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Five Thoughts on Fire Force‘s “A Brother’s Determination”

By | November 3rd, 2020
Posted in Television | % Comments

The fight between Sho and Shinra reaches new climactic heights in the latest episode of Fire Force! In this week’s installment, we get more of a look at the lore of the show’s world, a deeper explanation of the mysterious Adolla Burst abilities, and some highly emotional moments between two estranged brothers. Jump on board as we take a look at what makes this episode so tense and thrilling!

1. Hell is Adolla, people
In the opening of this episode, it is finally explained to us via Sho what exactly the Adolla Burst is and what it entails. It feels a little out of character for Sho to be the one explaining to the lost brother he disdains what exactly Adolla is, but exposition gotta get told somehow, y’know? Let’s say for continuity’s sake, that he got annoyed at his older brother’s ignorance. Anywho, as it turns out, Adolla is simply a new age, post-apocalyptic name for… Hell! That’s right, folks, if you were speculating that Shinra and co. are essentially straight-up demons, you were on the money! Granted, it isn’t the most well-hidden secret, but the narrative kept feeding and stretching the mystery of this world for so long that this feels like a big deal to finally have confirmation.

What I love about this scene is the creative way that Adolla is rendered visually. The animation has a grey-scale color scheme and the flames of Adolla rise from the ground like inky brush smudges, giving it a calligraphy-esque look. It’s very stylish and striking and feels like an original yet brief representation of Hell in anime.

2. A game of tag
Fortunately for us, there’s still plenty of mysteries seeded, as with finding out the nature of Adolla, we also see the Evangelist himself pop up behind Sho. And what can I say, guys: he’s got the most final-boss, Final Fantasy-ass villain design ever, replete with floating golden wings and enough god-like catholic symbolism to make you wanna cry. Yet the narrative merely teases him at this point, as he does nothing but merely show himself and smirk at Shinra, before disappearing once Sho is done explaining Adolla to Shinra. It’s an exciting glimpse of the future of this show and storyline, showing that Atsushi Okubo knows how to pace a long-form story.

From there, we get a few things: Licht figures out the nature of Sho’s powers, that he can pause time around him by controlling the expanding ‘heat of the universe’ which is batshit insane and I love it. On top of that, we get that classic, token-Shonen-protagonists persistence from Shinra to just keep going, no matter the odds, and try to save his brother no matter what, and it has been built up and executed so genuinely here that I can’t help but root for the poor guy.

3. Feel ALL the emotions
More on that last note: Shinra has a little bit of a flashback moment that touches on all the emotional beats throughout the series that the rest of the 8th Company has expressed towards him, and it’s a solid greatest-hits reel of moments up to this point. The point of it here, however, is to convey to Sho that even if he can’t save him, Shinra does have a solid found family back home and he will still have them even if he can’t adopt Sho into that fold. It’s not the most original moment, and pretty by-the-book as far as these kinds of action anime go, but it’s still a solid and faithful character beat for Shinra.

What I do like is that Shinra’s emotional persistence ties into his abilities. He realizes that he was on the receiving end of Adolla Links in the past, like with Giovanni and Konro, and that he can reverse that role to link with Sho and force emotions and imagery into him to make him feel something. Whilst it doesn’t work quite yet in this episode, there are some pretty good moments of Sho being interrupted mid-action by one of Shinra’s memories of the pair as children.

4. Anything you can do, I can do better
Due to the nature of Sho’s time-controlling powers, it seems that Shinra will never be fast enough to catch him because he’ll never be as fast as time itself. It makes for some pretty creative action sequences with Sho appearing mid-frame out of nowhere to attack Shinra simply because that’s how he would move if he was pausing time mid-fight. It’s clever choreography and it makes for a very tactile and satisfying battle.

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However, we get a dose of that good old never-give-up attitude from Shinra here, as he overcomes this by simply pushing himself to go faster and faster each time and doing the seemingly impossible. Shinra appears at one point to go so fast that he explodes into particles and disappears, only to reappear smashing into a column behind Sho, who wasn’t able to see him during his time-stopping phase. This is cleverly deciphered by Viktor Licht, who realizes that Sho is going so fast that he’s breaking through the time barrier, which his body can’t handle so it breaks apart, but Shinra is powerful enough to heat up and reform it subconsciously so that he can effectively move backward in time to dodge and subsequently hit Sho. Phew!

5. The fourth generation
This kind of ridiculous power scaling doesn’t go unnoticed by the viewers of this fight. It’s great to see Viktor Licht’s reaction of sheer disbelief at watching Shinra simply will himself to break the time barrier and achieve the once-thought impossible. Even more interesting, however, is that a few of the White-Clad, including an alleged Adolla Burst wielder, hypothesize that these two fighting at the power and scale that they are with their Adolla-linked abilities is the birth of the fourth generation of pyrokinetics. Having this audience watch and comment on the fight really gives it a sense of grandeur and scale that it deserves.

Shinra appears to be slowing down, unfortunately, with Licht warning him that if he’s not careful, he’ll overheat mid-sprint and be unable to reform himself from broken-down particles. Of course, Shinra simply pushes through, out of the sheer will to save Sho, which is the third time that we’ve had this rationale for why Shinra’s so powerful in this episode and it’s beginning to wear thin. However, Shinra just appears to be happy to be trying to reunite with his brother, and that kind of positivity is infectious here, leading us to really root for our boy as the episode ends on a cliffhanger.


//TAGS | 2020 Summer TV Binge | Fire Force

Rowan Grover

Rowan is from Sydney, Australia! Rowan writes about comics and reads the heck out of them, too. Talk to them on Twitter at @rowan_grover. You might just spur an insightful rant on what they're currently reading, but most likely, you'll just be interrupting a heated and intimate eating session.

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