After repeated wars, human biology changed. Now when humans get too close to natural fire, they combust. However, society has not completely collapsed without fire. Instead it has been replaced by a special material harvested by Fire Hunters from giant monsters that stalk the forests.
Touko, a girl from a rural village, is saved by a wandering Fire Hunter who gave his life to save her. As is tradition, she must now return his hunting dog and his weapon to his family in the capital.
Elsewhere, the Fire Hunter’s son Koushi, thinking his father abandoned him and his sister, are adopted by a wealthy family. However, while looking into a special fire stone in his research, he learns some troubling truths.
The Fire Hunter is one of those anime that you need to watch diligently or else be forever lost. However, it creates a whole lot to be intrigued by. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like The Fire Hunter, head on down below.
Anime Like The Fire Hunter
For Fans of Lore-Rich Worlds
Kemono no Souja Erin
In a nation that is threatened by civil war, Erin lives with her mother who tends to the Grand Duke’s powerful war-lizards as a doctor. However, after an incident with the Grand Duke’s favorite war-lizard, Erin’s mother is held responsible.
While trying to save her mother, Erin falls in a river and is swept away to a neighboring region. On her quest to get home, she encounters many different people and learns the harsh truths of her world.
Although both The Fire Hunter and Kemono no Souja Erin are initially similar in that they follow young girls experiencing the brutality of their world outside their initial sheltered existences, Kemono no Souja Erin has the main character grow up over the course of its story.
However, what these series really have in common is more the worlds that they create. They are vastly different from our own with unique cultures and creatures, although Kemono no Souja Erin lacks the same sci-fi infusions that The Fire Hunter gets later on.
Moribito
It is said that a widespread drought is coming to the Shin Yogo Empire, and in order to avoid famine, the reincarnation of the water spirit must be sacrificed in order to prevent it. However, the water spirit is the emperor’s own son.
In effort to save his life, the prince’s mother spirits the boy away with a mysterious female mercenary to protect him until the Emperor reconsiders.
There are things in The Fire Hunter that feel familiar, like the factories and mansions, but it creates a sort of post-apocalyptic world with new creatures and cultures that feels quite a bit different from our own. Moribito does something similar, but while it has its element of mysticism, there isn’t creature tribes in that world like the Tree People in The Fire Hunter.
If you like unique worlds that are almost more interesting than the story the anime is trying to tell, that’s both of these anime. However, while The Fire Hunter is about a journey and then ultimately invites you to ponder on other mysteries, Moribito is more a coming-of-age story as a mercenary mentors the threatened prince she is helping to protect.
To Your Eternity
One day, an entity, for reasons unknown, threw an orb to Earth. With no emotion or identity, the orb is meant to gather sensations and is able to take the shape of things it encounters as it learns.
For many years, it was a rock, and then it became moss, and when a wolf took its last breath near it, it became the wolf. After wandering for some time, it met a boy. After a long struggle, the boy, too, took his last breath.
With human form, now the orb sets off on his never-ending journey where he will meet many new people and have many new experiences.
To Your Eternity is unique among anime in that the main character is immortal, and time in his world seems occasionally like a second in his story. So, like The Fire Hunter invites you to want to learn more about its unique world, To Your Eternity is a series with an ever-evolving world with cultures and people that change over hundreds if not thousands of years.
Furthermore, both To Your Eternity and The Fire Hunter are led by greater, more mystical mysteries that you want to uncover and help create a reason for the characters to continue exploring their unique worlds.
The Twelve Kingdoms
In what started as a normal day as a normal high school student, Nakajima Youko has her reality shattered when a strange man named Keiki appears before her, swearing his allegiance.
When Youko and her friends are attacked by demons, they are pulled into a different world, one she has never known.
Separated from Keiki, Youko and her friends must do whatever they have to in order to survive this strange, harsh place.
While The Twelve Kingdoms is an isekai story that transports a modern school girl to a medieval-themed fantasy world, it is “isekai before isekai” from before it became a money-printing machine. This means it put a diligent amount of time into crafting the world.
