This one doesn't grab you by the collar, it sits down beside you and waits. The premise alone earns the price of admission: natural flame makes a human body ignite, so every lamp and hearth in this world burns fuel harvested from the corpses of Flame Demons, and Fire Hunters walk into the woods with sickles to get it. Junji Nishimura shoots those woods like they're inhaling, all muted greens and hand-drawn dread, and yes, the Mononoke comparisons are earned, but through tension rather than spectacle. Be honest with yourself about the pacing, though. It front-loads its lore hard, and there are stretches where you're holding four unexplained terms at once, waiting for the shape to appear. Stay with it. Touko walking to the capital with a dead man's black dog at her heel is the whole show in one image, a debt she never asked for and refuses to put down.

Outside protective barriers, a great forest crawls with fiery beasts, and humanity survives in small sheltered communities. A weapon from the Last War left people unable to go near even a small flame without bursting into fire, so the only safe energy comes from stones inside the beasts' bodies. Sickle-wielding Fire Hunters venture into the woods to harvest them. Touko, a young village girl, is saved from a forest monster by one of these hunters, and the meeting turns out to be no accident. Her family later sends her to the capital to return the hunter's dog, Kanata, and his fire sickle to his relatives. Meanwhile Koushi, a hunter's son taken in by a wealthy family, uncovers troubling facts about the royal family and secretly studies a special fire stone his late father found. Among the hunters, tales spread of a Fire Hunter Lord who could harvest the fire of a thousand-year comet now returning to earth.