Manga / Fire Punch

A tale of revenge, the apocalypse, and movies.

"The film must have been damaged or something because it was only in black and white and it had no sound. I don't know what the movie was about or why it was shot. There was only one thing I knew for sure. This burning man seemed to be the main character because the movie was entirely focused on him. Sometimes he'd be fighting something, kill it, and then get killed over and over. It was so gruesome, and I don't get the point of it. But still that man kept burning through the duration of the movie."

"Without even realizing it... I found my hand was clenched in a fist."

In a future where Earth has been cursed by the Ice Witch to freeze over, Agni and his sister Luna have been living in a small village doing what they can to get by. And part of that has been cutting their arms off to feed the village, as Agni and Luna to a lesser extent have the power to regenerate from any wound they receive. However one day, an army comes to their village, and a man with the ability to create flames that don't burn out until whatever they touch dies burns the village to the ground for indulging in cannibalism, leaving no survivors. Except Agni.

Now permanently set aflame, Agni sets out on a one man mission to find and kill the man who killed his sister. Much collateral damage occurs along the way.

Fire Punch is a manga series written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto published digitally in Shonen Jump+ serializing between April 2016 to January 2018 with Viz Media picking it up for English distribution that same year. The manga was essential in kickstarting Fujimoto's career into new heights which would pave the way to his more successful manga Chainsaw Man.

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This manga provides examples of:

• Action Survivor: Neneto, a former prisoner of Behemdolg that is press-ganged into being Togata's camerawoman and later works as an advisor to Sun. In spite of all the death in the series, she lives through the central conflict and peacefully dies of old age toward the end.
• Afterlife Antechamber: Togata claims that the afterlife is a movie theater. According to him, after or as you die, you sit in a movie theater and watch your life unfold on the screen before moving on. Agni sees it a few times when he's close to dying. When Togata dies preventing Agni's death, he's shown shoving Agni away to take his seat. When Agni does actually die, he meets his sister Luna in the theater. The ending shows Sun!Agni and Judah finishing watching what is presumably the entirety of Fire Punch in the theater while in the midst of leaving.
• After the End: The world is bleak both from Endless Winter and the lack of remaining humans.
• All for Nothing: All the efforts to stop the new Ice Age from overtaking Earth by putting Judah in a World Tree ends up being for naught, as several thousand years later what is implied to be an asteroid destroys the Earth anyway.
• All Your Powers Combined: The precursor humans like Surya and Judah can use any Blessing, though Surya isn't as good at it as Judah is.
• Amateur Film-Making Plot: Since there are no movies in the future, Togata decides to make one, with Agni as the star. Togata often gets really frustrated when the film doesn't wind up as dramatic as he wanted. Sun!Agni find the camera he was using in the epilogue, but the footage became slightly corrupted and has no sound, so he doesn't realize who Fire Punch nor or what his story is.
• Amnesiac Dissonance:
  • The post-tree Judah can't remember anything, and acts like Luna because that's what Agni wants. She can feel she's done horrible things and wants to atone, even if she doesn't know what for.
  • In the ending Agni takes Sun's identity. While everyone knows who he is, they decided to keep his past a secret.
• An Arm and a Leg: Finding the sheer force of Doma's flame burst too troublesome to walk through, Agni rips off one of his arms and uses the bones in it as an impromptu shiv to get that extra couple of feet needed to fatally impale his hated enemy.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Agni's super regeneration means he can't die even if he wants to, and there's a lot of reasons he'd want to. In his backstory, he spent several years alone in his village's ruins, enduring the crippling agony of being perpetually burnt alive and suffocated by an eternal fire, as well as the grief of watching his sister and everyone else he knew die horribly before his eyes, before he finally became able to fully move again and control the flames.
  • Judah keeps her promise and maintains the World Tree for millennia. She can't tell how Earth is doing nor can she speak. Agni eventually comes for her and they end up being Together in Death.
