The Beginning of the End! Fire Force Season 3 Episode 1 Review
Fire Force’s final cour opens on a less powerful note but reveals a lot about the nature of doppelgangers and makes the storyline more subtle yet even easier to follow as we are put into Shinra’s POV after a 3-month timeskip.
In the previous Fire Force Season 3 episode, we witness one of the most mind-blowing twists in all of manga, that the previous world before the Great Cataclysm was the real-life world.
Fire Force Season 3 Episode 13 is titled, “Unaware”
This episode adapts Chapter 217: “Self-Unaware”, where the chapter title is from, up to Chapter 220: “Father of the Proto-Nationalist”
Notably, this skips a third of Chapter 220, as it only adapts pages 2-9 and 12-15, meaning the episode has adapted a total of 50 pages.
This does, however, end the Stone Pillars Arc and begin the Asakusa Showdown Arc (Chapter 220 to 229)
Doppelganger Theme Perfected
While the episode is less exciting than the actual Season 3 debut, we actually get a lot of important lore here and a payoff to one of the anime’s best decisions, to cut Sister Sumire “spoiling” the revelation that Sister Iris was the Eighth Pillar and to instead let the story take its natural course, first with Shinra connecting the dots by comparing Iris’s personality to how the world perceived Amaterasu, the source of all power in the Tokyo Empire, all the way to the remaining chapters before the Cataclysm Arc that would fully reveal Iris’ true nature.
Shinra awakens like at the end of the previous episode and we see that he has blonde hair, piercings and tattoos, markers of a delinquent.
However, if you notice, Shinra is not only concerned about outward appearances (a common theme regarding Doppelgangers) but also his belief that his body is a gift from his mother, Mari.
Considering Mari Kusakabe, who gave birth to both Sho and Shinra without a man, is a reference to the Virgin Mary, the Mother of Jesus the Savior, on top of Shinra’s seemingly archaic beliefs on tattoos (which are universally associated with criminals, outside of specific cultural associations), it shows that Shinra is quite closely-tied to Christianity more than the Christian-spoof main religion of Tokyo, the Holy Sol Temple.
Shinra’s conversation with Iris is eye-opening in another way.
The gradual reveal that she is the Doppelganger of the mad 250-year old girl turned power source, Amaterasu works with this timing more because the day before Shinra awakened from his three month coma, Shinra’s Devil Doppelganger attacked her and with subtitles to emphasize his unnatural origins from another world, asks why Iris, a fellow Doppelganger is here in this world and attacks her.
Ironically, the Doppelganger Shinra, who is not a Pillar, is horrified by the presence of the final one.
Perhaps while this version is evil, there is still sadness and a reluctance to see the chaos unfold.
Or perhaps Iris’ bright hope and radiance is a frightening presence ot the demons of Hell or Adolla.
Arthur being the only one to perceive Shinra as “Shinra but not Shinra” was perfect as while he always called him based on the reputation and rumors about him being “Parent Killer Kusakabe” and the “Devil”, he could clearly separate them from the person and relectual friend he knew more personally.
This is how he is able to explain to Shinra what Doppelgangers are in spite of lacking any experience with Adolla.
In contrast, we had Captain Obi, who would always accept Shinra no matter what he was.
While lacking Arthur’s lack of touch with reality and surprising amount of perception and autistic-coded focus, Obi presents himself as a father-figure to Company 8, accepting all things and only looking at the person in front of him.
The story treats Obi as the pinnacle of humanity, the embodiment of hope and almost like a saint, in contrast to Haumea, the saint of despair, the Evangelist’s vessel.
A mortal man without powers yet has the strongest will and body that maintains hope amidst despair.
While the anime skips exactly what happened during Shinra’s coma, we do have an anime-only scene of Adolla.
The anime seems to want to add more scenes of Adolla as Joker experiences an Adolla Link, watching Doppelganger-Leonard Burns attack, maybe even kill off, some Doppelgangers, as if he is itching to get out of Adolla and rampage.
The previous cour opener also had something like this, albeit more expressive and more about hinting towards Fire Force being the Soul Eater prequel.
The next episode is titled, “With the Sun at His Back” , based on the title of Chapter 229: “The Sun Wheel at his Back”, the final chapter of the next arc, the Asakusa Showdown Arc.
This could mean that the leaks surrounding one episode adapting over 10 chapters is true as the entire Asakusa Showdown Arc, a 10-chapter arc for a total of 200 pages or one volume, will be trimmed down somewhat to fit a 20-minute episode.
Staff
SB: Tatsuma Minamikawa
ED: Takanari Hirayama
AD: Michinori Shiga, Mika Takasawa, Kazunori Shibata, Koutarou Okazaki
RA CRAFT
GRAND Guerrilla
KA: Mahora Muraki, Miyuki Kawano, Yurina Ooizumi, Haruki Asou
Shinichirou Minami, Toshimitsu Takechi, Miho Tanaka, Satoshi Ichinokawa, Minami Suenami, Kazuko Shibata, Ayu Tanaka, Kazumasa Takeuchi, Yuka Katabuchi, Yuuki Matsushima, Naoki Kawamura, 椋久美子 (?), Rika Kanetaka
studio CANDYBOX
Bin Ou
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