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Fire Punch

It starts off a very vast place that could on forever, like many stories set in such settings (endless snow, post-apocalyptic, etc.). But it grows and evolves to feel more and more claustrophic over time, and at the end, it feels like multiple things simultaneously: entirely self-sanctioned, undone, and bitterly empty.

The protagonist's relationship to his sister is the driving heart of the protagonist, from start to end. Everything unfolds not because they know his sister, but because they know his actions in relation to his sister and the calamity that befell her.

The nonsensical ramblings of the transgender major character Togata about film and cinema, the childish, confused, straightforward, mindless, dissonant mind of Agni (the god, the human, the sister's brother), the endless snow that brings in new foes, new friends, and more emptiness in the lull, right before events, and right after.

It is a narrative that thrives on its hatred on just letting things sit forever. When things do sit, they are uncomfortable, unnerving, still shots of just pure rambling dialogue, and they never feel like we're sitting. No, we're chained to an electric chair, but narratively, in terms of progression, it betrays itself constantly, enraged at the idea that things will ever make sense, sarcasm, putrid disgust at the idea of fulfillment and a completed arc. The completed character arc is their abrupt termination and disillusioning end, even as they have strived and survived all this time throughout just to reach even a little fake nod, but to be denied even that and to be betrayed and to have their entire soul cut out and put on display to showcase that authorial unsettlement (as experienced to a more digestible and at times traditionally narratively tragic degree in Fujimoto's other work Chainsaw Man). It is powerful for that reason.

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July 10, 2025 Superhuman Battlefield

I was moved already at the opening, and it reminded me so much of many scenarios of friendship in which case one would be lost, leave, or be gone somehow and the others would feel their absence in concert with the situation of a great length of time having passed and gone since their times together. When the first major character looked at the spunky expressions on their faces in the picture, I was moved, because it reminded me of my own experiences with loss, given that I used to be just like that with my former close friends. We used to be adventurous, curious, untroubled, and brazen, and now, we're just a bunch of people wearing suits with trimmed haircuts doing monotonous have-to work. The dull expression on the character's face reminded me much of what it feels like to be reminded again of the vividness, vastness, and richness stolen from me by time and situations far beyond our complete understanding. We were young, and we had either that soft knowing smile or that devilish grin of youthful ambition and confidence. But now, we sigh and close our eyes with our eyeglasses and professional gaits. We used to take on large roles, but now, we're banal and utterly unrecognized and cared about. We feel nostalgic for those years, and the emotions of frustration and grief that came with loss have become a stone, boring expression. That is exactly what that start portrayed well, and it is probably even more impressive than the true protagonist himself, who is initially portrayed as and can be considered a mere Gary Stu "hero."

However, as I read on, through his initial interactions with a nurse character, in contrast with his previous depictions, he is much more grounded here, making realistic inferences, and the nurse's responses fit the circumstances. Now, this is more than just an instance of realism in a vacuum, but it helps stabilize the narrative after its grandiose opening, which preceded the scenes with the glasses-wearing character staring at the picture. As such, the contrast propelled by the nurse-protagonist sequence, which I identify as the third narrative thread, aids both a dynamic, three-dimensional experience and a coherence that guarantees that there is a human grounded point of reference to it all. Ultimately, the protagonist and the glasses-wearing character are both effective axes of a broader first arc that is currently evolving from its grandiose, but conceivably typical prologue sequence.

The reveal that the glasses-wearing character, who was depicted initially as the equal counterpart to the main character, was a student of his changes much, but it is imaginable and conventional, especially in this era of power fantasies and Gary Stus.

Since 17 years has passed since the protagonist disappeared and presumed to be dead when he came back, the age gap, not only in terms of biological age, but also in culture and technology, hints at a growing tension that will become clearer as he interacts with characters whom he knew, such as the glasses-wearing character. The fact that the protagonist did not feel that 17 years has passed and said even that only a few days had passed for him underscores this intimated conflict. The happiness displayed by the glasses-wearing character, whose name I will finally recognize, Jeho, adds only to this  strain of dynamics in resources (i.e., power or strength), background, and perspective.

