// Foreword
I discovered Tatsuki Fujimoto the same way I imagine a lot of people did: Chainsaw Man. It’s a great show, and it took the anime world by storm when it released in late 2022.
A year and a bit later, I got around to thinking I could use a little bit more of that. I got around to thinking this because a friend of mine had been discussing the themes the manga delves into as it stretches beyond where the first season of the anime left off.
Not much longer, they popped back into the discussion and mentioned they had read another of Fujimoto’s works: Fire Punch. An unusual title, I thought, but then thought it’s no more unusual than Chainsaw Man.
They used such descriptors as “bleak”, “depressing”, and as well as “weird”, and “thoughtful” and I thought to myself, “hey, I like those things!”
I jumped into Chainsaw Man first, so that I could more quickly remove myself from potentially getting spoiled on things yet to come. I really thought it was great! The themes develop themselves as the story goes on, and I admired Fujimoto’s ability to entwine serious, dark topics and goofy or absurd comical moments.
It’s a vibe that is exceptionally unique, and I am very into it.
I won’t talk too much about Chainsaw Man here, because I know there are people who will read this that are following along with the anime, and far be it from me to be the giver-awayer.
I took a brief pause to read Jujutsu Kaisen, then jumped back over to the land of Tatsuki Fujimoto and Fire Punch.
And hoo boy, I was not prepared for this one.
// Zero to Sixty
One of the most crucial aspect of any story is the start. You have to grab your readers, viewers, or listeners quick. A good hook can really set up the rest of the story for success.
Let me say, no story in recent memory has immediately grabbed my full attention like Fire Punch. It didn’t just grab my attention, Fujimoto reached out of the book and wrung my neck Bart Simpson style, bashing my head against the wall anytime I dared to even think about looking away.
Readers are met with a positively unhinged introduction, so bizarre and fucked up you can’t help but keep going. You briefly are introduced to the world. It’s a post apocalyptic wasteland that has been plunged into an eternal winter by The Snow Queen. People pray to God that they might survive another day.
We meet our protagonist Agni and his sister, Luna. They live in a smaller village where everyone is just trying to survive the cold. Agni has a unique role in the village, to say the least. We meet the pair as Luna is in the process of hacking off one of Agni’s arms with an axe. She succeeds, and his arm instantly re-grows. You see, Agni and Luna are Blessed – people who have otherworldly powers. They come in many shapes and sizes, but these two have the power of regeneration.
When you learn that they are collecting many of his arms, your brain goes somewhere. You say “no, that can’t be,” and keep reading. But it is! They take these arms around town and deliver them to the townsfolk to eat. Some are happy to consume his flesh, some reject their cannibalistic ways. We see this as one older gentleman is found dead – thin and starved – with Agni’s meal prep still left in the corner.
It’s not just the fact that there are cannibals that’s so messed up, lots of media has them. It’s the way that cannibalism is made so utterly commonplace in this village that instills a unique sense of dread. The old lady smiling as she thanks the young boy for his arm, just like a lady in our world might thank a young boy for coming by to shovel her driveway.
They’re usually portrayed a stark raving mad lunatics, frothing at the mouth and laughing maniacally while trying to nibble off your skin, or cook you up as a spit roast.
But for these folks, it’s commonplace. And you can’t blame them. It’s this, or starve.
None of these things are done for shock value. They are all the direct result of humans being stripped down to their most pure and desperate selves. Everyone is dying, you’re hungry, freezing, and mostly alone. Your only chance of survival is eating the boy’s arm.
Although it’s the shock of what’s going on that initially hooks you, it’s when you understand the human desperation behind it that makes you realize this series is something special. Something horrific that touches on some very primal questions and ideas about human existence.
What do people do when they’re placed in awful, unending situations with their back up against the wall? What becomes of oneself when your whole existence is suffering and surviving? How do people find meaning in that? How to they find purpose?
// Suffrage City
The main premise of the story is this: Some soldiers arrived to the small village housing Agni and Luna. They quickly discover that they have been eating people. The village is labelled as cannibalistic and burned. This comes at the hands of a Blessed individual with the power of fire named Doma.
Agni and Luna burn slowly due to their regenerative properties. In an absolutely brutal scene, we see the siblings cling to life, ripped apart by pain and fire. Eventually, Luna dies. She leaves this horrific world with one final message – a purpose – to Agni: Live!
And live he does. Although it takes him years to be able to manage the pain of being endlessly burned alive, he eventually becomes a functional man – albeit one who is on fire.
He sets out as a tortured soul, focused only on exacting revenge for the death of his sister, his rage the only thing burning more ferociously than his body. The personification and physical embodiment of endless torment, both physical and mental.
This is the set-up for Fire Punch.
