Fire Punch

## Fire Punch *Fire Punch* by Tatsuki Fujimoto is the debut manga that announced one of the most singularly transgressive voices in contemporary manga. Published in Weekly Shonen Jump+ from 2016 to 2018, it is a dark fantasy set in a frozen post-apocalyptic world, and it refuses every expectation its genre and its publisher might suggest. Before *Chainsaw Man* and before *Look Back*, there was *Fire Punch* — raw, structurally daring, and unlike almost anything else in the medium. The world has been plunged into an ice age by the "Ice Witch," a woman with the power to call down eternal snow. In this frozen hell, Agni is a young man with a regeneration ability who lives peacefully in a small village with his younger sister Luna. Then soldiers of the Behemdorg army arrive, searching for food. The soldier Doma — a user who can produce undying flames — sets Agni on fire, kills Luna, and burns the village to the ground. Because of Agni's regeneration, he cannot die. He burns. And burns. For years. When he finally emerges, his entire upper body is a flame that will never go out, and the only thing sustaining him is a single purpose: revenge. What follows does not go where it seems to be going. Fujimoto constantly breaks the story open — introducing cinema, performance, mythology, religion, and genuine nihilism — until it becomes something stranger and more honest than a revenge story has any right to be.