"Become Fire Punch"

"You can become who you want to be." 

Hmm. Literally, I don't even know what to say. Ever so often I manage to catch up on all sorts of series but depending on whether they're an on-going serialized work, I barely ever read or watch them throughout. But there are times when I begin a series that I just can't put down due to how intriguing the story was and how well written the characters are, something like that. I spent all of yesterday going through all eight volumes of Tatsuki Fujimoto's Fire Punch horror action manga series which was released on Shounen Jump's digital platform Jump Plus and ran from 2014 to 2018.

As sort of writers ourselves we have to sometimes take a step back and look at the bigger picture. While I do spend most of my time going through detective fiction and mystery series on this blog, I have my own motivations to create fictional stories in this genre that stray away from what we know to be the norm, which is why I also follow all sorts of action shounen series as well as slice of life in hopes of finding something to move me forward with. I've been reading Fujimoto's other series, Chainsaw Man, weekly since it began and it has a great deal of atmosphere and variety to it that's quite inspirational, but I never expected this author to create anything like Fire Punch.

The story tells the tale of a man named Agni. In the prologue Agni lives with his sister in a small town. In this era, the entire world has been covered in ice and snow, and a certain religion has made its way to the surface as a legend of an ice witch who covered the world in eternal winter is being spread. This is a post-apocalyptic world in which humans live by their last breaths and are being toyed with by an army if they want to live for a few years longer. And when I mean toyed with, I mean it. Humans, especially those who are gifted with different types of Blessings (abilities) are used as literal firewood to keep the flames blowing, so that humanity can feel warmth for a few more years.

The story begins in a very odd way as Agni's sister Luna cuts off his arm. And then another arm. And another. You see, it's always the same arm as Agni and his sister are 'Blessed' with high regeneration, and they use their power for the good of the village full of elderly to feed them with human meat.

One day the army hits the streets and arrive at the town where Agni lives. It doesn't take long for the army to steal their supplies and leave, but as they're about to do that, the lower ranked soldiers inform everyone that the village is filled with cannibals. This causes a certain soldier, Doma, to use his own Blessing to light up the entire village and its citizens in fire. As Agni wakes up he notices that everyone is dead and the village is on fire - well, everyone, except for his siste Luna. Agni stays with Luna for a while as both of them burn in agony, but with the gift of regeneration they manage to survive for a while, until Luna dies and tells Agni to 'Live' for her. This causes Agni to live through a long time while being burnt. You see, Doma's flames will never extinguish until the one they burn has died. With the willpower he gained from Luna's last words, Agni decides to live for eight years while groaning on the ground and burning, until he gets somewhat used to the pain and can start to walk again. This time, his only mission is to find Doma, kill him to avenge Luna and the villagers, and then finally let himself die.

As the series gets a bit further we're introduced to other characters, such as couple of movie lovers, but literally all of these characters are absolutely insane. They're bored of life, willing to kill anyone without a shred of remorse... But! It's not just that as this series basically aside for very few instance never does what you expect it to. The characters are all handled in a way where they don't end up where you think they will, and the series goes through loops of twists and turns as it progresses. This manga is definitely bordering on a level of explicit insanity and madness from the author himself, but there is also this beautiful, human atmosphere and reasoning to the madness that I don't really recall ever seeing done in this way before, or at least not at this level, as of course there are series like Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit that also have this theme of beauty springled in a world of insanity.

A few years back I read couple volumes of this other tragic series called To You, The Immortal / To Your Eternity and when I began this series yesterday, the first chapter had that very similar air to it. It's not rare for manga to have tragic first chapters but these two kind of stood out with what they stood for; they are unnerving but not at all horror. This was the first time I really got to read anything of this series, though.
  I'm not a huge fan of gore but I have read all of these killing game series and series like Gantz, which is purely for action, gore and some fanservice. But when it comes to disgusting things, Fire Punch is surprisingly even beyond that, despite being published, somehow, on a shounen platform meant for teenagers (though it does have the explicit material warning on the covers). While I never cared about Gantz because of these things, gore, taboos, and just other unnerving plot elements are used very effectively in Fire Punch. It is in fact why I read it through in one day: I couldn't stop reading. But I don't know why. It's actually not the most interesting manga nor is it the best written one, but it did leave me with an impact about how a writer can make a series interesting by being daring and trying things others won't or can't, and it also left me with a very powerful and inspirational message that tells us that we can become who we want to be.

If you can stomach taboos and gore, Fire Punch manga is an amazing read up to a point, at least. The first half was fantastic. This is a series you want to read if you want an incredibly depressing story that isn't actually too emotional but it will create a burning feeling in the reader's heart. The second portion of the story turned into a psychological horror thriller which was just nutty. The action scenes were kind of -very- messy looking and the ending could have been crafted better regarding a certain tree plot, as it felt kind of forced, but as a whole, this series does stand out. A lot.