Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m eager to return to the ominous, intriguing world of The Fire Hunter, a world where Prometheus’ gift has turned against us, and even proximity to an open flame will turn human beings into ashes. Stranded within isolated villages, the last embers of humanity eke out a desperate existence, each community an essential link in a chain bound by forest-traversing trains. And now even that existence seems threatened, as greater and more terrible Fire Fiends challenge the few vessels left to humanity, and curses spread through the cowering villagers.
And of course, all that’s only the trouble faced by one of our two protagonists; over on Koushi’s side, we’ve also learned that the current governmental order is on the brink of collapse, that violent separatists are preparing for a major attack, and that anyone who’s in the know is already stockpiling weapons for the coming chaos. The Fire Hunter has constructed a world as evocative as it is fragile, and I am profoundly curious as to how Touko will find her place within it (or even survive the next five minutes, for that matter). Let’s get to it!
Episode 4
Somewhat unintentionally amusing synopsis, as we’re reminded of the relative stakes of our two stories: “Koushi meets a young woman while Touko faces a goddamn dragon”
God, this OP is still so good. Love the distinctive color design and shading, love the diversity of visual styles, and love the austere strangeness of the imagery; everything here feels like a portentous dream, like our sleep has been disrupted by some divine agent desperate to convey its frightful message
I will generally take “interesting but flawed” over “polished but predictable” when it comes to visual art and storytelling, and The Fire Hunter’s creaking production certainly exemplifies that. I would love to see more productions embrace something like the richly colored, distinctly textured aesthetic of this OP; sequences like the sun breaking through the clouds at the beginning seem almost like animated stained glass
We return with the dragon continuing on in its wibbly-wobbly way. I imagine cuts this loose, lacking in stable form and unconnected by in-betweens, probably inspired some frustration among viewers. But personally, having watched so much older anime where movement is often a luxury, I care far more about fundamental aesthetics than fluidity. Frankly, my biggest visual complaint with this show is the regular pans into a CG version of the Okibi estate; that CG grates harshly against the more naturalistic aesthetic employed everywhere else
Touko again demonstrates both her compassion and clear-headedness during a crisis, as she rushes to help the stunned Benio
Whew, all that said, the cuts are getting rough as the girls look for Kaho. Just like three far-flung frames to convey Touko rushing for the door
Kaho sits staring at the dead doctor, wondering why it was him and not her
It’s an interesting aesthetic choice; the show isn’t willing to compromise at all on the distinctiveness of its character acting, so we end up with sequences that demonstrate a great deal of frenetic movement and personality in the minimum possible frames. This exit from the train provides a successful example, with the lack of fluidity in Touko’s stumbling actually leaning into her youthful clumsiness
And even in this group scene, all the characters are moving individually, the animation relying on a sort of simplification of their form into distinctive color shapes in order to facilitate continuous character acting without labor-intensive detail
This is of course contrasted against the postcard memory shots that capture everything in rich color and detail. Aesthetic holism is clearly not a priority, and that’s facilitating some interesting contrasts
Kaho reveals this dragon is actually her village’s guardian deity. So if even the gods are now against them, what hope do they have?