It’s violent, it’s bleak, and it leaves you with a strange sense of deference.
We follow Agni as he discovers what his purpose is; what the meaning of his life is, and how he reacts and changes as the world batters him down.
His path begins one of vengeance. He must kill his sister’s killer, Doma.
This path has him cross some slavers. He kills them and frees a young boy named Sun who follows Agni. Agni and Sun arrive in the city of Behemdorg where we meet the other key players in this story: Togata and Judah.
These characters all come into the story with their own histories, and the torments they face on the pages of Fire Punch elicit reactions as different as they are interesting. There are more than these four, of course, but I think they offer the most unique looks into what this story is trying to say.
// God
Sun is a Blessed with the power of electricity, although at the time it is not as powerful as Agni’s abilities. After Sun is saved, he comes to believe Agni is a god. When they arrive in Behemdorg, they are intercepted and Sun is captured. He’s taken to a place with hundreds of other Blessed.
These Blessed – or “firewood” – are enslaved, bound, and used for their powers as a way to keep the city running. They are injected with a substance that hurts them while involuntarily activating their powers. Row by row, these individuals are kept in a large, dark room. They are only granted escape when they are allowed to sleep for a few hours.
When Sun arrives, he is optimistic about them being saved by the flaming man, a God named Agni.
At first, this annoys the other people. They would rather sleep than listen to the ramblings about some god. They have all given up hope, and simply pray the day comes when they might be able to die.
Sun continues, and people eventually start to listen. They start to ask for more stories. They have never met Agni, they only just met Sun, yet they begin to buy into this story. When faced with a hopeless existence, an endless torment spent staring into the abyss, a glimmer of hope is still something to hold onto, no matter how manufactured it may be.
Agni does eventually save the slaves, proving their faith had been justly placed. At least, from their perspective. Sun goes on to preach this religion, becoming its leader and titling it Agnism.
This is all despite Agni telling Sun that he is in no way a god.
But, it’s easier to believe than admit there’s no hope. He leads this religion for years, becoming more and more extreme.
Dogma becomes acceptance becomes purpose.
// Film
Togata is a regenerative Blessed as well, at least 400 years old. Upon first impression, they seem categorically unlike just about everyone else in this world. They are funny, chaotic, and obsessed with movies.
Togata decides to make a movie about Agni, designating him as the hero in the story. They direct him, train him in combat, and teach him English words like, “penis.” Togata kills other Blessed, complaining that they are all the same type, and that will make the movie boring.
This is a stark difference from the world the reader has seen in Fire Punch so far, almost alarmingly so. But it doesn’t feel out of place. This is a testament to Fujimoto’s ability to inject comedy into an otherwise serious story. Not only is the comedy much needed in a story this bleak, but it makes a lot of sense as we get to know the character more.
Later on in the story, Togata reveals to Agni that they are actually transmasculine, but trapped in a body they hate, that of a woman. They would like to change to match how they really feel, but their regenerative properties make that impossible.
Trapped in a body that they cannot escape and causes them anguish – Togata is not entirely unlike Agni in this regard.
Togata’s indifference to the horrors of the post-apocalyptic world suddenly make sense; they were already dealing with their own struggle before the world changed.
They tell Agni that they started watching films with their grandfather, and it was these movies that helped them realize who they really were. When the world changed, they lamented the loss of film.
The hardship they faced didn’t change, but the purpose and inspiration they found went away. This caused them to become obsessed with the idea of creating a Fire Man movie. Killing and betrayal meant nothing as long as the film could be completed, and the one time you see Togata really break down is when Agni ruins the direction of the movie.
Escapism becomes passion becomes purpose.
// Agni, Judah, and the Cycle
Judah is also a Blessed, but of a different kind. She is an evolved, advanced form. All of these evolved individuals share an almost identical appearance, and have the abilities of all other Blessed. This includes the ability to remove other’s powers.
She also strikingly resembles Luna.
Agni and Judah are constantly entwined in each other stories. Sometimes they are enemies, sometimes they are lovers.
Both of these individuals are also driven by external factors – they get their purpose and meaning from what others impart on them.
Agni is told to live by his dying sister, so he does, even when all he wants is to die. He’s told to be the hero, so he does, even though he kills innocents and feels like a villain. He’s told to die, so he tries, even though his regenerative powers prevent it. He’s told to be a man, even though he is in many ways still a child.
Even when he confronts his sister’s killer, he is convinced not to act by him. It’s only when his memories of his sister flare up does he murder them all in a blind, trance-like state.
The one purpose he set for himself – vengeance – is flipped on it’s head and stolen from him at the last moment.
He tries to kill himself but is saved by Togata, who in turn is burned to death by his flames.
