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.