Welcome everyone, to another week of Fire Hunter! I’ll admit, I wasn’t looking forward to much to writing this post, as Fire Hunter has done little of praise recently. And that hasn’t changed this week either! But I can’t just not write whenever the episode bad. If I do that this season will take forever. So lets dive right in shall we?
Before I get to negative, I will give Fire Hunter some praise. This week sees our leads finally meet up and get together, and it’s great. Not just because there is some payoff in watching these two storylines intersect, but also because it cuts down on the number of black-screen cutaways. I can’t understate how much I hate these cutaways. Not only do they completely break the flow of the episode and ruin transitions, they are just downright lazy. So seeing those start to peter out as Touko and Koushi intersect, cutting down on the number of different groups, was really nice to see. Hopefully as Fire Hunter progresses these groups continue to intersect, until they become one smooth narrative.
Getting into the actual content of the episode, this is where things start to go down hill a bit. For ease of communication I’ll just come right out and say it, I don’t get what Fire Hunter is trying to do with Okibi. It continues to try and sow doubt with every other scene, talking about what he would need someone like Koushi for, etc. But at the same time it has him prepping to basically turn a district into a minefield of Skyfire for the Spiders? It’s trying to make us doubt his intentions while at the same time making that intention itself grey. Like is he trying to prepare the city for a siege? Is he going to sacrifice an entire district to defeat them? If so how is he any better then the Divine Clans, and if that’s the case why present it this way at all?
And the spies! What about the Divine Clan spies! Not only what are they, these sort of soot-monsters floating through town, why is Koushi so freaked out by them? He isn’t doing anything wrong, just walking through town and visiting his old home looking for his dog. Surely acting like this and running away from them is more suspicious then just… letting them watch him. Unless he was doing something he shouldn’t, such as recovering Skyfire and such? I don’t know. I feel like I’m missing a lot of necessary information for the characters and their actions to make sense.
Finally I want to correct something from last week. I gave Fire Hunter some shit for Touko running away from the police and it not making sense. But credit to Fire Hunter, it addressed that by showing us that Touko doesn’t know what the police are. I think that’s a bit silly personally, surely they had something like that back in her village. But it’s still an explanation. And that’s nice. Aside from that though… I just find myself growing uninterested in Fire Hunter. Sure the melt is amusing, in a sad sort of way. But that’s really all it has going for it. The story is bland and uninteresting, confused on what it wants to do, and it hasn’t explored the world to any meaningful degree in 7 dang episode. Compared to Kaina and the Great Snow Sea its just… Its a sub-par dystopian anime.
P.S. There are some small moments I forgot to mention, mostly out of a lack of motivation to write anything about this show. Kun having magical powers to control and see through bugs is kind of cool, telling us a bit more about the Spiders and what they can do. I liked Koushi realizing his father didn’t abandon them but rather died saving someone, that was nice. Kaho marrying Shouzou is… fine? Don’t particularly care about either of them at this point, as neither are really characters at all. Miss anything else? I dont think so.