• Anti-Hero: Agni causes a LOT of collateral damage over the course of his attempts at revenge. Many innocent people die because of him and humanity in general might have been better off if he hadn't survived his village being burned down. Eventually he does come to realize how much damage he has caused in the name of revenge, and he is horrified by it.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Doma, the man who ruined Agni's life. He destroyed the village because he learned they were eating human arms and presumed them to be dangerous, not knowing that they were Agni and Luna's regenerating arms. He ends up being truly apologetic about what happened to Agni and later shown taking care of a group of women and children.
  • Judah created Behemdolg and views their horrible behavior as Necessarily Evil to repopulate the human race. Later she becomes a puppet for Surya, temporarily.
  • After the timeskip Nenetto discovers that Agni has been living with the amnesiac Judah the entire time while they were struggling. Sun was mostly fine with it because he respects Agni, but Nenetto (with Surya's suggestion) wants to force Judah to become the tree again and heat the Earth once more.
  • By the end of the story, Sun has been driven insane by his devotion to Agni. He'll do whatever it takes to bring Agni back to him, even if it involves killing the people close to the "current" Agni and beating him within an inch of his life. The world getting frozen further doesn't matter, as all will meet Agni in the afterlife. It's pitiful to watch as he gets set on fire by the man who was one of the first people to ever show him kindness when he was a boy.
• Anyone Can Die: The number of major characters who are still alive from the beginning can be counted on one hand.
  • Before the last time skip, everyone who isn't the reborn Agni has died, with the last character from the story having just died of old age. Then we get a time skip spanning millions of years, and we see that the Earth has somehow been completely destroyed. At this point, only Sun!Agni and Judah remain alive, and they seem to have died together.
• Apocalypse How: The threat of humanity being wiped out by the world being frozen hangs over the entire story. The Ice Age was caused by unseen nanomachines that permeate the air, instead of being caused by a person, as it was believed.
  • At the end subverted when Judah formed a tree-like structure that created a small revitalized zone around itself by concentrating the nanomachines. Then Double Subverted millions of years later when the Earth is shattered by a meteorite at an unknown time. The story ends with Sun!Agni and Judah reuniting in space and going to sleep, with the last page implying they died and went to the afterlife, thus leaving entire human race dead.
• Arc Words: "Live."
• Artificial Cannibalism: Since Agni can regenerate body parts really quickly, he encourages cannibalism of himself among starving people.
• Asshole Victim: All three prisoners of Behemdolg die at hero's hands. Lampshaded by Bat Man, who, after reading the mind of the one with wings, notes that nobody will cry after his death.
• Author Appeal: The author is a massive fan of western movies. Two characters are big film buffs, one of whom regularly name drops movies like Vanilla Sky and the other who wants to restart humanity so she can finally see how the canceled final Star Wars movie would end.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: On a supremely misguided and superficial level, both Togata and Sun want to be Fire Punch. They both wind up getting a taste of what it's like to live covered in unquenchable flames, and it's too much for either of them.
• Beneath the Mask: Togata's Heroic Comedic Sociopath personality and all-consuming obsession with movies is eventually revealed to a front he puts on because his gender dysphoria makes him feel like he's never been his real self anyway.
• Berserk Button: Do not badmouth Luna or try to hurt her lookalike Judah, Agni will turn you into a barbeque. Also don't question Fire Punch within Sun's village.
• Big Sleep: Judah and Agni's final deaths are treated this way. After talking to each other happily for a time, Agni closes his eyes, and Judah follows.
• Black Comedy: The story is rather serious at times, but it often goes so over the top, it becomes hilarious. However, often just as fast it will dive right back into being serious just as fast. From mid-way point the series doesn't even try to be funny.
• Blessed with Suck: A constant theme. Pretty much all of “the Blessed” are worse off because of their powers. Agni, in particular, has a Healing Factor so strong he’s effectively immortal and a body covered in undying flames that leaves him immune to the Ice Witch’s dreaded cold… but he can’t turn it off. This leaves him unable to eat, sleep, feel any sensation beyond constant pain, or touch another living being without incinerating them. As for the more mundane Blessed, they get rounded up by Behemdolg to be used as slaves to continually produce whatever resource their powers produce until they die.
