Fire Force Season 2 Episode 22

Fire Force Season 2 Episode 22

Plot for Extinction

Fire Force Season 2 episode 22 wasn’t a bad episode, but I’m having a hard time seeing what the point of it all was. I’m sure some things will make more sense in the future of this series, though probably not within what remains of this season.

One such seemingly pointless plot development was that the White Clad wanted to blow up the entirety of Tokyo. I’m sure there’s some reason for them to do this, but I have no idea what it was. And since their plan failed, I get the feeling it won’t be explained for a long time.

I mean, what does blowing up Tokyo accomplish for them? They don’t have all of the Pillars at their disposal, so they would still need to collect the rest of those. And the destruction of Tokyo would probably have killed Shinra and Nataku.

Arrow from the anime series Fire Force Season 2
Arrow

Maybe those with Adolla Bursts can withstand an explosion like that and the heat it would generate. But based on what we were told about the scale of this explosion, it seems unlikely. Out of all the fire soldiers, it was stated that Tamaki was the only one with a realistic chance of survival.

But let’s say that they did blow up Tokyo and both Shinra and Nataku survived. What does that accomplish? As Dr. Giovanni stated, the entire Tokyo Empire was created solely to further the Evangelist’s goal. So there must be a good reason for the White Clad to blow it all up.

Sure, Dr. Giovanni also said that they’re going to use the people of Tokyo as a fuel source. But again, to what end? I assume to help them create a second cataclysm — but don’t they need the Pillars for that?

Adolla Links

Another topic that Dr. Giovanni brought up was that Adolla Links can only happen between two people with Adolla Bursts or those who have come into contact with Adolla. This has already been implied multiple times throughout the series, but Dr. Giovanni puts more emphasis on it here.

So, how many people do we know who can utilize Adolla Links? First, we have the seven Pillars: Amaterasu, Haumea, Sho, Shinra, Inca, Nataku, and the unknown Seventh Pillar. Then we have Captain Burns, Joker, Captain Hague, Dr. Giovanni, and Lieutenant Konro.

There’s a pretty good chance that I’ve missed some characters, but those are the ones I can think of. Burns and Joker we know were caught up in the Evangelist’s plans in the past and transported to Adolla for a short period of time. I forget what happened to Captain Hague, but it’s already been established that he made contact with Adolla in the past as well.

Dr. Giovanni from the anime series Fire Force Season 2
Dr. Giovanni

That leaves Dr. Giovanni and Lieutenant Konro. Dr. Giovanni is an odd case because as he tells us, he’s never actually witnessed Adolla. His goal is to become closer to Adolla, and probably to witness it one day, but he hasn’t fully achieved that yet. That’s what all of his experiments are aimed at accomplishing.

What’s weird about that is that despite never coming into contact with Adolla, he’s achieved a one-way Adolla Link. Shinra was able to link to him, but he wasn’t able to link back. I’m interested in seeing if Dr. Giovanni ever does achieve a full Adolla Link, or if he’ll be an example of why humans shouldn’t “play god.”

Lieutenant Konro is set up as the next great mystery, but I’m not sure if there’s all that much mystery there. He probably witnessed Adolla when he fought the demon Infernal in the past.

Maki is Back

A week or two ago I wrote about how Maki’s transfer to a job as a secretary for the military was a stupid development that served no real purpose at this point in the story. I also explained exactly how this stupid development would be resolved. And guess what. I was right.

This entire character arc for Maki was the most unnecessary and predictable arc I think I’ve ever seen in an anime. I don’t know if the author thought this was a good idea or if his editor at Weekly Shounen Magazine was the one who told him to include it. But clearly, someone made a poor decision.

I’ve been complaining about this author’s inability to write strong, heroic, female characters for a few weeks now. This arc is the epitome of bad female character writing. I don’t think even Kishimoto ever wrote such a bad female character arc.

Maki Oze from the anime series Fire Force Season 2
Maki Oze

Why did we need an arc about male characters thinking Maki wasn’t strong enough to be in Company 8? As I’ve said many times, Maki already established herself as a very powerful member of that team. So all this arc did was regress her character so that she could get some artificial development to put her back where she started.

How it was all going to play out was obvious, too. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind that Maki would show up in the Nether at the last moment to save everyone with her pyrokinetic ability. As soon as she was sidelined, that was the only logical conclusion to the arc.

But, I think what made this whole arc even worse was the ending. Lieutenant Hinawa literally said that he purposefully sidelined Maki like that to test if she could really handle the challenges that await them.

Really? Hinawa’s supposed to be the one person in Maki’s corner even if everyone else doubts her. He’s literally the one who picked her to be a member of Company 8!

Conclusion

Fire Force Season 2 episode 22 had its good moments, to be sure. But I think the conclusion of Maki’s character “redevelopment” arc tainted the whole thing. If you just take that out, it was a pretty good episode.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

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