Fire Punch, Vol. 1

Wonderful illustrations.

I don't know. After the first volume, I'm going to have to say yes, but not for the normal reasons. The plot is bizarre, the characters are all sad and depressing, a lot of the dialogue is exposition to people who should already know what's going on, and the main character doesn't have much of a personality. Despite this, the unapologetically bleak world Agni inhabits makes me want to read more. Everything around him either freezes or burns. The people he meets are stupid at best and evil at worst. There doesn't seem to be any world to the eternal winter of the world. And there are no jokes at all. Most manga in this vein would use humor to lighten the mood, but any humor derived from Fire Punch is schadenfreude, with the only sort of comic relief character existing only as a witless punching bag for the cruelties of the world to get their hits in. So despite its somewhat weak start, I can't wait to see just how dark the life of Agni can become.