Episode 49 - Fire Punch by Tatsuki Fujimoto and Why Dark Storytelling is Important

In this episode I discuss the thematic elements of Fire Punch and what Dark Storytelling means to me.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hey everyone, welcome to the Comic Quicks Beyond Podcast. I'm your host, Vic. And with me today, I have two cats in the other room. Uh schedules for the other hosts are just kind of bad with recording right now. Um, Mike is busy with work and also has some travel coming up. Beef has a lot going on, being the world's most dedicated husband and dad. Uh Katia is working on a few things and busy with her new job. Uh, Garnet is planning a wedding and working two jobs at the same time, being a therapist and doing a lot of great work there. Uh, I'm actually on vacation this week. I just got some travel in. Listen to the last episode if you want. A little more details on that. I really would like to get the stories out there. I just don't want to tell them without people's permission. Um, and I've got a couple other projects going on at the moment. So we're gonna get into today's episode. We are talking about uh Fire Punch. Uh so this book was written and drawn by Tatsuski Fujimoto of Chainsaw Man Fame. Uh, it was originally published under the Shonen Jump Plus magazine. Uh it's also collected in eight uh paperback volumes. No, I can't remember exactly how I found this. It this might have been uh I saw the Chainsaw Man anime like four or five years ago whenever it came out. And uh maybe I just listened, I read Chainsaw Man about that time, and then maybe I looked up uh Fire Punch or just looked up what else he's written, and I think uh that's how I found his other work. It could have also been uh a super eyepatch wolf video that I saw. Uh he's got a video on Chainsaw Man, and I think he briefly messages or mentions um uh Fire Punch in there. Uh it's a bit of a hilarious bit, but uh I I watched it maybe a month or two ago again, and I forgot how dark some of the stuff in there was. Uh so that really raised the question to me. Uh, so how can I make this book both insightful and funny? Well, um I don't know if I can, but we're gonna, you know, talk about it and we're gonna get an episode out there. Uh, this is manga month. Um I'm not the world's biggest manga guy. I've have gotten more into it in the past few years. Now, I was primarily reading manga from 2022 to 2024. Uh, I still am reading a decent amount of manga, uh, but during that time it was almost exclusively manga. That might have been like all I was reading during that time. Um now I tend to gravitate more towards uh darker stories when it comes to media in general, but manga specifically. Uh, the one thing I've noticed about the genre is I feel like that and the extreme horror genre are what's uh most willing to come uh you know tackle really, really darker stories. Like the I I call this the um what your uh grandparents think Stephen King is. This is what these stories actually are. Uh and they're doing a good job saying something with these stories, which is really what appeals to me. Now, there is a ton that appeals to me about the comic book format. I just simply enjoy serialized storytelling with pictures. And if we want to be super reductive, that's kind of what a comic book is. Uh I think another appeal to me of, you know, specifically westernized comics, um, you know, Marvel DC and some of the other things like Ghost Machine and uh like the Energon Universe. Uh, strange that one doesn't appeal to me. Um I like the interconnected story and the little stories within stories, or one story being, you know, part of a larger story. That's one thing that really appeals to me. But I also do just like a good old-fashioned, you know, self-contained story, something you'd find in an image comic or a boom comic or dark horse or whatever, or even this some of the one-offs. And that's primarily what manga is. Uh, you could probably get into really deep philosophical debates of manga versus comic books versus webtoon versus other stuff. But frankly, those kind of conversations, I think they're cool at a bar when we have some drinks in our hands and we just want to hear some people talk about what they're passionate about. And if that's something you guys would like to hear, I'm sure there's other podcasts out here, but yeah, check it out. It's just me today. I um, you know, I I'm just trying to um I'm just trying to look at my from my my perspective. They're not all that different. You read them a different direction. I mean, webtoon, you read up and down. Uh, American comics or westernized comics, you read left to right. Um manga com or manga books, you read right to left. Uh manga, I think, does a better job focusing on the art and really pushing the visual storytelling. Uh and the and on westernized comics, I think uh you have a lot more both. There's um a Frank Miller quote out there, something to the effect of his writing style is based on uh trying to marry the emptiness of Western or the manga of Japanese manga and the um wordiness of Americanized comics, which um that might be true. I'm not even sure if that's a real quote. It was it's really hard to uh say for realsies. Um, but uh I think there's some merit in that where uh manga as a whole, I think tends to read a little bit more quickly because there is a lot less words. That the flow seems a little bit more natural uh in general, but also every writer is gonna vary from here here to there. Uh so let's talk about what