Trigger warnings and I’m not being snarky I seriously mean that.
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Tatsuki Fujimoto
Translation/Adaptation: Christine Dashiell
What They Say
Orphaned siblings Agni and Luna, like the Ice Witch who cursed their world, are two of the “blessed,” humans who hold special abilities. However, not all who are blessed are friendly, and after another of their kind attacks Agni and decimates the orphans’ village, Agni fights to survive, vowing revenge.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I read some very adult, very violent, very gnarly manga. I’m a big fan of Berserk and Dorohedoro and those have some very intense imagery. They also have likable characters and interesting stories, so no matter how shitty their worlds are it’s fun and exciting to follow the weirdness and horror that transpires in those character’s lives. The only manga so grim-dark that I dropped it was Eden.
Fire Punch is lacking that character drive which keeps the reader from turning away. It is a post-apocalyptic revenge tale, like some of those stories I mentioned above. It is also a checklist attempting to offend the reader at every turn of the page. I am not easily offended by fiction, there’s enough in real life to vent about, but within the first ten pages, I had to ask myself if the author had lost a bet or was trying to win won.
I’m not a fan of the phrase ‘try-hard’ or the overused ‘edgy.’ However, however… this feels especially juvenile in its depiction of the violent and horrific acts within. Much of the carnage lacks the humor that such horror is often paired with as a defense mechanism. The world depicted in this story is so vicious it lacks even the light of the sun in these characters lives.
Within the first five pages, there is already cannibalism and self-mutilation. (Graphically shown, I might add.) Before you can say ‘wait a second’ it almost dives into incest before everyone in a village is burned alive. Then we see the origin story of our lead, Agni. (Who, by the way, has that name before the incident that sets him permanently on fire.) Then there is almost a rape and quickly we are introduced to a religious state full of slaves and child prostitutes.
Did I mention the dismemberment? That’s the tame part of all of this.
Now, here’s the tricky thing. The art’s pretty good and there are no production problems with the storytelling and paneling or anything like that. The art is simple but detailed with thin lines and plenty of start white for the snowy landscape, and the artist knows how to depict gore pretty well. But, to what end? This entire book is almost entirely shock value. By the time the protagonist begins his journey and meets up with an especially naive kid named Sun, we’ve already seen that there is not much in the way of hope in their world.
The only thing I’m truly curious about is why death is so feared in their world. The only thing driving the protagonist on is his sister’s last words to live and his want of revenge. There are people who are dying of starvation, disease, and murder and who are surviving only to be sold into slavery in what appears to be the last city on earth. It has to be something related to their religion but we don’t have any of that.
Also, this volume ends with one of the strangest notes I’ve ever seen. At first, I thought I’d missed the author commentary page break but no… it’s just a jump cut to a weird character introduction leading to a weird and very final seeming close to this volume.
In Summary
Well, I’ve found it, the only manga more bleak than Eden: An Endless World. If you want to see the most craptastic of crapsack worlds, this is the manga for you. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong in Fire Punch and nobody is good, no good can come from this. This is a revenge story, and as such guaranteed to be bleak, but more so than any I have read before I wonder, to what end? The mantra of most of the characters is “DON’T DIE” when it’s clear that death is the only way out of the hell that is their existence. Sure, the lead starts off as a young man to root for, but he is broken very quickly. How far can the author take this story when it feels like he blew his load in the first volume?
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: B +
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A –
Age Rating: Mature
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: January, 16, 2018
MSRP: $12.99 US / $17.99 CN / £8.99 UK
