It’s all in the Presentation: Aposimz vs Fire Punch

I recently had the displeasure of reading the first chapter of the manga Aposimz, by Tsutomu Nihei. A brief summary of event should be enough to show why this first chapter was so bad. The world is one of a harsh eternal winter. A young man plays a very important role in keeping his village alive, which barely scrapes by. The young man has an interaction with a love interest. The village he lives at gets attacked the next day by an empire, killing most of the people in the village. The young man gets a new power and seeks revenge for his village. Anyone familiar with anime and manga can see how incredibly generic this story is, and can tell that the writing is just awful.

I recently had the pleasure of reading the first chapter of the manga Fire Punch, by Tatsuki Fujimoto. A brief summary of events should be enough to show why this first chapter was so great. The world is one of a harsh eternal winter. A young man plays a very important role in keeping his village alive, which barely scrapes by. The young man has an interaction with a love interest. The village he lives at gets attacked the next day by an empire, killing most of the people in the village. The young man gets a new power and seeks revenge for his village. Anyone familiar with anime and manga can see how powerful of an opening this is, and can tell there is something special here.

Wait a second… That’s the same summary for both series. Maybe a brief summary of events is not enough.

Right off the bat, both series start with narrated exposition explaining the world. This isn’t a great start for either series since it isn’t presented in the most interesting way, but neither section lasts very long. In Aposimz, the world is a giant mass of machine and is only cold on the surface. In Fire Punch, the world is cold because of the Ice Witch. Then the main character is introduced. Aposimz introduces a few other side characters along with the main character, taking focus away from Etherow, the main character, but also not really fleshing out anyone else either. The group of characters are out for combat training, but end up scavenging for food. They see some people with frame disease, which makes people like machine zombies. Fire Punch, on the other hand introduces the main character by having his arm chopped off by his sister. Luckily the siblings are blessed, which means they have powers, so they can both regenerate, though Agni, the main character is much quicker than his sister at this. Agni and his sister, Luna are the only people introduced here, so they get more focus, and are introduced in a much more unique way.

Etherow’s group sees a regular frame (machine humans who keep their will) girl being chased by the evil empire. They end up saving the girl, and killing the empire soldiers. The girl has a regular frame that she wants Etherow’s group to keep safe, and she turns into a much weaker version of herself. This part is mostly setting up things later, and there isn’t really an equivalent in Fire Punch, because it doesn’t need one. The set up is all embedded elsewhere in the story.

Etherow returns to his village and lets everyone know what happened. He talks with the regular frame that protects his village about what happened, and everyone tells Etherow not to blame himself even though the empire will now attack their village. They plan to move out tomorrow, so Etherow goes to take a bath and sees a girl in his group naked. It’s very obvious here that the village will be attacked soon, making a lot of this section tiresome to get through. The part with the girl is also pointless and just sets up a harem for the story.

Meanwhile, Agni goes around his village distributing his arms so that the villagers (everyone other than Agni and Luna are elderly) can have food to survive. They see a villager who died for refusing to eat human flesh, and the priest of the village has a funeral for him, stating that no matter what, one must always live. The priest remembers picking up Agni and Luna after they were found alone, in the cold. When they are alone, Luna tells Agni that she wants to have a baby together, to which Agni is understandably uncomfortable. This section shows how the villagers live (much more than just they scavenge for food, which is all that happens in Aposimz), shows that there is a religious backdrop for the world, and establishes a weird relationship between Agni and his sister. Everything is important, and though it’s also obvious that something bad will happen, there is no attempt to flesh out anyone except Agni and Luna, so it doesn’t feel like time is being wasted.

The evil empire attacks Etherow’s village, killing many people who had attempts to flesh them out, but weren’t given enough focus to care about. The love interest survives of course. Etherow is wounded mortally by a regular frame who hilariously exposits that he is the second strongest frame in the empire. Etherow is saved by the girl regular frame his group saved earlier. He goes against all odds and becomes a regular frame by merging with the girl. He and the evil regular frame attack each other with powerful energy blasts at the same time, and Etherow is left almost dead at the end, but he escapes. The battle is bombastic and not a very good set up for future events as Etherow, the complete amateur holds his own against the second strongest person in the empire. It makes it seem like there will be no challenge. The fight is confusing because the evil regular frame and Etherow both fight in armored forms that look similar, and the powers of a regular frame are the same for all regular frames, so there is no variety. Etherow also feels like a chosen one character because he gains a power that is supposedly statistically unlikely. Etherow obviously seeks revenge and feels responsible for the attack, but everything was established too quickly, so it feels hollow.

A new evil empire, trying to defeat the Ice Witch goes to Agni’s village, searching for blessed to recruit. When they see that the villagers are cannibals, they don’t look for an explanation, and instead a blessed among them attacks the village, burning everything in sight. Agni of course, survives, though his body is constantly on fire. He thinks about dying to join his family and soon his sister, who can’t regenerate fast enough. His sister’s dying words tell Agni to live, and he remembers the priest saying to always live. Agni spends eight years burning and learning to move, but he is able to move and seeks revenge. He encounters a blessed rounding up people for the empire and defeats them. Agni, with his eternally burning body in a world of ice, doesn’t encounter the person who destroyed his village, but he sets off to look for him. Agni does gain a new power here, but he already had one, and he had to suffer a lot to gain that power, so it feels less like a chosen one story and more like a story following someone special. The love interest dies, so there isn’t any chance of a harem being built, there is a small arc for Agni about living, and a gray world is set up with multiple factions. Of those that die, only Luna has any characterization, so the massacre feels less like an event to get the reader to care, and more like a motive for the main character. Agni also doesn’t fight the blessed who destroys the village (in fact his attack isn’t even shown, creating more mystery about him).

The art in Aposimz is better overall, there is more style, characters are consistent, and it feel very bleak, but the art doesn’t help the experience when the writing is so bad. Fire Punch doesn’t have bad art, it’s gritty, but a little inconsistent. It’s writing is much better though, and makes for a much more enjoyable first chapter. The difference is clear when the names of the two main characters are taken into account. Etherow doesn’t have any clear meaning while Agni is the Sanskrit word for fire. There is a lot of care put into Fire Punch to make a great story, while Aposimz has very little care, instead playing tropes and cliches very straight while doing nothing new or interesting. Both series are edgy, but Fire Punch is so much more interesting and has a unique tone to it, while Aposimz ruins it’s bleak tone of the world with generic tropes. The first chapter of Aposimz is 1.5 times as long as the first chapter of Fire Punch, wasting even more time, and making Fire Punch even more impressive to accomplish a similar set up in a much better way with fewer pages.

It’s important to note that this is just the first chapter of each series, and how things ultimately end up could be very different. Still, one series I don’t know if I’ll ever read, and one I greatly look forward to reading.