ファイアパンチ

FIRE PUNCH

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
8
RELEASE
January 1, 2018
CHAPTERS
83

DESCRIPTION

Orphaned siblings Agni and Luna, like the Ice Witch who cursed their world, are two of the “blessed,” humans who hold special abilities. However, not all who are blessed are friendly, and after another of their kind attacks Agni and decimates the orphans' village, Agni fights to survive, vowing revenge.

(Source: Viz Media)

CAST

Agni
Judah
Togata
Sun
Nenetto
Doma
Luna
Surya
Fugaitai
Jack
Uroy
Daida
Ivan
Kalou
Hentai
Bimbo
Lean
Bat-Man
Tena
Datsu
Bana
Karr
Niodera
Ranu
Suryu

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

StupidWeeaboo
57/100
Unrewarding Dumpster Fire Punch
Let me preface this with my opinion that I was not a fan of the storytelling and film motifs that were the most prevalent throughout the whole manga, and I was more a fan of the warmth-giving theme. Anyways, hopping into the review (spoilers by the way).

This manga is about an unforgiving and cold world in a perpetual ice age pushing society to its ends. There exist people that essentially have superhuman abilities but aren't necessarily treated royally known as the 'blessed'. The manga opens with a showcase of what the people of this world have to resort to in order to survive, wherein the main character, Agni, and his sister, Luna, have a regenerative ability and use their cut off regenerated limbs to feed the townspeople. The main character then has a run in with a blessed that can omit flames that can never be extinguished named Doma. A conflict between Doma and the village leads to the whole village being burned to the grown and everyone dying, including his sister. The combination of the main character's regenerative ability and perpetual flames leads to character of Fire Punch himself. As he builds his reputation, he is eventually 'hired' as an actor for Togata's film obsession and it is from this point onwards that the manga builds and builds to a point of absurdity.

Let me break down the characters. San is a dolt that Agni just happens to save, Nenetto ends up being a character that sees everything through a camera as per the command of Togata and Togata is an unhinged regenerative blessed that is 300 years of age and is the knowledge base. There's also Judah and The Ice Witch who're basically just plotpoints. There are more characters but these are the main cast that end up driving the whole mid-section of the story. To be honest, the dynamic between these characters seems to be that they're all just following something. Agni is following his revenge, Togata is following her film obsession, San is following Agni and Nenetto ends up following Togata. It almost feels like a daisy chain in the way that the characters feel about each other and in that sense the feeling that they have any chemistry together is weak. It is only at the end of the manga where things get really absurd that I almost start caring about some of the character's motives and desires to pull through on following what they want to achieve.

I'd say that there are a few kind of sections to this story. The pre-Togata, Agnisticism, post-Togata and Judah. Even though sometimes I found Togata to be kind of weirdly written, it's true that she carries most of the cast in terms of having an opinion and a mystery about her and so that's why I decided to split the story up in terms of Togata because I'd say that she's almost the heart of the series. Agni himself even admits to her that he wouldn't be anything without her and wouldn't know what to do in general, she kind of drives his arc along with the resources and knowledge that she has. Togata ends up setting up a scenario where Agni can fight Doma and that leads to probably the best fight scenes in the manga between blessed convicts. I was kind of sad that they didn't go further with the idea of blessed convicts.

Agni's main arc throughout the manga is to avenge his sister by murdering Doma, but by the time he's learned to endure the eternal flames Doma has become a withered old man though this doesn't stay consistent close to the end of the story but I'll get to that. This causes Agni to lose his sense of self and that's what he continues to battle from that point onwards, just who he is and what he's living for with all of the major characters chanting "Live!" to Agni as he struggles with his frustrations. He ends up almost becoming God to the outside cast of the manga and that's what I meant by the Agnisticism section of the story. P.S. Loving your sister irrationally is not a character trait.

San attempts to stay faithful to Agni, all the way up to the last few chapters even, thinking of him like a god. This sets off Agni's god complex and causes him even more identity issues. San and the regenerative blessed are probably the best examples of the world building. San because he ends up acting as fuel for the Behemdorg town to feed off of in amongst several hundred other slaves that provide for Behemdorg in a twisted way by being forced to use their blessings. The regeneratives give a good sense of history to the world and I guess act as living proof within the world that things used to be different.