• Broken Ace: Togata. The immortality afforded by his Blessing has allowed him to become skilled in a ridiculous number of fields from hand-to-hand combat to film production, but he struggles to find any reason to live in a world without movies and his Healing Factor nullifies any attempt at gender reassignment surgery, making it impossible for him to transition to a male body.
• Broken Pedestal: Agni's reputation as the savior is caught up by the questionable things he did on several occasions.
• Brother–Sister Incest: In the first chapter, Luna attempts to seduce Agni and offers to bear his child. Agni refuses in disgust but his Dying Dream (where he and Luna are living happily with their child) and later chapters shows that he reciprocated these feelings. It turns out Agni had sexual feelings for his sister even when she was still alive, possibly due to being the only girl anywhere near his age in their village (everyone else was elderly).
• Bungled Suicide: After befriending multiple people who were indirectly victimized by his own actions, Agni repeatedly attempts to take his own life, but to no avail.
• Cerebus Retcon: Togata's apparent obsession with penises makes for some funny off-kilter moments, but it gets darker when it's revealed he's a transgender man who is upset that he is forever trapped in a female body due to his regenerative powers that would have undone any surgeries he might have gotten.
• Cerebus Syndrome: While it starts off rather grim and serious, the manga eventually settled into Black Comedy territory once Togata appears. Then it falls straight into the serious as all the humor pretty much vanishes as major characters are killed in one fell swoop, existential crises arise, and certain characters' found happiness are torn away from them. All culminating in a Gainax Ending where the Earth is destroyed and it's heavily implied that the heat death of the universe has come.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Togata eventually notes that the constant strain Agni’s muscles are put through having to constantly regenerate from Doma’s fire means he’s way stronger then a normal human could ever become.
• Crapsack World: Oddly subverted, as seen in A World Half Full
• Create Your Own Hero: Literally every event in the series was a product of Doma’s burning of Agni’s village (on Judah's orders. They understand this.
• Cycle of Revenge: Doma killed Agni's sister, making Agni want to kill him no matter what. Then Behemdolg started hunting Agni in return for all the people he went through. And then the slaves Agni rescued started hunting Behemdolg regardless of reasons. And then...
• Death by Irony: Surya, mastermind of the "world-saving" plan to turn Judah into a tree and stabilize the nanomachines, is killed by Sun for being faithless. Having lost her regeneration powers from trying the process on herself, she couldn’t come back. Then Judah does exactly what Surya wanted, but she's not there to see it.
• Death of a Child: Played horrifically straight when the deranged Agni burns down a house with many children and teenagers inside during his attempt to finally kill Doma.
• Death of Personality: Judah blows the regeneration core in Agni's head out of him. Even though he physically reforms, mentally he has become a blank slate. To confirm this, we see Agni in the afterlife before the story continues with the "new" Agni who is now the rechristened Sun—and he ultimately gets his own trip to the afterlife when he dies.
• Deconstructor Fleet: Of the post-apocalyptic setting and the tropes and characters surrounding it. If one were to exist, EVERYONE would be too traumatised to properly function as a sane human being.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Sun is one for the Tagalong Kid. He follows Agni because he saved his life and has nothing but undying faith in him. Agni rightfully tells him to not go with him. This faith gets him almost raped by a dog, his feet cut off, used as a living battery, and his devotion turned into manic religious worship. By the end of the story, he becomes the True Final Boss Agni has to face. Both have come so far that neither even recognize each other anymore, and Agni ends up remorselessly incinerating Sun.
• The Determinator: Agni's will is as much a factor as to why he survives Doma's flames as his powers are. Without such drive, even someone with a Healing Factor as strong as his would burn to cinders and die, as tragically seen with Togata.
• Didn't Think This Through: Surya stayed in Sun's group while Agni was absent and was planning to use them against Agni and take Judah for herself. Sun is so devoted to Agni that not only does he respond by subjecting Surya to Off with His Head! the moment he hears about it, he decides he wants to burn Judah and damn humanity with it.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Agni spent 8 years looking for Doma, but after blowing up half of Behemdolg, Doma was already a Retired Monster and Judah goes missing. Then Surya and Agni's struggle with his emotions in check enter the front stage.
• Distant Finale: The last two chapters follow Judah as she tries to keep the tree alive over eons before she reunites with Agni and dies with him.