appeal what this appeals to me. Um so I picked this story because it's equally dark and fun, and I'm generally attracted to a story with a post-apocalyptic world. There's something relaxing and refreshing about seeing a postmodernist society fall apart and people to survive because for some reason this brings me comfort. I'm not a big fantasy guy. It's hard for me to connect with it. Like, there's no way we're gonna really go back to dudes riding horses. Like it's just not something I can see myself in most of the time. Uh, I mean, I'm a fan of Berserk, the manga, which uh that is one of my few fantasy things I really, really enjoy. But, you know, something about a uh like a post-apocalyptic story where the world's just gone all to hell. Like, I hope it never happens. I I I hope truly every day this never happens, but that could be something that, you know, uh we can see this as a cautionary tale that, you know, if this happens, this is a story of survival. And it's maybe, God forbid, we're in that situation. If our characters in these stories can survive, so can we. So I'm not going to spoil too much of the story for you. Uh, I've read this whole thing before. Uh now we are going to talk about the high concept, and um, it's gonna be very hard to avoid some spoilers for the first volume of this, but I'm gonna try to do my best to like keep it at conceptual level. Um, now, uh, disclaimers. So if you're uh if you've read this already, I assume there's a good chance you're uh about to go grab yourself an alcoholic beverage to get through this episode. I'm not gonna bullshit any of you. I love dark storytelling. I'm really fascinated about what you know the human mind can come up with and put down on paper. And I would much rather someone sit down, have a dark thought and put it on paper than go out and do something awful. I think you can do at least a modicum of good by putting your thoughts down on paper or sharing on a podcast and just, you know, get those thoughts out. Maybe someone else will connect with them in a way, realize someone else has these thoughts. And that's a comfort to me that I'm not alone. Or someone took these really dark thoughts and they made something much, much better for uh themselves than it instead of doing something awful. You know, every single person on this planet has truly horrible thoughts. We can't avoid it. It's who we are as people. One thing that I am not happy about what that my mom used to say to me was you know, some people you have dark thoughts and then you have dark actions, but in her opinion, thinking it's as bad as doing it. And honestly, that comes from a Christian upbringing where my mom wasn't even really religious, but my grandmother was. And oh boy, if you brushed your teeth wrong, it was a sin in my house. I'll say that much. So even having like a bad thought in your head that you can't control, like we know intrusive thoughts and dark thoughts just they're part of life. There's nothing we can do about them. Well, you can get those thoughts, but you can choose to do something positive with them. You can talk to a therapist about processing your feelings, you can again start a podcast, you can start a YouTube series, you can just put your thoughts down in a journal and maybe or maybe make some art. You can put your thoughts down and never do anything with it. It's still you taking an action with those thoughts. So that's kind of why I like the dark thing, the dark media. Unfortunately, just having mental health issues I do, it's part of my life. And experiencing media like this is a way for me to help process those feelings. So now let's get the content warnings out of the way. Um, there's sexual assault, a lot of violence, torture, manipulation, suffering, and there's some hinted at depictions of incest. I'm not going to joke. Uh, the main character has a younger sister who is younger than him, and her not truly understanding the world, wanting to repopulate, she wants to have a baby with the brother, which incest is, you know, breeding between family members we know is biologically wrong. Uh, I'm not here to be the morality police, uh, but procreating with another person within your gene pool is biologically dangerous for the child. Uh I we don't, I don't think we really have to dwell on that much longer, but you know, these are things that happen. This they think the book handles it pretty well, and they move past it and say, you know, that's that's wrong. So let's talk about what this book is about. And now I I have the Sisyphean task or the Herculean task of trying to make this uh funny or enjoyable, and I've already said a few things that are like, this story is really messed up. So we're we're gonna have some fun here. And if you are at all uh you know squeamish, uh, I'm gonna tell you it's probably for your best to check out, and maybe just not this one isn't for you. Not everything has to be for everyone. I like doing stuff like this, and this is something I can talk about and I think there's value to discuss. So uh Fire Punch follows a character named uh Agni. Uh he's living in this post-apocalyptic world. The world is covered in a blanket of snow. Uh now, in this world there are blessed people. That's kind of like having an ability from X-Men. Uh, his ability, his blessing, is to regenerate damage, he can regrow limbs and basically recover from any harm, like Wolverine from X-Men. Uh now, Agni, Agni uses these abilities to feed his village, kind of like Titus Andronicus from Shakespeare. And yeah, I