaut’s friends with her flame whip, forcing him and Tamaki to enter the fight, though it pushes Juggernaut’s regeneration abilities to their limit, with him only able to use one last big attack to stop her.

OUR TAKE

Nether 2: Electric Boogaloo continues in earnest as it seems we’re doing another boss rush in the Nether like what was done near the end of the last season. The main difference between then and now is pretty much just the addition of new characters on both sides. In this case, we have another Tamaki fight that is mainly from the perspective of other characters and makes pain staking use of her recurring gag of having her clothes fall off for no reason. Only this time the opponent is a woman so that doesn’t work on the enemy, making it even more pointless. I’ve long made clear how much I really don’t care for this gag, even if it is only used sparingly now, so it definitely took points off this episode. However, you’ll be glad to know that I still didn’t think this was that bad of an episode, but it was certainly an inconsequential one.

I’m glad that Juggernaut finally got have some focus on himself, since he’s been becoming more recurring lately and has a pretty interesting ability that doesn’t seem to be fully explained at the moment. Since the second season started, we’ve seen him get back up what would normally be terrible and fatal wounds, but never quite get into how he’s able to do that. What we did learn this time is that his ability seems to have limits, as the multiple blows he endured from Orochi eventually forced him to use his bare flesh in order to push his attack, which seemed to imply that he was entirely out defenses to shield himself from it. That said, I don’t expect him to die from this, but it was a noble effort of his part.

We’ve likely got a few more major fights to follow, since there are four other Company 8 members around in different squads, among them Maki’s brother who is going to really lay into Hinawa about Maki being involved in all of this. Though it’s probably worth noting that, despite us being halfway into this arc that began with focus on Maki, she’s nowhere to be seen in this episode, and won’t be playing any major role next time either. But we can get more into that then, I guess. For now, we can at least enjoy the competent fights, but I can’t help but be a disappointed that we can’t also have some major character growth for principal characters alongside that. Ah well, the season’s still got a handful of episodes left.