• Doomed Hometown: The village where Agni and Luna live together is destroyed in the first chapter. Likewise, Sun was exiled from his village on the pretense that they didn't have enough food to feed him. Though in reality, it was because they were dying of the plague and Sun was the only person not infected.
• The Dragon: Surya brainwashes Judah to become one for her, though it doesn't last.
• Dramatic Irony: Since only select people know Agni in person, the rest call him Fire Punch. Later when Agni doesn't have his flames anymore, one of Behemdolg's survivors asks Agni to kill Fire Punch, which technically is something he was planning to do already, and Sun starts to doubt this is the person who he's been following.
• Driven to Suicide: After Agni's flames finally go out, he is taken in by a group of women. Noting that he is very strong, one of them who blames Fire Punch for everything from killing their friends (which he did) and causing her to get raped and impregnated by Behemdolg asks Agni to find and kill Fire Punch—not knowing Agni is Fire Punch. Agni agrees and repeatedly attempts to take his life while away from the others. However, his super regeneration stops him from succeeding. The only method that seems like it would take is allowing himself to drown, but he's saved both times he attempts to do so.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Sun is mistaken for a girl, and a scientist who wanted him and Nenetto to have sex with some dogs isn't too happy about finding out that he's a boy.
• Dysfunction Junction: Practically every single character is at least a little bit unhinged. After all, they need some way to cope with the world freezing to death around them.
• Earn Your Happy Ending:
  • Zig-zagged with Agni's followers. Many of them eventually die to hunger, but they die with a calm look on their faces.
  • Agni and Judah both eventually die together, but they go apperently to heaven at the end of the story, if you interpret it that way.
• Enemy Within: When Agni suddenly gets a vision of Luna asking him to resume his revenge, a "monster" takes over him and goes back to Burn the Orphanage. By the time he comes to his senses it's already too late. Later it happens again, but Agni deliberately lets the Fire Punch persona take over him, and his face has a more skull-like apperance while he's in this state.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite typically relishing in ultra violence, Togata can only gape in horror as Agni finally gets his terrible revenge on Doma.
• Evil Counterpart: Surya and Togata are both movie addicts and Manipulative Bastards, but while Togata wants Agni to be The Hero "because that's what the viewers would like", Surya views Agni as a villain that killed a lot of people for selfish reasons and has to die miserably "because that's what villains do".
• Evil Plan: Well, possibly anti-villainous plan. Surya, the immortal girl who decides to call herself the Ice Witch says that soon an ice age will kill all life on earth, but she has a plan to basically restart life on earth by sacrificing everyone who is still alive, even in outer space. Except for her. Her main motivation for doing this is so humanity will one day reach the point in civilization where humanity was before the ice age struck so that she can finally watch the last Star Wars movie whose production got canceled because of the ice age.
• Fantastic Caste System: You either are Behemdolg's officer, stay home all the time, or you are a slave; the latter aren't even considered human despite being different only in allegiance.
• Fighting from the Inside: Despite the brainwashing, Judah asks Agni to Mercy Kill her for creating Behemdolg. She lives, but Agni beats her so hard she loses all of her memories.
• Fight Unscene: Invoked by Togata when he laments that a lot of the bad guys he's trying to film himself fighting are all derivative of each other and tells Nenetto to stop filming because that would be boring. Then he questions why she wasn't filming.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Agni's natural state. Makes sense considering he's perpetually on fire. Togata is able to get him an outfit at one point that is fire retardant. It's largely more for looks than practical purposes (Togata wants to shoot a movie with Agni as the hero, and you obviously can't have your protagonist's wang hanging out at all times), and it gets destroyed relatively fast and never comes up again.
• The Future: The series takes place some long time after the 23rd century. Space colonization is already a thing, but Earth became abandoned, reducing it back to 21st century level of technology.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Sun, the little kid Agni saves towards the beginning of the story, spends the majority of the manga as a generally helpless child who eventually gets his legs cut off and has to be saved from a life of using his weak electricity powers to power a city. Basically all he has is his love and faith in Agni, the man who saved him time and again. 10 years later after Agni goes missing, Sun, now an adult with fancy prosthetic limbs and much better control of his electricity powers, is the de facto head of the cult dedicated to Agni who is capable of cutting off limbs with extreme ease and able to launch himself very large distances with his legs. He has also gone a bit insane from his dedication to Agni.
