Key Takeaways
- Fujimoto’s works contain explicit human elements, dark themes, and tragic characters.
- Fire Punch is deemed too extreme in content for adaptation by studios due to its gruesome and horrifying elements.
- While Chainsaw Man & Look Back were well-received adaptations, Fire Punch’s extreme nature makes it difficult to produce.
Chainsaw Man has been a worldwide success with its captivating and exhilarating manga and anime adaptation. And Look Back has now been adapted into a breathtakingly beautiful film. Those are two of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s works adapted into anime in spectacular ways. But there are still other works by him that the fans are dying to see in motion.
Fire Punch was Fujimoto’s first serialized work in Shōnen Jump +, and while it didn’t garner nearly the same universal praise as Chainsaw Man, it still holds a massive fan base that’s begging for a worthy anime adaptation. But perhaps Fire Punch’s story might just be too much for a studio to adapt and for audiences to stomach. Here’s why Fire Punch might never receive an adaptation.
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Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Style
The Human Element Exposed
Fujimoto’s works share one special thing in common: the explicit human element in the stories. He’s a genius at portraying people’s lowest emotions and both the light and dark of the human heart. His works are often made with a cinematic perspective on manga and his stories are filled with flawed and tragic characters. But another thing that defines his manga is the unrelenting tragedies and atrocities committed by the characters in them. His works, more often than not, reach readers’ hearts effectively and make them connect deeply with the characters, but surrounding those emotional beats there is a lot of extreme cruelty and incredibly dark tones that are not easy to digest.
Chainsaw Man is known for its explicit portrayal of political corruption, sexual abuse, and even cannibalism. While the super-powered entities of its world are not bestowed with classic action powers seen in most other action manga. The powers and abilities seen in Chainsaw Man are always deeply violent and disturbing. And the relentless use of sinister and haunting imagery that permeates through the overall quirky characters that inhabit the story.
Look Back might be the most lighthearted of Fujimoto’s works and, at the same time, it contains a dose of human darkness that creates the tragedy seen in the story. The anime film has both captivated and broken the hearts of the audience. One constant in Fujimoto’s works is a tragic and violent element.
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Fire Punch Might be Too Much
Too Dark Even for Fujimoto
Fire Punch takes place on a future earth that has been laid barren and frozen by the Ice Witch. She is one of many humans in this dystopian world who possess special abilities called Blessings. In a remote village live two teenage siblings, Agni and Luna, who have the Blessing of regeneration, and they feed the village with the meat of Agni’s severed arms that he then regenerates. One day, they are visited by a Blessed called Doma, who offers to take Agni to his home city, but after learning that the villagers survive on human flesh, he incinerates the village and all its inhabitants, including Luna. Agni’s left burning alive for eight years while his regeneration keeps him living but struggling with unbearable pain. As soon as he recovers his strength while still being set ablaze, he starts a journey seeking revenge against Doma.
It was so gruesome and I don’t get the point of it. But still that man kept burning through the duration of the movie. Without even realizing it, I found my hand was clenched in a fist.
Fire Punch was the first serialized manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto, and to this day it might be his darkest. The manga is filled with extremely dark themes and imagery, such as sexual assault, incest, cannibalism, human harvesting, child abuse, and psychological horror. The manga has been criticized for its use of unrelenting atrocities done by the characters, and while this is also an aspect seen in Fujimoto’s other works, Fire Punch might be the most extreme example of this.
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While anime has progressively become more violent and darker, studios are still hesitant to adapt such dark material. Berserk is one of the most famous and critically acclaimed manga of all time, and it is yet to receive a full adaptation of the story. And just like Fire Punch, Berserk is extremely dark and gruesome, which might be one of the reasons why it has taken so long for a proper adaptation to be made. With how industrialized anime has become in recent years, a project that is so easy to disturb audiences and put off a large portion of a demographic might be outside the realm of executives willing to greenlight a new anime.
There are more works by Tatsuki Fujimoto to be adapted into stellar anime, like Chainsaw Man or Look Back, but Fire Punch is exactly the type of story that executives are very hesitant to produce for an adaptation and even more difficult for general audiences to watch.
Chainsaw Man is an action-heavy shonen anime that follows Denji, a guy who fuses with a devil called Pochita. The show is based on a manga by Tatsuki Fujimoto.