Togata's death extinguished most of the flame at the core of this series and I kind of lost interest there. Agni was battling whether he should forgive Doma after he sees that he's living an honest life in the cruel world (which doesn't make sense because he was described to have a mental illness) taking care of a family of sorts. And for the first time in the series I felt like it was a genuine character-defining moment for Agni, but he just goes into a blind rage and forgets himself, killing everyone including Doma. And thus he has no reason to live even though he was proving to himself that he had reasons to live apart from those motives by denying that he should enact his revenge on Doma. This leads up to Togata's death by saving Agni.

After this Judah, who's another regenerative, at the Ice Witch's will is set up as the 'tree' of the new world that will abosrb all life starting with the death of all the followers that Agni had accumulated up to this point. The Ice Witch's motivations caused me to stop taking the manga seriously. She just wanted to birth a new world, using the resources available to her as pretty much the strongest blessed, to get to a point in time where she can watch Star Wars again. Look, I can understand Togata's motives because she's about 300 years of age and movies are the only thing that her imagination could cling onto but for The Ice Witch, she's lived 3000 or more years and as such it's stupid as to why the core of her motive, which ends up being such a huge plotpoint is that she just wants to watch Star Wars. Considering the stakes of the series, I was kind of expecting some more seriousness and I guess I'm being cyncical beacuse this show should have just been dumb fun to begin with but with the stone established at the beginning, I was at odds.

Judah, Luna and The Ice Witch all have the same face for a reason that I forget. And so when Agni ends up destroying the tree he loses his perpetual flames but ends up with 'Luna' who is actual Judah and the world warms up. He then lives out 10 years acting as Luna's brother, accruing the trust of a kind of small family. He forgets who he is, sometimes having violent episodes where he is Fire Punch again but for the most part he has forgotten. Turns out Nenetto, San and The Ice Witch have been attempting to gather the resources to make the second tree with Judah again. After some conflict and some undeserved deaths (San, dying at the hands of Agni), the second tree ends up being established and Agni, now living as the reborn San for Nenetto ends up having to re-evaluate his identity again. Millions of years pass and it ends with Agni, 'San' and Judah in empty space.

The absurdity of this ending doesn't feel deserved. The journey of the characters does not justify the extremes that it has reached. I think it was going pretty well when Agni turned on his motivations and wanting to act with individuality, against his motives set up when he was first affected by the flames. Togata's absence left the manga kind of cold and it was especially shameful because Togata's death was not necessary at all and I think killed the manga as a whole. The ending probably would have been a lot more satisfying with Togata in the picture, though I can't necessarily suggest a solution to include her in the series. I ended up feeling bitter the more I read, constantly questioning why I was reading especially because the writing got worse and worse not that it was that great to begin with.
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Schurmann
68/100
Weird and violent story about a HUGE, STRONG, TALL and POWERFULL MAN, with a mind of a child

__Weird and different __

The visuals are very inconsistent, with the characters changing their appearance on every panel, but it isn't bad by any means. I particularly don’t like the art style.

The story starts in a post-apocalyptic world, that is covered in snow and with two brothers, Agni and Luna, who have regenerative power and some romance between both of them. They are saved by some villagers that are on verge of death with no food because of the extreme weather. Agni with your strong regenerative powers feeds the villagers with his arms that always grow back. And now the creative ways of using his power shown as a great part of the story, and honestly this is the main reason why I continued reading It.

One day a plane appears in the skies and land at the small village, bringing troops from a city. The troops are looking for supplies and slaves, but everything changes when the leader of the group finds out that the villagers are cannibals. Disgusted, the leader who has the power to make flames that never die, throw on fire the village, killing all villagers, except Agni that stays alive, on fire, regenerating and burning in endless agony. And in agony, he sees her sister who has a less powerful regeneration, dying.

Few years of agony later, he starts to endure the pain and finally gets up, full of hate, wanting to kill the man who did it to him and his loved sister.

Through the path for his revenge, he finds some freaks and discovers that the world he is in is broken ass fuck. And that is when the manga kinda loses Itself, with a bunch of random meaningless violence, and weird broken minded characters, without objectives. In my opinion, a pointless attempt to make It seem different and innovative. At first, shown as been kinda realistic post-apocalyptic manga, but it fades away with all this nonsense.

