The penultimate episode is upon us, dear readers! Fire Force season one is heating to a final climax and we are starting to see the culmination of Shinra’s journey with 8th Company and how his search for his brother is coming to a close. There’s plenty of high emotional beats that especially hit hard for those watching for the first time, so more than ever, be aware of potential spoilers!
1. Get out of my head, Charles!
The opening of the episode sees our best boy Shinra trying his damnedest to get through to his evil, rude little brother Sho with the help of his Adolla Link. It’s a very emotive and interesting plot device since it basically allows for an in-story reason for flashbacks to appear. Thankfully, the narrative handles these flashbacks in interesting and feasible ways, that they appear in flashes that feel like Shinra is really trying to push them into Sho’s head without complete success. In this way, you can really feel for Shinra’s struggle to save his brother.
And with a final blizzard of visceral, raw emotions that remind Sho of his older brother bringing him back into safety as an infant, Sho finally does come around. It’s a moment that feels well earned after episodes of what felt like Shinra butting his head against a wall. Too bad that just before the opening credits, we see Shinra stabbed through the chest by what appears to be another Adolla user, the newcomer Haumea!
2. Haumea’s okay, I guess
As it happens, in a very vaguely explained way, Shinra seems to have lost control of his powers and actually stabbed himself…? This is glossed over in a weird way that leaves us weirdly unsure as to how our lead protagonist got stabbed through the chest with a dang longsword. Regardless, Haumea is well and truly on the scene now instead of just skulking around in the shadows, and of course she’s not just here to mess around. Haumea’s cackling and maniacal and definitely makes a splash with her full debut here. She gloats in front of Shinra and somehow seems to switch the only-just-rescued Sho onto autopilot to get him the heck out of there. Not without a fight though!
Before she can make any drastic moves, our fearless co-leader Lieutenant Hinawa shoots a bullet right towards Haumea’s head, showing us that the rest of the 8th Company have come here to save our boy. The most important take away here is that Arthur’s plasma sword seems to be capable of interfering with Haumea’s electrical, nerve-tampering powers. It’s not touched on too much here, leading me to think that this will be more important in later episodes. It does make Haumea a little less fearsome, however, as she seems to get constantly annoyed by how much Arthur’s plasma is affecting here.
3. You make my Earthquake
Luckily for the White-Clad, the earth (under-earth?) begins to shake, with Haumea revealing that this is the Evangelist’s doing to help her gang escape from the Nether with Sho intact. Damn that Evangelist with his perfect narrative timing! Haumea escapes with Sho following along as a mindless drone, which makes me feel sad that we didn’t get the satisfying ending to the showdown that I would’ve liked, but shows that the narrative has larger plans for the Sho/Shinra rivalry down the line.
The gang manage to escape the Nether intact, and we get some great wide-scale shots of the luscious, post-human landscape that surrounds the entrance. It creates an eerily beautiful setting for the scene as Shinra is fighting for his life attached to some serious medical equipment. Hinawa and Obi make the quick decision that our boy needs to be taken straight away to hospital, and they both recommend a face we’ve only seend briefly in the past, the medical captain Huang. She’s a tough, practical solider to the Fire Force, and her inclusion here and show of status is terrific and shows some solid diversity in the higher-up character roster. She agrees to take on Shinra, but doesn’t have the highest of hopes.
4. The best in the biz
We move straight to a supernaturally powered medical procedure scene here with Huang and her team beginning to perform on Shinra, and it’s one of the best adaptations of the fire powers inherent to this show and the many ways they can be applied. Sadly, there’s not too much in the way of scalpels or close-proximity, high-tension organ-tweaking moments, but we do see Huang summon a pretty dope Rod of Asclepius that forms as a flaming blue snake around her arm as she raises it in the air to be used.
The rest of the scene is essentially another in-text infodump for readers to understand what’s happening here. The rest of the 8th Company are essentially sitting together and explaining exactly what it is that Huang is doing to Shinra, and how the 6th Company are a Hospital unit but still an essential part of the overall Fire Force lineup. What’s interesting is that Obi notes how Huang is mainly effective on pyrokinetics like Shinra because her own flame amplifies the patient’s, allowing that to help them be restored to full health.
5. Three. Days. Later.
Thanks to Huang’s efforts, Shinra essentially remains in a coma for three days healing, when he wakes up for a moment to reflect on his time trying to save Sho. Unfortunately, this is all dashed away by the long-anticipated re-arrival of the menacing Captain Leonard Burns. I love how much the show teased this character as the potential villain behind all of Shinra’s troubles right at the start of the show, then managed to squirrel him away for long enough that we’d all fall into a false sense of security and forget about him. But no! Bam! He’s back, baby, and he’s as deadpan and vaguely-motivated as ever, coming to Shinra with the promise of answers as to what happened to his family so many years ago.
It’s pretty straightforward stuff as Burns reveals that yes, he knew who Shinra was all along, and that his brother survived and was taken by the Evangelist and blah blah blah, just about anything else that would potentially stir Shinra up. Burns doesn’t really come off with any real allignment through this discussiong, rather just seeming more like a self-important prick, but that’s not a bad thing here! Because, Burns challenges Shinra to a rematch after all these episodes to see how far our boy has come, and knowing that the next episode is our last for the season, you can be sure it’s gonna be a good one!