• Gainax Ending: Millions of years into the future after becoming a world tree to keep Earth out of an ice age, Judah has lost all memories of who she is and why she is even maintaining the tree. To make matters worse, the Earth doesn't even exist anymore; at some point it was completely destroyed and left in pieces. However, at some point after that, Sun!Agni reaches her and she thinks she is Luna again. They both talk for a time, then fall asleep and embrace. The final shot is of them both walking out of an empty cinema.
• A God Am I: Agni doesn't like people worshipping him, but if it's to keep his allies together he'll go along with whatever story they come up with.
  • Later becomes A God I Am Not, as Agni throws away his identity, and decides he's now The Dreaded Fire Punch.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Everything that is wrong with the world is due to the Ice Witch who caused the world to freeze over. Except there is no Ice Witch; according to Togata the world is simply entering a new ice age, while Surya claimed it was caused by failed nanomachines that was meant to give people superpowers. Surya decides to take the spot since it's vacant.
• Healing Factor: Most common type of Blessing, ranging from healing heavy wounds in weeks, to growing missing limbs in moments, to brushing off headshots.
• Heroic Build: Years of strengthening his regeneration to regain the ability to even move despite constantly being on fire has given Agni the body of a Greek god.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Deconstructed with Togata when Bat Man points out how perverse it is to primarily view Agni and the destruction that follows him as sources of entertainment.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Togata performs Interrupted Suicide to Agni and pulls him out of the lake at the cost of burning himself to ashes.
• He's Back!: A dark example. After spending 10 years not on fire trying to live with a brain damaged Judah and some women who were with Doma before he killed him (not that they know), and being unable to get over his suicidal tendencies for everything he's done, Agni and his group are found by people who knew who Agni was before. Agni accepts his role as the villain Fire Punch, bluntly stating to Tena that he killed her father and everyone she loved. And to make the transformation complete, he is set on fire by Doma's granddaughter with the same flames Doma had, which means Fire Punch is back and angry.
• Hidden Disdain Reveal: When the subject of his gender comes up near the middle of the story, Togata makes it known that not only has he secretly resented Agni for having been born a man, but he's also envious that his circumstances have granted him Togata's ideal body type as a tall, strapping masculine figure despite them having similar Blessings.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: In a strangely funny example, the actor who plays the "god" of Behemdolg's religion was actually an alcoholic pedophile.
• Hope Spot: All the times you think Agni is about to be happy something has to ruin it.
• Identical Stranger:
  • Judah is a dead-ringer for Luna and repeatedly reminds Agni that she's not her. Which helps Agni get his sister back (sort of) when Judah develops amnesia and he starts treating her like Luna.
  • Surya, the self-proclaimed Ice Witch. She and Judah came from a line of engineered superhumans created by the old world, who are said to all look identical.
• Idiot Hero: Agni is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Justified in that even though physically he is in his 20s, mentally he is still a 14 year old child, as he spent 8 years burning alone in the middle of nowhere, and even before everything happened, education wasn't exactly something he had access to, living in a frozen over village with survival being the most pressing matter. He regularly notes that even though he is able to handle it, he still feels the pain of being constantly on fire, so he isn't really able to focus on more complex thoughts.
• Immortal Immaturity: Togata is old enough to partially remember the world that once was but mostly acts like an eternal teenager, speaking primarily in crude one-liners and locker room spiels.
• Immortality Hurts: Agni still feels pain like anyone else. Or he used to at least. After being set on fire, the pain was so crippling it took him 8 years of burning alone in the middle of nowhere before he was able to regain control of his faculties.
• Interrupted Suicide: Agni is saved from drowning twice, which seems like the only possible suicide method that could actually kill him.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Agni and Togata are this. Also Neneto towards Sun.
• Kid Hero All Grown-Up: Sun was just an idealistic Distressed Dude with electric powers that were barely as strong as a stun-gun. After the timeskip he becomes a Lightning Bruiser and delusional leader of an entire city.