The fact that the protagonist, whose name I will also finally recognize, Yeob, maintains his spunky attitude, while Jeho looks desperate is a simple illustration of this shift, which is sudden for Yeob, who disappeared and came back feeling like only a couple days had passed, but life-long for Jeho, who stayed behind and is now in his late forties. (To clarify, I said "forties" because Yeob said that he should be 47 years old after he returned from his 17-year-long disappearance, and it is likely that Jeho is now around the same age as Yeob should be biologically.) 

Yeob's spunky statement "Seems like you got a lot weaker?" and Jeho's response "It's been peaceful," illustrates further the difference.

Jeho and Yeob's following conversation to this grounds their initial intense greeting. 

Jeho said: "You'll find out when you get older as well. You start crying more as you age." Yeob responded: "I wouldn't know because I'm still young though?" Yeob later asked about the request he made before he disappeared, and it was a joke about his friends making a biography for him. Jeho said that they did abide by their promise and said that the film became top 1 in the worldwide box office.

Afterwards, Yeob expresses his vulnerability. He said several things: that he thought he died in the dungeon, which was the place whither he disappeared, that the world is filled with so many new things he had never seen before, that it does not feel real, and that even though he saved the world, he was really just a poor homeless person.

The overarching plot becomes introduced to the protagonist, specifically about the virtual reality sport called "Battlefield". The story says that it was a new business for the superhumans "who became useless after the war." The superhumans were part of the people affected by the power caused by the monsters from underground. This was what was narrated about in the prologue sequence. As such, when the protagonist saved the world, he defeated the underground monsters or "civilization."

The protagonist continues to be grounded and realistic about his circumstances, given that with the amount of burden on him, it is imaginable to want to stop living like a zoo animal all the time. It is conceivable that he would want to live for himself.

While the scene where Yeob unknowningly calls Jeob's daughter attractive can be considered strange and creepy, they are 30 and 23, respectively, both adult in mind and body. Moreover, bringing up briefly a pertinent complicated topic such as this cements further the concept of "17 years have passed," given that a lot of the women that are biologically and mentally around his adult age currently were only children before his disappearance, which, as mentioned earlier, to him, was only a few days ago.

Review Written on
August 25, 2024 Hope You're Happy Lemon

The first time that I read the manga, I was already cringing at how familiar this was to the many rom-com stories that I've read. It is hard to sit down and pretend that such stories are enjoyable much. However, I did end up finding the characters easy to root for and enjoy, and it did not matter who. All the characters, including the strange character whose name I will not mention, ended up making the story feel fresh and personal rather than formulaic and blended. Though I would say that it did follow the formula of rom-coms, but it did take an interesting approach that I have not read before, specifically the particular combination of switching bodies, working together between the two, and the lack of an immediate romantic reciprocation.

When it came to particular characters, the friend that he had in film club, Natsumi Kogahara, was also a nice character, and the idea that she liked the main protagonist when it was actually the former girlfriend that was controlling the body was interesting. I thought it would veer into a complex relationship where the former girlfriend ended up gaining the bodily and mental feelings of the protagonist's body, which would result in a complex story where the former girlfriend likes Natsumi Kogahara only when she is in the protagonist's male body. However, that did not end up happening, but either path would have been interesting. This sets up the character arc for the protagonist to work together with his former girlfriend as they swap bodies in order to achieve best their goals and maximize each other's skills and knowledge. Ultimately, both characters eventually find value in the swap, but it remains the case that they are trying to fix the problem, which establishes the overarching narrative conflict.

As for how I feel about the story, I enjoyed it enough to read it to the latest chapter at the time, chapter 34, but for context, I was hoping to test myself and read a manga again after so long. I have been focusing much upon writing and other skills, having minimized the time and attention that I give activities such as reading manga and web novels and playing video games. This means that the story could have very well been another typical engaging story, and it might have made little difference.

When it comes to a scene-by-scene or a narrative thread-by-thread perspective, I can go into much depth here.

