Fire force episode 24 featured Television 

Five Thoughts on Fire Force‘s “The Burning Past”

By | November 17th, 2020
Posted in Television | % Comments

We reach the end of season one of Fire Force with a well-structured finale that delivers exciting battles, genuinely surprising and intriguing reveals, and some good old tom-foolery. And what better descriptors could you use to describe this infectiously fun anime? It’s been a blast these past twenty-four weeks, folks, so let’s not waste a minute and get right into “The Burning Past”.

1. Flash forward
I know that as an educated writer (allegedly) and consumer of a large amount of popular media (read: popular, and observe the absence of: scholarly), I should be savvier to the old flash-forward/starting-in-act-two narrative convention, but this episode’s introduction genuinely got me! We open with a completely different scene to the promise of a fight in last week’s cliffhanger. We instead seem to see the aftermath, in which Shinra is so shellshocked by something that clearly happened in his confrontation with Captain Burns that he can’t confidently confide in Vulcan or any of his closest friends about it. It might have been due to the week between watching episodes, but I was honestly scrambling for a moment to see if I’d missed something!

What it does do, however, is build up a lot of quick and palpable anticipation for the Shinra/Burns confrontation to take place. We knew that there was a significant difference in their power towards the start of the season, but for it to now be to the extent that Shinra has not only been hospitalized but also emotionally scarred? What possibly could have taken place??

2. A decisive battle
After the opening takes place (the last time we’ll hear Mayday by coldrain in this context, my controversial and divisive fave), we finally jump back to the point when we last left off. Burns is standing motionless, effortlessly goading Shinra into a rage and taunting him into a battle just by letting slip that he knows what happened in Shinra’s past. What takes place is a thoroughly cathartic battle: not necessarily one with the most flashy and fluid animation in the series to this point, but one with a lot of emotional weight and stakes riding on it. If Shinra can injure Burns and prove himself to have grown, he will learn the truth about his past!

Not to say that the animation standard in this fight is bad by any means: it’s really exciting, especially as far as shiny supernaturally powered battle anime goes. I love how searingly hot Burns’ personal flame is rendered, as it gives visual credence to just how much more powerful the captain is than even our faster-than-light protagonist Shinra. On top of that, I love how the onlookers comment on how old-fashioned Burns is by always goading people into fights, and how he’s really letting loose. It’s a great way to add tension to the fight!

3. Mother dear, what horns you have!
Luckily for us viewers, we never had anything to fear! Shinra manages to summon all of his fancy new jet-propulsion and yoga-inspired techniques to burst through Burns’ shield and land a fierce burn on him (yes, a burn on Burns). Burns does the surprisingly honorable thing here and concedes defeat, not only progressing the narrative forward but also revealing that he is a little more code-abiding than we might have initially suspected. He proceeds to reveal a little about Shinra’s past, so beware when I say that in the next paragraph we will be touching on some pretty heavy-duty spoilers for Fire Force season one.

As it happens, the Evangelist and his White-Clad were actually around way back in these halcyon days of Shinra’s tumultuous childhood. A creepily young and energetic Haumea detects that a new Adolla Link is about to be born within Sho, and so they wait at the sidelines and subtly influence things to go their way. Due to this, we see that it wasn’t an infernal that burned down Kusakabe family house: it was Sho’s Adolla awakening, lighting a massive fire and unfortunately causing their mother to change into an Infernal. Not just any Infernal, mind you, but the Infernal that Shinra has been chasing so long, the one that had seemingly taken his life away from him. It’s pretty tragic and unexpected stuff but opens up a lot of potential about what could happen with Shinra’s heritage and what this means going forwards next season.

Continued below

4. A new direction
We snap back to Burns telling this story, as we realize this was the devastating event that shellshocked Shinra so late into the future. The realization that the insidious, demonic villain he’d thought to have ruined his childhood actually turning out to be his own mother is a bit of a game-changer for our sweet boy protagonist, and it’s easy to see why this kind of revelation might stop anyone in their personal quest for revenge. Shinra gets understandably pissed off at Burns for having hidden the truth for him for so long, but Burns reveals that he didn’t want to get Shinra involved for fear that he wasn’t as potentially powerful as his brother Sho. It’s a great rationale that combines emotional and practical response, making us get more of a feel for the kind of person Burns is.

The narrative shifts again to the flash-forward, where we see Shinra finish detailing the events of this confrontation to his Captain Obi. Interestingly enough, Shinra seems to think his next route is to investigate the captain of the fourth company, some guy named Hague, who unfortunately was not memorable enough for me to be shocked by this revelation that he might be involved. The scene finishes with a newfound quest and resolve, that hopefully, Shinra will be able to find his mother and somehow turn her back. Hope!

5. Party before the end of the world
But wait! There’s more! Fire Force delivers a great post-credits cap to the season by having the whole of 8th Company and their extended friends that they’ve come closer with during the season having a party to celebrate Shinra’s release from the hospital. It’s one of the most wholesome and fun parts of the whole season and gives us a moment of well-earned downtime to let us just hang out with these characters and see how their personalities and quirks intermingle.

There’s plenty of great character moments to be found here. A few personal favorites include Benimaru offering in a shockingly flirtatious way to drink sake with Tamaki (who may actually be underage? Ehhh????) and Viktor Licht frying up some octopus all on his own and being thoroughly entertained by his own presence. I really, truly love the scene of Princess Hibana and Karim seemingly having a date together, but with Hibana calling Karim gravel and making him top up her wine glass. I can only aspire to channel the same energy to get men on my dates to do the same. Regardless, it’s a perfect ending to the season that leaves off enough questions for us to come back but gives us a solid resolution and satisfying send-off to a thoroughly entertaining block of storytelling. Thanks for following along, dear readers!


//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.

EMAIL | ARTICLES


  • Dark Netflix Paradise burnt Adam and Eve painting Television
    Ten Thoughts on Dark‘s “Paradise”

    By | Dec 4, 2020 | Television

    Welcome to this week’s installment of the Summer TV Binge of Netflix’s Dark, analyzing the final episode of the twisted German time travel series, released June 27, 2020.“Paradise (Das Paradies)”Written by Jantje FrieseDirected by Baran bo OdarSeptember 25, 2053: Claudia reveals the true Origin to Adam, informing him their world and Eva’s were borne out […]

    MORE »

    -->