mean he hacks off his arms and cooks as food, cooks them as food to feed people. Uh then during a conflict with another blessed, Agni is then lit on fire by another blessed whose flames will burn until they completely run out of fuel. Not exactly, but not dissimilar to Pyro from X-Men. So at this point, Agni's blessing is to regenerate himself. His then cursed with being set on fire until the fuel goes away. So he's regenerating. With uh if you know anything about gas, it tends to burn. If you know anything about gas, it tends to run out. Um, not trying to get overly political with the fucking gas prices right now. But um, Agni never runs out of gas, so he's constantly stuck in a state of fire. He the book over a few pages shows him basically walking in isolation, and um he's learning to control the fire. He's been punched by fire, hence the name Fire Punch. But that's just a small fraction of what the book is about. There is a conflict, suffering, and the nature of living is in this book. One of uh another character's last words to Agni are you have to live. Now, this book is about suffering and living in the complexities of life. Well, life is pretty plainly about living. There's a lot of suffering in our lives. It's just a natural part of it. Not to get overly personal with you, which is a lie, but right now my life is overall pretty easy to live. But unfortunately I'm facing some I've had some pretty hard months recently, and I've had some pretty bad depression. Doing this podcast is my creative out to try to put some goodwill into the universe and joke with you guys whenever I can. I have a job, a wife, and two very dumb cats, and I keep my bills pretty low. I really shouldn't complain when you look at my life on paper, but I have pretty bad depression, and it's been compounded a lot lately by environmental issues. I've been struggling with my weight and honestly just connecting with people lately. I've unfortunately had some issues with competing in strongmen, and I need to put that on hold. So I'm still training. It's just I hit this bit of an apex where uh to get to to compete at the level I'm at, I'm simply just not strong enough and not willing to do the things to my body to get there. And I don't can't really drop down a level. I can lose weight, but again, struggling with weight. Wait. I have a I took this week off to hang with friends, but um, to be honest, that was to do something they wanted to do. It wasn't something I had a ton of interest in, and it cost me a lot of money, and no, I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for them. And I, you know, this week's my anniversary, but my wife started a new job, but she can't take off, so we can't really spend much time together, and that sucks. And I've been I so I decided I would just be responsible as I could this week, and I worked on a few things around the house and I did all the projects I could in about two days. Um, unfortunately, I'm at a point where I need to call someone to help with some projects, and there's just no way I can do them on my own. It's even if I rented the equipment, I wouldn't have the skill skill. So that's gonna cost me a lot of money. Um, I just kind of been in a bit of a haze here. And, you know, I've been trying to connect with my friends, but it's just not going as well as I would like to. Um, it's I don't know if it's just they don't have the time or not willing to do the things that I want to do. I just would love to be able to call someone and say, hey, let's go do this. But when you hear no enough, you know, you don't want to be pushy and you kind of get to the point where you just don't know what to say, hey, I would like to do this. And I just kind of realized I'm recently that I'm just kind of in a spot where it's not even that I don't know what to do. I just I don't want to I don't know. That's just kind of a shit feeling. Um but yeah, and you know, you look at this kind of story and I just try to process through that sob story I just gave you. And one thing I say is, you know, my feelings are valid. I'm depressed and lonely and upset by the entire shit fucking world that we're dealing with, and I have a lot of privilege. I'm not going to deny that. Some people are just starving in the streets being killed. I'm not one of those people. I don't have to worry about not having a roof over my head, I don't have to worry about starving. I have very, very first world problems, and that's very comforting to me when I pre-contextualize it. And stories like Fire Punch are truly a way for me to sit down and say, you know, my life might make me depressed. I might not feel very good right now, but I'm not living in a constant state of agonizing suffering. I didn't watch everyone I love be killed in front of me, and I didn't spend eight years just to be able to only make part of my hand catch on fire so the rest of me cannot burn. So I I don't know exactly if this is a translation issue or not a translation issue or if it's intentional. Uh, from what I understand about um uh the name Agni, A-G-N-I, that is the Hindu god of fire, and he's referred to as a god a few times in this. Uh, I I'm again not sure if this is a translation thing. I don't know if Agni's name is supposed to be Agni or Agony, like the English word agony, like pain and suffering, or if this is just simply a uh circumstantial thing. I tried looking at it and looking it up, and all I could find was there's a few people who think it might be more circumstantial than anything. So should you