The following contains spoilers for Fire Force Season 3 Episode 19, “Those Who Fight Back,” now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Like many shonen action anime, Fire Force the series has a huge, high-stakes ending arc that provides payoff for all the earlier plot twists and developments. Naruto had the Fourth Great Shinobi War, Demon Slayer had the Infinity Castle Arc and now Fire Force comes next with the second Great Cataclysm. The earlier episodes in season 3 have been building up to this explosive climax, and it duly arrives in episode 19.
The end result is strong, not as meaty as it should be, but strong and featuring more of Atsushi Okubo's unconventional creative talent. Any shonen anime can raise the physical stakes with powerful end-game villains and imminent world destruction, but Episode 19 in Fire ForceThe final season takes it even further. “Those Who Fight Back” is conventional and in some ways clumsily paced, which slows the episode down a bit, but otherwise it's just what it is Fire Force the fans were waiting. This final part of the adventure is dangerous, dramatic, sometimes humorous and above all pushes the boundaries of anime presentation.
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Haumea's story is heartbreaking but takes up too much time
The suspenseful episode “Those Who Fight Back” is strong overall, but the results are rather mixed with the first main segment of the episode. This is a flashback sequence revolving around Haumei and her personal guardian Charon, including a scene from Haumei's girls. As first mentioned in the previous episode, Haumea has struggled throughout her life with absorbing all of humanity's emotions as a mega-empath of sorts, and this episode's flashback depicts this with stark clarity. Haumey's suffering is palpable and a nice example of how a villain's trauma may not justify their destructive actions, but at least the portrayal makes the villain more understandable.
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Considering what Haumea has been through from her beginnings to now, it's easy to see how she couldn't have turned out any other way. Haumea being a lifelong victim of her circumstances and uncontrollable powers makes her a somewhat sympathetic victim in this flashback and adds some much needed layers to her character.
Something similar can be said for Charon, who feels more like a foster parent than ever as he devotes himself to Haumea's needs, then and now. Notably, Charon allows Haumea to hit him repeatedly as she tries to vent her constant pain, a more humanistic version of Charon absorbing things from other people. It's interesting to see and shows how Charon really is about endurance and protective power, not just destructive power.
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The only real knock against Haume and Charon's shared flashback is that it takes up more of “Those Who Fight Back” than it should. This heartfelt sequence definitely deserves some screen time to get the job done, but in light of what's going on elsewhere, it intrudes further into the episode than it should. This episode is strongest as the beginning of the end, and the rest of the visually stunning Great Cataclysm is squeezed into a tighter time frame to make room for Haume's slightly drawn-out flashback. Fortunately, the rest of the episode is still in the works, and there will be a lot more to come in episode 20 and beyond.
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The Great Disaster of Episode 19 mixes imagination and despair into burning reality
Residue Fire ForceThe latest episode is even stronger than Haumey and Charon's shared flashback. At the heart of the story are the promised end times as the second great calamities begin, and the explosive results do not disappoint. Only one factor dampens the fun a bit, and that's the ease with which Arthur Boyle, the fire knight, dispatches bug-Giovanni. The end of episode 18 did a wonderful job of heating up Vulcan and Lisa's personal stakes when Giovanni possessed Yu's body with his insect form, but episode 19 releases the tension too easily.
Arthur only needs one accurate stab to finish off Giovanni while sparing Yu. On the plus side, it charms Arthur as an increasingly powerful and elegant knight who can save the day in true style. Arthur finally feels that he has fully grown into his role as Knight King, and with some reluctance, Vulcan's squad feels the same. On the other hand, the stakes with Yu's possession feel like a cop-out, and that's a real shame, considering how Yu's possession and insertion of that key ended Episode 18 on such a great cliffhanger. Maybe Fire Force he needed to kick Giovanni off the stage to make room for more villains and conflict, but it's still a crushing end for any favorite Plague Doctor antagonist.
When it comes to the devastating apocalypse taking place across the globe, episode 19 is firing on all cylinders and is a marvel to behold. Fire Force he asks more of himself than mere physical threats as the world burns and the most powerful villains threaten the heroes, and it's for the best. To enrich the narrative and bend the strange imagination of Atsushi Okuba, Fire ForceThe latest episode wisely frames the Great Cataclysm as many things: the liberation of Haumea from her suffering, the birth of a new world from the ashes of the old, and above all, the implications of the images. It is past time for conceptual themes like this to find their way Fire Force.
Future episodes may explore this in more detail, but for now, it's enough for Episode 19 to describe this dreamlike apocalypse as images of humanity's collective despair and other negative feelings becoming reality. It's almost like a commentary on how shared emotions can wreak havoc on society even more than physical threats like war or famine, how the heart of humanity can affect the real world and vice versa. This cerebral experience is enhanced by the use of real-life footage with some filter effects to blur the lines between the old world the audience knows and the future world Shinra calls home. It also helps how the odd moon has to do with it Soul Eater blur even more worlds together.
Amusingly, Viktor Licht even winks at the camera and describes how the people of the old world – the real world known to anime fans – and this world are different. Ultimately, this is all about reality and concepts colliding in a way they were never meant to be, heralding the fiery birth of a strange new world where anything, good or bad, can happen. This makes for a strong start to Giovanni's promised ending, even if Giovanni was taken out of the picture too soon to witness it.
- Release date
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July 5, 2019
- Network
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TBS, MBS, CBC, Tulip Television, BSN, tys, NBC, HBC, RKK, i-Television, SBS, IBC, BSS, MRO, OBS, TUF, RSK, TUY, tbc, RKB, SBC, KUTV, RBC, UTY, RCC, MRT, atv, MBC
- directors
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Sho Sugawara, Ryota Aikei, Tetsuharu Nakamura, Yuya Horiuchi, Kazuomi Koga, Daisuke Chiba, Kyohei Suzuki, Yuushi Ibe, Shuuji Miyazaki
- Writers
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Yoriko Tomita
- Franchise(s)
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Fire Force
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Gakuto Kajiwara
Shinra Kusakabe (voice)
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Yusuke Kobayashi
Arthur Boyle (voice)
- The Great Cataclysm is properly weird and terrifying.
- Apocalypse creatively blurs worlds and realities.
- The heroes are well positioned to counterattack.
- Giovanni's death is devastating.
- Haume's flashback takes too much time.
