Something to clarify since the post wouldn't make sense otherwise. I posted this on an anime group I usually go to, so maybe the post will be kinda confusing on some lines. Also my memory of the manga isn't that great, so bear with me if I got things wrong, mainly the motivations part. So here I am copy pasting the same post here.
A common topic you'll see me ranting all the time is about how Fire Punch is shit.
I've spent almost a year reading it, it had some really good moments and some really bad moments, tending more so to the latter.
I've always wondered, if it was a comedy, it would be a great comedy, but if it tried to be serious, then it was failing horribly. Somehow people thought it was the latter and also thought it was good, seeing it was nominated for some big awards.
In every chapter I ask myself what good the people are seeing in it, and maybe it's me that can't see further but the latest few chapters striked me as odd. There was a really big reveal, spoilers ahead.
The motivation of 2 of the main villains was brought up to be movies. The main antagonist during all of the manga just saw a shitty movie and since people knew no better in this world, he thought it was a way to live his life. One of the real villains in the manga motivation was to watch Star Wars.
From the middle towards the chapters we're sitting right now, movies were a big topic of the manga in this post-apocalyptic world. People need to believe in something and major characters chose movies. One of the main characters wants to film a shit b-class movie about the protagonist.
And then the idea popped up in my head. What if the actual manga is a b-class movie? Cheesy dialogue, somewhat decent action accompanied with a horrible plot.
Just like previously Mayoiga was acclaimed since "it was a comedy all along", a statement which I never fully agreed with, I thought Fire Punch might be the case like that.
Fire Punch is a shitty movie, I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of it the whole manga was being filmed or something. It would be so meta, it would be so self-conscious it would actually be a masterpiece. Not of story telling, but a certain uniqueness to it's narration rarely found in manga storytelling.
But this is but a thought passing through my mind, so far, it's still a shit manga, a shit manga I can appreciate.