- Titles: The Fire Hunter, Hikari no Ou
- Genre: Supernatural, drama, adventure
- Episodes: 10
- Studio: Signal.MD
Possibly one of the greatest leaps in human evolution was the taming of fire. When men figured out how to use flames to their advantage, the world was their oyster and nothing could stand in their way. That is until fire stopped cooperating. No one knows why but at some point, the great cataclysm took place, and fire was taken away from men. Whenever a human dared approach a natural flame, they would themselves spontaneously combust leaving nothing but sooth and ash behind. As you can imagine that was a bit of an oopsie for civilization and the world was plunged into dark and primitive times once more. Perhaps humans had angered the gods or perhaps the gods had simply forsaken them. This time around, the descendants of the survivors will make sure to properly honour the divine to avoid further catastrophe. They slowly rebuild their cities and found a way to replace the natural flames. Infected beasts roam the land and their blood can be used for light and heat. Fire Hunters have taken up the mantle to hunt these dangerous creatures and give humanity a chance to redeem themselves in the eyes of the gods. But there are those who whisper dangerous thoughts in the shadows. Heretics that threaten to take everyone down with them. What if the gods were not what they seemed to be? What if they didn’t have anything to do with what happened in the first place? What then?
I was intrigued by The Fire Hunter the moment I set my eyes on the key visuals. That’s not a run-of-the-mill image! And the initial reviews were optimistic. But then that optimism got dampened along the way and the final ratings ended up middling at best. I might have even dropped it from my To-Watch list if AniList users hadn’t so heavily compared it to From The New World. When you mention Shin Sekai Yori, you have my attention!
Production
One of the most common complaints viewers had about The Fire Hunter is that the animation is bad. I actually made a separate post on that subject using The Fire Hunter as an example. As I said in that post, yeah…the animation is not great. The little movement there is, is often jagged. There are a lot of very obvious shortcuts used to reduce the amount of actual animation needed and some of them are more successful than others. And there s a lack of model consistency in some of the action scenes.
The Fire Hunter is an action-oriented story. It’s not entirely action by any means but there are frequent fight scenes and these are important and significant to the story. I can therefore understand if some fans were put off by the animation.
But I think it’s unfair to discount the production all together just because of that.
Attributing value to art is a rather subjective endeavor. Maybe you like the art style and character models you see in my screencaps. Maybe not. I will admit my bias and say that I personally rather liked them. But regardless of personal taste, I don’t think we can just flatly say the art was bad. It wasn’t. There is a decent level of detail, proportions are good, and characters’ clothes and hair are designed with their backgrounds and lifestyle in mind. The Treefolks look awesome! When not in a dynamic scene, the art is actually very consistent which is nice.
The colours are sort of grim which fits the mood but the show uses several hatching and texture techniques to give a bit of depth and interest to the images.
Among those tricks used to minimize animation, there are frequent still shots throughout the series. But not just plain old stills. These are highly detailed and stylized pencil-rendered glamour shots that are occasionally so elevated that characters become hard to recognize, And this causes a clash that once again may not at all work for some viewers. Once again, I liked it. Let me see if I have an example:
I’m really heaping on the praise here. I just feel that The Fire Hunter was unfairly judged for its animation.
But there are bad things as well. Character faces are not very expressive at all for example, which is a shame. It does make it harder to really empathize with them and the story needs you to do so. Also the CG scenes, most notably any outside shot of the mansion, are in my opinion just plain bad. Like an old video game from the 90s. And this can be an interesting style when done on purpose but it really doesn’t go with the rest of the show at all. It took me completely out of the moment every time I saw the effect.
So at the end of the day, we are left with a mixed bag. There are some production elements that are interesting and others that fail. It’s a daring little show that tried a few things out but the strain on the budget is visible and risks are well…risky. I think the production will be a deeply divisive element for viewers.
Story & Characters
But what about the plot?
Here’s the thing, AniList has this little section at the bottom of anime-specific pages called Recommendations. It’s a place where users are supposed to add other shows that they think are similar enough that fans of one will enjoy the other. And these can be upvoted or downvoted. For The Fire Hunter the recommendations are as follows:
- 1- From The New World (Fantastic show and I can sort of see why it’s here. The atmosphere, paranoia and mix of mysticism and technology are similar indeed)
- 2- The Heike Story (have not seen it)
- 3- Moribito (not sure why it’s here)
- 4- Erin (have not seen it)
- 5- To Your Eternity (really not sure why it’s here)
You see one glaring omission in this list? In case it wasn’t clear from my synopsis, plot-wise The Fire Hunter is extremely similar to Fire Force. The execution of that story could not be more different and as such I understand why it wouldn’t be in the top spots but the stories are eerily similar. Maybe actionably similar…
And when you strip it down to the core, it’s a really awesome premise. Fire, unknowing and unliving nevertheless turns on men. Not in any malicious way but just overnight goes from being one of humanity’s most important tools to a dangerous threat. And what are we supposed to do then? Think about it, how can the world we live in even exist without fire.
