Fire Force Season 2 Episode 20

Captain Hajiki

Sure, Captain Hajiki had one of those “shounen character quirks” (his memory loss) that I think are pretty stupid. But, aside from that, he was a pretty neat character who had a unique pyrokinetic ability. Basically, his eyes work like thermal cameras and he’s able to see heat signatures through walls.

Too bad he died like most of the other fire soldiers from the Second Company.

Fire Force Season 2 episode 20 had a lot of potential, and yet, I think it was pretty bad overall for a few reasons. Captain Hajiki’s sudden death is a minor one, but still one nonetheless. I don’t have a problem with characters suddenly being killed off. But it would have been nice to get to know him a bit more first.

I didn’t feel anything when he died. Instead, I just thought, “Oh, that guy we just met is dead now. Okay, moving on.” He was just tossed aside so that Juggernaut could have his big moment, and I think that was a waste.

But what about the other problems? Well, there was Tamaki’s lucky lecher ability again. There was also almost a cool fight involving Tamaki before she was turned into a damsel in distress again. And just about everything involved in the fight against Orochi was bad too.

I think the things I hated the most about the Orochi fight, in particular, were Juggernauts stupid regenerating “ability” that’s just his layers of clothing and Orochi explaining to us how her attacks work as she performs them. Clearly, Orochi has never heard of “show, don’t tell.”

Was there anything I thought was good about the episode? The short scene with Arthur made me chuckle. That’s it.

Knights of the Purple Haze

Something I didn’t quite understand in this episode was the existence of the Knights of the Purple Haze. These four members of the White Clad appear to work directly under Ritsu, the necromancer. However, they aren’t corpses that she’s reanimated.

What was confusing to me about this is that she seemed to imply that they were another group of “knights” equal to the Knights of the Ashen Flame. But isn’t the Knights of the Ashen Flame just the official title for what we refer to as the White Clad?

So if the Knights of the Purple Haze are members of the Knights of the Ashen Flame, then how are they also on equal footing as the Knights of the Ashen Flame? Wouldn’t that make them a subset? Or is Ritsu implying that she’s forming her own group because she views herself as a leader, and not a follower?

It does make sense for Ritsu to have her own set of followers. After all, Charon is another protector of a Pillar and he has his own personal hype squad. But I still think that the way in which Ritsu referred to her followers as being a group on the same level as the Knights of the Ashen Flame was a bit odd.

Of course, it’s also possible that I’m just misunderstanding what the Knights of the Ashen Flame actually is. Maybe it isn’t the official name for the White Clad organization. Maybe that’s the name for Yona’s followers within the organization specifically? I don’t know.

Anyway, I hope we’ll get to see what the other three members of Ritsu’s knights are capable of. I liked Orochi, but she didn’t really get all that much attention.

Weapon of Destruction

Let’s just go over this fight against Orochi in some more detail. It starts with her suddenly appearing and beheading Captain Hajiki before he can do anything. That would seem to imply that Orochi is exceedingly strong, but as it turns out, that’s not the case.

Captain Hajiki just had a bad matchup against her. And by bad matchup, I mean that he just wasn’t fast enough to see or dodge her attack and his fire resistance was quite low.

As for how Tamaki was able to be defeated by someone like Orochi, well, the only real explanation is that the author just doesn’t want Tamaki to be useful in any way. We’ve seen her use her pyrokinetic ability effectively at the start of season one. But ever since then she’s gotten more and more useless.

It’s clear that Tamaki’s only role in the series from here on out is going to be fan service. So I don’t really consider her a character anymore. She’s just a piece of luggage the Eighth Company carries around. It’s become obvious why her own company gave her away.

With Tamaki out of the picture, I thought that maybe we were going to see some cool stuff from Orochi while she fought Juggernaut. That wasn’t the case. Orochi just narrated her own attacks and didn’t even get a cool shot for me to use as a picture in this review. The one above is the best there was.

And as for Juggernaut, I think I’ve said this before, but I don’t like him either. Just as Captain Hajiki did, he has one of those “shounen character quirks” that are just stupid. Why do his clothes regenerate? Because it’s “funny,” I guess. Even when we see his limbs cut off (including his head) they just come back.

There’s no reason, it’s just because that’s his gag.

Conclusion

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve become pretty tired of this series over the past few weeks. I find the vast majority of its developments to be boring, most of the characters are one-dimensional, and those singular dimensions the characters do have are often bad. It’s kind of been this way ever since the second cour began.

If this series gets a third season (which it probably will), I’m not sure that I’ll review the episodes weekly. It’s never a good sign when I’m enjoying Boruto more than another anime, but honestly, that’s the case with this one.

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My review of the next episode is available here.