As the story progress, the main character also broke as everyone, and with all years without developing his brain, he becomes a tall and strong man with a childish brain. With his childish mind, he does what every teenager does, shit. In the middle of his ~~great~~ revenge, and heroic time, he ends up killing a bunch of people e discovering that the guy who has killed his loved sister changed. Now, feeling guilty and sorry for every bad thing he did, and tries to save lives to compensate for the lives that he took.

From the middle to the end, the manga gets great with the broken main character and story, especially Luna or someone that looks like Luna. A character gives some hints about the powers the people have, but it ends up not being helpful to explain all the powers since everybody is an ultra-religious freak, all the information becomes unreliable.

The ending, in my view, is the best possible, showing a conclusion to the love that started everything and letting a bunch of questions without a definitive answer, which suits the weird plot.
> - `Story: 68` - `Characters: 66` - `Visuals: 70` - `Enjoyment: 68`
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SilentGyoza
87/100
Fire Punch: The art of madness/creating a subversive masterpiece.
You don't have to be the main character, an avenger, a God, or the ---- ----- anymore. That is my wish. This time you can become whatever you want.

Introduction

Fire punch (ファイアパンチ, Faiapanchi) is a manga written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto, the manga began it's serialization on April 18 2016 in the Shonen Jump+ (The equivalent of the Shonen Jump but online) and ended on January 1, 2018, and is licensed by Shueisha and Viz media.
The manga totalized a number of 8 volumes and 83 chapters, it was nominated for the 10th Manga Taishō Award in 2017.
Even though the manga possesses the genre of Dark fantasy/Gore/Psychological Horror/Dystopia it is categorized as a Shonen.

Summary

Agni and Luna are siblings with super-human abilities, people who are born with those powers are called blessed (in their cases remarkable regeneration abilities). The world they live in is a nightmarish hell of snow and ice where starvation and madness rules, thanks to a blessed called the White Witch. After escaping an awful situation, these two do what they can to help their new village by giving their limbs as food, only to see it raided by the newly-forming “city of freedom” Behemdorg, which is seeking both slaves and recruits to fight against the Ice Witch. After learning the truth about this village, a Blessed one called Doma kills Luna and all the villagers, and sets Agni ablaze with a fire that will never go out, Agni eventually learns to control this curse and sets out on a quest of revenge, to kill the man who ruined his life.

Analysis
`` /!\ Most of what I'm going to say here is going to spoil the manga in its overall structure, I added a spoiler warning for the story based spoilers, If you want to read the manga in total discovery I recommend you to skip this section /!\``
Story: The story of Fire Punch feels as if it's going everywhere and nowhere at the same time, there is progression but the manga really emphasizes the fact that this is a stagnant cycle of themes and consequences.
It's not a really complex story but it manages to get you hooked up by all its madness and mysteries. Fire Punch is really subversive when it's about revelations and plot twists, you can deduce certain aspects of the plot, but it's more about the reveal and how it affects the main characters.
Every new arcs/volume innovates the overall structure of the manga, what I mean by that is that the focus and objectives are changing constantly, sometimes it will be about training for the next huge arc, escaping from the enemies that want revenge, or even learning how to become a good God !! You are never bored when you hit the 10 chapters cap because the manga constantly morphs into a new genre.
The ending is really beautiful and finishes on a melancholic note. Agni being resuscitated as a new being is really sweet, the fact that he lives enough years to meet Judah/Luna in the void of space is just beautiful and shows how the power of love can even transcend space and time (at risk to lose your sanity), this ending shows the many cycles of humanity that the manga handles which are war/religion/comfort...

World: The world is a hell of Ice and pain, only those who abandon their humanity can survive. like your typical "Hokuto No Ken" or "Mad Max" where the soil is dry and hot, this dystopian setup is really unique and new (in the media of manga) to the genre of "Post Apocalyptic", a world of cold is much more interesting because the hope for restoring the planet to its original form is much more optimistic, but the physical pain is even more consequent than a withered world. A world of cold can't allow you to grow crops, procreate certain types of cattle, or even creating life.
Fire Punch world is a really good analogy for one of the many themes of the manga, which is Stagnation and Inactivity. When you are freezing you usually are in a state of non-movement, your body has a hard time to move and you can't do many tasks when you are cold. In Fire Punch This is a metaphor for the current state of the world in a non-eventful way, characters and parties install themselves in a sort of comfort and denial, they are aware of their condition but they will find new ways to keep a semblance of "warmth", by using others for your own benefit, as fuel or a God, those are the main causes of this Stagnation, the city of Behemdorg is the perfect example of this metaphor.
The locations are obviously all covered in Ice and snow but have a semblance of realism to them, villages with houses built with wood, old buildings from the previous centuries who are decaying with time, and the huge city of Behemdorg with its tall buildings.

