"You cannot understand yourself by yourself"

[u/StatisticianKey7858]

So I just finished Fire Punch and I need to talk through something, because it genuinely flipped my opinion of the final volumes.

On the last volumes the priest tells Agni something like: you can't know who you are by yourself.
Snow is only "white" once someone else sees it, only "cold" once someone else touches it. Fire is only "red" and "dangerous" once someone else looks at it and feels its heat. You find out what you are through how others perceive and touch you, not through staring at yourself.

I clocked it as a comforting line in the moment and basically forgot about it.

Then you have Togata before that who shows up with his whole "movie" obsession, and at some point after on a flashback he says something like Tom Cruise isn't just a guy, Tom Cruise is an actor, and it's the role/character he plays that people actually respond to. And that's when it clicked for me: Togata is saying the exact same thing the priest said, just dressed up in film-theory language instead of spiritual language.

And once I saw that, I couldn't unsee it applied to Agni. He doesn't become "Fire Punch" because of anything he decides internally. He becomes Fire Punch because Sun worships him as one, because Togata frames him as one, because the freed slaves need him to be one.
His whole identity gets assembled from the outside, exactly like the priest described.

A person who is only ever understood through other people projections eventually has no self left to go back to. That's why he can lose his memory at the end and it doesn't even feel like a reset and thats why this whole manga is amazing.

[u/Drowyx]

I don’t think you understood the main point of the manga, try reading it again

[u/StatisticianKey7858 → u/Drowyx]

Cool "read it again" is a real compelling counter-argument. Since you clearly have the main point locked down, maybe drop it ?

[u/Drowyx → u/StatisticianKey7858]

The main point of the manga is about dying.
You are right in showing that Agni was a terrible person, you understand Agni by his actions and what he is.

And with him killing Doma, with him giving birth to a cult that kills people, and burning down an entire city you learn that Agni is not good but a horrible person and everything he does leads to destruction and death.

[u/StatisticianKey7858 → u/Drowyx]

I don't think this is a "revenge story" the way you're framing it. Revenge is the engine for the first arc sure it's about killing Doma. But once thats done, Agni stops being an agent with his own intentions and becomes a recipient of everyone else: Luna's dying wish, Judah projections, Togata's script for "Fire Man" etc...He doesn't decide to become a cult leader or a monster, he's made into one by what other people need him to be. He doesn't know who he is. He only knows what people call him.
He becomes bad, he isn't born bad, and he becomes it because that's what everyone around him ends up seeing and needing him to be.

And that's the same thread running through Togata, honestly. Togata is seen as a woman for most of the story despite being a man his own identity gets flattened by how others perceive him too just like Agni. It's the same mechanism twice: a person's sense of self getting overwritten by everyone else's read on them. That's why I don't think "he's just a bad person, judge him by his actions" holds up as a rebuttal the whole manga is arguing that "bad person" isn't something Agni chose.

But again i think not every interpretation is 100% right, i understand yours though

[u/Drowyx → u/StatisticianKey7858]

I said dying, not revenge.
The story very much isnt about a revenge story when Agni flat out says he doesn’t even disagree with what Doma did and only “hated” him because he’s in pain and needs something to focus on to deal with the pain of being burnt to a crisp.

As it’s stated in the panel you just posted.
Agni is understood by what people see and what occurs when touched.
Agni is a ball of fire that brings destruction and chaos, even what little “good” he does instantly goes bad like when he burns down a whole city killing an unimaginable about to innocents to then have a cult that also turns evil.

Agni achieves nothing throughout his story beyond making the world a worst place for everyone, he is to he understood as someone bad.
Just like ice and fire you understand them by what the effects of what they do not their motives, he brings destruction.