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Note: This covers the whole manga but there are no major spoilers.
Well, that was a weird title, in a good way, to the most part at least. Its plot points and elements reminded me of different titles, so I’ll go over it comparing it to them for a little.
MY HERO ACADEMIA
The set up is kinda similar, super powers appeared around the world but instead of taking place in the future from now and somehow not changing the world in its entirety, it goes for a far edgier version where one single ability destroyed the whole environment forever, technology got stalled and now everyone struggles to survive, no teenagers and high schools in contemporary societies here.
HOKUTO NO KEN
In this post-apocalyptic setting full of chaos and no authorities, people abuse their powers, the strong abuse and enslave the weak, and everyone has lost their mind, plus since the resources are obviously limited the food is scarce, leading some to resort even to cannibalism. Thus religious cults end up being formed and they spread lies and made up bullshit, and they get followers because they are dellusional and in need of a savior, this last element reminded me a bit of Akira.
VINLAND SAGA
To its core, Fire Punch is a revenge story where an edgy protagonist lives (and dies, constantly) just to achieve that and there’s a lot of focus on the mentality of the main character and how self destructive his goal can be, and even how it can affect the lives of everyone around him. Plus both manga dare to do something different with it or go beyond that point, by either not achieving that or showing the consequences of doing so.
And now for this work itself, this is the best part of the manga by the way, showing how the protagonist is literally an unstoppable killing machine that sets up to avenge his loved ones, destroying many innocent lives in the process, becoming a God in the eyes of others, and doubting his goal, objectives, desires and methods along the way, there is a lot of time spent on long introspective scenes where Agni suffers the mental pressure of what he’s doing, thus the manga is not done with empowerment fantasy or victimizing in mind.
Plus the visual narrative during those moments is superb, there are whole chapters showing every single action in the whole sequence, if you’ve read One Punch Man or Fujimoto’s other work Chainsaw Man, you know what I mean. This happens even during the moments where he goes on a rampage, which, thanks to a sharper stroke, the prominence of shadows and close to no lighting, all combined with no dialogue, thankfully comes off as horrifying instead of epic, again no empowerment fantasy in mind.
With that said, there’s an ever present weird feeling throughtout the work regarding its approach and tone to its themes. After a messed up beginning and thanks to a certain character, the whole thing turns into a kind of self aware satire of revenge stories pointing out outloud the tropes and clichés of those type of stories, thanks to said character (and the author)’s fondness of movies in general, especially action and horror where those things are rather common. I have to say that I don’t like this guy’s style of combining morbid and serious stuff with bizarre events and juvenile humor, it makes the tone uneven and hard to know how to respond to this story. Thankfully after a while the manga enters its best bits with all the good stuff I already talked about thanks to a major event in the plot, thus becoming kind of a dark subversion of this kind of story.
Another weird aspect is the kind of incestuous thing, having consumed Koi Kaze and Usagi Drop I can safely say this the most Freudian japanese product I have consumed in my life. The implementation of this is kind of a mixed bag, it’s well established in the context of the series at the beginning since this messed up world left the protagonist and his sister all alone and desperate for emotional support, and their survival instinct and their wish/duty to protect and feed their village kicked in. It’s off putting, I’ll never accept this kind of stuff, but it was well presented in story
After that the manga tries to confuse you concerning a look alike of mc’s sister, it’s rather ambiguous if she’s or not the same person, leading him to develop a weird mix between a sister complex or love, protective obsession or sexual attraction, not being clear enough if he sees her as his sister or lover, and it gets worse the more it goes on all the way to a crappy finale. And I know they are not clearly related, but when I see them acting like siblings for half the duration, the romantic moments just feel kinda wrong. Well presented, weirdly developed is my final verdict regarding this.
Which can sum up the manga pretty well, although the good aspects are still there, the last thirty chapters are rather infamous because, although the protagonist keeps facing the consequences of his actions and never feels like an empowerment fantasy, the resolutions are rather light for him. I keep seeing how he repents for what he has done to others yet keeps being forgiven rather easily, and I know some of them have become his family at that point, but in a story about facing the consequences of your actions, everyone close to Agni seems to forgive him and wish for his happiness with ease. Plus just like the weird feelings towards his non sister, this dynamic had no build up, and that’s because of its worst aspect, the time skips.
There are just too many and they are big, not letting the story to flow naturally, the dynamics keep changing, many side characters disappear from the manga and are never seeing again, some others change completely and even become antagonists, and none of that was properly built upon before happening and also, again, the ending was total bullshit.
Finally for a post apocalyptic series, having an immortal protagonist takes away a lot of tension, well at least side characters die and you don’t know when the protagonist can snap and kill everyone nearby, so there’s that I guess, and the interesting developments still make up for it.
I would normally complain about the characters changing their mentality or becoming amnesiac during time skips and the power levels being somewhat inconsistent as well, but I can sort of accept the way it’s presented here, in both a metaphorical and literal way. Metaphorically, the protagonist lets his desire for revenge go, you can even see that his flame doesn’t burn with the same strength during some vignettes, and his expression becoming much calmer during those and literally half his brain is always burning and was since his childhood, so there’s that for an explaination of him forgetting stuff and being so dumb at times.
Neither the artwork and the designs are that good but some of them are impressive and the highlights in the visuals (the darker moments, as previously mentioned) make up for it. The backgrounds are usually very good too, it’s just that it becomes a little tiresome after a while when you are just seeing the same frozen world almost all the time.
In the end, you get a messed up but well established beginning, followed by a bizarre self aware satire of revenge driven action heroes, followed by a very well presented dark subversion of said revenge stories, with a very bad finale. It’s flawed and it abuses time skips, but as a whole it is meaningful, rather engaging, visually interesting and ultimately mostly well presented, so I say it’s worth the read, despite not being anywhere the masterpiece level some claim it is.
My rating varies between a 6 and a 7 out of 10 among the volumes, with a, let’s say, 6.5 for the manga as a whole.
