Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Fire Hunter
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Kiwi93
Posts: 429 |
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This will quite possibly be this seasons hidden gem.
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JoelBurger
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At least Nishimura and Oshii have a source material to reign in their boomer insanity this time.
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TheSleepyMonkey
Posts: 963 |
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Is it that hard to just call someone/something old, instead of "boomer"? |
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JoelBurger
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Is it that hard to not get upset by the word boomer? Apparently so. |
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AQuin1904
Posts: 270 |
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I've been really excited for this series for a while, and my thoughts on these first three episodes more or less agree with Lynzee's.
The visuals' inability to keep up with action shots is a shame, although I appreciate their ability to bring out some of slow, meditative shots of scenery or small, everyday actions, which jibe with the novels' prose. On the other hand, nothing was ever going to live up to Yamada's gorgeous illustrations. They're so detailed and dynamic, and he draws so much vibrancy out of his stark black-and-white palette. As happy as I am that this series exists at all, I do wish it could have the 50 episodes of breathing room that The Beast Player (another children's fantasy novel series of similar length) got back in the early 00s. It benefits from being able to take in its world and characters at a slower pace early on, and a lot of initiative and character Touko shows in the first book comes through small interactions that could easily end up cut or simplified for time (as some have already). That would also have afforded the series time to deliver some of this information more naturally, instead of a narrator reading excerpts from the book so much of the time. I absolutely adore both the opening and ending sequences, though. |
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ab2143
Posts: 767 |
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Yeah, I’m finding Koushi’s storyline to be the more interesting of the two
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nl_TvdL
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I find this anime interesting but also very depressing. The way those people are treating the young girl feels morally wrong, the boy who lost everyone except his ill sister (who probably will not recover) feels like a victim “saved” by a rich man who just uses him, the questionable faith of those women aboard the “fire vehicle”.. Everything is just so grim.
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SHD
Posts: 1759 |
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I'm enjoying this show so far, but the limited animation can be really distracting... not so much because it looks bad (it does, but anyway) but because those parts clash so much with the decently done scenes, and it just makes it very obvious that they're struggling. Also it's obviously affecting the storytelling as well, since they can't do the episodes as they originally planned to.
I'm getting curious of the novel, I may end up buying and reading it. |
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AQuin1904
Posts: 270 |
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It's re-releasing in bunkobon format now (including a corresponding set of cheaper ebooks), so it's fairly accessible. There's also a print-only eight-volume edition with color art and behind-the-scenes material for the anime being released, but that's by far the most expensive option right now, and I don't know how nice they are, since I haven't seen a copy personally. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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Saved for me by the "three-episode rule." I was close to dropping this after the directorial nightmare that was episode two.
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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Oh, didn't know we had reviews for this one.
It's a unique premise--normal fire becoming deadly feels like a metaphor for overuse of fossil fuels eventually backfiring, or just the overwhelming dangers of the modern world in general. Could go somewhere interesting, though the multiple unrelated protagonists and complicated politics and evil gods or whatever is a lot to keep track of. It also often demonstrates a situation organically without narration or exposition, but then adds an explanation anyway... one of my pet peeves. The animation is... trying, usually sufficiently, but sometimes too hard, and sometimes not hard enough. I don't know if these hunting dogs have anime flight superpowers or if that's just part of the weird art style. Sometimes it cuts to a slideshow of overly-detailed images, which seems to be an artistic choice since these are too short to save much budget, but it's kind of jarring. The funniest thing is those repeatedly reused establishing shots of the mansion, which look like they were rendered on an N64. I'll continue with it for now, if only because it's such an odd duck, but it's hard to say yet whether it'll pull itself together or just fall apart. |
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Andrew Cunningham
 Posts: 532 Location: Seattle |
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The way this show delivers exposition over disconnected visuals feels like stylistic permission to not pay close attention to it. Like we're not supposed to be parsing it as much as letting it wash over us, getting the flavor of it rather than the specifics.
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NeedMoreCats
 Subscriber Posts: 334 Location: Westchester, NY |
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I’m fascinated by the story. I am. I don’t mind the info dumps that much. But, oof, I feel so bad for fans of the novels. This is not an adaptation I’d wish for anyone. That dragon run amok—so poorly animated it was hard to decipher just what was happening.
As far as I know, the novels are not available in English. Have I got that right? I think those lush detailed stills are illustrations from the novels? Clearly, a very different design aesthetic from the anime. Not that I mind the stylistic choices here—at least, in the quieter scenes, really not working in the action scenes—the color palette and character designs kind of remind me of shadow puppetry, which is rather cool. I just wish it were better because, from what I can glean of the original story, it really deserves better. I’m still gonna watch it, but my heart goes out to the fans of the novels. |
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AQuin1904
Posts: 270 |
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I'm still glad this show is happening, but I really hope later episodes will focus more on character than lore.
I cannot understand the scriptwriting choices here. They had to make cuts, since they're adapting around 80 pages per episode (these books are 400 pages each, and they're denser than LNs), but they kept almost every single bit of lore exposition. Some of it is necessary, but leaving more of the world vague would have been worth it to keep all the character moments we're losing. Imagine if the Lord of the Rings movies had included a full reading of the appendices but kept the same runtime. Why did they keep Mr. Hitoo's line about dust when they didn't animate all the dust on the third floor? It looks pristine in this version. The way they redesigned the book makes sense—it's a more visual way of expressing cyclical motion—except they cut every scene of Koushi thinking about clocks, so it doesn't connect to anything. Of course, if they gave Koushi any of his cut scenes, it should have been the ones where he's actually experimenting and not just reading. I guess giving Enzen a sendoff with the dragon is more plausible, but cutting one of Touko's first big assertive actions for it baffles me. (Book version: spoiler[Enzen died in the truck crash. Shouzou goes at the dragon with his wrench after it crushes Benio, and Touko, in the heat of the moment, stabs it with the sickle.]) I get cutting time with the treefolk, but I wish they'd animated the characters reacting to their smell, which is spoiler[what keeps fiends from attacking them].
Yes, the novels are untranslated, and probably won't be any time soon. We almost never get non-LN Japanese fantasy in English (like, to the extent that I could probably fit the whole publishing history on one bookshelf). The stills aren't from the novels, since those illustrations are black and white (not even grayscale) and use a lot of neat brushwork for detail. The novel illustration of the dragon is great, but it depicts a moment that got cut from the show. |
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Probablytomorrow
Posts: 169 |
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I think the walls of exposition are at least selling me on the mystery of how humanity even defines itself in this setting. It’s established that they lost the age-old battle with nature, but are they now in a new battle with nature, or with their own products of that old battle, or with new classes of humans? Do the humans deserve to fight back against their place here, or are they just making things worse? It feels like the answer is complicated.
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