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.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

The Oze Family

Fire Force Season 2 episode 19 was an odd episode. First I thought it was going to be some backstory, then it seemed like it was going to effectively be filler, then it suddenly seemed like stuff was going to happen, and finally, it ended by setting up a seemingly predictable next set of events.

As odd as this might seem, I don’t think that any of these events with Maki’s family really needed to be shown in the anime. The reason for this is that we pretty much understood the majority of Maki’s backstory solely from the current OP and what little had been mentioned about it previously.

Think of it this way: What did us seeing Maki’s family all together add to the series? Did it establish that she’s from a military background? No. We already knew that. Did it establish that she’s from the upper echelons of society? Also no. The OP already hinted at this enough for it to be understood.

We were introduced to Maki’s family members, sure, but did they need to be introduced in this way? Her mother doesn’t seem to matter. Her brother is probably going to be an extremely minor character. And her father being the general could have been brought up in so many other ways.

I knew we would be getting an episode like this after seeing the OP, but I figured it would probably add more substance. That wasn’t the case. And considering I wasn’t looking forward to this eventual episode anyway, the fact that it didn’t really do much wasn’t a good thing.

There are times when the OP and ED can be used to give background or context to a series. This would have been the perfect time to do it by leaving this content out of an actual episode.

Into the Nether

I always find it odd how everyone is scared of the Nether. It’s literally just the subway system. How far in the future is this series supposed to take place? Why don’t they understand that the Nether isn’t some spooky, mysterious place?

You’d expect that fire soldiers and the military would have no problem waltzing right into the Nether. If random people can go crawling through caves in our world, I think some professional soldiers can go walking through the subway system in their world.

And, although everyone (except the White Clad and the Church, apparently) is afraid of the Nether, the military literally sent two guys to investigate it. If the Nether is such a scary and dangerous place, why are they only sending two guys armed with flashlights and pistols? It doesn’t make sense.

Anyway, I found this portion of the episode to be fairly interesting because we got to see a slightly different side of the White Clad than we have before. Normally, the White Clad grunts don’t really show a fear of death. They’ll charge in and fight opponents who are clearly stronger than they are.

However, this was the first time in which we saw a White Clad member willingly throw away their life. He didn’t try to fight Maki’s brother and the other soldier — he simply blew himself up with the bomb strapped around his torso.

Not only did this show us the determination of the White Clad grunts, but it also showed us that the White Clad are playing a bit of an information game as well. Why did that grunt blow himself up? Probably so that he couldn’t be captured and interrogated. But also probably to destroy the evidence within that lab.

Caged Bird

The latter portion of episode 19 was definitely the worst. I’ve brought this up in previous episode reviews, but Maki has always been the “strong” female character of Company 8. However, the end of this episode seemed to be attempting to break that image of her down.

She thinks that the two most important men in her life, her father and lieutenant Hinawa, believe that she’s too weak. She also gets sent back to the military because her father ordered it and Hinawa agreed for some reason. And once back at the military, we see that she’s made into a secretary, which is apparently the posh job all the daughters of high-ranking officers get.

As Maki puts it, her father views her as a bird that needs to be kept in a cage close by so that he can watch over her. Obviously, this doesn’t suit who Maki is, and that’s part of the reason why this was so frustrating. Maki has already been built up as a strong-willed character.

Why is she now being broken down in this way?

Unfortunately, it all makes sense if you look at it from a trope perspective. This is clearly just setting up a situation in which Maki can eventually prove her strength to the male figures in her life and come back stronger than ever.

If I had to guess, something’s going to go wrong in the Nether. Once Maki hears about it, she’s going to resist, but eventually jump into action and save the day. Her father is then going to see how good she is at being a fire soldier and that she can take care of herself. She’ll then proceed to return to Company 8.

As for Hinawa, it will probably be revealed that he believed in Maki all along and he had planned for all of this. He probably knew that her father needed to see Maki’s strength in action for himself in order to be convinced. Having her go back to the military is one way of ensuring that happens.

Conclusion

I honestly don’t see the next few episodes playing out any way other than as I just described — as far as Maki’s role is concerned. This setup is just way too predictable, and as I said, unnecessary because Maki is already established as being a strong character.

But what do you think of Fire Force Season 2 episode 19? Did you like seeing the stuff with Maki’s family? Do you think my prediction is going to be wrong in any way? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

The Holy Woman’s Anguish

Fire Force Season 2 episode 18 was a pretty average episode overall aside from the increase in animation quality. But I’m not some animation nerd, so all I have to say about it is that it looked extra nice this week. The rest of the episode wasn’t anything special.

