Disclaimer: This entry contains spoilers for Fire Punch.
About
Agni Face is the name given to a memorable expression made by Agni, the main character of the manga series Fire Punch. In 4chan’s anime and manga board /a/, the face has been used as reaction image, exploitable template and for shitposting, often acccompanied by the words “LIVE” or “kino”.
Origin
Fire Punch is a manga series created by Japanese author Tatsuki Fujimoto, which ran on Shounen Jump+ from April 18th, 2016 to January 1st, 2018. The series, set in a post apocalyptic glacial world, follows Agni, a man with very high regenerative abilities who was set ablaze, and his path of vengeance to kill the man who murdered his sister and set him on fire. On May 21st, 2017, chapter 53 of the series was released on Japan. In it, Agni makes the expression after character Judah gets amnesia and starts thinking that she’s his sister (shown below).
Spread
During the following years, the series remained in relative obscurity, the page being posted in related discussions or threads in /a/. On March 10th, 2020, an anonymous user started to post the manga series in a storytime series of threads, which gained massive traction on the board (shown below, left). The success of the storytime would result on the creation of several threads, and the spamming of the page all over the board, on top of the creation of several pictures using the face as base by putting it over other characters (shown below, right).
On June 27th, 2020, an anonymous user submited a Yotsuba drawing of the face on a GET thread. The following day, a thread dedicated to the face was submited.
Various Examples
External References
Source: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/agni-face-live