Manga Review - I am A Hero - An Insight into the Aftermath of a Zombie Outbreak

It's been a while since I wrote a manga review since reading manga is a bit inconvenient for me. I feel a bit awkward reading manga out in public, especially when there are a lot of people around. And when I'm at home, I rather just do things that I usually cannot do whilst on the move. Anyway onto the review! I Am A Hero is a manga about that revolves around a mangaka in a zombie outbreak, and the readers witness the treacherous journey he takes to survive.

For me, the story starts off strong and it leads on well, developing the main character - Hideo, from someone who is a "wimp" to a man. Our main character is surprisingly level-headed in apocalyptic times and I guess this reflects his character and how he is not selfish (EVEN despite having hallucinations). I like the situations Hideo is placed in, and it is interesting to see how he would handle it. To be honest, I would probably be even wimpier than him if I was in the same situation, and that's probably due to my lack of gun shooting skills. I really find no fault in the story telling and the plot progression in the earlier and mid chapters. Perspectives from other groups of survivors were interesting too, but I personally felt that it wasn't really necessary. The characters are all realistic and would act in a similar way if they were real life too.

What I am unsatisfied about is the later chapters, where Hideo is essentially alone again and his companions have all combined with a being that absorbs the zombies. This concept of a being that absorbs zombies to create a collective mind is very weird. I guess the author wanted to do something interesting, and that's fine. The problem was that it was never explained why this happened and I was disappointed about that. I was hoping for an ending that resolved many of these questions about the zombie virus, but we are left with an open-ended ending where we see Hideo still defending his life from the zombies. To be honest, I'm not mad with this ending - I'm more disappointed at the lack of explanation about how the virus came to be, and how these beings that merge zombies to become a collective mind, came to be. For me, and a lot of people, endings are very important because it solidifies a conclusion for the story and leave as little unresolved questions as possible. Another thing they didn't really answer was the zombie that saved Hideo from other zombies, but I assume that this was due to the zombies' ability to control itself, like Hiromi.

If you aren't comfortable with realistic themes like sex, there are a couple of scenes that hints at female survivors satisfying the male ones - but if I remember correctly, that was only shown once. The only other sexual components were with Hideo and his two female companions. It was a bit weird to have an affectionate relationship between a minor and a 30+ man, but then again, this wasn't fully delved into so that was fine. The manga is not afraid to show the grotesque nature of the zombies, and their hunger to infect and kill, so you can be guaranteed that there will be scenes involving blood. The manga drawing is not bad - there is attention to detail, especially when it came to drawing the zombies. The author also drew beautiful backgrounds too and he did it consistently for 264 chapters.

Overall, this manga was somewhat disappointing because I thought this was a must-read for zombies manga fans. Even though the story was well done and there was good plot progression from the start to until the middle-half part of the manga, the ending and the lack of explanation for the origins of the zombie virus was disappointing. I felt that there was a need for an explanation because they suddenly introduced a being that could be controlled by certain zombies and also had a collective mind to make a decision. It kinda showed that these zombies aren't really zombies after all. If you were expecting an amazingly explained manga from start to finish, you would be disappointed, just like I was.

However, it's not the worst zombie manga I have read - it's definitely decent, but it can lead to a sour taste in one's mouth if they had too high of an expectation.