• Knight Templar: Behemdolg uses girls as Breeding Slaves and Blessed boys to power up their city. They like to use their position as the last citadel of humanity to justify their actions.
• Lack of Empathy: Togata could care less about anyone's feelings, he's only interested in making an entertaining action film. This trope is later downplayed, if not outright subverted.
• Land of One City: Behemdolg would be The Empire if it wasn't just one city. It operates on Utopia Justifies the Means, has gathered most of the surviving humans and takes the rest with military force.
• Living Emotional Crutch: For all of Togata's eccentricities, he's ultimately one of the few people who Agni can confide in. Agni is a 15 year-old boy trapped in an adult man's body whereas Togata has been alive for 300 years. As such, Agni constantly relies on Togata for guidance, despite knowing that Togata is primairly interested in him for entertainment. Tellingly, it's right around the point of Togata's death that Agni veers into Villain Protagonist territory.
• Long-Lived: The natural lifespan of humans seems to be twice as long, sometimes even longer, than today's standards and people with regeneration powers often appear Younger Than They Look.
• The Lost Lenore: Agni hears Luna's voice any time the pain gets the better of him, pressing him to keep going. Then amnesiac Judah who Agni views as Luna becomes his Morality Pet.
• Maintain the Lie: Both Agni's and Behemdolg's sides have to keep the cult mentality in order to ensure their factions don't fall apart.
• Meaningful Name: Agni is the name of the Hindu god of fire. The main character, Agni, spends the bulk of the story perpetually on fire and later becomes a cult's object of worship. His name also sounds like the English word "agony", reflecting the constant, intense pain the fire puts him in.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Due to Doma's flames still retaining their properties of burning living things until they die, Agni can kill people by accidentally bumping into them. He winds up unintentionally killing several people as he slowly making his way through Doma's house to kill him.
• Miracle Food: Some Blessed powers can be been used to create food, albeit in an grotesque indirect manner.
  • Regeneration-types create biomass from seemingly nothing to heal themselves, which Agni has often used to cut off and regrow parts of himself for others to eat.
  • One of the many Human Resources Behemdolg extracts from the Blessed is some kind of starchy substance its citizens eat.
• The Movie Buff:
  • Togata is one. He regularly name drops all sorts of real movies he used to watch before the ice age hit, as he is a mutant with immortality. His main interest in Agni is to create a movie as all movies were banned sometimes in the 23rd century, leading him to play both sides of the conflict and create a fire resistant outfit for Agni to wear so he looks more heroic. To take things even further, Togata even believes that the afterlife is a movie theatre. And it seems that he is correct.
  • Surya, the mysterious girl that looks like Luna and Judah who wants to reset the world, is this as well. In fact, her entire motivation for wanting to restart humanity is to create a full-fledged civilisation again so she can finally see a new Star Wars film, since the apocalypse cancelled a previous one.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Sun tries to kill Judah for receiving more of Agni's love than him.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • Agni is horrified when he realized that his saving the slaves from Behemdolg caused thousands of innocent people to lose their lives by burning to death in his flames.
  • Doma discovers that the teachings of Behemdolg are fake and he killed people for false reasons. He quits the military and starts an orphanage. He still doesn't think burning Agni's village for cannibalism was wrong though, and fully knew they weren't killing anyone in the process, but apologizes for it anyway. Then Agni reflects on what has he been doing recently.
  • Agni initially attempts to let Doma go after hearing his perspective. When walking back, however, he flies into a murderous rage and ends up killing Doma and all of his children. When he comes to his senses and realizes what he had just done, he's horrified at the monster he's become.
• Neglectful Precursors: They have filled Earth with uncontrollable nanomachines and migrated to space, leaving behind a Death World. They were also said to have created a dystopia where everyone was identical, as well as banned any and all forms of art.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Behemdolg is... shitty, to say the least. However, it still was a city that provided some level of security in a borderline uninhabitable world. Agni's decision to liberate the slaves, while obviously coming from a place of good will, ends up causing a lot of people to die in the crossfire.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: Though he wishes he wasn't, Agni is nearly invincible. No matter what happens to him, he will eventually regenerate. Even decapitation won't keep him down forever. He cannot even kill himself since any wound he gives himself will just heal too fast.