We can go into the first chapters, starting off with the inaugural scene that secures a hook by forcing a reader to confront the prevailing subject of cheating, roping the reader in with a sense of relatedness as broader Internet culture becomes more established toward the shared attitude of open hatred toward the idea of infidelity, even in and especially so in the context of more casual teenage relationships. In other words, this bonds the reader with the protagonist in the recognition of its limitations in fostering stronger bonds and its intersubjectively accepted expense in the form of broken trust. Now, this goes for any other story with such a premise, but in the case of the focal manga, what we have is the false premise of infidelity, as the former girlfriend is revealed narratively later to have lied about it to the protagonist. This complexifies the dynamics between the reader and the two firstly introduced primary characters (PA) and the additional PAs who contribute to this ever-evolving matrix, which undergoes a period of stabilization in the first 30 chapters: in the first chapters of which the concept of body swapping is set as an inciting incident alongside the convergence of the former girlfriend and the protagonist. Ultimately, the story is groundbreaking by the mere juxtaposition of themes and approaches that have been traditionally separate due to the challenge of maintaining a smooth, engaging interweave; illustrating the growth of the complexity of storytelling as active manga readers and their attendant communities grow in population and becomes more accustomed to stranger narrative combinations.

One of my favorite parts is when the protagonist has to deal with the realization that it would not matter even if he stayed up, because that reinforced the overarching conflict and ensure that the characters were stuck in this imposed bubble no matter what, because it was where all the interest and excitement occurred. As regards how the author accomplishes this, he creates various situations such as the protagonist's interest in dating Natsumi Kogahara and the former girlfriend's need to study a foreign language. All of these are the building blocks that secure the believability and "buying power" of the foregoing overarching conflict. As intimated earlier, the awkward, complicated yet intriguing situations advanced by the PAs break the potential narrative repetitiveness of the overarching conflict as has been observed traditionally through protagonist's attitudes. His unique combination of external and internal responses to such situations are emphasized, from which the reader can glean the confirmed commitment to the endurance of the evolution of the premise and thesis of the matrix and, by extension, the story as an idea around which a community springs up.

Review Written on
August 25, 2024 The Promised Neverland

Even just reading the first three chapters alone is enough to make you think of it as a place where people live, where people have stayed, perhaps for decades. It has that historical character that you would only find in those little details, in those scratched corners, and cluttered bookshelves. When you finally get to the gruesome scenes, it feels less a fact and more like a world-building error, not on the author's part, but on the idea that a children's book could ever go so dark, not even in the way of original Cinderella, but in the way only demons from a whole different modernized genre could ever fully capture the essence of. That disruption feels less like waves crashing against a beach or even a tsunami going inland. It feels very much like a distortion of genre, where the full commitment to the environmental storytelling that should have told a completely different story is pitted against something that isn't quite right, something that isn't quite normal, something that lacks the particular qualities that should ever come close to the kind of mind that inhabits a children's story's environmental lens. Artists spend decades of their life inhabiting something that will constrain them their whole life. When the author of The Giving Tree was pushed to make a children's book, you could tell they were not doing so along the lines of "cottage animal anthropomorphism" and contemporary realism, making it less abrupt when it was revealed that he didn't care for it. In contrast, The Promised Neverland's choice to "forget everything else" in their Grace Field House illustration while holding the demons at the back of their mind is sophisticated, refined artistry. This effect makes a lived-in, world-of-its-own quality where the story could have started and ended in Grace Field House without trouble. This makes "the truth of the house" even more properly unnecessary and, by extension, even more compelling.