The cycle of violence which carries Agni around and around through this story is consistent, from the first page to the last. Devoid of meaning or intent, the violence persists, and he rides the cycle toward the inevitable end with no self-determined purpose at all.
Judah has experiences that are parallel in theme but different in application. She is not in control of her life. Instead of being merely influenced by others, she is controlled. She is made to be a soldier and a preacher of a false god in Behemdorg. She is forced to be a tree that will warm the earth by the Ice Queen. These are things she is forced into because she is an evolved blessed, and others see this as her path. Or, they see how they can exploit it.
This culminates in a moment when the cyclones of violence around these two characters collide, aligning the eyes of their storms. Agni returns to his village with the body of Togata to find that the Ice Queen has turned Judah into a tree. The tree has killed everyone in the village, everyone he lived with.
Agni hears the voice of Judah from within the tree. It calls out to him, asking for him to kill her. Tired of being used, she takes her life into her own hands by asking for it to be ended.
Agni attacks Judah and the tree, destroying it. During the attack, Judah is destroyed to the point that when she regenerates, she has no memory. Before this, she uses her powers to strip Agni of his flames and regenerative abilities.
Agni tells this new Judah that she is actually Luna, Agni’s younger sister. They end up moving into a new camp and making some new friends. They survive as best as they can. They spend ten years here.
During this time, Judah realizes she is not Agni’s sister, and they begin a romantic relationship. Things are as close to good as they can be. This all leads up to a final confrontation with Sun, who re-emerges into the story and wants to kill Judah.
In a climactic fight, Agni is almost defeated. Seeing images of Judah in his mind fills him with the determination to live – to want to live, not to live out of obligation.
After the fight, Judah realizes that she had been dictating Agni’s whole life. His purpose had been solely revolving around her, whether that be as an avenger, a god, or Fire Punch.
Judah finally makes a choice of her own, and it’s to protect Agni and give him a better life. She destroys part of his brain, causing him to lose all memories of what happened. She then leaves him with their friend Neneto and turns into the great tree once again.
This provides the area where Agni and Neneto live with warmer weather, fertile land, and relative peace. A good life. Agni takes on the name Sun.
80 years pass, and eventually Neneto grows old. Sun asks the dying Neneto who he was before he was this person; he admits he has a feeling he was chasing after someone. She dies before she can answer.
Sun has not aged, due to his regenerative properties. He’s given a suicide pill, the only way for him to ever die. It’s this, he’s told, or face the imminent end of the world brought about by weapon discoveries by other humans.
He spends time sitting in an empty theatre, watching old footage of him as Fire Punch, without knowledge of what he is watching. He clenches his fist, as if something deep down is reacting to it, pulling him towards that life, or the people who were around this flaming man.
Hundreds of years later, we see Judah living in the tree, trapped in the eternal void of space. She watches as hundreds of years turn to thousands. She forgets herself, she forgets Sun’s name, but remarks that she hopes he is happy, whoever he is.
She watches as the planet below her is destroyed by asteroids.
She floats through the nothing for tens of millions of years, for an unknowable amount of time.
Eventually, when time could pass no further, she hopes someone will save her. It’s now that Sun finally arrives. He had not taken the suicide pill.
He realized, even without any memories of it, that maybe his life did have meaning.
Sun broke free of the cycle of violence and the labels of others: Hero, Villain, God. His meaning became – or maybe always was – to get back to the one he cared for more than anything.
Judah elected to determine her own fate after a lifetime of being used. She made her purpose to provide a life for Sun. Casting herself into eternal nothingness for the sake of the one she loved.
They meet. They introduce themselves as Sun and Luna. They cried, talked, and fell asleep, just as they always had.
In a world without meaning, they dare stand defiant in the face of Nihilism. The violence, the fear, the cold, and the pain – it all dissipates as the end of it all becomes the present and the everything. They know not what came before them, or what may come after. Unknowing their partner or even themselves, they finally find their meaning: each other.
// Conclusion
There are many ways to interpret the events of Fire Punch. One would certainly not be incorrect to describe the book as a Nihilist story, or a tragedy. But that’s not all that I took away from it.
I left Fire Punch with a feeling of awe. I left it with a profound sense of optimism, spurred on by the beauty of human endurance in the face of brutality. No matter how far you go, your sense of self can remain intact.
Fire Punch is a love story: not just familial love, or romantic love, but a love so powerful it can fuel the flames of a burning man to the end and beyond. The love one feels when they finally understand the meaning of life – the meaning of their own life – and they’ll stop at nothing to have it.
When everything else is ripped from you, what small sliver of love is left behind that keeps you going?
It’s about finding hope in the despair, the beauty in the violence, and making movies at the end of the world. It’s about finding the moon to your sun, and holding onto that until the universe melts away.
