Welcome back to this week’s coverage of Fire Force, folks! This week, the short arc that began in the last episode featuring the raid on the 5th Company’s base comes to a close! We get some light shed on Iris and Hibana’s upbringing as Sisters and some terrific pyrokinetic visuals. Let’s jump on in!
1. I need a hero
You’ve got to admire the audacity that Shinra has, being one of the 8th Company’s newest and youngest recruits, deciding that he has the guts and willpower to take on a dang Captain. Better yet, he tops this all off by announcing to Hibana and Iris once he enters the room that he’s the hero of the story come to save his senior officer. It might sound arrogant the way I’m describing it, but the show manages to put his best intentions at the forefront and have him come off as incredibly endearing. The way that we see him prep himself up before entering the room adds a much needed human element that builds up to this announcement, plus the way that Shinra has been developed in the show at large makes it hard for him to be seen as overly arrogant.
I do love that just before entering the room, there’s a scene of a set of Angel’s Three that tries to stop Shinra. He almost immediately wipes the floor with them, which perhaps clears any worries that he might not be strong enough to face a captain.
2. Token Tragic Backstory
As the fight kicks off, we start to find out more about Iris and Hibana’s upbringing as told by the latter. Since Hibana detested it so much, all we hear are the negatives. We learn that the cathedral that the two studied at was supposedly a strict religious place of learning and that at some point everyone except Iris and Hibana combusted (but not turned Infernal? I’m still not 100% sure how this process works). Hibana believes she was spared since she was the one who leaned the most towards atheism in their class. She doesn’t give any explanation as to why Iris survived, though perhaps this is the narrative fueling her madness in believing this reason, which is clever subtle storytelling.
The reason why I call such a rough-as-hell backstory token… is that, well, it is! Shinra even notes on the fact that she’s not the only one with shit in her past relating to combustion, but in a way that doesn’t make it needlessly meta so that we’re not thrown out of the immersion.
3. It’s all in your head! Push through!
This was what went through MY head when we learned about Shinra’s ability to withstand Hibana’s hypnosis-esque ability. Shinra seems to believe that Hibana’s diluting of his blood vessels and other messing with his bodily functions in order to cause severe slow-down is just “all in his head” and so he can overcome it. So naturally, I immediately thought about whenever my Youtube personal trainers yell at me to move past the pain because it’s all in my head. Damn it Shinra, that’s not how it works!
Once I got over this, it did make for a pretty entertaining fight scene. Hibana’s pyrokinesis has the ability to create and control large bodies of flame to the point that she can change their colors and forms into a Sakura tree. Seeing the flames pulse through the Tree form is kind of stunning, and the way that the anime uses the light from this formation glitter over the room in little Sakura leaves makes for some terrific scene-setting. Plus, the way that Shinra seems to defy physics with his sheer willpower and seeing Hibana so shook by that very exciting storytelling.
4. The paths we take
We do start to see a little bit more of a power shift as we progress further into the fight, however. Hibana’s Sakura petals eventually converge around Shinra in a glowing pink prison which, again, looks terrific in animated form. But it does feel like a moment of genuine danger for Shinra where the show does happen to remind us that yes, Hibana is a trained-ass captain and Shinra is a rookie-ass newbie.
Before we can see these scathing petals set in on Shinra, however, there’s another flashback to the Cathedral. This time, it seems to be more of an omnipresent storytelling style so we don’t just get Hibana’s influence leading the story where she wants. We see a sweet moment as Hibana is acting as a mentor to the kids, showing off her Pyrokinesis in ways that light up the sky with fire shaped into glowing flowers. Iris is so enamored by this that we see her ask to see them again, to which Hibana promises yes but only when she becomes less shy. It sets up and rationalizes the pair’s dynamic in the show thus far, giving context to the way Hibana is so aggressively dominating to Iris but also setting precedent for a more benevolent relationship.
5. Show me the flowers, senpai
We flip back to the present and Shinra, with his magical power of self-confidence, manages to withstand the sakura storm and preach more to Hibana about what it means to be a hero, which is kind of cutely naive. Hibana resists for a while but then actually starts to take in his words and buckle somewhat. I’m of two minds about this because, in the face of Shinra performing these miracle acts, it would definitely make someone question their life choices. Yet Hibana is such a strong personality and was played up so hard as a villain prior to this, that I feel a little let down by her bowing out so easily.
Regardless, we see her enamored by Shinra then proceeding to mansplain about how heroes don’t need precedent to be saved by others, which is a bit of a weird note to wind the episode down on. The actual ending is much sweeter, however, since Iris asks if she’s proven herself to have broken out of her shyness enough to see the flowers again, so Hibana makes pyrokinetic Irises. Aw.
