The Asakusa arc is turning out to be one of the longer arcs in Fire Force so far and it’s certainly heating up by this point. We’ve had powerful characters being introduced, we’ve had good guys against each other, and now we’ve got some classic team-ups to face a mysterious enemy. Let’s make like Shinra and move full speed ahead!
1. An offer you can’t refuse
We get some closure on the rather obvious cliffhanger from last week’s episode and… it turned it pretty much exactly as expected. Konro, unfortunately, burned out his powers to the point of giving himself a permanent disfigurement, and the moment that we see between Beni and him is pretty endearing and only feeds my headcanon that these two are adorable husbands even further.One thing I did notice from this scene, however, is that the animation quality on facial expressions seemed a little less detailed and expressive than usual, and I noticed this recurring throughout the episode. I won’t harp on every appearance this makes, but in this instance at least, it took away from what had the potential to be one of the more emotive scenes of the series.
What is interesting is that instead of enrolling in the Fire Force, Konro and Beni are instead approached and offered to make a team in light of their handling of the chaos. It gives readers a bit more context for how these companies are formed, which is to say, they’re done so with little planning, at least in the early stages. Beni has a very anti-capitalist attitude to it, but Konro sways him towards the Fire Force, saying that they can manipulate the Empire as much as they would do back.
2. Identity crises
Snapping back to the present, we see Konro finish up talking to 8th Company before deciding to head out. Naturally, Shinra has a glory moment where he makes a speech about doing the right thing and being a hero, and it’s all very on the nose. Luckily, Konro loves cheese, so he gives Shinra his approval, saying one day Shinra will meet his person worth sacrificing himself for (like Beni, right? Because you guys are soulmates??). Back outside, we see Beni dealing with a whole bunch of townsfolk who are accusing each other of things that either person doesn’t recognize as having done. Beni’s tired expression is perfectly on point and relatable at this moment, and we can really empathize with him having to deal with people like they’re children.
It seems to be, however, that the White Clad has infiltrated the entire city with duplicates, although the reason for this mass invasion isn’t totally clear, it does create a smokescreen for the White Clad’s true intentions to protect them from Beni and 8th Company. We see this kick off in an unsettling way, of course, when one of the Hikage twins gets kicked by Arthur and revealed to be one of the White Clad disciples with his face shape-shifted to cause mistrust. Shock, horror!
3. Infernal city
At this point, we see the animators relying upon CGI a little too much. There’s a cut back to Asakusa as a cityscape, and we see large vats of fire erupt into the sky to signify multiple, massive Infernalizations happening across town. It’s a good use to display scale at first, but the show goes back to it multiple times, to the point where it interrupts the flow of dialogue and action. Regardless, we see that the White Clad is now going around Asakusa and wreaking havoc with their artificial Infernalizing. Given that we saw Beni put in so much effort into ritualizing and exorcizing an Infernal in the last few episodes, it hits viewers hard to see so many Infernals pop up all over town and what effect this might have on the general public.
There’s an interesting comment made by Captain Obi when Shinra wants to go and help exorcise some of the Infernals. Obi wants to respect not only that they are not within their jurisdiction to save the people here, but that the people of Asakusa have expressed that they feel better knowing that Beni will be the one around to put them to rest. Instead, they help out by rescuing and evacuating the townspeople, which is a totally reasonable compromise.
Continued below4. Cults are still bad, kids!
From here, we see a little bit of the White Clad and some of the interesting personalities in that group that choose to worship The Evangelist. We meet a charming weirdo named Yona who uses the miraculous power of Fire to inflict plastic surgery on his victims and mold their faces to however he chooses. To show he’s a little unhinged, the narrative has him go too far and blow up a victim’s face, splattering blood all over Yona as he mutters to himself. It’s a little excessive to show that this character is ‘twisted’, but the ability and the way it is explained is certainly interesting.
Having shown this power off, the focus returns to Hinawa and the gang interrogating the weird old man that impersonated the Hikage twin. The old man was one who had been cosmetically altered by Yona, which already makes him feel a little unsettling having come out of the other side of that procedure intact. But to add insult to injury, the old man spouts off about how pathetic humans are in the great light of Sol. Again, it’s stock standard cult speak and feels a little trite compared to the complex lore and character relations the show is so good at.
5. Teamwork
To cap off the episode, we get a neat little fight between Shinra and Arthur and two of the White Clad, Arrow and Haran. Regardless of the fact that the animation quality is not quite on par with some of the other superb action scenes this series has to offer, the way that the fight is mapped out narratively is pretty interesting and engaging. The aptly named Arrow snipes at Shinra from a few separate places to confuse him, before ambushing him with Haran, only to have Arthur save our boy’s neck. At this stage, we get a dynamic that we haven’t seen in a little bit: Arthur and Shinra actively competing against each other! It’s that classic shonen rivalry on display, but without all the uncomfortable drama and bad blood spanning tens of hundreds of episodes. Instead, we get a pretty comedic sequence of the two arguing and trying to work together without stepping on each other’s feet.
The narrative pauses the White Clad, which looks awkward considering we see them stand there and wait for Shinra and Arthur to settle their differences. However, we soon get into a pretty solid fight, with flashy fire animation, as Shinra opts to go for close range against Haran whilst Arthur takes on Arrow. The episode ends with a genuinely interesting cliffhanger this time, as Haran is pushed into a corner and forced to Infernalize himself to tip the scales – but what will happen?!?
