A brief lecture in meme history: Agni pained face

 

This one right here. You might have seen it before, you might have not. Maybe wondered to yourself as to what the cinnamon toast bullspit this is.

 

I’ve been making memes for each and every blogpost, so I figured why not make a post about meme culture (because it sounded fun, okay, bear with me.)

 

This face – this god-awful cursed face – started spreading as a meme on 4chan and the continued to spread elsewhere. That’s all I’m going go into about 4chan because, frankly, I don’t want to talk about 4chan.

 

This meme originates from a shounen manga, Fire Punch. The mangaka (=manga author) is none other than Chainsaw Man’s mangaka Tatsuki Fujimoto. Fire Punch was his first longer manga, and he has done shorter stories even before that.

 

So, the question is: What is Fire Punch?

 

That’s a really, really good question, because most of the people who have read it are left confused, miserable, and maybe even baffled.

 

I’m seriously not exaggerating, when going though Fire Punch reviews the words, such as “unique,” “weird,” or “what the fuck did I just read,” pop-up way more than you’d expect.

 

The confusion Fire Punch stirred in its readers is explainable, so let me get into it. 

 

 

 

There will be SPOILERS now for the FIRST CHAPTER. And I’m going to add a trigger warning for DARK/DISTURBING THEMES here. You have been warned. Twice. (Nothing visual will be shown)

 

As I stated before, Fire Punch is a Shounen manga. Shounen Jump is a magazine that usually has mangas targeted at young boys, that’s also what “shounen” means in Japanese – a young boy. Good examples of their typical mangas are Demon Slayer and My Hero Academia. Characteristic to them is the hero journey of the main character. We also follow them along in a usually colourful, but also somewhat grim in its undertones, world.

 

Based on that description you would assume that Fire Punch is about a guy who punches people. With fire. Right?

 

Wrong.

 

Fire Punch starts its first chapter off with a premise of superpowers and a worldbuilding that could be used for a typical Shounen Jump story. The main character, Agni, lives in a world where something known as an “ice witch” has turned the world into a very ordinary Finnish winter. It’s freezing cold. Eveyone’s suffering. All the good stuff. There are “blessed” people who have been granted abilities. Agni’s is that he can regenerate. His sister, Luna, has the same gift, but hers is much weaker to his. Due to the sudden temperature drop, food is nowhere to be found.

 

So how would Fujimoto solve this problem?

 

Cannibalism. 

 

 

You heard me right. Agni cuts his limbs off, feeds them to the villagers, grows them back and repeats the cycle.

 

This is what Fujimoto decided to make for his first full-length manga. For some reason.

 

And we aren’t even at the whole “fire punch” part, yet.

 

Soldiers claiming to fight against the ice witch come to the village looking for gifted individuals. Doma, a gifted blessed with fire that never burns out, sets the village ablaze when they find human meat in the houses. Agni and Luna are set on fire and due to his sister’s weaker regeneration, Luna dies from the attack. With her last breath, as Agni is begging for his death, she says: “Live.” This is the beginning of Agni’s revenge journey where he wants to kill Doma for the murder of his sister. It is the only, and I mean only, reason that keeps him going. However, it takes him 3 years to learn to live with the pain of constantly burning and 8 years to control his regeneration.

 

Tl;dr Fujimoto wanted to explore how far you can take torturing someone who cannot die. That’s the premise. Lovely.

 

(Credit to u/sssssammy on r/FirePunch)

 

Due to his sister’s words and the beginning of his agony, the Agni pain face meme is also called “live”. But the meme panel in the manga comes much later, and to summarize it without too explicit spoilers, (Assuming anyone would want to read this trainwreck. Please. Just don’t.) Agni seems to have reached the very limit and is in the worst pain imaginable. He makes the face instead of crying and it twists his face in agony.

 

Then the internet took that and made it into a meme ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Thanks 4chan

 

It was year 2017 when the chapter released. On the 10^th of March, 2020 – the doomsday – an anonymous user started to post on 4chan. This made eventually led to the face being put on top of other characters and it exploded from there. 

 

(credit to u/-gawdlee on r/Chainsawman)

 

This meme made Fire Punch gain popularity, during which time Chainsaw Man was releasing. All of this traffic made Chainsaw Man get even more popular. And then people started making Agni pain face memes for Chainsaw Man. And then Fire Punch started gaining popularity. We’ve come a full circle, people. A full circle!

 

So, I made some too because his face is funny af-

 

Here's headpats for Agni to make up for the emotional torture I made him go through with my memes (like that makes up for anything):

As final parting words: I do not recommend this manga for anyone. And I mean it. It has a trigger warning for literally everything there is, and I AM NOT KIDDING. Please believe me. Fujimoto needs some serious help.

 

 

 

 

 

Sincerely, someone who finished Fire Punch and what the fuck did I just read.

 

Here's my Aki sketch. That's the mood after finishing this shi-