read Fire Punch? Uh, it really depends. Did what I just say bum you out? Maybe not. Are you interested in a story of human suffering with interesting art style? And the art in this is pretty good. Uh, I will say that uh I believe his art gets a lot better in his other work. And you will actually kind of noticed uh he's only got maybe 10 to 12 faces he draw, he can draw and recycles. No shade. I mean, I can't draw one face and recycle it. Uh he um it just becomes noticeable at one point. There's some artists who just do that for me. Uh, another one of them is uh Nick Dragota. Love his style, love his artwork. Uh, but when I reread uh finished East to West a few weeks ago, it was just uh very noticeable how much uh Absolute Batman is pulling from East to West. Um so I I I only reread the first volume of this for this show. Uh I read it like two or three times and reread specific parts a few times over and over again. The first volume of this is one of the most insane things I've ever read in my life. It goes to really dark places. Like I said, there's sexual assault, there's talks about incest, there's flat-out suffering, there's tyrannical government, like tyrannical quasi governments just using people as slave labor. So this might be just too dark for some people, but I personally see this as a bit of an emergent immersion therapy. I think one of my main criticisms of this book in terms of a story, like I said, how book one is the one of the most insane things I ever read. The rest of the story, it's not that it changes direction or anything, but I feel like it's less focused than this book. Now, again, I haven't read the rest of it in two years. I just don't have that kind of time to read it all. Um, I do kind of want to keep reading it, but I don't know. I I just it's I think the first volume is all I really personally need to read, and maybe the end again. The ending I remember pretty well, but I wouldn't spoil that for anybody. Uh I would say that this is a totally appropriate story, as this is a dark story with a couple jokes and moments of levity splaced in rather than the opposite where it's a light hard story with some really dark stuff splaced in. I personally just prefer this method instead of the other. It just comes off to me as a little bit more honest. Uh, in terms of new reader-friendly, this is dark. That's the only thing holding you back. If you're comfortable with dark, um, go right for it. Or if you want something that's like edging on the extreme, go for it. You're not going to have any problems. Uh, if you want to check out something else by Tasuki Fujimoto, I would really recommend both Chainsaw Man and Look Back. Uh, also a novel called Goodbye Airte or Airie, I think it's called. Um, Goodbye Airy is really, really depressing, but it's not anything as dark as this. Uh, I would caution you about this one. Like, in terms of quality, again, it doesn't go down, but it just kind of becomes middle of the road at some point. I guess that is going down. Like the first book is more or less a five out of five, and then I think the rest of it becomes like there's some like between two and four with mostly two and threes in there. Uh, I would more recommend you read this digitally on the Shonen Jump app through the web browser. You have to read it that way. They don't allow it on the app, at least not in my version. It may vary from country to country. I don't know. Uh, I did actually own the paperbacks because I didn't know you could read this digitally. But honestly, I don't think I would get rid of my paperbacks or anything, but I would probably only have read this digitally and just been done with it. Um, but I do really like the rest of Tasuski Fujimoto's work, and I really like the first volume, or at least I can really connect with it. So that's it for this week's episode. Next week we're going to go into something much more happy and fun. It's called Goodnight Pun Pun or Poon Poon. I think the only way to read that is paperback or buying a digital copy through like a vendor like Comixology or Amazon. I don't know of any of like the library apps that allow for it. If you guys do, please let me know in the comments. Or please remember that you can uh also vote until the end of May for uh Full Genji Ito episode. Pick any book, any story you want a full episode on. We shall happily do that and get into these personal stories with thematic elements and breakdowns and analyses. Um, I'm looking really looking forward to that one. He's got some great work out there. Check out last episode. Uh, next couple episodes are going to be really fun, but they're gonna be gonna be dark. I'm gonna do my best to uh uh take on the challenge of making these as fun as possible.

SPEAKER_00 22:27

Well, guys, thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get a hold of me through email, I'm at comicbooksbeyond at gmail.com, and I'm at comic booksbeyond on Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok, and we're also on YouTube. Some of the podcasts are gonna go there, but we're also working on some extra content for YouTube as well. I'd like to give a thank you to the crew of the Talking Comic Books podcast, Brad and Lease of Comic Book Couples Counseling, Alex Jaffe, Jeremy Whitley, Bran McNulty, Jimmy Gasparo and the crew of Comic Book Yeti, and John Klein III of Shadowflame with Magic. Most importantly, I'd like to thank all of our listeners and supporters. Be good to each other out there and take care of your people. We'll see you next time.