My personal break from blogging seemed to come to a pretty well timed end with Fire Force coming after its own break. And I don’t know if it’s just the weird mood I’m in right now, but upon watching this episode, I’m kind of struggling to remember why I was enjoying this show so much in the begging. Maybe it’s a lack of Demon Slayer to just fill me with good will towards all anime.
Episode 12 deals with the continuing plot of Shinra and the 8th precinct investigation this new villain known as the Evangelist, who is turning people into Infernals using insects. They’re currently in the 7th district trying to get permission from their equally powerful, but standoffish leader. Who just go back from destroying half the town in order to take down one Infernal.
Most of this episode focused on Benimaru, his approach to life and his relationship with his second in command; Konro. My issues with this show come from the fact that there is a lot of character work going on, but it’s never focused on our main characters. I know more about Benimaru in this one episode than I do about Arthur. Shinra is our main character and he is a collection of archetypes with a tragic backstory.
We’ve gotten some insight into the senior members of the 8th now, and seeing them all fix up the town is a nice little touch. Using their skills and powers to speed through the Job. All except Tamaki, whose only contribution is her clothing just falling off for no reason. I kind of think I hate her now.
Shinra, however, continues to just be present. To be the nice guy with the scary look, that’s the main thing he has going for him in these first dozen episodes, where I feel I understand much more about Obi, Hinawa and Maki at this point thanks to that last episode. Hell, Hibana got an entire mini arc dipping into her character and motivations before we really have any depth to Shinra.
I know he’s a shonen protagonist, and depth isn’t generally their point. But I’m just getting a little annoyed by it now. Speaking of which, the show’s weird pacing continues, as we get into a fight between Benimaru and the 8th company almost out of nothing.
After the fact, we find out that it was the Evangelist’s white cloaked men who can apparently chameleon into other people, framing Obi and Hinawa for turning that guy from before into an Infernal. The show seemed to be in such a rush to get to the fight that I almost missed the fact that our main characters aren’t evil.
I can understand why they want to get there though, action really is where this show is at its best and the fight scene that ensues is pretty great. Benimaru takes down the entire team pretty handily before Obi emerged in full Paladin gear and battling an unwinnable battle against the 2nd/3rd generation solider.
Now that I think about it, it seems pretty unusual for Obi to be a captain and not be a pyromancer. In the beginning, the fact that some Fire Force members lacked powers didn’t seem that weird. The more we learn about this world and how it seems to retroactively change my perception of it makes it seem like My Hero Academia, in where not having superpowers seems like the weird thing.
This episode ends in the middle of another flashback, showing how Benimaru started his own division of the Fire Force and Konro overused his powers to such an extend that he now suffers severe burns on his body that never heal. Which seems like it’d really such.
I’m not feeling Fire Force as much as I used to, and talking about these episodes on a individual basis is becoming more difficult to justify when I’m not enjoying them as much as I’d hoped I would. Even Dr. Stone is grabbing me more than this these days. Maybe I’ll review next week’s episode. I’ll just have to see how much it impresses me.
A Richard Wood Text Adventure 