I am a Hero Omnibus Volume 1 (I Am a Hero, 1)

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Final note; some people have complained about the ending, I disagree. The ending is masterful. It's bitter, but also very sweet. Heido truly changed, and all shown in just the latter half of the last chapter. It is satisfying. Meaningful Name: The Alternate Character Reading for Hideo is why he keeps saying "I am a hero". Later we have Hiromi. The manga ended in a deeply moving and intelligent way. From the beginning to end, the main character represents cultural HERO of the enlightened age, Robinson Crusoe on his (mental) island. The main character's end and beginning are the same, but with a very meaningful difference emerged in between: all the other people from the city are gone to the collective world of ZQN. In a way, all the other people already were like zombies to him. The collective mind will keep on as one, without sacrificing two-for-the-sake-of-one, in contrary to what the main character keeps on doing. The manga sets the deep question about the meaning of civilization and culture, of individual and collective mind. The return-to-nature ending is a way of ending civilization and culture, in the collective consciousness which could be seen as the perfection of collective life. In the end the civilized-cultural technical individual keeps on doing his mechanical tasks: farming land, making weapons and killing animals to please his hunger: to sacrifice nature to himself. He only communicates with lifeless monuments and treats them like living beings, as does the civilized man of letters who keeps to himself and his books. Mechanical person is a schitzophreniac, who has lost his touch with other people and nature, and keeps on sacrificing it. In the end he is a punished by ZQN by abandoning him to survive on his own, because he's not worth rescuing from himself. The main character represents pessimism against mechanico-individual human culture, while the ZQN-collective represents optimism for the collectivo-natural animalism. This doesn't mean the manga is purely opting for the ZQN, since there is also the third medial option of the islanders: close-to-nature small community living, rising children, creating art and fishing with simple tools. This represents another kind of island-living, as opposed to the robinsonal city-heroism. The Robinson-Hero of mechanico-technical enlightenment is shown to be cut off from nature and communal ties to his fellow humans: he pointedly keeps on living in his city-wasteland, because his city originally already was a wasteland in his schitzophrenical individualism. The real being of this robinsonal hero is and always will be city-wasteland, not an island: he is an island in himself, and so his city already always was wasteland as the place void of other people, a deserted city-man in his habitat with his fields, guns, lifeless monuments and technical ego.

Kengo Hanazawa vie vision zombie-pandemiasta loppuun asti. Sarjan tapahtumat käynnistyvät hyvin, hyvin hitaasti eikä ensimmäisen pokkarin luettuaan voi kuin aavistaa mitä tuleman pitää. Mutta jo seuraavassa osassa siirrytään vauhdilla toimintaan tartunta-aallon levitessä ja paniikin kasvaessa joka puolella. Ensimmäisen osan viipyilevään ja yksityiskohtaiseen tunnelmointiin palataan kuitenkin usein, eikä toiminta (muutamia hyvinkin rajuja splatterkohtauksia lukuun ottamatta) hypi liikaa silmille. Kun ensimmäiset uutiset mystisistä hyökkäyksistä näytetään tv:ssä, herättävät ne vain lievää ihmetystä ja huvittuneisuutta. Vielä siinäkään vaiheessa, kun yksittäiset zombit ilmestyvät ihmisten keskuuteen, ei asia kiinnosta ketään. Vaikka kadulla kävelisi vastaan kuinka sairaan ja sekopäisen näköinen tyyppi, ohitetaan se vain tyynesti, kunnes tämä iskeekin hampaansa vastaantulijan naamaan. Ja silloinkaan muut kadulla kulkijat eivät kiinnitä tapaukseen huomiota. Voin kuvitella, että juuri näin japanilaiset oikeasti reagoisivat vastaavassa tilanteessa. Tämä onkin ensimmäinen kerta, kun zombie-pandemian leviäminen ja ihmisten reagointi epidemiaan on kuvattu oikein. Esimerkiksi viimeisinä elossa pysyvät hikikomorit, jo valmiiksi yhteiskunnasta eristäytyneet henkilöt. Mutta kuinka pitkään kukaan pystyy sinnittelemään omassa huoneessaan ruuan loputtua, kun oven takana (entiset) perheenjäsenet hakkaavat ovea?

アイアムアヒーロー ; 请叫我英雄 ; Tôi Là Một Người Hùng ; Jag är en hjälte (swedish) ; أنا بطل (Arabic)

Chekhov's Gun: With an actual gun. In plain sight. The wait shows the main character is far from an action hero, at best.

Spit Take: Oda breaks the news of her pregnancy to Hideo, while he is eating noodle. Cue Hideo coughing and spitting (off screen), and a strand of noodle hangs out of his nostril when he's done. The characters reflect the sharp juxtaposition of this story, the horror elements neatly situated against the (unintentional?)hilarious, over-the-top insanity of the initial outbreak.Sinä päivänä kun epidemia räjähtää käsiin, Hideolla on sattumalta mukanaan harrastushaulikkonsa. Japanissa kenelläkään ei ole aseita, joten zombeja vastaan taistellaan lähinnä veitsien ja pesäpallomailojen avulla. Tässä tilanteessa Hideon status nouseekin kohisten muiden silmissä, hän kun on ainoa, jolla on mahdollisuus ampua päälle rynnistäviä zombeja. Hideo on kuitenkin pelkuri, joka selviää hengissä lähinnä pakenemalla ja tuurilla. Mutta kun Hideon seuraan liittyy muita selviytyjiä, saa hän vihdoinkin syyn muuttua paremmaksi, rohkeammaksi ja urheammaksi ihmiseksi. Vasta kun yhteiskunta romahtaa, on hänellä mahdollisuus nousta oman elämänsä sankariksi. Character Filibuster: Suzuki has very strong ideas about the future of manga, and loves to philosophize about them at length. Played for laughs when it's clear nobody asked, and sometimes it's all in his head. The dead eventually do pop up in this book but it is not until much later into the story. The majority of the tension is knowing that these creatures will be introduced eventually, but the author brilliantly shows incredible restraint by making the reader wait for that to happen. Instead we spend some time witnessing our protagonist oblivious to the clues and signs that something bad is bound to happen. When the outbreak happens it is horrifyingly wonderful, I haven't been this wowed since the 28 Days Later films. This book does have lots of gore, so I would not recommend I Am A Hero for the squeamish or those who don't enjoy horror films. One thing that really impressed me is that all of the usual cliche Japanese goofball humor is missing from the book. We don't get the stereotypes that plague the majority of anime and manga fiction in this book. It was almost like the author saw the same boring patterns and opted to do something entirely new. Regardless it is a breath of fresh air and I love it.