Characters: The characters are one of the many strengths of the manga, at first sight, they all feel unique and have a bunch of charisma, you can feel their struggles and grasp their ideology very well, that is If they are not killed subversively after 30 pages of screentime, they often are well built for the most part (mainly 3 characters), and they all exist in order to enhance Agni sanity or insanity/movement or stagnation/life or death...

The main character of Agni is the central point of the manga, everything revolves around him, characters/events/factions... all of those things move by the sheer fact that Agni is still alive. He constitutes many allegories and metaphor, he is literally a living analogy, such as-

- The Flame of life: Literally the will of someone who wants to live by being carried by a driving force. Agni is the embodiment of this philosophy, by burning physically and staying alive/metaphorically as his life will always burn because of this simple word "Live", ironically considering that Agni wants to die, this flame of life can often be seen in the eyes of other characters like, the flame of life of San, is the existence of Agni, another flame of life is that of Togata, which is his love for movies/wanting to make a movie (more details on this character later).
- The Flame of progression: As the world is stagnant because of the cold, Agni is the moving force of this world, as he moves forwards, he physically burns everything on his path and destroys the snow and ice by melting it (making progress on the environment), but as a metaphor, it can mean that his flames change the world socially/economically/religiously/materially...
An analogy for Jesus and the anti-christ : Agni is often depicted as a God and sometimes as the Devil depending on how his actions are viewed by individuals and groups, but Agni is just a mere mortal with some divine powers, and this is where the parallel begins.
He is the Martyr of his principles, he sacrifices himself for the sake of others and bears their sins so they can be free of their own chains (literally as some of them were slaves and metaphorically as the others were chained by their stagnation). Therefore he is an avatar of Jesus (Agni being crucified on this image), someone in which we put our truth and faith into, someone who can accomplish the most unthinkable miracles.
After that, there is the destructive Agni, a monster who kills and destroys everything on its path, a beast who is willing to murder the only hope of humanity (the giant tree) just because it was in its way/objective, a human who acts only through nothingness and madness.
Those two avatars are the same sides of the same coin, they complete each other and form an insane individual whose duality is of dying as a God or living as a monster.
In the manga Agni Fire has been extinguished once, this can mean that his flame of life is dead (not physically but mentally and spiritually), but near the end, he recovers his flames, but he wasn't totally reborn as an avatar of Jesus, but still as the antichrist, in the end, Agni is finally reborn as San thanks the wish of Luna/Judah.

The second main character of Judah I don't have many things to say about her, but nonetheless she is a really good character to analyze and theorize. The fact that she is named Judah is a direct echo for the analogy of Agni being Jesus. Being a traitor it can be seen as if Luna betrayed her brother, but the biggest betrayal was that she said Kill Me to Agni, the total antithesis of Luna's word Live.
Surya/Luna/Judah are 3 characters with the same face, body physiology, tone of voice, and many more, however, they are not the same person. It can be assumed that they are a new race of human that outdated the laws of evolution (by the words of Surya), there is a really high chance that the blessings come from them, a kind of mutation that can be passed hereditarily through many generations.
I think that they represent angels (maybe not) or some kind of divine species that are not from the same plane of existence like ours, the fact that they even flew the planet so they can populate more hint at their infinite force/power.

