After a phenomenal, if not a little inconsistent, seven-year run, Fire Force has finally come to an end. Despite its relatively simple beginnings, Fire Force quickly evolved into an anime with a vision of massive scale, and while other stories that have done the same often fall apart by the end, amazingly, the same can’t be said of Fire Force.
In Fire Force‘s final season, After Arthur defeated Dragon and Shinra’s friends defeated various doppelgängers, the Great Cataclysm was brought to a halt as humanity regained an inkling of hope. With that, the only thing left for Shinra to do was defeat Haumea and the Evangelist to save the world, and with that thought in mind, he and Sho traveled to Adolla to confront Haumea for their final battle.
How Fire Force Sets Up Its Final Battle
In the depths of Adolla, Shinra and Sho tried to defeat Haumea with their Adolla Bursts, but with the Evangelist’s power, Haumea could call upon the powers of the deceased Pillars—Iris, Inca, Sumire, and Amaterasu—and was virtually invincible. Worse than that, though, was that Haumea revealed that the true nature of the Evangelist was humanity’s collective despair and desire for death, with Shinra, the embodiment of humanity’s hope, being framed as the villain for denying humanity the release of death.
Naturally, Shinra refused to accept that he was a devil for wanting to save humanity, and he and Sho kept trying to fight Haumea, regardless of how little headway they were making. Unfortunately, things reached a head when Haumea summoned a doppelganger of Obi and had him slit Obi’s throat. That was enough for Shinra to give in to anger and despair, and with humanity’s hope all but lost, the Great Cataclysm was reignited and destroyed the world by turning it into a sun.
Shinra, consumed by despair, was ready to keep it going by slaughtering Haumea, but he was stopped when Arthur attacked him from space. Arthur reminded Shinra that he wasn’t the kind of person who would give up, and not only was that enough for Shinra to regain his resolve as a hero and humanity’s hope, but it also summoned his and Sho’s mother, Mari, who was revealed to be the Evangelist’s doppelganger.
With Shinra’s family reunited at last, Shinra realized that the only way to counteract Haumea’s despair was for him, Sho, and Mari to combine their respective aspects of hope into a stronger symbol than ever. As it turned out, Shinra wasn’t being metaphorical, as with the power of Soul Resonance, the three of them fused together into a godly being called Shinra Bansho Man.
How Fire Force Ends Its Final Battle
With the power of Shinra Bansho Man, not only could Shinra overpower Haumea, but he could also warp reality to repair the world and end the Great Cataclysm. Haumea, however, said that Shinra’s actions would only renew humanity’s despair and desire for death, something Shinra couldn’t deny, so rather than set things back to normal, Shinra, upon reviving humanity, recreated the world to be slightly more cartoonish and decreased the value of life, thus making death and despair less important to humanity.
With the rules of the world permanently changed and one final speech from a revived Charon, Haumea regained her faith in humanity, and Shinra destroyed the last remnants of the Evangelist. Before everything ended, though, Shinra revealed that he had also created a God to watch over humanity and make sure they don’t completely forget about death, and God’s first act was to remove pyrokinesis and spontaneous combustion from the world before leaving to make a home for himself.
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Sometime later, Shinra founded a new organization for safeguarding the world from its bizarre new threats, with all of his friends from the Fire Force filling out its ranks. Decades later, Shinra watches on as his son finally joins the organization, and centuries after that, it’s revealed that Fire Forece was a stealth prequel to Soul Eater, with God, now Lord Death, creating Kid in Shinra’s image, Black Star training as a child, Soul gazing up at the moon, and Maka being told Shinra’s story by her parents and learning to not give in to despair.
Why Fire Force Has One Of The Best Endings In Modern Anime
As divisive as endings in anime and manga can be, especially in modern times, it’s safe to say that Fire Force’s ending easily ranks among the best endings a person can ask for. Right off the bat, the fact that series creator Atsushi Ohkubo decided to make Fire Force a prequel to the Soul Eater anime was a great twist for the final act, but what made it even better was how it was done in a way that naturally played into the themes of idealism in both stories, making the whole act feel far better than mere fanservice.
Of course, Fire Force’s ending also works without the hook of it being a Soul Eater prequel. So many anime and manga stories fall apart in their finales because they fail to give themselves enough time to properly close out their stories, but Fire Force did a great job of pacing itself and giving every major plot point proper closure, making way for a finale that was equal parts bombastic and cathartic in the best of ways.
The strength of Fire Force’s finale is especially notable thanks to its overall ambition. Not only was there a lot the story had to deal with by the finale, but much of the final arc had also adopted a meta-narrative challenging the conventions of manga and storytelling as a whole to reaffirm the importance of having a happy ending. Not only did it do a great job of conveying that message, but it did so by making things as over-the-top as possible, and it made what would otherwise be an overly saccharine ending feel incredible and earned.
Fire Force wasn’t a perfect anime by any means, and its final arc did reinforce some of its weaker elements, but overall, it’s a rare case where an anime had the perfect pacing and overall structure to deliver a finale with a perfect level of flair and emotional catharsis. There was no better way for Fire Force to end, and if this really is Atsushi Ohkubo’s final series, then there was no better way to cap off his career.
- 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)