Fire Force Season 3

Episode 11

I am in many ways a simple man. If Fire Force names an episode “The Great Kaiju Battlefront,” I am duty- and honor-bound to get unreasonably excited for it. It's simply how I'm coded. For our tenth anniversary this year, my wife bought me a big Godzilla figure that holds my game controllers with his claws while he “Skreeeeeonks” into the sky. I like big monsters.

“The Great Kaiju Battlefront” is pretty good, so far as you might expect from a Fire Force monster mash-up. The giant metal behemoth that is summoned from the Pacific Ocean alongside the White-Clad's Pillar is a simple looking guy, but I find that simple is often effective when it comes to anime creatures like this. He might not have much personality, which is just fine, because all he needs to do is be a lumbering mass of latent explosive energy that will mess up Tokyo something fierce if he's allowed to run rampant for very long. It's the pure threat of the thing that forces the different Fire Force Companies to band together to prevent catastrophe, which is what you love to see in an episode like this.

Like many of the episodes from this portion of the season, Shinra and the gang from Company 8 are not necessarily the main focus of the action. Our boy tries his darndest to help, mind you, since his fiery feet are seemingly essential to taking out the monster before it reaches the shore, but Shinra actually spends most of the episode knocked out in the clutches of the floating White-Clad boy that shows up to cause trouble. Instead, this adventure is an opportunity to reintroduce some old, familiar faces: Captain Honda and Takeru from 2nd Company are here to provide firepower; whole ground crew of Company 4 is on the scene to protect civilians and provide crucial combat ; and we even get Oguru and Kurono from Hajima Industries to offer their unusual brand of “back-up” for the firefighters.

I'll be honest: I'd completely forgotten most of these characters existed, but getting to watch such a diverse cast of weirdos work their magic to stop the monster was still a joy, and it really reminded me of how much fun it can be when a show like Fire Force can take advantage of its ridiculously large and eclectic cast. Oguru and Kurono, especially, make for a very fun and diametrically opposed pair. Well, “fun” might not be the best word, what with Kurono being a sadistic psychopath who is only out to protect the weak so that he, himself, can retain exclusive rights to torturing and tormenting them…

On the other hand, his shadow powers are sick as hell, and the way he combos with Ogun's attack to put down the kaiju for good is an immensely satisfying conclusion, so yeah, let's actually go with “fun.” This whole episode was just plain old fun, from top to bottom, and you won't find me complaining about that.

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Fire Force is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Fridays.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.