Review Written on
April 7, 2026 I Get Stronger the More I Eat

I read the manga "I Get Stronger the More I Eat", and I remember that by the time it first released in Webtoon, it was downvoted a lot, or to be more accurate, it was given a low rating. By the time I last read this on the Webtoon application, it was on chapter 94 and August 24, 2023. Anyway, moving on to the actual story, when I read it, I found the first chapter mildly strange and confusing. However, it was interesting to see it all tie up to form the premise of a powerful villanous protagonist with no empathy for even the cute baby dragon, because he was using it as bait or as part of a diversion tactic of some kind in order to kill the dragon. Oh, wait, I remember now. The protagonist faked that the baby dragon was killed by an orc or troll or lizard or something in order to divide and conquer. I remember that he ate a slime at the start as well, and the comments were pointing out that it was obviously a parody or mockery of the protagonist "Rimuru Tempest" from the manga "That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime". To explain how I am going about this analysis, I am not going to go back and re-read it because seeing what I remember is part of it. I remember that the protagonist later met with this dude who knows that he comes from another world. It was shown that he came from another world and that he had the same powers from that previous world. The dude he met is from that previous world, and they were both transported here to this new world where the story takes place. Anyway, what happens next is that the protagonist and the dude team up in order for the dude to grow in power. The story is then comprised of the protagonist taking over the entire world, being brutal and villanous in a cold, calculating, and callous way, and then winning in the end, betraying even the dude. It is a weird story, and I read it primarily because the main character was so weird. The story was strange at times and introduced strange plot lines and background stories; however, I did not find it too bothering at all. But it was definitely lifeless, but that is the point of the main character. There was this occasion when the protagonist teamed up with this girl who was a priest but had a demon side to her, and she was a fan favorite for a time. But even she was discarded because she soon went against the protagonist. In the end, the protagonist beat everyone, and I think there was this god in the end. I do not remember the ending exactly, but I remember that the protagonist also had to fight a bad guy that was similar to him. The protagonist's powers was basically being able to use the powers of the things he eats, so he can use poison or something from a monster he eats. I do not know if there is anything left to say about it. It was pretty immersive enough, and I liked the scenes where he is this powerful creature who was being used as a part of the empire whereof the aforesaid dude was leader. In reality though, this dude relied upon the powerful protagonist to be this very powerful. In the end, the protagonist won, and that was the end. It was a vertical Webtoon comic like Tower of God, but it did not have the same level of immersion. But it is also because it is a vastly different story. If I compare it to anything else, I will only highlight its particular characteristics, not necessarily its faults. It chose to give a strong focus on particular characters, but there were occasions where the story felt large-scale. Though the choice of the art style and focus clearly made it much smaller in visual and narrative scope, even if the protagonist was taking on entire countries. 	

I should emphasize that there was emotional depth at times, because it did show that people were trying hard to defeat the protagonist, with animosity, revenge, and all kinds of emotions in their attempt. But it was not as complex, varied, and interconnected as many other stories. I felt that it chose to focus more on the protagonist's power rather than going into much depth. However, there were many occasions where the characters were given depth through dialogue, dynamics, relationships, and their connections to each other. I remember this one time when the protagonist decided to pretend to be this dragon person and befriended this guy whom he had wronged by killing his sister. I do not know why the author decided to have the protagonist do this, but the acting as the cheery, sociable, and friendly giant half-dragon half-person was done such that there were no signs that it was the protagonist in the eyes of the guy. So when it was finally revealed, the guy went crazy and still lost. I do not know why the protagonist had to be this calculatingly brutal so as to create the most powerful betrayal ever, but he did.

Power dynamics were a key theme of the story. I am reminded of the girl who teamed up with the protagonist. I remember that the protagonist helped her or something, and he even guided her on her path to becoming a monster. The protagonist did not show emotion, but it was portrayed as a mentor-student relationship. This dynamic changes as the story unfolds, but this, along with the deceiver-victim relationship between the protagonist and the guy who had lost his sister to him, epitomizes power dynamics.

To emphasize the theme, he does not only guide her. He manipulates her, turning her from priestess to enjoying the feeling of being a monster. He activated the monstrosity dormant within her.