The first half of the episode focused on Iris and her internal conflict regarding the fact that the Evangelist(‘s people) founded the Holy Sol Temple. I don’t believe I mentioned this in one of my episode reviews, but over on our Discord server (which you should join), I basically laid out this entire half of the episode a month ago.

Back on October 2nd, I said that Iris is going to struggle with this knowledge, but that she and the other sisters won’t be going anywhere. Even if the church was founded by the Evangelist, that doesn’t matter. What matters is the role that the church, and more specifically the sisters, play.

I even said that the sisters are important because their inclusion in Fire Force companies helps the mental states of the fire soldiers. Without the sisters there to say the prayer and perform the rites, the fire soldiers would feel as though they were murdering innocent people rather than laying tortured souls to rest.

But, the fact that this was all predictable even a month ago doesn’t make it bad. In fact, I think it’s good that this was illustrated and explained in this episode because it would have been odd to leave it out. It was so predictable that it needed to happen for the developments to make sense.

The only problem is that it leads to an episode that isn’t surprising or all that exciting.

Gods and Men

I’d say that the one interesting portion of the episode came with the discussion of whether or not the Evangelist is the god that the members of the church believe in. Technically speaking, this isn’t the case, because they worship Sol (the literal Sun), not the Evangelist.

It also doesn’t matter as I pointed out earlier. It doesn’t matter what god they believe in as long as they find solace in that belief. Though, luckily for the believers of the Holy Sol Temple, the Sun is a real thing. So, I guess by default that means that their god really does exist.

However, Shinra brought up a good point. Based on his Adolla Link with the Evangelist, he mentions that as far as humans are concerned, the Evangelist might as well be a god. Why does that matter? Because the “Holy Sol” might actually be referring to her.

Have you ever seen Ancient Aliens? Because it’s very possible that’s the route Fire Force is going to go down. It may be that modern people within the Tokyo Empire believe that the “Holy Sol” mentioned in their scripture is referring to the Sun. You know, because it would be crazy for it to be referring to an otherworldly being.

But, in reality, the “Holy Sol” could have been the name given to the evangelist by the people who originally witnessed her appearance. It’s pretty easy to see how that would be the case if you go back and look at how the Evangelist was depicted in season 2 episode 13 when Burns and Joker saw her.

She shines as brightly as the Sun itself, and as Shinra stated, she has an otherworldly, almost godly aura to her. It’s easy to see her being referred to as the “Holy Sol.”

The Man, Assault

I’ve made my opinions on Tamaki pretty clear ever since she was introduced into the series and we learned of her lucky lecher “ability.” I think that she generally detracts from the anime and that it would be better if she wasn’t included at all in her current form.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with including ecchi in a series. But for Tamaki, “ecchi relief” is the only reason she seems to be in the Fire Force series. And in many cases, this “ecchi relief” comes right in the middle of some climactic action.

I get it. The author wanted to include some fan service. But do you know what better fan service is? Not interrupting the action scenes that your fans want to see with some out-of-touch ecchi.

So, naturally, I’m not really a fan of Assault as a character either. The second half of this episode, which focused on Assault and Tamaki, honestly wasn’t that bad. However, I would have much rather it not have been included at all and instead have been replaced with some meaningful content.

I’ll admit that it was funny at times. But at the end of the day, I feel like half of the episode was wasted. If the whole Assault vs. Tamaki thing was only like two minutes long and came after the credits, that would have been perfect. But for it to be a main feature of the episode was a bit much.

Just imagine how cool Tamaki and Assault could be if they weren’t solely used for comedic (and ecchi) relief. I brought this up a week or two ago, but Maki is really the only strong female character on the “good” side of this series. Iris is alright, but Tamaki can barely even be considered a character.

If the author wanted to make use of her sex appeal, he could have at least done it in a way that puts her in control. The whole accidental nudity thing that always happens with her is a bit weird.

Conclusion

What do you think of Fire Force Season 2 episode 18? Do you think the Evangelist is the “Holy Sol” referred to in the scripture of the church? Did you like the Tamaki vs. Assault portion of the episode? And more importantly, do you like Tamaki and Assault as characters in general? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

Boys, Be Weak

Fire Force Season 2 episode 17 was pretty boring if I’m being honest. Aside from the one scene of Charon which I’ll get to in the next section, there wasn’t really all that much going on in this episode. And, even the “new” information that was revealed wasn’t all that new.

I guess I’ll start off with Nataku’s backstory. All we learned was that Nataku is from an abusive household in which he was constantly pressured to perform at the highest degree in whatever he did. This supposedly explains why Nataku’s emotions go from 0 to 100 in an instant.

However, that doesn’t really explain anything. I’m pretty sure we already saw an abridged version of the scene in which his parents gave him up to Haijima. And his manic episodes were already explained by his trauma from when he was kidnapped and forced to become a pyrokinetic by Rekka.