While you see a few different cultures and villages in The Fire Hunter, the world seems pretty empty. When traveling, the world of The Twelve Kingdoms often feels similar, but it does go to great lengths to show you the varied differences in cultures and societies in each of the titular kingdoms.
If you enjoyed how unique the world feels in The Fire Hunter, The Twelve Kingdoms is beloved for its world-building.
For Fans of Post-Apocalyptic Society
From The New World
After a small portion of humanity suddenly developed psychokinetic powers, the world underwent a rapid transformation. After 1,000 years of turbulent history where regular humans struggled against those with powers, we focus in on Kamisu 66, a small town where 12-year-old Saki Watanabe finally awakened her powers.
This awakening means she is finally able to join her friends at the Sage Academy. However, things in Saki’s life do not remain as simple as those precious days.
With missing children in the village, rebellious rumblings, and a world steeped in myth and mystery, Saki and her friends are about to face the shocking truths of their peaceful society.
While the most immediately noticeable similarity between From The New World and The Fire Hunter is the art style, they also take place in a similar world.
In both anime, there was an apocalyptic event that devastated society, but the story of the series is set in the far future of that world. Humanity lives more primitively and the world is more sparsely populated. Furthermore, there are also other humanoid creatures that live among humans and are discriminated against by them.
However, The Fire Hunter often plays coy with its past whereas From The New World has you unraveling what happened to humanity in the past as something that plays a pretty large role in the story that is going on for the characters.
WorldEnd – What Would You Do At The End of The World?
It has been five hundred years since humanity went extinct at the hands of the mysterious beasts that roam the land. Now the surviving races have retreated to floating islands in the sky out of reach of most of the beasts. However, there are ones nimble enough to put these people in danger.
A small group of young girls, a race called the Leprechauns, are now raised as the only ones that can wield ancient weapons to fend off invasion by the beasts, but it often requires them to sacrifice themselves and they don’t often live to see adulthood.
Enter Willem, the last surviving human woken from his slumber and sent to watch over these girls, still feeling the sting from the final battle where he lost everything five hundred years ago.
Both The Fire Hunter and WorldEnd take place in a world that was destroyed because of something humanity did. However, the plots of both take place in the distant future after that event. Now, people still suffer because of it.
However, the world is much further along in WorldEnd, with them fleeing to the skies. Furthermore, WorldEnd is a bit more traditionally anime in both story and characters. It is also a distinctly more emotional tale.
Wolf’s Rain
In a dying world, there is a legend – When the world ends, the path to paradise will open, but only wolves can find the way. Long thought extinct, wolves live among humans with the the ability to shape-shift into human forms.
In Freeze City, several wolves find themselves drawn by a mysterious scent that they believe is the start of their path to paradise.
While world of The Fire Hunter often seems bleak and like it is on the verge of dying, Wolf’ Rain takes place entirely in a world that is dying a slow, wintery death.
Both series start off with the characters being given a purpose, and follows them on that harrowing journey. However, Wolf’s Rain has a little bit more desperation to it, but like The Fire Hunter, it is also focused on unfolding a mystery that is driving the series rather than just suffering.
Kaina of the Great Snow Sea
With the world covered by a great snow sea, drinking water becoming scare, and livable land located at the feet of a few deteriorating orbital trees that extend into the sky, humanity has dwindled down to a few thousand.
According to legend, there is a sage that knows the secret to producing unlimited amounts of water, and Princess of Atland, Liliha, sets out from her war-threatened kingdom to find this sage in hopes of fostering peace.
She ends up floating to the top of an orbital tree where she finds Kaina, a young man part of a small village of elderly.
Although she couldn’t find the sage, Liliha takes Kaina with her back to her home where she hopes to find another route to peace or victory with the aggressive and technologically advanced mobile nation of Valghan that plagues the snow sea.
