I Am a Hero

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i haven't read very much manga I've read a few decently long series but as far as they go this one is actually really good for a majority of the time, it has weird moments especially earlier on but they dissipate after a while. This definitely has the scariest imagery out of any manga I've ever seen, the author is actually just amazing at drawing creepy visuals and I applaud him for it. He's also great at creating a sense of dread that lingers on because he's great at not pulling punches and it's horrible knowing any character could die at any time, sometimes it ... doesn't work great but overall it does it's job. Now getting to the final chapters is where my score gets kind of iffy because I'm gonna be honest they're a little weird and the ending is abrupt, it's not bad by any means but it could've been expanded much more than it did. The ending was still really sad for me though seeing our main character be in his situation. After reading the epilogue though I do feel as though it expanded enough for me to raise my score a little, it was a really sweet ending with some beautiful imagery and some emotional moments from our main character. I do really wish the author expanded a little more or kept the series going but I understand that he may not have wanted to, I just feel there was so much more to explore and he probably knew it. Overall worth a read if you like the idea of zombie stories, because out of the things I've seen I feel this is probably the best zombie story for manga to an extent.

I've been reading manga for more than 15 years now and never write reviews, even for absolutely terrible or fantastic manga. I'm making an exception here due to how long this manga is, and how great it is throughout 90% of it, but also how the ending impacted the story and overall quality.

This is less of a review and more of a warning to any would-be reader. The ending is objectively bad--it's not bad in a 'oh it's up in the air how a person interprets it kind of bad'-- it's bad in a man who calls his wife by his ex's name ... during intercourse sort of way. It's horrendously rushed and provides no answers or resolutions to anything that happened over the course of the entire manga; essentially, it feels as if there is no ending at all and had its serialization axed or the author died prematurely. If you can deal with a good manga but an abrupt ending (just along for the ride without a destination) then I'd honestly still recommend it, as it does a lot of things better in the survival/zombie front compared to other manga.

This was one of the most exhausting and unrewarding reads I have ever sat through. I really can't recommend I Am a Hero to anybody, even those who are okay with nothing but running from and killing zombies. With all due respect to the author, he had a really strong concept to start with and most of the characters were actually interesting, but really unfortunate pacing issues and out-of-touch artistic philosophy really hinders the series. Not to mention the plot that gets major traction only to land absolutely nowhere. You can only look at a double-spreader of a city landscape with zombies roaming around so ... many times before getting absolutely sick of it.

The only saving grace of this series, to me, is the art at least being consistently good... until the last volumes. Quite a few of the pages were clearly rushed and borderline unfinished or straight up anatomically incorrect near the end, but with how sour the ending already is for every other reason imaginable, I didn't even find myself caring. If you want a straightforward gory survival story with frequent cool, creepy, and/or pretty illustrations, then I guess I Am a Hero is an *okay* choice. But only okay. The pacing still makes even that aspect diminish substantially by the halfway point.

Many of the supporting characters were potent, yes, but way too many of them were completely dropped out of nowhere. Because Suzuki himself takes a backseat in the latter third of the plot, this feels reeeeally terrible sometimes. On top of the story about the zombies itself just... literally not being resolved at all, I cannot name a series I've read that's left me with larger dissatisfaction. It's almost as if the author imploded everything on purpose because he grew to hate what he made for some reason.

There is almost nothing to take away when finishing the read. I've read a few series that are loose-ended and/or aren't obvious with what exactly they stand for at the end (Blame! is the most obvious one that comes to mind), but I Am a Hero is anything but either of those things. The author somehow wrapped up everything with a clear ending while also not delivering on any of the previous setups at all. I do not feel there was anything to be gleamed from here at all. The series ends up not respecting itself, and at the end it doesn't bother to give the reader what they might've been hoping to stumble upon.

If you love this manga yourself, all the more power to you. I don't think it takes away from you as an enjoyer or critic of the medium. I simply cannot, in good will, give this the thumbs up to any prospecting people at all, and I am kind of appalled that something like this is even remotely close to an 8 in public score.

Edit: I'm re-uploading my review after reading some positive ones from across the web. I am even more appalled. This series was not scary at all. The scariest part was when Suzuki was having schizophrenic delusions in the first chapter, which almost never pop up in the story ever again afterwards. I would never call this a horror manga because of it. Also, "realism" is not a good basis for how well-written a series is. I thought we got over this as a collective people a few years ago. If anything, attempting realism almost always comes across as a superficial attempt to buff up how "mature" the series feels, but this manga is not even remotely realistic even outside of the zombie stuff, with the exception of a very small handful of characters. I cannot believe what I have read.

0/10 for a thoughtful read where you're expecting or hoping to absorb in any common literary techniques. 4/10 for a casual read if you just want to kill a lot of time with zombies.