Another thing about this episode that didn’t quite make sense regarding Nataku is that everyone just agreed that Haijima should continue watching over him. I kind of get it from the perspective of the White Clad, because they need Charon to be at 100% in order to capture Nataku.

But, it doesn’t really make any sense for Company 8 to agree to Nataku being held at Haijima. Shinra attempts to justify it by saying that Kurono is able to keep Nataku’s emotions in check. But isn’t Kurono’s physical abuse also a point of stress for Nataku? His emotions might not go wild if he’s not being beaten every day.

It just seems very odd to me that Company 8 would look the other direction here. Haijima even confirmed that they plan to sacrifice Nataku to create a second Amaterasu.

Charon the Reflector

We’ve known what Charon’s ability is for a while now. He can absorb heat and then return it as his own explosive firepower. And, it doesn’t just seem like he can absorb the heat from flames directed at him. I believe earlier on in the series he also absorbed the small amount of heat in the air around him.

But, in this episode, we were given his epithet. He’s known as Charon the Reflector. This title is obviously in reference to his 2nd generation pyrokinetic ability. But what if heat wasn’t the only thing Charon could reflect?

Charon is probably the strongest human we’ve encountered in the series. He can definitely be defeated with some ingenuity, or by someone with a broken ability like Sho’s. But if we’re just talking about raw offensive and defensive strength, I think Charon is number one.

So, what if his reflection ability is partially responsible for this? It wouldn’t necessarily be responsible for his massive defenses. But perhaps the reason Charon is so strong is due to all of the hits he tanks.

We’ve seen Charon dish out some seriously damaging blows after shrugging off hits from opponents like Shinra. But what if he could also store up that power? It’s been implied that Charon is partnered with Haumea because he’s not affected by her abuse. What if that abuse actually powered him up?

Perhaps the true reason that Charon is paired with Haumea is that he can tank all of her pyrokinetic and regular attacks and store that energy in his body for later use. But unfortunately, even this doesn’t really explain how he’s able to take so many direct hits without sustaining much damage.

The Mystery of Haijima Solved!

My least favorite part of the episode came when Company 8 confronted Haijima’s president. The reason this part of the episode wasn’t good is that we really didn’t learn anything new. All that happened was that things were confirmed which had already been heavily implied.

For example, the fact that Haijima knows that Amaterasu is powered by a human with an Adolla Burst isn’t a surprise. And the fact that they’re attempting to create artificial Adolla Bursts so that they can sacrifice people to create more Amaterasu-like structures isn’t very surprising either based on what we’ve seen them doing with Nataku.

The only somewhat surprising thing about all of this is that Haijima has no real connection to the White Clad. Because of Dr. Giovanni, I assumed they at least had a surface-level connection. But, in one of my previous reviews, I did mention that it was very possible that they weren’t connected at all.

If they had been connected, there wouldn’t have been a reason for the White Clad to attack them in order to obtain Nataku.

The other problem with this scene is that it cleared up everything with Haijima too easily. I’m sure there’s still something shady going on with the Holy Sol Temple, but the conclusion of this Haijima investigation felt like the conclusion of Joker and Shinmon’s trek below the church.

It just ended without anything being discovered.

So at this point, we know that while the church was originally founded by Yona, it no longer has an affiliation with the Evangelist. And as for Haijima, they’re just a massive company seeking profits, also with no affiliation to the evangelist. All that leaves is the White Clad as the Evangelist’s followers.

It feels like we’re running out of mystery here. I don’t know how far ahead the manga is (or if the manga is even still running), but it really seems like we’re running out of content unless something big happens soon.

Conclusion

What do you think of Fire Force Season 2 episode 17? Did you think this was a good episode? Or do you agree with my view that it didn’t really do anything or introduce anything new to the series? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

Mind Blown

Fire Force season 2 episode 16 was much better than the previous episode. After all, there was actual action rather than characters standing around and talking about how they’re going to take each other down. And this action started almost immediately, which was great to see.

I often forget that Maki is actually a martial arts specialist considering she’s typically portrayed as the “witch” of Company 8. Sure, Maki wears a witch hat and controls two fireball familiars most of the time. But when she’s actually serious, she uses her fists instead, and that’s something I want to see more of.

It’s a bit interesting how much weaker the female characters on the “good” side of this series are compared to those on the “evil” side. And I don’t mean weaker from a power perspective, I mean it from a character perspective. The female villains are just so much better than the female members of Company 8 most of the time.

Another thing I liked about this episode was how we got to see characters from all three factions fighting over Nataku actually team up together. The most notable of these combinations were Shinra and Kurono followed by Shinra and Charon when it became apparent that Kurono wasn’t going to be much help.

