This new arc of Fire Force is turning out to be a fun feature for some of the periphery characters that have fallen from the spotlight in recent episodes, plus a great proving ground for fresh blood. We get less focus on Shinra here and a great battle scene with Arthur, plus some more light shed on why Vulcan is such an important figure. As always, there’s spoilers considering the nature of these recaps, but there’s is a pretty heavy spoiler in this particular episode, so be warned! Regardless of that, let’s dive in!
1. Found Family
The episode kicks off with some endearing moments that we spend with Vulcan, Lisa and Yu, as the cobbled together found family that they’ve become. The way that it starts is so endearing, and we’ve had so many examples of good natured, wholesome family situations in the past with this show (e.g. Beni and Konro) that I didn’t at all expect to have this comfortable rug so violently yanked out from underneath me. Vulcan shares a soda with his deceased father and grandfather at their grave which is, of course, adorable and I love him, before he goes to bash away at a makeshift drum kit with gleeful abandon.
In retrospect, the episode sets up a betrayal so heavily in this opening sequence that I’m a little disappointed in myself for not picking up on it. Vulcan talks about how he sees they’re family as an indestructible unit, like the perpetual energy machine Amaterasu, whilst Lisa comments that all good things that exist must come to an end at some point. Lisa, don’t be a buzz kill, girl!
2. Giovanni’s return and taking Shinra off the board
Post opening, there’s a little bit of discussion between the 8th Company folks about protecting Vulcan’s workshop, and Shinra’s warning about Giovanni’s incoming attack via the mysterious Adolla Link. They try to figure out the best way to explain this to Vulcan without sounding crazy, which is a plot device that I often find such a drag in high-concept fiction like this. Like, so much ridiculous nonsense is going on in this world, is it truly that much more farfetched that Shinra’s… shins… have a telepathic ability to warn him of an incoming threat? Thankfully, we don’t dwell on this too long, with Iris and Arthur only talking to Vulcan briefly before Giovanni’s reinforcements arrive at the workshop door to make a convincing argument for them.
Meanwhile, Shinra split the party and went off on his own to try and intercept Giovanni. This certainly does something, though whether it actually achieves anything in our party’s favour is questionable. Giovanni attacks Shinra with 2nd Generation fire powers and a wire-controlled rocket fist, sending more than two million volts of electricity into our boy without fully taking him out. This gives us a new perspective on just how beastly and powerful Shinra is without going into masses of stats, and I kind of enjoy the vague-ness of it.
3. What makes a true knight
Back at the workshop, Arthur volunteers to protect the workshop but explains that he doesn’t have his sword or anything ‘knightly’ on him to channel his powers through. It’s the first time we’ve ever really heard Arthur’s powers explained in some way that he can rationalize, and it’s super endearing and fun. Vulcan goes ahead and whips something up for him, and so our hero goes and meets the enemy garbed in… well, scroll up to the header image and you’ll get the idea. We get a hilarious comparison of this real life version versus the more traditional, knightly garb that he sees himself in within his mind’s eye, and it makes me love Arthur so much more than I ever did.
The foe that Arthur is facing has the ability to make illusionary copies of people around him, which Arthur promptly destroys with his shockingly increased ego-powers. However, the White-Clad foe manages to think cleverly, and creates a mirror image of Arthur in his ridiculous get-up to make him feel humiliated and lose his faith in his knightly powers and get his ass handed to him. It’s a clever work around that doesn’t just result in a power level struggle, but I still feel bad for our good King Knight boy, Arthur.
Continued below4. Betrayal
With our tragically fallen Knight King Arthur out of the way, Giovanni and his gang begin their assault on Vulcan’s workshop. Vulcan, being the angel that he is that could support me in his big tattooed arms, tells Lisa and Yu to run on without him, but not before Lisa turns around and promptly knocks him down with an flame surge (Noooo!!!!!). Yes, folks, as I was alluding to in previous thoughts, it does so happen that Lisa is actually the dirty dang mole in Vulcan’s adorable family, having been inserted by Giovanni in an attempt to learn secrets about Amaterasu.
But what secrets could Vulcan know about the world’s foremost perpetual energy generator, you ask? Well, dear reader, as it turns out, Vulcan’s forefathers were the ones to come up with the blamed thing, and Giovanni wants to know the whereabouts of the key. It’s a pretty straightforward plot twist, especially coming off Lisa’s betrayal, but it plays by the numbers well and sets Vulcan up as a pretty big deal within the larger Fire Force universe.
5. Terrifying fervor
Before long, our plague-mask bearing villain Giovanni arrives on the scene, and boy, does he change moods fast. Before, especially when handling Shinra, this guy had a creepy, smooth-talking doctor energy about him that made him already feel slimy and uncomfortable. When dealing with Vulcan now, however, at the cusp of realising everything he’s worked so hard for in the Evangelist’s favour, he becomes a terrifying, repetitious, screaming, cane-beating machine. We see his frustrations with Vulcan and his family bubble and seethe to the surface as he makes comments about how genuine and gullible the family was, yet still so talented and successful. In a way, this makes him more relatable and further on that, even more horrifying.
Giovanni is completely relentless in this beat-up, destroying a defenseless Vulcan who’s already on the ground in foetal position. The real kicker, however, is that he then goes and wrecks Vulcan’s nature and animal projector, crushing our sweet himbo’s dreams at realizing a natural, fauna-populated world ever again. It’s a huge penny to drop at the end of the episode, and I can’t wait to see the sweet revenge enacted on this sick bastard Giovanni in the future.
