Hikari no Ou 2nd Season

“As for what’s in the upcoming season, this one makes it seem like only the war is left to shown, but if the visual quality of the second season remains the same, the fights will look ridiculous.” I wrote this at some point on my review of the first season and it looks like I was mostly right, except for the fact that the visuals somehow became way worse. There are almost no moments when the artwork looks good and there are a lot of inconsistencies in the character models, the backgrounds were improved from the previous installment, as they no longer have the bad CGIfrom earlier, but that is still present for some special effects. The actual motions, as I implied, are a lot of worse now and makes every fight look ridiculous, and even the ones during scenes without action are done very poorly. The moments with special looking stills are used less randomly at first, but are just as prominent as the series moves forward, and it’s even quite obviously used to save some animation, plus they kinda moved to have an AI assisted look instead of the almost painting like from the previous season. They look good however, not like the AI horrors you can find out there, but the difference from before is worth pointing out. The directing keeps doing its thing but can’t save the visuals much, especially because it seemed like it got rid of the black screen moments with the character names spelled out on them, only to bring them back at some point. What didn’t change was the atmosphere of the show, which remains the same from the previous season, with soundtrack, sound effects and voice acting being as good as they were before. The only thing that’s worse is the opening and ending songs, which are inferior compared with the previous ones, but still good on their own. As for the plot, there is still some world building going on but it’s nowhere near as much nor it has the dull infodumped presentation from the first season, most of the story now is all the parties involved in the war doing their own thing. The good part is that previously passive or mysterious characters are finally doing something, and on paper everything is epic when described since after all the humans are setting on fire the spiders, who in turn lead a full on attack onto them, the gods move around kidnapping hostages for making them their host for their ultimate goddess or something like that, and the tree people go around and below the capital city trying to save as many of their own as they can. It doesn’t stop there as the series also bothers to show common people as refugees and even some humans siding with the spiders for their cause against the deities, and this way the conflict doesn’t feel limited to just the important cast. On execution, however, since a lot of things are happening at the same time, the transition from one thing to another doesn’t feel very organic, especially compared with the previous installment, and it becomes questionable if some things were properly introduced or anticipated in the previous season, or even during this one, with the answers to that being mostly negative. As for the characterization, well, Touko becomes more involved with the conflict, Akira reluctantly and slowly accepts what she has to do and Koushi has his own Oppenheimer moment after he realizes the effects of what he has done ever since the first season and what it led to. But just as it happens with the aforementioned elements, the character focus might feel, ironically, unfocused, because of how jumpy the plot became, with scenes dedicated to them coming off as short or too apart from each other through the series, before moving to something else completely different. As for the rest of the cast, some old faces reappear in very awkward ways, literally to say hello before disappearing from the show once again after a short scene, or to tell the others about their backdrops and motivations all along in equally awkward ways. As for the resolution, it was ok I guess but it also felt quite easygoing and done after a lot of infodump and lacking in impact, the world goes back to how it was and all the enemy parties reach an easy agreement after so many years at war, leaving you with a “ah, that’s it” kind of feel at the end. As a whole, the whole series is kind of interesting to follow for feeling like an anime from another era and the people making it, but in terms of execution it’s not really something I consider worth watching nor would openly recommend outside of people wanting something kind of different.