Benio is lost in a sudden, calamitous moment, swept away by a dragon’s claw. She was brave and strong, but this world is savage and random
Another distinct variation on the screen-in-screen partition, as Touko is carried away by Kanata in an increasingly smaller central block while the rest of the screen is filled by the rapidly passing ground. A fun, novel way to convey a sense of retreat, as the scene which occupies your current focus dwindles behind you
Returning to the city, we see a boat decked out in magnificent colors, apparently bound for an island to the south
Hinako seems to be doing better, and has become friends with Kira
Kira critiques her father’s taste in boat decoration, then asks the two not to mention it. A small exchange that implies some distance between her and her father
She’s also clearly delighted to have playmates now. Interesting how effortlessly Koushi lies when asked what he does in her father’s study
Okibi states he can get all the supplies Koushi needs by the next day. We’re basically seeing this society from opposite yet equally desperate ends – Touko trying to keep herself alive with nothing at her disposal, and Koushi attempting to keep humanity alive with all the tools his society can muster
Our narrator explains that candies are set at colorful shrines throughout the city during this spring festival, free for all children to take. The incidental worldbuilding details of this narrative do a great job of adding distinct texture to their society, though I still question if including the narrator was necessary
This show’s distinct visual priorities are demonstrated again as Okibi walks towards the ship within a crowd of characters, all of them individually designed and traditionally animated. Modern productions tend to either avoid such scenes or populate them with CG background characters, but The Fire Hunter refuses to compromise on its compositions, only its fluidity
Koushi’s tutor explains to both him and us that contact with other nations was lost after fire turned on us, and that one of the ship’s missions is to seek out other remnants of humanity
The boat is itself a form of helpless prayer – it simply goes out to the same island every year, returning with goods that are barely worth the trip. Their society busies itself with pointless ritual while Koushi seeks a genuine way forward
“Sometimes, I think the flame fiends might be a gift.” Another tutor muses on the strange, abnormal physiology of the fiends, how they seem designed almost specifically to be killed and harvested
“I shouldn’t say any more. The Forest God would curse me for it.” And this is apparently a heretical teaching according to the Forest God, who Touko’s narrative seems to imply has already abandoned us
This is an efficient sequence, with Koushi’s experimental progress conveyed visually as his tutors offer these key fragments of exposition
When activated, his fiend fire glows like a golden crown. A dazzling sight whose cruel origin is made clear by our transition back to Touko, who is currently wondering if all the nice people she’d met on the train are dead
More of this production’s charmingly wibbly-wobbly animation as our trio of survivors traverse the forest. Certainly a bit distracting, but also somewhat compelling; I’ll certainly take this over the CG backgrounds and three-camera setups of our current, tragically post-layouts era
They are discovered by the tree folk whom Touko was seeking at the beginning of the series, who seem genuinely melded with the trees in some way, possessing green skin and bark-like extensions of their forms
“Village guardians are incarnations of the capital’s Lady Goddess. If your dragon god went mad, someone likely made it so.” “The spiders.”
Back at the capital, Koushi is directed to the third floor of the library, an elevated observatory-like chamber filled with rare scrolls. This world is filled with so many fun visual ideas that it’s a pleasure just traveling alongside its characters
His research reveals that the cataclysm which created flame fiends actually turned normal creatures into fiends, through a process of adaptation to their new environment
The Goddess Tokohanahime is apparently the patron of fire hunters. Her younger sister Tayurahime is the country’s guardian
The sickle being the weapon of fire hunters would support the idea that the fiends were created to be harvested
The fire of the “Millennial Comet” would protect them from the darkness. Apparently a man-made star or rocket, also known as the “Flickering Flame”
“Whoever catches it shall become Lord of the Fire Hunters”
We conclude on one more ambiguous reflection from the narrator, who muses that the goddess might have just been waiting for the fiends to ripen so she could birth the first sickle and cut them down
And Done
Ho boy, is this plot ever thickening! While Touko did her best to survive a goddamn dragon attack, Koushi led us through all manner of ominous revelations regarding the origins of fiends, fire hunters, and their current society altogether. It seems abundantly clear now that nothing about this world’s apocalypse was natural or predestined; humanity did something that presaged their own destruction, either through the Icarus-like audacity of the Millennial Comet, or the true, hidden origin story of the Goddess Tokohanahime. As usual, this story is so dense with its own mythology that it can get heavy on the exposition, and the animation is getting more fragmented by the second, but the world we are exploring is so intriguing and evocatively realized that I still find myself drawn to its mysteries. Like From the New World, this fragile stability hides a terrible secret, and our leads are drawing closer to it by the second.
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