Fire Force 6/7 – Spark of Promise and Investigation of 1st

So I missed writing about last week’s flame fest due to travel so let’s make it a double header this week! Not the best two episodes to stick together, but we’ll make it work somehow.

Let’s start with the big focus of Ep. 6 (and some of Ep. 7) – Princess Hibana. This is a sympathetic bad guy, but for some reason, Okubo has actually made a female character that didn’t make me want to burn my eyes out (If I was a character in this anime, I’d have X’s in my pupils). While not entirely believable, Hibana’s trauma and response are plausible – seeing the gruesome deaths of everyone you knew COULD cause a psychotic break. I’ll buy that. I think what makes this episode work is the duality of Hibana and her flames: the beautiful flowers to entice children vs the sadistic combat skills employed to enslave. Really, I’m just happy Fire Force has managed to get a female character with a bit of depth…not just in the chest area.

To wrap up episode 6, the fight scene was great (I don’t know who is doing the choreography for this show, but…it’s amazing and then also a little awkward at times. Very strange). The devil enticing the princess is a pretty convoluted juxtaposition of personalities – who is the devil/hero and princess/devil, really?

Episode 7 is where we see the bigger story starting to shape up. Now that Princess walk-on-people is on our side (and hilariously just hanging out at a different company’s station – like what are all the masochists in her station doing without her?), we find out – gasp – someone is creating infernals. And that someone is probably in the 1st, which is the religious arm, of course up to no good.

Now unfortunately the 1st has cat girl, who I’m seriously contemplating just ignoring in all future reviews. However, the other characters of the 1st actually carried this encounter pretty well. Fighting the 1st’s captain showed that Shinra managed to beat the nerd (but beautiful? How does that work?) captain in a fight. Not a combat captain. He wasn’t even remotely close. Throw some clever fire gizmos into the mix and that’s pretty much all that happened here.

Episodes 6 and 7 have gotten us into the squad investigation plot-line, which is going to be pretty straightforward: introduce the major characters, tensions, etc. and set up for the next cour (which I’m sure will involve Shinra’s missing brother). What heartens me is that the animation quality hasn’t taken a nose dive – despite some awkward footing occasionally, the fight scenes remain the highlight of the show. As we also explore the personal connections to fire, I think Fire Force actually has some steak behind all the sizzle of the pyrotechnics. Here’s to hoping this level keeps up, both in writing and in animation.