• No Woman's Land: Behemdolg, to the point that their religion preaches that rape is an active moral good.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Surya wanted to use Judah for her own needs since she can't do it herself, but since Judah is deep inside Behemdolg she couldn't do anything. Agni wrecking the place became a convenient opportunity. Later she sends some of Sun's group after Agni to retrieve Judah from him, though she dies before the climax.
• Not Blood Siblings: Judah looks exactly like Agni's dead sister Luna. So after he has basically lost his mind, returned to not being permanently on fire, and she loses her memory, he begins to treat her as though she were really Luna, and she accepts it. Soon after, their relationship turns romantic, then sexual.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Agni realizes that the people he's burned make him no better than Doma.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: Agni decides to temporarily drop his revenge against Doma in order to save the oppressed slaves in Behemdolg. He unintentionally causes thousands of innocent people to die either in the destruction caused by his flames or by starvation after losing their food source. Somewhat justified in that Agni's still fifteen years old mentally and lacked the perspective to understand the consequences of his actions.
• Offstage Villainy: While Agni was busy with Doma, Surya and Judah went ahead with the World Tree plan and attacked his followers.
• Propaganda Machine: Behemdolg people are made to watch "inspirational videos" of their god (actually just a renamed regular movie) from a young age to keep them unified.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: Behemdolg specializes in all three.
• Redemption Rejection: Agni going berserk and rejecting Doma's apology.
  • Tena's pleas for Agni to stop being Fire Punch end with him deciding to play the villain in the end because he can't bear living with survivors of his past rampage.
• Restart the World: Surya's goal. It's a case of Skewed Priorities as she just wants to go to cinema again, but it's better than what is there currently.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Agni's main motivation, first to kill Doma for killing his sister and anyone who stands in his way, then the Ice Witch as well for causing this mess to begin with.
• Sanity Slippage:
  • Agni's sanity has been slipping ever since he got set on fire, but it finally completely snaps after his flames somehow vanish and Judah, who looks exactly like his sister, loses her memories. Agni convinces her and then himself that she is really his sister Luna. Then he goes completely suicidal as he guilt-trips himself while also being overprotective of Judah.
  • Sun does a Face–Heel Turn at the final arc as he deifies Agni and refuses to listen to reason.
• Shout-Out:
  • When Agni and Judah stumble upon an abandoned salt factory, one outfit she puts for him while raiding the place's wardrobe bears a striking resemblance to one of Mathilda's.
  • In Chapter 10, Togata says "Remember when I promised to kill you last? I lied."
  • The guy with a bat, who is one of Agni's supporters, is simply called... Bat Man.
  • MANY to Star Wars. Probably the most tragic one is when Agni kills Doma's adopted children, although by accident in this case.
  • In Chapter 47, when Agni presumably goes to "Heaven", there are several posters hanging out the walls for such movies as Back to the Future, The Empire Strikes Back or Avengers.
  • The scenery and panels of chapter 52 strongly resembles the infamous final scene from The End of Evangelion, with Agni and Judah awakening on a beach, with the former initially trying to kill the latter, before breaking down into tears while she caresses his face.
• Shrouded in Myth: The Dreaded Ice Witch who froze the world. Since nobody has actually seen her, most information about her comes from Behemdolg's propaganda. It's because such a person never existed and the world is in such a way for a different reason.
• Slave Liberation: Agni went to Behemdolg to face Doma, but finding captives he decides to set them free while at it. This resulted in him turning from a rumoured saviour to the centre of a religion.
• Spell My Name With An S:
  • Sun is probably supposed to be named after the sun in the sky.
  • Suya? Sulya? Surya? If going again with the sun motif, Surya is the Sun god in Hinduism.
• Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person: Though Togata presents as his assigned gender, Bat Man's telepathy perceives them by their actual gender identity. This example is more negative than most, as the recipient is Forced Out of the Closet as evidence they're untrustworthy.