Review Written on
July 21, 2024 Hotel by Boichi Toaru Ossan no VRMMO Katsudouki Dice Distant Sky Love Advice from the Great Duke of Hell Agravity Boys (Axed 🥀) The Legendary Moonlight Sculptor Solo Leveling (read it many years ago around 2018 or 2019 and loved it) To Your Eternity A Mark Against Thee Pie Game The Tide Terror Man Dr. Stone Isekai Nonbiri Nouka Chainsaw Man Killing Stalking Long Dream Apocalypse Live Moon You Pig Pen Blood on the Tracks The Brilliant Village Doctor The Gamer That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime unOrdinary Miracle Simulator The NPCs in This Village Sim Game Must Be Real! Fly Me to the Moon Mashle Tower of God We Never Learn The Quintessential Quintuplets My Perfect Girlfriend Domestic Girlfriend Beastars Aposimz Kenja no Mago (Wise Man's Grandchild) My Girlfriend Is a Zombie I'm a Middle-Aged Man Who Got My Adventurer License Revoked, but I'm Enjoying a Carefree Lifestyle Because I Have an Adorable Daughter Now Fight Class 3 The Lazy Lord Masters the Sword Horimiya The Rising of the Shield Hero Dungeon Reset The Ghostly Doctor So I'm a Spider, So What? Berserk of Gluttony Kuro no  Shoukanshi (Black Summoner) So Pure, So Flirtatious Here U Are Please Don't Bully Me Nagatoro They Say I Was Born a King's Daughter The Simple-Looking Sword Saint is Nevertheless the Strongest Skeleton Soldier Couldn't Protect the Dragon How to Treat a Lady Knight Right Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic I Became the Demon Lord so I Created a Dungeon and Spend Heartwarming Time There with Non-Human Girls Vinland Saga Hachi-nan tte, Sore wa Nai deshou! The Fiancées Live Together World Customize Creator Lonely Attack on a Different World The Reincarnated Prince Wants to Slack Off The Wolf & Red Riding Hood Eating Crab with a Yukionna Nano List Freaking Romance Melvina's Therapy Sweet Home Axed My Deepest Secret Boyfriend of the Dead The Four of Them True Beauty I Love Yoo Bluechair Tower of God Lookism LUMINE Adventures of God Just a bit of Gloom Ghost Eyes Everywhere & Nowhere How to Survive a Romance Fantasy Double Click The Dungeon Cleaning Life of a Once Genius Hunter The Knight Only Lives Today The Genius Murim Fitness Trainer Surviving the Game as a Barbarian Reincarnated Murim Lord Hand Jumper Tales of the Unusual Survival Diary The Ember Knight microHUNTER Questism Vampire Family Bibliomania Prison Lab The Advanced Player of the Tutorial Tower Omniscient Reader Auto-Hunting With My Clones A life through selfies The Retreats RE: Trailer Trash Ctrl+Z The Horizon If AI Ruled the World Flowar Principal's Livestream In The Bleak Midwinter; Delusion Solo Bug Player Dark Mortal The Greatest Estate Developer Weak Hero Orenchi no Maid-san The Warrior Returns The Archmage's Restaurant Rice Boy Goodnight Punpun Safely Endangered Through Dimensions Escape Room I'm the Grim Reaper PTSD Radio Homunculus Gantz A Man's Man (2026-01-03 to 2026-01-08, chapter 181) Ascendance of a Bookworm Jagaaaaaan Tomodachi Game World Trigger Golden Kamuy Twin Star Exorcists Undead Unluck Three Days of Happiness (also known as I Sold My Life for 10,000 Yen per Year) Vtuber Confucius I Am a Hero Emanon The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You My Girlfriend Is a Samurai A Bride's Story Her Summon My Home Hero Masamune-kun's Revenge Missions of Love (paired with Shawn Mendes & Leon Bridges' "Why" remix back in 2019 I Am My Wife The Reborn Young Lord is an Assassin My Avatars' Path to Greatness The Possessed Acting Prodigy The Patron of Villains My Girlfriend Nebula's Civilization Got Dropped into a Ghost Story, Still Gotta Work Artifact-Devouring Player The God of Improv The Otherworldly Genius Method Actor Ultimate Shut-in

Modern Clinical Psychiatry (10th ed.) Mixed-Species Groups of Animals Nutritional Strategy and Social Environment in Redtail Monkeys Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson Negative Dialectics by Theodor W. Adorno The Naturalist on the River Amazons by Henry Walter Bates Being and Time by Martin Heidegger The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard Prose of the World by Saikat Majumdar The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner San'ya Blues: Laboring Life in Contemporary Tokyo by  Edward Fowler The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel

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