Fire Force Season 3

Episodes 13-14

From both a production and a narrative standpoint, the third season of Fire Force has been less consistent than its predecessors, but I was still damned happy to cover its return in this winter's Preview Guide. While Fire Force has never been the most creative or ambitious modern shonen anime, its infectious commitment to its own willfully idiotic brand of charm has earned the series a place in my heart. At the very least, the final stretch of the previous cour saw Fire Force's many long-simmering story threads and lore crumbs finally start to come together into a cohesive vision of a final act, which is exactly where that first episode picked up.

We'll have to save the really meaty developments for a future episode, though, because all of the drama involving Shinra's Doppelgänger possession and Sister Iris' awoken flame powers has been set aside for a good old-fashioned one-on-one brawl between a couple of cool supporting characters. This time-honored shonen manga tradition may make for somewhat wonky pacing, especially when you're digesting a story on a week-to-week basis, but the rule of thumb has always been that we allow the comics to get away with this indulgence so long as it can deliver the goods. The “goods”, in this case, are obviously “badass anime fights with just enough ridiculous melodrama to keep things interesting”. I'm happy to report that Fire Force arrived this week with a pallet stacked high with the goods, and all of it special-ordered just for us.

I won't pretend that the extended flashback to Benimaru's upbringing at the hands of former Hekeshi leader Captain Hibachi is the most interesting story in the world. Most of it plays off of tropes and themes we've seen plenty of times before, even within this very show. Hibachi was a tough old cuss who used his fists to educate young Benimaru more than he ever relied on words, but all of that abuse was just because Hibachi knew that Benimaru would be the kid to lead the brigade when he inevitably had to pass on the torch. His determined resolve in the face of extinguishing Infernals is what eventually led to his murder at the hands of a grieving orphan boy. Still, it's not like Fire Force hasn't already made the tragic reality of the Infernals abundantly clear by this point. Fast-forward a decade or two, and now Benimaru is the obscenely powerful and beloved captain that Hibachi knew he could be…which is good, since the Infernalized Hibachi has risen in the wake of two new Pillars to give his old pupil another dose of his patented tough love. Except, you know, now that love is also on fire.

In the end, I don't think any of the narrative surrounding Benimaru and Hibachi's fight is much deeper than what you might find recorded for the backstage promos leading up to a big wrestling match between two longtime rivals. This isn't necessarily a criticism, by the way. Pro Wrestling has a formula that absolutely works, and it's no secret that most shonen anime essentially embody the anime equivalent of the WWE. Like I said before, all of this extra flair is in service of The Big Fight, and so long as The Big Fight is cool, then we're all good.

The Big Fight is pretty damned cool. I wish I were the type of person who cared enough about special moves and battle-patter to provide more analysis of what Hibachi and Benimaru actually end up doing to each other in their gorgeously animated, almost painterly showdown. Alas, you will have to settle for a meager “Fire go boom real pretty, muscle men punch hard under shiny red moon.” While this isn't my absolute favorite bit of showy spectacle that Fire Force has delivered, it is still well worth any fan's time.

What interests me more is the way that imagination and creative willpower have been made into literally world-changing forces as the Adolla burns ever brighter. Last week, Shinra's Doppelgänger took the form of the thuggish punk that the world always believed him to be, and here we see Hibachi become a monstrous incarnation of raw power, which is how he always wanted to be seen by his loyal crew. As Fire Force hurdles closer to its ultimate climax, I will be interested to see just how significant an impact this transformative power of collective imagination will have. For one thing, we keep on getting dramatic closeups of that wacky, grinning crescent moon, and I could swear to you that we've seen that thing before, in an entirely different series…

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Fire Force is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.