What’s a series without a rival character for the protagonist? In Fire Force, Shinra’s opposite is Arthur Boyle, a strange young man with an obsession with knights. Though he and Shinra clash all the time, the two of them make up the vanguard of Fire Force Company 8, as the youngest members who happen to have some of the best offensive abilities.

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But who is Arthur Boyle, the young man obsessed with Knights, and where did he come from? This list will dish out everything an anime fan needs to know about Arthur, which might help people on their rewatches of the series now that the first half is over.

According to the lead himself, the reason Shinra seems to be so at odds with Arthur is that he’s popular with women, something Shinra believes to be true because Arthur comes off as mysterious. It also probably has something to do with how he constantly treats women like princesses while he’s their loyal knight.

Of course, the bigger problem with this from Shinra’s perspective is that he’s not being mysterious because he’s cool, but because he’s a blockhead.

9 CAN CREATE PLASMA AND ELECTRICITY

From what we’ve seen, this is an ability unique to Arthur in the same way only Maki has been shown to be able to shut off someone’s flames.

Arthur is capable of pushing the heat of his flames so high up that they become the fourth state of matter, plasma. As a result of this, he’s also capable of generating electricity, though it all winds up being focused through his blade Excalibur.

8 CAN ONLY USE SWORDS

Due to the unique way his power works, Arthur has one massive flaw in his powerful abilities: he can only use something that looks like the hilt of a sword. When introduced to Company 8, we even see him discard the axes that Fire Company members are meant to use in favor of his sword.

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However, while he typically uses his bladeless sword hilt dubbed “Excalibur”, that doesn’t mean he’s locked into only relying on that. It can be anything so long as he can continue his illusion of being a knight.

7 LIKES "ROYAL COURT FOOD"

The second volume of the Fire Force manga is called “Hero or Devil”, and its character profile is devoted to Company 8’s dunderheaded swordsman, Arthur Boyle. In it, we learn quite a bit about Arthur including that one of his hobbies is creating models of castles.

We also learn that Arthur’s favorite food is court food, though the manga explicitly explains he’s never had it before, and that his favorite music is “court music”, though again...he’s never heard it before.

6 IS KNOWN TO PLAY IN COMBAT

Arthur is probably one of the most powerful characters in Company 8, but he’s known to place limiters on himself. After Iris gets kidnapped and Company 8 winds up going to battle against Company 5, Arthur ends up in combat against Setsuo, a rare Infernal which managed to maintain his intelligence despite being transformed.

During most of the fight, Arthur is never able to get past being on the losing end. It isn’t until he realizes “he’s been using the wrong hand” that he’s able to decisively take the victory. Yes, Arthur actually directly referenced the “I’m Not Left-Handed” trope.

5 WEAK TO PAPERWORK

More than anything, Arthur’s primary weakness is how much he despises paperwork. In his character profile, we’re told Arthur dislikes any subject that involves a classroom (makes sense considering his parents never forced him to do homework), and this shows when he’s asked to do anything clerical related to Company 8.

We’ve seen him attempt to do paperwork, but after long periods of time it seems like his brain completely burns out and he becomes almost useless with it.

4 STRAIGHT-FORWARD IN COMBAT

Probably one of the best things about Arthur is his ability to look at any problem head-on. Because of this, it’s difficult to intimidate him in combat. Combining this with his delusion ability and he only gets stronger when up against hard to beat opponents, because it makes him believe any challenge is a test to his ability as a knight.

We’ve even seen this help him against Shinra’s brother Sho, who moved far too fast for even Shinra to notice at first. This has it’s limitations as well though, as he does particularly poorly against people who specialize in misdirection and illusion.

3 HIS TRUSTY STEED

It should be obvious considering how often he refers to himself as a knight, but one thing we can’t say is Arthur isn’t loyal. When Shinra and Arthur were placed on a mission to go get a new member of their group, Arthur finds himself in trouble when he needs to defend their new recruit and his friends because he can’t get his delusion power going.

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Fortunately, they give him the equipment needed to feel “knightly”, including an imitation horse so he could go into battle with a steed. After being given one clear look at the steed by the villains he realizes it’s more of a donkey than a horse, but after winning the battle, he still keeps it around because of how much it aided him in combat.

2 GAINS POWER BASED ON HIS DELUSIONS

Arthur’s limitations are arbitrary, but they don’t really seem to be within his control as of now. He lives in a world of delusions, where women tend to be princesses while men tend to be knights or wizards. He takes this even further though, as he even believes pidgeons to be griffons and thinks he’s slain dragons before.

The more Arthur falls into his world of delusions, the more powerful he’s known to become, and we’ve never really seen the limit of his abilities. However, if his delusion is shattered, he’s easily beaten, and in some cases, this is easier to accomplish than others.

1 ABANDONED BY HIS PARENTS

Given Arthur’s delusions, it’s not hard to wonder what his parents were like to cause him to look at society in such a way. Well, as it turns out Arthur’s parents were simple restaurant owners who just couldn’t quite do the job.

After a fire destroyed their restaurant, the two of them abandoned Arthur, but before leaving they told him that he was King while they were gone on an adventure to save the world. This is the cause of Arthur’s delusions—he’s refusing to face the world as it is, and instead prefers it how his parents framed it.

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