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I’ll try to keep this short, since this title doesn’t really have much to talk about. This anime has some veterans within the medium behind it and one of the most interesting premises in a while, so it seemed like a worthy title to follow. There were some early red flags though, such as a very minor studio that has produced nothing but garbage doing the major work and a very so-so director in charge of it. It was a semi interesting series until, suddenly, it ended.
The overall plot structure is nothing special, just a road movie type of adventure where one of the two protagonists has to go from point A to point B, but happens to meet a lot of secondary and minor characters and learn about the world along the way. Meanwhile, the other main character studies how to develop weapons and learns more about the past that led to the present time of the show. Basically, everything they do is a way for the viewer to learn more about the setting and lore of the anime, but there’s not much actual plot in it.
Basically, what made Hikari no Ou semi interesting to follow wasn’t the story, but the buildup and a promise for a war to come, while almost all the time of the show is dedicated to explore its world. It takes place in a future with seemingly steampunk like technology, there are arranged marriages, dragons that guard villages, creatures from the forests that cure others, other creatures from the forests casted away from society, magical and natural fire, a tribe referred as spiders that manipulate said natural fire and wants to use it in a war against humans, shadow like black fire creatures that act as spies for the gods, who in turn are separated by elements and clans and are going to be part of the war, something such as paper is so valuable it’s the only way to communicate with those gods and can have a direct impact in the upcoming war, and there are hunters with any kind of dogs as hounds. Meanwhile in the capital they are building a cannon powered by lightning to fight the spiders. And there’s also a satellite coming down to Earth, and a human vessel for some prophesized star child I think. Everything is interesting but presented through infodumps to the two main characters, which makes for quite a challenging viewing experience to sit through only for an acquired taste. Also, it may sound like it is complicated, but in reality it is not, it’s just that the series explains everything in detail to look like everything is organic and makes sense.
Although there are things that I don’t exactly buy such as a chihuahua as a hound, and how easily Touko the female protagonist can use a weapon the size of her body at first try. Also, there are several lucky encounters throughout the show when she needs them. Anyways she eventually reaches the capital and accomplishes her goal in a so-so way, parting away with Kanata the dog and getting the weapon of the fire hunter that saved her was done well, but the reunion between Kanata and its actual owners was anticlimactic.
The other plot point was the war between humans and spiders but there’s no closure for that, as the series ended out of nowhere in its tenth episode, which really affects the overall. All the previous episodes were acceptable as slow yet interesting on their own, because they were building something big to come. They didn’t have much in them, but the anticipation of the next thing was done well. Well, with no ending, every episode was a buildup to nothing. Ten episodes worth of buildup and exposition through infodumps for nothing, come back in the second season.
And it’s not like you are watching the show for the characters either, the two main characters are there to learn about the world, and the others are there to explain them everything the audience needs to know. No one stands out that much, no one has a very interesting personality, only two characters have some kind of backdrop which are more told than shown, and no character really develops. Touko becomes braver and Koushi learns that people die when they fight, that is all, they don’t change, they just come to know about stuff.
As for the presentation, the sound effects are good, voice acting feels mature and done well, the music is very good and atmospheric, the opening is quite interesting because it goes from being very slow to very fast yet flowing organically, and the ending is another beautiful song by Maaya Sakamoto as usual. First episode aside, the visuals, however, are very weak, the artwork suffers constant quality drops, the characters go off model all the time, the motions are sloppy even during relaxing moments and frankly quite pathetic during the few fights of the show, and as for the special effects, they are fine, but there is some ugly CGI in here. The backgrounds are the best part, but even them have some crappy CGI sometimes.
The directing is weird as well, throwing visually completely different illustrations during some moments in very random ways leaving you confused more than impacted, and using a black screen with the name of the characters that are going to appear whenever the series switches from the villages to the capital city. I don’t need to be reminded of the characters’ names every half an episode, and I hope no viewer is.
So, Hikari no Ou is a series that focuses entirely in its atmosphere and world building, with not so much actual plot and characters in it that would be worth a watch if it had an actual resolution to all that build up, but it doesn’t. 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. The trailer for the continuation, however, makes it look like there is going to be even more world building, what’s even left to talk about in this show? The actual fire hunter and that star child thing or something? I don’t know frankly. It is hard to recommend the show because of its dull and visually weak presentation and because there’s not much actual content in it, since it is just an anticipation of a second season that might look really bad. So, it’s a series only for those who seek something with a mature tone that feels different from what’s currently in the medium. Otherwise Shinsekai Yori in lore and setting and Seirei no Moribito in characters and some of its mythology have everything that you could want from this show, only done much better, and with actual worthy resolutions.
17/03/2024 update
“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 CGI from 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.
5/10