It can’t! That’s why Fire Force only makes fire kind of dangerous sometimes and Fire Hunter compromises by creating a universe with special Fire Beasts that can be killed for “safe” liquid fire. But the liquid fire is in limited supply and difficult to obtain so it’s not a complete cop-out. And that’s brilliant. We’ve seen plenty of fiction imagining what it would be like if basic resources like water or land were rationed out or controlled by a tyrant. Heck, we’ve even had Dr. Seuss try to see what a world with air for sale would entail. But fire? It’s not something we need to survive directly but at the same time, it’s essential for just about everything we take for granted in society. Is everyone in Fire Hunter a raw vegan except for the privileged few? What does that mean for agriculture? Or countries with cold climates? As a thought experiment, this premise is awesome. At least it is to me.
But there’s more to the universe of The Fire Hunter than just one good premise. The world is dense with lore and mythology. People are bound by rituals that could be attributed to naïveté until we actually see gods and mystical creatures. Except do we? Is what we call gods and demons really what those creatures are? Once again, to me, the universe of The Fire Hunter was just fascinating and I honestly looked forward to each new episode in hopes of getting a fresh piece of the puzzle.
But it won’t be for everyone.
The story is told from the point of view of several different characters that eventually come together. As such you would imagine it to be a character-driven story. And although the characters are by no means bad, they do feel a little shallow and underdeveloped at this stage and that’s just not going to cut it for a story like this.
And I might as well not tiptoe around it, I say at this stage because season 1 is clearly meant to be the first of many. It ends on a cliffhanger! I do believe the second season has been announced so yeah, the characters will get more chances to come into their own but I still think that they should have already been developed properly at this point.
Another thing to note is that the pacing is difficult to describe. I would not call the show slow-paced by any means. In a mere 10 episodes, we have been introduced to a huge cast, a very complex universe and sooooo much has happened. Objectively the series is jammed packed. But it feels slow. A lot of things are left unsaid and the camera will linger on a character (with very little facial expressions) instead of having a dialog. The aforementioned stills will cut off the momentum of action scenes. There is a good bit of political machination going on and we learn about it mostly through people cryptically talking to each other but since we follow characters who are not in on the annals of power, we can only get a superficial idea of what is going on at that level.
It often feels like the show is starting something and then just letting it hang there. And once again, this might be resolved completely in season 2 but it is an issue if you only have season 1 to watch.
All in all, I felt like Fire Hunter was way better in idea than in execution as far as the story goes. But I also thought that the ideas are fantastic so take that for what it’s worth. I will be watching season 2 and am actually looking forward to it but I also understand where that middling rating comes from. This will not be a show for everyone. And if you want a dark and cryptic mystery with some action and mythological elements, watch From the New World. It’s an exceptional anime!
You might like this anime if:
Honestly, this one is hard to recommend. I liked it… Maybe you will as well. A lot of people did not like it as much
My favourite character:
Kanata! AniList doesn’t consider him as a character but they are wrong!
Suggested drink:
A Wildfire
- Every time there is a pencil still – take a sip
- Every time Kanata growls – good boy! take a sip
- Every time a Flame Demon shows up – douse it and if anything’s left take a sip
- Every time we see Koushi’s father – take a sip
- Every time anyone mentions “the capitol” – take a sip
- Every time anyone uses a dog whistle – take a sip
- Every time anyone bursts into flame – fan yourself
- Every time anyone mentions “skyfire” – take a sip
- Every time we see a god – raise your glass
I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.
On the strength of that last screencap alone I’d almost watch it. Art being kind of my thing. I might wait, though, and watch both seasons at once if season 2 does come up. More of a binge than a follow along I think. Part of that is my own problems with complex worlds and lots of characters – I tend to get lost.
Life without fire would be possible in tropical and subtropical climates. Humans were running around in those places long before we had fire. Living in temperate areas would be problematic but still possible if you borrowed another animal’s fur or made artificial fur.
Since it is fire that is the problem and not merely heat, maybe we’ve been doctored somehow. Something secretly added to our diet to make us extremely combustible? I imagine it would be to keep us from being technological without actually destroying us. Maybe to solve the climate change issue?
But… I can also see lots of ways to overcome this. Somehow all our accumulated knowledge would have to be lost and curiosity would have to be eliminated as well. We’d figure out other ways to generate heat and probably also methods to use fire remotely that didn’t involve close proximity.
I can sort of see why Moribito’s here: the same fantasy-road-movie vibes, maybe? I wouldn’t have thought of it myself. It certainly fits better than Erin (if that’s Beastplayer Erin, that is). Erin’s a great show, though, so no complaints from me.
I did immediately think of Fire Force, during episode one. Totally different vibes, though. Interestingly, electricity has replaced fire in a lot of circumstances (cooking comes to mind). I never quite found out whether they have electricity at all, or if they do what they use it for.
I thought the setting was great; the characters were fine. I didn’t get into the show at first, but it grew on me. I’ll definitely watch the second season when it arrives, but it’s just not going to reach favourite status. It’s okay mostly.
Also, Kanata is definitely a character (and so are the other doggies).