• Take That!: Togata complains about having to fight two guys with a Healing Factor in a row, saying it's so boring and repetitive that it reminds him of The Astronaut's Wife.
• That Man Is Dead: When Judah is taken by Sun's men, Agni sets himself on fire and becomes Fire Punch once more. As he massacres his "followers", one of them falls to his knees and begs Agni for forgiveness. Agni ignores his plea, as he is not Agni, he's "Fire Punch".
• Then Let Me Be Evil:
  • Surya wasn't good in the first place, but she becomes a Card-Carrying Villain after everyone blames the Ice Witch for everything, and she decides to claim the name to keep Agni motivated.
  • Agni decides to become the villain Surya wanted since Sun's group has been threatening Luna!Judah.
• Time Skip:
  • The first skips occurs between when Agni's village got burned down and when he was set on fire to 8 years when he finally is able to resist the pain enough to move.
  • The second occurrs when Agni gets used to life without being on fire, with the girl who now thinks she is his sister and the group of women who took the two in. 10 years pass before one of them reiterates her desire to see Fire Punch dead.
  • The epilogue takes place 80 years later. Then it jumps multiple of thousands of years.
• Together in Death:
  • Once the original Agni finally suffers a Death of Personality, he's reunited with Luna just like he always wanted.
  • Doma's boys, all hugging each other when Agni accidentally burns down Doma's village in order to kill him.,
  • Sun!Agni and Judah reunite in the Distant Epilogue, peacefully passing away knowing that there is someone else to comfort them. The final shot of the manga features them leaving the theater together.
• Tomato Surprise: A person alone in a movie theater is repeatedly used as literal or metaphorical representation for their death. But the second-to-last time this is shown, it turns out Sun!Agni is still alive and physically in a regular movie theater.
• Took a Level in Kindness: When going to Behemdolg to get his revenge on Doma, Agni finds himself sympathizing with the oppression of the slaves, and decides to put off his revenge in order to liberate them, which ends up giving him a reason to live beyond merely getting back at Doma. Sadly, it comes crashing down after some time.
• Trans Tribulations: Togata is a transgender man. Due to his super regeneration powers, a sex change operation wouldn't stick, so he felt forced to consider himself a woman his whole life.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: Meeting with Doma face-to-face makes Agni understand that a long time has passed and they both have people they protect, and Luna wouldn't want this. Agni becoming a Death Seeker also helps. It doesn't last.
• Villain Protagonist: Agni straddles the line for much of the manga, though the moment where he seems to cross it is when he burns down a repentant Doma's home, killing not only him but all the children under his care. Togata even notes earlier, that in a movie, a hero who kills children is likely to have the audience turn against him. He does have a Heel Realization after this, and has become very suicidal ever since, which is rough considering all his suicide attempts fail due to his regeneration powers. The trope is later played straight when after Agni starts to think that Judah is his sister and everyone tries to take her away from him, he decides he may as well stop acting like a hero.
• A World Half Full: The frozen world of the Ice Witch is one wrought with terror, misery, and death, and likely the only way any of the characters could conceivably be happy if they just offed themselves (In the very first chapter, Agni has no problem with dying since he and Luna will be Together in Death). Yet they all find a reason to fight for their lives. Be it for revenge, for love, for religion, because someone told them to, or even just for making a movie, everyone continues living in spite of their common situation.
• World Tree: Surya plans to turn Judah into one, which will reach outer space and absorb nutrients from other planets. In the end, Judah willingly becomes the tree, which spreads to the solar system and beyond, lasting even after Earth is completely shattered and billions of years into the heat death of the universe.
• You Are Not Alone:
  • After Togata is outed as a transgender man, he lashes out at Agni when he tries to offer help, believing that his situation is too unique to really be understood by anyone but him. Agni simply responds that he'll never understand if Togata never bothers to explain. He does, and while he still suffers from dysphoria, feels a weight lifted now that there is someone else who knows what he's going through.
  • Agni manages to reunite with Judah in their final moments, as she spent millennia in space, even though they no longer have memories of each other, and die happy to know that they won't be alone and cold as they pass.

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"You really are a dumb kid. You're no god. You only look like one."

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