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The staff for the television anime of Rieko Hinata and Akihiro Yamada‘s The Fire Hunter (Hikari no Ō) fantasy novel series started streaming the 30-second and 120-second versions of the second promotional video for the show’s second season on Thursday. The 30-second version previews the opening theme song “Hikarakka” (Scattered Flowers, Falling Flowers) by artist Cocco. The 120-second version previews both the opening theme song, and the ending theme song “Dakishimete” (Embrace) by Maaya Sakamoto, who voices Akira in the series.
©日向理恵子・ほるぷ出版／WOWOW
The new season will premiere on January 14 on the premium subscription television channel WOWOW. The second season’s new cast includes Manaka Iwami as Yururuho / Sennen Suisei and M.A.O as Ruri Matsuri. The rest of the 16 main cast members are reprising their roles.
The first season premiered on January 14 this year on WOWOW. Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired in Japan.
Junji Nishimura (Ranma ½, You’re Under Arrest: The Motion Picture, True Tears, Vladlove) is directing the anime at Signal.MD (Recovery of an MMO Junkie, Napping Princess, The Wonderland), and Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Angel’s Egg, Jin-Roh – The Wolf Brigade, Blood: The Last Vampire, Vladlove) is overseeing and writing the scripts.
The novel series’ story is set in a world in the chaotic aftermath of humanity’s apocalyptic Last War. A great forest, infested with flameling creatures and other fallen beasts, covers the world, and pockets of humanity live in small protected communities. Due to a special weapon used in the Last War, human beings spontaneously burst into flame even when merely getting close to a small source of fire. The only safe energy source for humanity lies within the bodies of flamelings, and the duty to hunt them falls to the sickle-wielding firecatchers who brave the depths of the great forest. Among the firecatchers, they whisper tales of one who would be “Firecatcher Lord,” an individual who will be able to harvest the fire of the thousand-year comet, the “Wandering Spark” that has flown in the sky since it was sent up before the Last War, but is now returning to earth.
The story begins with Tōko, a young girl from a paper-making town who finds herself in the forbidden forest, assailed by flamelings, when a flamecatcher rushes to protect her. In another place, a young capital-born boy named Kōshi shelters his younger sister after losing his mother to factory poison.
Hinata debuted the first book of the series in December 2018, with illustrations by The Twelve Kingdoms illustrator and RahXephon character designer Akihiro Yamada. Hinata published the fourth book in the series on September 2020, followed by a side-story volume in December 2021.
Sources: The Fire Hunter anime’s X/Twitter account, Comic Natalie