Fire Punch

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Fire Punch rules. A free-wheeling psychedelic commentary on violence (all kinds--physical, sexual, emotional, etc) in media and our relationship with these stories. A manga that treats the traditional narrative and plot hooks of the medium with disdain as if they themselves are an act of opression, bearing down on the lives of its characters. An intelligent and carefully crafted work that refuses easy solutions or simple emotions. A story where a man who fights by hitting bullets with a baseball bat is confronted by a woman in a bikini (the world has frozen over in Fire Punch, a perpetual winter) riding on a katana as ... if it was a hoverboard. Fire Punch rules.

It's hard to blame anyone for backing out early here despite the amazing premise and promise of real scuzzy exploitation fun in the first chapter thanks to the following volume worth of oppressive and at the face meaningless cruelty. Sure there are some jokes, but it all weighs heavy on you as bad things keep piling up on each other as if that's just the truth of the world. And most reviews or impressions of Fire Punch seem to suggest that most people did stop here. They call it out as pointlessly edgy and immoral and nihilistic. And hey, I was seconds away from quitting myself. But then a character appeared and recontextualized the preceeding pessimism. Togata, a camera wielding maniac, almost literally hijacks the manga early on. The protagonist disappears, replaced by someone whose entire life is formed through stories. Someone who can't help but see the world as a narrative. She constantly and overtly discusses the narrative beats of the manga itself, explaining like an author or a critic how each scene should fit within the overarking story. Or she would be, but things keep going wrong. The manga refuses to abide by the tired and true beats of traditional manga. From here on, the form of sequential art is twisted and played with as expectations and cliches are constantly dismantled with an infectious glee: the super special ultra technique exists for a gag, the quirky and mysterious side characters are almost immediately ignored after their introductions, fights are born and raised for the sake of the anti-climax, so on and so on. The initial darkness that turned so many off is seen in a new light now as a sort of mockery. The main character, his motivations, his personality, the very world he lives in is all so silly, like some sort of joke. Except it isn't.
Except it is.
Except it isn't.

The audience is in this way confronted with how society consumes art: that is to say, constantly and hungrily. Are we like Togata, whose life has no meaning without stories to watch to pass the emptiness of life, or are we like Agni (the protagonist) whose life is, knowingly or not, shaped and defined by the violent stories society loves. Or are we like the antagonists, who tell their own fiction so much they end up believing in it themselves. The answer is, of course, a complicated "yes".

And through that "yes" an optimistic vision of creation is formed. Fiction can, Fire Punch supposes in the midst of its chaos and confusion, allow the oppressed to be free, give meaning to the meaningless, and provide comfort to the suffering. Fire punch is, after all, a manga, created by an artist who is unabashadly in love with stories.

There's a lot to talk about with Fire Punch. There's a lot to talk about with all art. The series is extremely compassionate towards minorities in a way that is rare for manga; the ending is bold and touching, transforming the work again into something even bigger; religion plays a major role, both as a concept within the series and symbolically (the main character's name, Agni, is that of a Hindu fire god--I know nothing about Hinduism but ya'll know I'm gonna be digging deep into this now). But most of all, what Fire Punch wants you to remember is that at the end of the day, movies exist. And who doesn't love movies?

Okay, I just finished this today (after taking a long break on it to finish up some things) and I’ve got to say this - do not pay attention to reviews and read this yourself.

At times, I really enjoyed this manga, and other times I couldn’t believe I was still reading it. Some may say that’s a testament to its ability to drag you in and keep you in, but like many of the negative reviews have said, I believe it was mainly because I wanted to see what crazy turn Fujimoto was going to send me down next.

Now, those turns are what makes ... Fire Punch unique, and are why I rate it a 6, but you have to decide that for yourself. Many people try to ascribe a lot of different themes to this manga, themes that I don’t necessarily agree with. On its face, it’s wholly nihilistic, depressing, and little room for redemption, but that can be what draws you to it.

The difficult part for me with respect to the nihilism, and gradual recision of Agni’s character was that, I really enjoy stories with strong protagonists, one’s that I can identify with, or at least, can identify with their motives and reasons for being. Here, while the story is fantastical and, one can argue, damn near impossible to relate to much of anything going on, for much of the later story I couldn’t fathom, or even remotely understand, what the characters were doing. Or perhaps worse, how they got to thinking what they did and acting how they did with respect to the story prior, and that’s Fujimoto’s fault for the lightening fast pacing.

All in all, read this for yourself and decide. You might hate it after 10 chapters, 30 chapters, 60 chapters, I don’t know. But I think it’s worth it enough to at least try.

I initially wanted to do a comprehensive review for Fire Punch. While I hated the experience, I thought maybe there's enough passion and creativity behind it to warrant picking things apart. However, the more time I spent on trying to do that, the less value those elements started to carry, and the more Fire Punch began to look like a plain mess.

It starts with a solid and straightforward premise. Post-apocalyptic frozen world, some people have special powers called blessings, there's allegedly a big bad behind it all, and people are going crazy under these extreme conditions. Then comes a group of people trying to rebuild ... civilization and burn down Agni's village, his sister, and himself for the crime of cannibalism, even if it was in the form of eating endlessly regenerating limbs that Agni provided. He is then doomed to burn and suffer for a long ass time as his endless regeneration counters eternal fire. Years later, Agni learns to control the pain enough to think and move and goes on to get his revenge.
I don't like retelling whole chunks of the plot like that, but I saw this as the solid beginning for the series. It reminds me quite a bit of Hokuto no Ken but edgier in that regard. You have an insane unjust world in a setting where humanity is dying out, but here comes an incredible hero who nobody can stop. It's nothing especially unique, sure, but a pretty good setup for a short action story.

For a while, that's precisely how the story progresses before diving entirely off the rails towards whatever the author thought would be cool or funny or, in many cases, shocking. Fire Punch's lack of any direction or purpose is obscene. It genuinely feels like the whole thing was written without a plan in mind or at least trying to build up from what already exists. Characters appear and then get killed off for no reason. Potential thematic elements are introduced only to be discarded. There's nothing coherent about it. I had some fans tell me and tell others that it's about human connection, hope, emotions, etc., and sure, if you try, you can apply that sort of theme onto the story, but what's the point if the story itself doesn't develop it in any way?
For example, there's a moment later on in the story where a character reveals that they have gender dysphoria, and immediately that was enough for someone to say this is a topic that the manga talks about when in reality, all the discussion or commentary about dysphoria starts and ends with "it sucks." Wow, ok, good talk. Next time have a character also say that war is bad and that rich people are assholes, so it's even more profound.
Another example is Agni's whole role in this. It starts with revenge, but shortly after, the author plays pong with his motivation, what does he want, what does he live for, what does he value, and what does he hate? All these things just get flipped around for the sake of convenience.
There's nothing to take away here, just a bunch of episodes that allow fans to try and ascribe deeper meaning or value to the writing.

So what is left? The art is nice most of the time. In particular, the way Agni is drawn covered in flames is great. There are a few genuinely funny or heartfelt moments, but they're overshadowed by utterly tasteless shock content. Dogs raping kids, goons talking about how they'd rape a little boy, some necrophilia, pointlessly cruel farming of the blessed, a bunch of deaths that only happen for shock factor. It's no better than any other edgy schlock in that regard. Is this worth a read? If you want a good story or a cool action series, no. If you've read Chainsaw Man and thought, "Wow, I wanna read whatever else this genius wrote," then you probably already know the answer and only read this to find out why some asshole would give another masterpiece an unjust 3/10.