Review of Fire Force Season 3

I’m a fan of Fire Force. This series isn’t among my favorites, but it’s Shonen done beautifully with dazzling and well-choreographed fights and its underlying story has always been an intriguing if sometimes confusing backdrop to events as they unfold. It’s not breaking the mold, particularly in the character department, but given that this world has to somehow become the world of Soul Eater, it takes its time and puts the pieces together pretty meticulously to get there. For all the mad rush that this series most definitely is at times, this is a series that rewards careful attention to detail and has a gooddeal of interesting worldbuilding.

And yes, it still has all of that here. Despite this being the first half of its final season, the series is still very much engaged in building on what it has set up at a deliberate pace, though it’s still interspersed with some intense fights involving new and established powerhouses. When the series comes back to Hibana’s past in particular and a certain someone shows up, I think it’s firing on all cylinders as this is a mystery the series has slowly been feeding into for the past two seasons without payoff. We still don’t know everything that’s going on, but we have a lot more insight than we did and a new enemy to face out of it.

As for the rest of the series, the fights are still really good where they appear. The humor remains a bright spot… for the most part (like many, Tamaki and her “lucky lecher lure” has never worked for me). We even get some insight into Arthur and his family, albeit it’s cut off pretty abruptly. Leonard Burns gets a real arc in this one, though I felt like I didn’t understand some of his more central choices here, which neutered my investment in him so the end of that arc doesn’t hit as intended even though his fight was dope. The appearance and display of power from Dragon was definitely a high point.

If I had to pick a biggest gripe, though, I think this season falls short just by being the first half of a finale. It’s hard not to notice just how much of this is set up for a climax that hasn’t come yet. I’m a manga reader, so I know what’s coming and I’m excited to see it. Despite setting most of this up as an appetizer, though, it does give us just a small taste of the main course in that final episode (love to see it). And, yeah, that plus the strength of its big reveals and its more bombastic fights do put it over the top of previous seasons where we were just getting tidbits of information. It’s still a bit convoluted, but it’s coming together and the whole picture is at least starting to come into focus. I’m excited for the finale in the fall, but until then, this will tide me over.