The Fire Hunter - A diamond in the rough? Nope, more like a shitshow of proportions gone wrong. I mentioned that had mixed feelings going into Rieko Hinata's adaptation of the novel, which was spearheaded by director Junji Nishimura and series composer-cum-scriptwriter Mamoru Oshii back last Winter, which was a mediocre effort that mainly stemmed its issues on studio Signal.MD's production values, which was supposed to reflect art like pristine watercolour features that elevate the show, not degrade it into the PowerPoint slide show presentation that is nonchalantly slapped all around the show for no reason at all. And Season 2 here, or Part 2 rather,just only confirms to me the one thing I feared about the potential of the show: that the entire staff team had their passion seemingly removed almost fully. No one seemed to care at all, or just ready for AI to take over the majority of the anime, thus saving production costs and man hours. (Sic)-ing from the review that I made exactly a year ago, I really like the story elements of Hikaru no Ou a.k.a The Fire Hunter, with its rather massive world spanning from the spiders to the Divine Clans and even the Fire Hunters, which was said to provide balance between the Heavens and the Earth. But sadly, the divine clans decided to pervert the system and define it as their own divinity, from the Flickering Flame, which is said to be the generational taking-over of female children to become new Goddesses in the process, and the Millennial Comet, failing which that the system, powered on a satellite, would come crashing down to Earth as if it was a comet from outer space. The entire story in a nutshell: fascinating, and interesting to a degree. And both Touko and Koushi's story intertwining people, belief and their fate together, makes for a rather intriguing relationship of two halves: one isolated by her family and trusting her dog companion Kanata (which was left by the dead Fire Hunter Haijuu) to wherever the story leads them to go, and the other, information both gathered and obfuscated by a family who tries to help him as much as impede his progress when it came to certain elements which must not be spoken of or brought to light. Sadly, AND unfortunately, both the pros and cons within Season 1 a.k.a the first half resides within Season 2 here, as if it's a finished product that they chose to delay its release and close up the finishing touches in order not to cover up the embarrassment that was the former initial season, only exacerbated to a degree. It's almost as if I can copy-paste my Part 1 review here, but I digress, having watched the entire story as it is. Everything about the OST is still here, and it still gives the atmosphere that the show crucially needed to tell from a background perspective. The OP and ED songs on the other hand...is IMO a downgrade, so much so that I WILL prefer Season 1's theme songs in a heartbeat. At the end of the day, Hikari no Ou a.k.a The Fire Hunter is an interesting work which I will want to read if given the time to do so in its novel form. But the anime was a mix, and then a big swing of a miss. Definitely not the adaptation that is worthy of its namesake, and if you ever wanted to try the series now in its full and complete 20-episode compilation, you're welcome to do so...but take it with a grain, or rather, splashes of salt.

This anime is absolutely phenomenal, and the hate is unfounded. It's so very rare for an anime to both ask extremely intriguing questions, AND deliver with equally interesting answers. The OST is actually Godly (what did this anime do to deserve this? This is some of the best stuff that has ever graced my ears), the Voice Acting is mostly great (some of the children, understandably, are a bit hard to listen to in the midst of so many stellar performances), the ending is great and fits the show well, and it's simply a blast to watch. Not much else to say. Yes, maybe I havea higher tolerance for bad production. However, the high-points of S2 animation are so good in fact, that you'll probably forget this criticism existed. The thing I disliked most was that, while S1 animation maybe wasn't pretty, it was just messy. It showcased a lack of knowledge in animating movement, which I found quite charming and not at all a bother to watch. While S2 (at its worst) will be extremely distracting still-frames. For an anime that hinges on conversation, the facial expressions being completely off in some scenes is detrimental. And so on. However, as I said, when it wants to be, it gets pretty darn beautiful. And the REALLY bad animation episodes are maybe 2 or 3. The world-building is wonderful: they more than make up for the bad animation with masterful talking scenes. It's been a while since simple dialogue kept me at the edge of my seat (probably hasn't happened since AoT): they build up mystery superbly well. The music definitively helps: they time it crazy well. I don't really agree that the anime is overly convoluted, either. Things are pretty much spelled out sooner or later, and, while you can probably connect something a bit earlier if you're super smart, you will still be able to understand the story in full as long as you watch the show. If anything, I wish they didn't repeat the information we've already learned as much as they have. And yet, I think some story elements are wasted. Won't go into spoilers, but I was expecting a little bit more from Touko and Hinako, and there were some characters I found kind of useless and just didn't understand why they were in the story in the first place. My only real complaint is that I found all the big reveals being prior to the Finale a bit weird. It kind of left the Finale in a weird spot where everything has already been explained, so they're not sure what to do. With all that, this season improved so much on the last. If you found the last one a bit slow and gave up on it, trust me, things pick up. A bonus is that it's highly rewatchable, as well! Overall, I can't recommend this anime enough. It's well thought-out, has awesome dialogue scenes which give you just enough information to keep you invested, the voice acting is marvelous, the fight-scenes might not have the best animation but the hype is still there, and the music is going into my playlist. Absurdly good anime, and hated for so little reason.

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