Why you should read Fire Punch manga

Short description of the manga: Fire Punch is a manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, which was published from 2016 to 2018. Besides Fire Punch, the author has another rather popular work at the moment - Chainsaw Man, which will get an anime adaptation in the near future (1-2 years).

In the Fire Punch manga, an ice age engulfed the Earth, and with it, suffering of all kinds became a constant companion to human life. Constant wars for resources, famine, slavery, religious fanaticism, outright boredom endured by people who have the gift of regeneration and can live for hundreds of years. And about all this the characters talk and argue with childlike directness.

I think this approach is one of the main components of the popularity of Japanese stories around the world. Where in the West everything is subtly and meaningfully deconstructed for the tenth time, the Japanese talk about pressing issues seriously. Because whatever facade of reflection is erected around the phenomena of life, they do not lose their essence. And if we feel bad, the pain is real. And pain is perhaps the main theme of  Fire Punch.

Agni, the protagonist, is just such a regenerator, which means that dying is an extremely difficult task for him. And according to the ancient Greek irony of fate, the guy gets burst into a magical flame that doesn't go out until it burns the fuel that is his body. As a result, the guy is perpetually on fire and perpetually recovering, which does not make him happy at all. In such a state, few things seem better than to take revenge on his abuser, the man who put his eternal fire on Agni. And here begins the story of overcoming oneself.

There is a harsh mythicism to the manga: the motives and actions of the characters and the events that occur are overblown and hypertrophied, and at the end the rather chambery and personal story turns into saving the world. Honestly, this manga is so simultaneously good and crappy that I can't give any structural analysis on it. Only when it gets completely uninteresting and you start to get bored does the author manage to bring you back into the story in some clever turn of events. And thrash retreats, only to return with renewed vigor. This kind of clever thrash is an extremely interesting subject, and few people do it better than the Japanese.

All in all, if you want to read a manga that will entertain you until the very end, surprise you with its fucked-up gut and make you think about the meaning of life and other topics of similar depth, then Fire Punch is your choice.