What I thought was cool about these pairings is how it showed that there isn’t exactly a firm line separating the three factions. Haijima and the Fire Force aren’t really enemies — they just have competing goals at times. We already knew this through Haijima’s connection to multiple of the Fire Force companies.

And at the same time, despite Charon really being an enemy of the Fire Force, he protects Shinra because he’s one of the pillars.

Arrow and Haumea

The most surprising part of the episode to me was seeing how “thicc” Arrow actually is under her outfit. I already liked Arrow as a villain. She has a pretty cool ability that’s simple, yet effective. I also think she has a cool outfit. But, I do think I’d like to see her more often with her face exposed.

Arrow’s appearance aside, I actually really enjoyed seeing her paired up with Haumea because it gave the series an excuse to explain more about these Pillar/protector pairings we’ve seen. Normally, Arrow would be paired with Sho and Haumea would be paired with Charon. But not this time.

So, why are the Pillars and their protectors paired up as they are? Simply because those are the most compatible pairings as Arrow explained. Arrow is a long-range attacker, so she’s normally paired with Sho who uses a sword at close range. They compliment each other’s fighting styles.

On the other hand, Haumea and Charon are probably the most compatible of all the Pillars and their protectors. As with Sho and Arrow, Haumea and Charon each excel at a different form of combat. Haumea is more about fighting from a distance while Charon uses close-combat.

But what makes Haumea and Charon work so well together are their personalities and special characteristics. Haumea is pretty chaotic. She doesn’t seem to think twice about harming her allies, and that could be a problem. But thanks to Charon’s indestructible body, he can withstand her abuse.

This synergy between Haumea and Charon actually reminded me a lot of the “Zombie-Combo” of the Akatsuki from Naruto: Hidan and Kakuzu. Those two were paired up because Kakuzu tended to kill his partners. But since Hidan is immortal, he can’t be killed.

Haumea’s Abilities

Sometimes the series refers to Haumea as a plasma user, as do I. While that’s technically correct, the true plasma user of the series is Arthur. Haumea is more of an electricity user. And in this episode, we saw her use her electricity in a few more ways that we might have not seen before.

Or maybe I just missed when she used them, which is very probable.

The first new ability she appeared to show was the ability to pull other people towards her. In the image within the previous section of her electrocuting Arrow, it looked like she used her electricity to pull Arrow back into her.

It was almost like she turned her own body and Arrow’s body into polar opposite magnets that attracted each other. If this is in fact what she did, that’s a pretty neat ability that could be used in some cool ways. I believe there were also a pair of twins in a One Piece filler arc with that kind of ability.

The second ability Haumea used, which I feel like she may have been shown using before, is a Spider-Man-like swinging ability. She shoots out a “web” of electricity which can stick to buildings. She then uses these electric webs to swing just like Spider-Man. Oh, and she even does the Spider-Man hand sign when she shoots the “web.”

Ritsu the Necromancer

Finally, let’s discuss Ritsu for a bit. I’m not actually sure whether I like Ritsu’s ability or not, but I do think she has a pretty good character design. Ritsu’s character design is based on a zombie maid/nurse, which is pretty fitting once you learn what her ability is.

Ritsu is a pyro-necromancer. She’s able to resurrect the dead “sort of” and use an Infernal as a catalyst to make a giant, Infernal monster. Remember the giant Infernal from the first episode of the season that felt out of place because we had never seen anything like it before?

That was Ritsu’s doing.

There are a few issues I have with this ability, though, which is why I’m not completely sold on it. For starters, would her ability have worked if the deceased people she “resurrected” weren’t burnt to a crisp? If so, how would that look?

From what we got to see of her ability, the zombies she created didn’t look all that different from Infernals themselves. I think the only real difference between them is that Infernals have a connection to Adolla as the source of their power while Ritsu’s zombies don’t.

The other thing I don’t really like is that Ritsu creates these massive Infernals out of her zombies. The zombies themselves fit with her character design and necromancy ability. But once you combine them with an Infernal to make a giant Infernal, that connection is kind of lost.

Conclusion

What do you think of Fire Force Season 2 episode 16? Did you think it was any better than the previous episode? Do you want to see the White Clad members mix up their partnerships more? And, which White Clad protector has your favorite ability? Charon is my favorite member, but I like Arrow’s ability more.

If you enjoyed this review, remember to click the like button ❤️ down below. Also, follow me over on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. And come join our Discord server if you’re interested in discussing anime with other members of the community.

Finally, I’d like to thank HeavyROMAN for supporting DoubleSama.com at the Heika tier this month. To learn more about how you too can become a supporter of this blog, check out Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.