mangakas - mastering art and having good writing, worldbuilding, and sometimes a good understanding of scientific concepts. but most times the writing and worldbuilding falls off. sometimes the art isn't good.

some of fujimoto's backgrounds and writing go unbelievable. his writing was rarely awkward or bad. the art in general and hatching specifically were sometimes off but as a whole it's incredible that he is at that level. serialized at 23.

it was fascinating how fujimoto wrote togata in that seemingly american post-ironic way. don't know how non-english speaking countries' "dark" post-irony works, but there's always been uproar about english-speaking zoomers replying to japanese artists' work ironically and post-ironically, resulting in artists deleting their social media accounts ("I HATE THIS" "this is killing me" etc, artists thought people were trashing their art). i never got the impression japanese people had their own similar culture, so seeing it in fire punch was enlightening. have only read 20-30 manga and 30-40 anime before so it could be common and i wasn't avid enough to find it. or remember it because it's been a while since i consumed animanga, which i was most active in during 2018.

strange but not surprising that fujimoto would refer to togata in his interviews as a female, despite portraying him so well throughout the entire manga. togata's portray is much better than the ones in boys run the riot and j no subete*. 300 years of repression yet still ever-present agony. no concept of hrt though, unless regeneration would revert the hormones to cis female levels and make it useless.

*was thrown off by how rita was just cis instead of some kind of trans man. of course, the manga was made in 2001 and she kept fucking up j's gender anyways. j no subete was great in one aspect, and it was portraying the horrors of being the impregnator as a trans woman. there was one other media that had a similar mass of teratomas with the same concept, but i forgot if it was by torrey peters or something else.

boys run the riot seemed very surface level. stripping the flesh was kinda there but still in some parts it was off.

the acting plot of fire punch often didn't land but it was very unique.

agni's forced smile panel threw me off, i didn't connect the meme to fire punch until that happened.

i couldn't keep track of which blonde girl was which during the salt factory arc. i thought san and surya were beheaded but then they were alive. i thought the blonde hair people looking similar had to do with being evolved but then it had no significance, just same-face syndrome.

just saw someone say the characters seemed like aliens from another planet but they seemed believable and not all that wacky. togata is any old letterboxd zoomer mangified. agni is suffered suffering will suffer. amnesiac luna is the girl from elfen lied. add in a collective psychosis from the traumatic ordeal of living in an ice age and there you have it.

apr 22, 2022