Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: The Fire Hunter
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AQuin1904
Posts: 264 |
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Did reviews for this get canceled due to lack of interest? Anyway:
I can't speak to how well the anime conveyed this, since I knew it from the books ahead of time, but humans secretly hoarding skyfire and experimenting with it are both big-deal crimes. This is why Okibi has an orphan working in his basement instead of a big research team. The anime cut Koushi speculating that Okibi plans to make him a fall guy if they get caught.
This one I know is the anime failing to make things clear enough. Shouzou and Akira got treatment from a pharmacist moonlighting as a back-alley doctor, but Shouzou is still unconscious and wasting away. They can't show him to another doctor because they're not supposed to be in the capital, and treefolk medicine is night-and-day better than any normal treatment (this would have been clearer if the section where they treat Kaho hadn't been so truncated).
Believe it or not, this is a tense, moody scene in the novel. The anime cut somewhere between half and three quarters of the lines (starting from Koushi's conversation with Kira), so we lose: spoiler[Kira learning about what Koushi is doing and talking about how her parents treat their servants, Okibi plotting to have Roroku imprisoned or killed, and Koushi throwing this plan together out of incomplete research to save him]. |
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Hiroki not Takuya
 Posts: 2514 |
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Reviews lagging because of low interest? Yeah, I could see that. I've stayed away since Ep8 because the writing has utterly failed to be engaging. We know so little of the character's motivations or history that they are just like the "paper ninja spys" that showed up from nowhere. They mostly talk and talk about politics, the gods and clans etc as if we should care when we are given so little to care about any of the characters.
In the commentary about the S2 announcement, someone mentioned Shin Seki Yori and I am beginning to think that is not far from the background idea here. The "gods" being those with telepathic and telekinetic powers as that guy that showed up Ep9 seems to possess, not "magic" as the reviewer thinks per se. Not caring about S2 but maybe some reveals will happen there as promised to make it casually watchable... Ep10 was so meh that I couldn't help observing that in the post-credits shot of Japan from space, Japan was far north of where it should have been. Either the background artwork, which has been gorgeous overall BTW, failed or this would be have to be set some 10,000 years from present day. Which may be the case... |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 2944 Location: Email for assistance only |
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The final review for the last few episodes will be in tomorrow. These fell behind for two reasons:
1. I took a week off of work. Incidentally, that coincided with Buddy Daddies' recap so that show didn't get behind. 2. The finale write-up is entirely out of obligation because this show is a snore and a half. |
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Leviathonlx1
Posts: 196 |
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It's too bad we'll never see the novels translated like Shinsekai Yori was. Of course it probably helped Shinsekai Yori was a far more popular novel which was even fan translated before the anime.
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Hiroki not Takuya
Posts: 2514 |
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Well Lynzee, good review and excellent commentary in choice of thumbnail! One thing I think could have been added was mention of the WTF-heavy story elements because it went way beyond not spelling things out. Maybe I am misunderstanding something but the following was just incomprehensible
The Millennial Comet=The Flickering Flame=Satellite in Space=Lady Toukohime... associated with... Fire Master=Fire Hunter that Catches the Flickering Flame=Enemy of God Guy=Lady T's brother (?)=God of Wind Clan=Underling of Said God (??) If all those elements are present in the novel, this anime has succeeded in killing any interest I might have had to read such a snarled story... |
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Thatguy3331
 Posts: 1790 |
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So, I don't think I ever became truly invested in this show, but I am invested in, and utterly fascinated by how much of an all around disaster this seemed to become. I am sincerely interested in trying out the books, if only so I can have a proper understanding of how badly this seemed to play out for everyone involved. I can't imagine the author is happy, nor anybody on staff and while the industry at large becoming an increasing hellscape is common knowledge at this point it's been a good minute since I've seen something fight against itself to reach the end this hard. I am faaaaaar too morbidly curious to not see season two but I absolutely do not blame the reviewer or anyone else for not continuing, I am absolutely the weirdo in this situation lol.
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jr240483
 Posts: 4378 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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while no one blames you for giving up on the series (which is what occur during the reviews for GARO dark moon, yashahime S2 & boruto) , the series itself is to blame cause the source materials are way better and if i was the author, i would be ABSOLUTELY furious on how WOWWOW and the production committee completely butchered it for as someone who read the source materials, a lot of things got SERIOUSLY edited out! this debacle is a prime example on how NOT to do a novel adaptation! |
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2390 Location: United States |
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Oh, you've read the original novels? Nice! Edit: Got rid of the asking for fan translation. Sorry about that. Forgot it was against the rules. Last edited by FireChick on Thu Mar 23, 2023 11:45 am; edited 1 time in total |
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jr240483
Posts: 4378 Location: New York City,New York,USA |
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A) i read the original japanese novels! and B) you do know that asking for fan translations are against ANN's Terms of Service right!? 
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AQuin1904
Posts: 264 |
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I think I've said pretty much all I want to about the anime, but something struck me while I was skimming through the second book after the finale:
I love some of the little flourishes in the prose, like how the group of hunters who knew Koushi's father and whom he meets in the forest with Roroku are described entirely via their dogs. Those little touches do a lot for the reading experience and make it a welcome break from light novel prose (which I've read a lot of lately). |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11348 |
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It's not perfectly rendered, but it's not that far off. They're just not looking at it oriented N/S as you're used to seeing it on maps. Korea is oddly elongated, and some of the islands are shaped a bit abnormally, but this is in the future, and climate change along with the fire apocalypse could somewhat account for that. Plus again, it's not a map-perfect drawing. I didn't hate this as much as everyone else, but I don't know if I'll be back for more or not. Probably will depend on the season's other offerings when it airs. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2299 |
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Something like 4-5 episodes ago I didn't agree with Lynzee's description of the show as hard to follow (though I think she clarified, at the time, that she mostly meant because the info-dumps were boring and unengaging), but I think at this point I'm fully on board with that description. And, well, pretty much everything else in her final review; it took me 2 weeks to even remember this show's finale had come out! The superficial character writing, incoherent world-building, and popsicle-stick sock-puppet animation really come together to create something impressively less than the sum of its individually already unremarkable parts.
Especially disappointing given there seems to be something going on under the hood that might be worthwhile, in the underlying source material; you can even sort of see a little bit of what they were going for with each character's arc, from a kind of massive distance, if you squint really hard -- but, god, you have to interpolate so much you're basically writing the story for them. Ironically, I do think I'll try to remember to check out the source manga (er, novel(s)?), and add this to ye ol' list of "If I'm ever not terrible at Japanese, try to read this". Kind of funny that a terrible adaptation is sometimes more motivating for a deeper follow-up than a good one. I wonder if there's any hope that season 2 will feature serious changes on the production side of things? Some part of me still really wants to like this, for some reason, and I'd be curious if the same issues that led to the wonky animation also caused the miserably ill-told narrative & character work. EDIT: Also, at kind of a very high level, my experience with this felt like my experience with Kaina of the Great Snow Sea; kind've funny that they were both airing at the same time. Will keep my comparison too vague to be a spoiler: Kaina's production was more competent, but, in both cases, the central narrative and character work felt poor to middling, and yet I really wanted to like both shows based entirely on the hints of an interesting underlying world. And, in both cases, I eventually got so bored I just stopped keeping up with the show. Guess I'll go back and finish up Kaina in the next few weeks, at some point, too... but, man, really kind of a shallow season, with two of the titles I was most interested in coming together so uninterestingly. And, for yet another weird similarity: both contributed OPs to my list of regularly played music. The Fire Hunter's OP is the one thing that never disappointed me about it! Perfect coding music. |
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