Welcome everyone, to another episode of Fire Hunter! This is a rough week for Fire Hunter, for a lot of reasons. It’s kind of sad really. I started with such high hopes for this and its falling, while I started with such low hopes for Kaina and the Great Snow Sea and it’s surpassing them. Just goes to show you can never know what will be good in a season. Now without further ado, lets jump into it!
As usual, first we have to start with the production. And as usual with Fire Hunter, it’s not good. Oh Fire Hunter looks fine in stills, sure. The colorful eyecatches are beautiful when they appear, no one can dispute that. But anytime it moves well… I’d almost prefer it not. Take the climax of this episode for instance, with the dragon-like Flame Fiend. The idea is there, I can feel the terror and majesty they were going for, and the eyecatch at the end does a lot to help with that. But the dragon itself is… rough, jittery even, with harsh jagged lines and few frames. It doesn’t feel like it belongs in the same show as everything surrounding it. That’s a damn shame, because Fire Hunter’s unique style should lend itself well to that sort of thing and yet it’s falling short.
Heading into this weeks narrative isn’t much better sadly. Right off the bat, the episode put a sour taste in my mouth by confirming my suspicions about Koushi’s father being the one to save Touko. That on its own isn’t bad, in fact it’s just good setup and storytelling. My issue is how it was revealed. In this case, through the opening recap. Not when the two characters meet, not through some kind of climactic reveal. Just… casually thrown at us through the episode introduction. If you ask me, that’s the worst way to confirm it. There’s no weight to it, no gravitas. Maybe in the novel it was confirmed earlier, so that sort of thing made sense. Or maybe they thought it was obvious to the viewer, which it is. But that doesn’t mean it should be handled like this.
Still, Fire Hunter did improve after that disappointing opening. The girls come together to ask the Engineer for help, who in turn convinces the captain not to kick Touko off. It’s a nice moment of characters being reasonable. Plus we also get to learn precisely why they were angry: Not because Touko left the train to help the girl, but because she failed to close the door behind her, endangering the rest of the occupants. That’s a much more reasonable reason to punish her if you ask me! Makes a ton more sense. And since no one was hurt, they can be convinced to come around on her. I like that. Of course Touko still might have to walk the rest of the way with the train getting fucked up by the Flame Fiend, but at least now it’s probably a group trek more then a solo trek.
As for the Flame Fiend itself, animation aside this thing was cool. I like seeing just how different these monsters can be, and the range of their power. I also thought Fire Hunter did a good job of setting it’s appearance up, as we learn that the other fire hunter was starting to hunt bigger game and becoming more arrogant with a 2nd dog. I’m curious, if he survives this, if there will be any fallout from that. Will he be blamed for picking fights he shouldn’t have? Or is he going to return as more of a bully then before now that they probably can’t continue to use the train? Whatever the case, I’m becoming more interested in exactly what these Fiends are, what they can do, and how they came to be.
Meanwhile on the other side of the story we have Koushi getting inducted into a new family! There’s some small stuff here, like how the daughter seems interested in Koushi and the Mother is implying that Koushi might inherit the company instead of the daughter, etc etc. Family drama that probably won’t be relevant for a little while but is good to get setup early. What really interested me though was the conversation about rebellion. Or in this case, simply self-protection. It’s not that the Father is going to try and overthrow anyone, he isn’t plotting insurrection. He simply doesn’t trust the Government to protect him and the people when the real insurrectionists come. That’s not only a fair concern to have, but an interesting one. Why is the Government culling people/allowing them to be culled? What would they have to gain? Hopefully Fire Hunter shows us.
And for the aforementioned insurrectionists, we have the Spiders. I don’t know what these things are yet, and Fire Hunter didn’t really expand on them either. It seems like they are a former Divine Clan, a member clan of the Government, that either left or was banished? And so they now live in the forests, the deadly forests filled with Flame Fiends mind you, plotting the Government’s downfall? There’s a lot of questions here! Why do they live out there, how do they survive without Government support with the Fiends, were they able to make a deal, what’s this about the Government being able to control the weather? The list goes on. Fire Hunter is setting up a lot here, which is good. There’s a lot to be interested in. But it’s all going to amount to very little if it doesn’t use any of it by the end.
So yeah, all in all this was a kind of disappointing episode of Fire Hunter. It still has a lot of potential in it’s setting and overall narrative, but the production and the way it’s telling that story leaves a lot to be desired. This isn’t Junji Nishimura’s first rodeo, he should know how to do these things. But I fear that his particular style isn’t suited for the kind of show Fire Hunter should be. That or he’s gotten to ambitious and isn’t actually able to pull it off. Either way, Fire Hunter is not living up to the hopes I had for it after that first episode. In fact, as I said in the opening scrawl, Kaina and the Great Snow Sea is actually supplanting it in my rankings. Hopefully things improve as we get further.