The eccentric director Togata is a character a bit complex, he has many struggles (ironically) not tied to the world and environment.
His insanity is not really tied by the fact that he lived more than 3 centuries, but because he feels dysphoric on the outside, he is a trans man who has an admiration for strong main male characters in movies, they are a model for him and he wishes to become one, but he can't because of his regenerative abilities. I am myself transexual (female) and it was the most realistic depiction of a trans character (in the media of manga) in a non-LGBT manga that I have seen, you don't have to get a big reason to feel trans, sometimes little bits of social/body dysphoria built over time can be the reason, your affection for fictional characters is maybe the source of your pain and it's totally legitimate, everyone has their own struggles, our experiences are not the same and it's ok to not understand our internal strife even if it brings us pain.
Togata flame of life is his love and unique philosophy for movies, his life is directly tied to his passion, but he is not the main character of this movie (World) Agni is, in parallel Togata had another flame of life in him, which is again Agni. By not using others for his own benefit (movie) Agni became his new flame, by throwing his fuel (cigarette) he had no more interest for his movie/life, it was now all about Agni this is why he sacrificed himself to save him, he is the main character and without him, there can't be a movie. (Also because he is the director of this story, the afterlife could literally be a cinema.)

Themes: Fuel and cigarette is a theme that surrounds the manga from the beginning to the end. A cigarette represents the life of the one who smokes, and the fire/fuel are the life of others that are used for your advantage. Fuels in the manga are literally slaves used to power up the city of Behemdorg in electricity/heat/iron and other resources, the cigarette is a metaphor for the dependence of other's blessings/life.
Cigarettes also signify the life of the smoker, if they give up on smoking it means that they gave up on life.

Judah rejecting the city of Behemdorg and the concept of fuel by throwing her box of cigarettes

Togata putting his cigarette down and giving up on using the life of others for his film

Religion is a huge theme in Fire Punch, it is mostly depicted as something bad in the sense that having a blinding faith for a God, will lead you to unrealistic demands, and often your death.
Without a good education, religious groups can transform into nightmarish cults who will listen to anything a God will tell them, and by that are going to perpetuate a cycle of horrible crimes.
Religions need to have some sort of discipline to exercise a healthy conviction.

Movies and the main character is a theme directly tied to Togata (see my analysis on the character for more)

Concepts: The concept of blessing is a breath of fresh air compared to all those same power systems that the nekketsu genre constantly utilize, fire/electricity/Ice... all of those types of power are dull and overseen, but Fire Punch adds a new twist by using this formula at its paroxysm, there are sort of power-up in the manga just mighty abilities that can be produced from nothing, this means that the characters can't be exhausted when they use their powers, they are basically infinite.

Structure: As I said previously the structure of Fire Punch is very fluid, each new arc changes its format, and it always feels fresh and new, not one time was I tired of the passing !!

Art: The art of Fire Punch is not revolutionary, but it is definitely gorgeous and nice to look at, the lines and inking are smooth and not too rough, the characters designs all feels unique and detailed with a side of realism to them.
Sadly the backgrounds are not that well-detailed most of the time, but fortunately, the double pages deliver a sense of impact, and there is a sufficient amount of details(not too much/not too barely).

Personnal Thoughts

Fire Punch was a wild ride, it subverted all my expectations, I didn't think that I would enjoy this manga this much, there is a bunch of meaning and interpretation just by the graphical art, I would even compare Fire Punch as a moving painting.
The characters were really deep, they each add a unique philosophy and I think I could learn from some of them, mainly Doma with its speech of keeping a semblance of education in a collective, or Togata with its insane side that was triggered so he could forget his sex/dysphoria.
I think that Fire Punch might be one of my fav manga, not in my top 10 but still, it was such a learning experience for me !!
This manga needs to be more popular, hopefully, (when chainsaw man is going to be adapted as an anime) more people are going to be intrigued by the cover art and the title of this insane fiction, and will decipher every corner of this story because it really deserves all my praise and love !!!

Conclusion

Fire Punch is a story about love and life, it taught us to not let our Fire go and letting it burst with pride. You are not the main protagonist of this world but your Fire is still your own and it can influence the life of others for the better or the worst, you can breathe hope and destruction with your flame depending on how strong it is.
A masterpiece can be anything, and Fire Punch was a masterpiece in the sense that it decoded the genre of nekketsu by not letting a power system rule over a story and characters.
This was the struggle of an individual who had a flame but not the chance to live, he was the opposite of a human, a God, or a Demon, even a martyr, but in the end, he had the choice to decide which Flame he wants to be.

Sidenotes: I hope you enjoyed my 2nd review !! This was a very long review to do since I have dysortographia and English is not my first language !!! If I see some errors I'm going to correct them in the near future
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