”You’re starting to feel pretty normal about the situation we’re in, don’t you think?”
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Kengo Hanazawa
Translation: Kumar Sivasubramanian
English Adaptation: Philip R. Simon
Lettering: Steve Dutro
What They Say:
With Japan’s zombie outbreak in full swing, manga maestro Kengo Hanazawa shows readers how the monstrous ZQN creaturs begin to take over Taiwan before bringing us back to his main heroes. Our three key survivors must help each other heal up mentally and physically, as Hiromi’s mysterious affliction continues to evolve. Hideo and Yabu grow closer as the mysterious Cult of Kurusu spreads across the country. Now a major motion picture, this hit manga series is presented in a deluxe omnibus format, collecting two of the original Japanese volumes into each Dark Horse edition—to catch you up with the manga’s strangest zombie apocalypse quicker!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
I Am A Hero has always been a slow-paced manga, which probably explains Dark Horse’s decision to release the series in an omnibus format. Even with that in mind, though, the characters and plot revelations in the series move at a snail’s pace—doubly so when keeping in mind just how much happened last volume.
With Suzuki now embracing the use of his gun, and thus himself as a hero that deserves to be in the spotlight and save the day, you’d think the manga would progress at a swifter pace. But rather than maintaining the momentum the previous omnibus had set up, it looks like things are back to square one. Now having left the tyranny of the shopping center, Hideo and the still-zombified Hiromi are joined by the crass nurse Tsugumi “Yabu” Oda. Having met under slightly stranger circumstances while at the mall, their current mission of finding a safe space to tend to Hiromi’s bullet nail wound is used as a chance for the two to more formally get acquainted with each other.
Similar to the series’ earlier chapters where Suzuki acts rather absentmindedly, these moments between Suzuki and Oda are heavy in dialogue, but ultimately silly enough to prove decently entertaining. Oda’s blunt personality does not mix with Suzuki’s more timid nature, but it does create for excellent moments of banter. You want Suzuki to better assert himself especially when in times of crisis, and Oda works perfectly as the readers’ stand-in. She doesn’t coddle him by any means, but she is at least aware enough of Suzuki’s feelings to know that he shouldn’t be forced to put on a tough-guy act simply because he’s the only person of the group with an effective weapon. This dynamic in tandem with the more do-nothing moments as the group travels together composes the better moments of this volume—the two-page spread as they find enough change to use a lone vending machine is even funnier in context.
Suzuki and Oda’s car adventures are sandwiched between two side-stories. The first, involving two workers of a manga magazine taking reference pictures while in Taiwan shows just how far the ZQN virus has spread. At the same time, though, you feel little towards the two characters in these chapters as not only are they new to the series, but you eventually find out they’re pretty crummy people. Likewise, the latter chapters involving Kurusu gathering together the shut-in forum-posters was entertaining but ultimately lasted a bit too long. Author Hanazawa’s repeats his previous set-up of showing exclusively forum posts for pages at a time to a lukewarm effect. While the first time felt like a novel way to ease readers into an aside, this repeated use just felt more like a means to further plot-dump info on readers to ultimately lead into a cast of new characters that seem to serve as the new equivalents of the people at the mall. It’s not bad by any means, but for something omnibus length, it just feels like not much progress was made.
In Summary:
I shouldn’t be surprised by I Am A Hero’s slow pacing by this point, but I am. So much nothing happens over such a sizeable chunk of pages, and yet I’m invested enough in the core cast that I’m willing to keep powering through. Nothing story-wise is bad by any means, but I just wish Hanazawa wouldn’t stretch out moments for as long as he does.
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Manga
Release Date: January 23, 2018
MSRP: $19.99