Like The Fire Hunter, Kaina of the Great Snow Sea feels like a series set after some long-ended apocalypse that left humanity scattered and on its last legs. Furthermore, both series follow main characters that have to leave their secluded home in order to return something, only for them to be caught up in a building conflict between two groups.
The charm of both of these series is really the worlds they create. You want to see more and you want to unravel the “why” of it all.
For Fans of Unrest Between Humans and Other Beings
Giant Beasts of Ars
In Ars, humanity and the beast tribes are threatened by giant monster attacks. To combat this, champions of physical prowess form pacts with partners of magical ability to merge and wield magnificent destructive power.
Jiiro is one such champion who is still mourning the loss of his former partner. One day, he meets Kuumi, a young girl who has just awakened her magical abilities. He soon discovers that she escaped and is on the run from an experimental laboratory and helps her flee.
Both series take place in worlds where humanity is constantly threatened by attack from large beasts. However, while that is a threat, neither anime necessarily makes subduing those beasts the focus.
Instead, they focus on mysterious building intrigue happening within that world. However, while The Fire Hunter hides it behind a primarily more primitive society, both series have their sci-fi elements in their non-traditional sci-fi worlds.
However, Giant Beasts of Ars is a little less mysterious and a little more focused on action.
Rage of Bahamut – Genesis
Thousands of years ago, ancient dragon Bahamut terrorized the world. However, when gods and demons allied themselves to prevent the world’s destruction, they sealed him away, splitting the key among them so he would be eternally imprisoned.
After the dragon was sealed, humanity returned to normal. However, things are about to get very abnormal for bounty hunter Favaro when he meets a mysterious women that holds half the key to Bahamut’s seal.
Although The Fire Hunter takes a bit to get there, both Rage of Bahamut and The Fire Hunter build towards the rising tensions between humans and the other non-humans that live in their world. However, while The Fire Hunter is more creative in its non-human residents, Rage of Bahamut still puts a good amount of detail into its more standard gods and demons.
Unlike The Fire Hunter, Rage of Bahamut is a little more focused on action and its doesn’t really have the same pervasive sense of melancholy that the The Fire Hunter often embraces.
For Fans of Mysterious and Thoughtful Art Anime
The Heike Story
The Taira Clan, also known as the Heike, have developed authority in Japan. When a young girl disrespects a representative of the clan, her father pays the price with his life.
Later, this girl, now adopting the name Biwa after the instrument her father played, approaches Taira no Shigemori, the eldest son of the Taira Clan leader.
To him, she reveals the power of her eye to see the future and portends the downfall of his clan. He reveals to her the power in his eye to see the wandering ghosts of the dead and, after learning of how her father died, offers to take her in in hopes that she can help him steer his clan away from disaster.
The Fire Hunter and The Heike Story has an art style in common, and also tend to be more thought-provoking stories rather than big action stories. However, while The Fire Hunter builds its own lore, The Heike Story is historically-inspired with some fantasy elements added in.
While both series follow a young girl as the main character, Biwa is less of a main character unlike Touko, and more of a way to focus on the downfall of a clan without having any singular clan member as the main character.
Both of these anime series are great for people that want to dive into a deeper, more thoughtful story where you don’t necessarily know what is going to happen next, but the characters make you want to find out.
Haibane Renmei
Rakka is an amnesiac who only remembers emerging from her cocoon. She is born into the world as a Haibane, a group of young people who have small gray wings and halos.
While she tries to live a normal life, there is much that the Haibane don’t know and must figure out.
Part of what makes The Fire Hunter interesting is watching the characters traverse their world and wondering what is going on. While Haibane Renmei has the characters stay in one location, you also spend the entire anime wondering what is going on.
However, while The Fire Hunter is clearly building out a unique world, Haibane Renmei leans more on obvious symbolism, but still makes you curious about why the characters are in the situations they are in.
In essence, both anime series invite you to ponder and don’t necessarily give you every answer so obviously as some may like.
Do you have more anime recommendations like The Fire Hunter? Let fans know in the comments section below.
