Fire Force Season 2

Season Overview

Fire Force Season 2 (Enen no Shouboutai: Ni no Shou / 炎炎ノ消防隊 弐ノ章) is 24 episodes long and covers four primary arcs. I’m just going to give these arcs names based on the important aspects of them. First is the Inca arc, then the Chinese Peninsula arc, followed by the Nataku arc, and lastly is the Nether Raid arc.

There are also some episodes that don’t really fit into any of these arcs spread throughout the season. But those are the main four groupings of episodes.

The Inca arc introduces the Fifth Pillar, Inca Kasugatani. I’ll discuss her a bit more in the new characters section. But what you should know for now is that she’s a complete wildcard who just wants anarchy. She also has a fairly unique pyrokinetic ability the likes of which we haven’t seen before.

My favorite arc of the season was probably the Chinese Peninsula arc. In this arc, a rag-tag group of fire soldiers heads to a peninsula on what was formerly the Chinese mainland. What I like about this arc is that it gives us a lot of lore about the world.

The Nataku arc introduces the Sixth Pillar, Nataku Son. In this arc, Company 8 once again looks into the dealings of Haijima Industries. While there was a lot going on in this arc, I didn’t feel like it added all that much to the series besides introducing some characters.

Finally, there’s the Nether Raid arc, which I thought was the worst arc of the season. Rather than being a climactic end, it had some surface-level action but mainly focused on how poorly the author writes his female characters. There was a lot wrong with this arc from a character development perspective.

New Characters

There are five new characters of note in Fire Force Season 2. These are Ogun, Inca, Ritsu, Nataku, and Kurono. Ogun might have been in Season 1. But I don’t believe he was so I’m including him.

Ogun Montgomery is a member of Company 4 and a friend of Shinra and Arthur. The three of them trained together before officially becoming fire soldiers. Ogun is somewhat unique in that he appears to have three different pyrokinetic abilities.

First, he can control a flame-powered hoverboard. Second, he can create spears out of flames. And third, he can boost his physical abilities to insane levels by altering his internal temperature. Ogun is probably the coolest new character.

I’m going to pair Inca and Ritsu together here because they work together. As the Fifth Pillar, Inca is given a Protector to, well, protect her. This Protector is Ritsu. Inca’s pyrokinetic ability allows her to sense when a fire is going to start. She can also start fires by tracing a line she sees in the air, but it doesn’t appear that she can start fires at will. Ritsu is a necromancer who uses fire to reanimate corpses.

Nataku is the most recent Pillar to awaken. He’s the kid who was forced to become a pyrokinetic by Rekka using one of the bugs on him. He was then taken in (captured) by Haijima Industries, where he was forced to undergo combat training to bring out his Adolla Burst. We don’t really know what his ability is yet, but it seems to be a cursed-arm type ability.

And lastly, we have Kurono Yuuichirou, Nataku’s (tor)mentor at Haijima Industries. Kurono’s defining character trait is that he loves beating up those weaker than himself. He also has a smoke-based ability, which is the first of its kind in the series.

Comparison to Season 1

Generally speaking, I think Season 2 is better than Season 1. However, I wouldn’t say that the gap between the two seasons is very large. The second season had some better fights, such as Shinra vs. Arthur. But overall I wouldn’t say that the fights were all that much better.

Where Season 2 really shown was its lore and world-building. We learned a lot about the history of this world throughout the season, but primarily during the Chinese Peninsula arc. It’s in China that our heroes learn a bit of the truth regarding the founding and maintaining of their home nation.

In fact, I think that the first half of Season 2 is much better than Season 1. The reason that it’s not overwhelmingly better as a whole is that the second half of the season really dropped off. It slowed down, started looping back around to old plot points, and dismantled a lot of the series’ character building.

I think the slide downward started in the Nataku arc. Going back to Haijima Industries didn’t feel like any progress was being made. Company 8 already dealt with Haijima during the original Dr. Giovanni arc and the Captain Hibana arc back in Season 1. So returning to Haijima now just felt like we were rehashing something that was already done.

To use a game analogy, have you ever played The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass? That game makes you return to the same main temple about five times just to make a little bit of progress each time. It’s not fun when you know that you’re wasting your time there rather than making real progress elsewhere.

The biggest issue with Season 2 is how it deals with Maki and Tamaki, though. I won’t go too much into this since I wrote about it extensively in my weekly episode reviews. But basically, Maki’s character was “undeveloped” just to redevelop her in a condescending way. And Tamaki continued to be nothing more than fan service.

Conclusion

In the end, I gave Fire Force Season 2 a 7/10, which is the same score I gave to the first season. If I was just rating the first cour of this season though, it probably would have been an 8. Which season do you like more? Let me know in the comments.

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