OP: “Usotsuki (嘘つき)” by Leo Ieiri (家入レオ)

I have many, many reactions to the premiere of Hikari no Ou.  I mean, obviously it was great – so totally outside the guardrails of what anime usually is in 2023 in every way.  Not perfect, mind you – there are things I can niggle about which thus far notch it below the series it so obviously reminds me of.  But nevertheless, to be reminded of that series at all is a rarity and a welcome one.  If you’re a lover of high fantasy and what it can bring to anime in good hands, The Fire Hunter will be like an oasis after days in the desert.

“That series” is of course Seirei no Moribito – for me not just the apex of high fantasy in anime, but of anime itself.  I won’t hold Hikari no Ou to that standard to call it a success, obviously, but the template could hardly be more obvious.  You look at this premiere and you may think “how can this possibly not be Production I.G?” –  and of course it is, after a fashion.  Signal.MD is part of the I.G. Port collective, generally (correctly so) regarded as the (relatively) low-rent cousin of I.G. and Wit.  And you can see where some corners were cut with CGI and fuzzy backgrounds in a way they wouldn’t be in a Wit or I.G. first episode, but the overall look is pretty unmistakable.

Moribito of course had the auteur Kamiyama Kenji as the writer and director, and his work on the series in both roles (he added massive amounts of material to improve an already great novel) is among anime’s most accomplished.  But Hikari no Ou is no piker.  It has Nishimura Junji directing – a big name, though nothing he’s done since has come close to True Tears.  An ever bigger name is Oshii Mamoru, as close to anime royalty as it gets.  Roger Ebert (one of the first Western critics to really get anime) said of his Metropolis “If you have never seen a Japanese anime, start here. If you love them, “Metropolis” proves you are right.”  Oshii taking on a writing role here at 71 should make anyone sit up and take notice about the source material’s potential.

There are some other distinguished names, many with Gainax and Bones connections, and character designer/animation director Saitou Takuya worked on Moribito as a young animator.  But above all of them, even Oshii and Nishimura, for me the one whose influence most stamps this premiere is composer Kawai Kenji.  Kawai is anime royalty too, for good reason – his soaring, cinematic scores are integral to every series they adorn.  Watching Hikari it’s striking how much influence music can have on the anime experience.  Kawai’s score here is unmistakably Moribito-esque, and that Kawai signature does more than anything to shape the identity of the first episode.

The story is classic anime fantasy – I even called it “boilerplate” in my season preview, though that’s not entirely a criticism.  Civilization has basically crumbled.  Humans have been “remade” (though it’s not specified how or why, it’s implied that eternal war was involved).  Now, they burst into flame at the mere sight of natural fire.  However, “flamelings” roam the eponymous forests, and Fire Hunters slay them to use their flame to keep the flicker of society alive.  One of these fire hunters is killed in slaying a flame beast near the village of Touko (Kuno Misaki).  His last act – and there’s great pathos in this – is to tell her the name of his dog, Kanata.

Touko’s backstory slowly emerges.  Her parents died in a small fire along with 19 others (Touko is said to be cursed as a result, it seems), and she now lives with her grandmother (blinded by the fire) under the care of a village woman and her daughter.  The woman is kind to Touko but the daughter resents her presence deeply.  As for Kanata he savagely attacks everyone but Touko.  Her guardian decides that she should go to the capital to try and return the hunter’s dog and tools to his family, which means an arduous five-month journey on a collection truck (beast flame seems to be what it’s collecting).

As to the capital, it seems to be a place where something of technology survives, albeit mere scraps.  It’s a city in the vein of what you might see in “Laputa” but more dystopian, a kind of an industrial revolution nightmare.  Here resides a teenager named Koushi (Ishige Shouya) ans his younger sister, orphaned when their mother died as a result of the pollution emanating from the local factory.  Koushi receives a mysterious letter, implied to be from someone living in a vast, gated mansion.  Koushi and Touko are obviously fated to meet – my assumption is that the capital and her journey to reach it will be dual narratives for the next few episodes (and we don’t yet know for how long the series will run) at least.

All this weaves a really compelling and immersive narrative.  My only quibble would be the strings of clumsy explicatory exposition and the so-so CGI in the wide shots with movement – not a huge deal but with this sort of story, it would be lovely to have everything be spot on.  I don’t know much about Hinata Rieko or the source material, which is why I didn’t rate this series even more highly than I did going into the season.  Even so I think I was underselling it, given the names involved.  Hikari no Ou is distinctive and arresting at the least, and it’s impossible not to think based on the premiere that it has a chance to be genuinely special.  “A show that could change the equation if it surprised on the upside” is what I said in the preview, and I feel pretty good about that statement now.

ED: “Mada Tooku ni Iru (まだ遠くにいる)” by Maaya Sakamoto