HORRORS is an ongoing series exploring the overlooked darker elements of well known media. SPOILER WARNING for some plot details below, as well as CONTENT WARNING for body horror, mentions of sexual assault, cannibalism, gore, and incest.
I, like I assume many people, was interested in checking out the manga Fire punch based on the premise alone: A man who is constantly on fire, immortal, and hellbent on revenge. I expected something akin to a One Punch Man. What I got was post apocalyptic trauma, cannibalism, and incest. It’s incredibly strange and unique, and felt ripe for exploring in more detail. So without further ado…
Firepunch follows the story of siblings Luna and Agni, Gifted with the power of regeneration. Their world has been cursed with an endless winter, and food is scarce. They regularly cut off their limbs, which regrow quickly, to prevent the villagers from starving. One day a group of men in military gear arrive in a helicopter. The leader, Doma, proclaims “these are not humans” once he finds out about the cannibalism. He is also Gifted, with the power of flame. “My flame will not be extinguished until death.” He razes the village and Agni is the only “survivor”, Luna’s regenerative abilities were slower and could not safe her from the fire. Her dying words are “live”, spurring Agni on.
Literal years go by, Agni learning to deal with the constant unending agony of being burned alive, dying, and his flesh reconstructing. He gets up and starts walking, his only desire to kill Doma. We follow him as he kills people and regularly has flashbacks of his sister and the times before he was, you know, on fire and stuff. Almost all of these moments are of the siblings suffering, be it from the hands of bandits, using their bodies as food and fuel for fire, attempting to rape Luna and dealing with the freezing temperatures of the world. This is definitely not what I expected going into this manga and I honestly got depressed. It was a struggle to continue reading, even though I kind of wanted to know what happened to Agni.
Later, we see a different form of suffering. The Blessed are harvested for their abilities until they run out of energy and die. We are shown a building full of hospital-like beds, each containing an emaciated Blessed. They are fed through tubes and attendants clean their messes once a day. San, a young boy who had his lower legs cut off while trying to escape, has the power of electricity, which only one other enslaved person has. Upon seeing San, he is thankful that his pain and burden will be lessened, but remarks how cruel it is to subject a small child to this. Their only solace is a few meager hours to sleep and pray to God to kill them. Truly heartbreaking, yet San holds out hope that Agni will save him.
While Fire Punch does have lighter moments, like Agni trying to learn English and immediately saying the word penis, the whole vibe is so incredibly depressing. Doma is a shell of the man he once was, so what is the point of revenge now? There will be no satisfaction in killing him. The only release for Agni is the thought of death. The poor dude really gets put through the ringer, too. Since he can’t die, at one point he gets decapitated and to prevent him from regenerating they just shoot him in the head every once and a while, eventually wrapping his skull in fire resistant cloth and stuffing it into a box to be thrown in the ocean.
Somehow things get WORSE. People start to worship Agni as a God, and believe he will save them all. There’s absolutely no food and the only part of Agni’s face that doesn’t burn is repeatedly cut off to use as meat for the group. We’re talking several hundred times, every time food is needed.
Doma is eventually confronted, however he has become a shell of his former soldier self, raising a group of children and attempting to atone for his sins. Agni does not want to kill him anymore, and leaves, only to eventually return overcome with anger and slaughter everyone. It’s a sad moment with no release for Agni, who remains on fire. What does he have to live for anymore?
Honestly after this things get complicated and frankly a bit unnecessary so I won’t delve into it too much, but there is a woman named Judah who looks and sounds exactly like Agni’s departed sister, Luna. There’s a lot of back and forth of him accusing her of being Luna, and eventually Judah is kidnapped by the Ice Witch herself who….Also looks exactly like Luna. She wants to absorb all of the world’s energy into a tree, with Judah as the linchpin, and basically restart and warm up the world. Agni rips Judah from the tree and in the process is finally not-on-fire-anymore, while she loses all her memories, so he just tells her she’s Luna. They live like this for a while just surviving and then eventually Judah/Luna is like hey. I know we’re not actually siblings, though I’m still going to call you brother…Let’s make a baby. Not a fan of this…At all. I guess I sort of understand Agni’s love for Judah/Luna, but it feels gross to take it to that level.
Agni’s now peaceful existence is cracked open when people figure out he is Fire Punch, leading to a confrontation with San, not the leader of “Agnism” the religion that worships him as their god. Everyone burns and dies. Judah decides to become the tree for real this time and wipes Agni’s memories and puts out his fire for good. Years, decades, centuries pass. The only thing left is the tree, and Judah’s vague memories of a man. In the end they are reunited.
I really don’t know how to feel about Fire Punch. It has some interesting concepts and disturbing imagery, but the overall story feels muddled and unsure of itself. Agni’s inner dialogue, struggling with guilt and anger, gets a little tiring after a while. I think it would have been perfectly OK to end after his confrontation with Doma, with some wrapping up the narrative details thrown in. Still, it’s quite a unique story, especially for one that I assumed was going to play out in a totally different direction. It’s something I won’t forget anytime soon. ※
LORMAGGOT 