The moment I laid eyes on this show I could immediately tell that veterans of the anime industry were working on this. The likes of Mamoru Oshii and Junji Nishimura working on this left me having high expectations for this show and it delivered to some extent. The story telling and world building has a more older style to it with it being more of a slow burn. It reminded me of the older Studio Ghibli films like Princess Mononoke with its forest settings. There was also a lot of world building and exposition and while it made it a bit hard to keep up with everything at points it was quite intriguing watching and listening to all the lore around the fire hunters and the changes of human civilization. Unfortunately early on there were signs of this show having a very limited budget and I could tell with the shortcuts in the animation the CG and the unpolished designs. However I will say the unpolished designs sort of worked for this type of show and the line work was decent. It was a good effort nonetheless by studio Signal M.D. The music was a very well executed aspect of the show with the OST contributing to the overall ambience of the shots and settings. The OP and ED were both great as well with the former being my favourite opening of the season. To give you a gist of the show it revolves around an industrialesque world where human civilization is not driven by fire anymore but lives in constant fear of it. However there is hope to collect a new type of energy with collecting stones that emit light and steam which is the job for fire hunters. Touko a young girl is in trouble in the woods and gets saved by a Fire Hunter who sadly perishes saving her leaving his dog Kanata behind. She embarks on a journey to return Kanata to his relatives along with his weapon. Meanwhile Koushi who is the Fire Hunters son is adopted by a wealthy family and in their mansion and in the outdoors he learns truths about the history and lore about the Fire Hunters and royal family and researches to try to save the world from its eventual demise. Their two paths start out separate at first and slowly come together. The show does get a little heavy on exposition and it gets hard to follow at times but its definitely intriguing. The execution of the lore telling might make the story a little boring at times with its restricted use of animation which constantly uses stills to tell the story. While the story is wholly interesting the execution is a bit lacking. The characters seem more like vessels to tell a larger story and while they have distinct personalities there wasnt much to break down from their interactions. They have their realisms around how they interact with the cruel world around them but thats about it. If you value cohesive storytelling and world building a lot this might be an anime youll enjoy. For me while I did enjoy the storytelling and world building but the animation ultimately did take away from some of my enjoyment here. There was some good ambience background shots and an excellent soundtrack as well. This adaptation basically tells me that the novel itself was quite amazing and this adaptation gave it some movement to go along with it. In a mediocre season overall this still ended up as one of the better shows of the season and I would give this a light recommendation.