| Title | : | I Am a Hero Omnibus, Volume 2 (I am a Hero Omnibus, #2) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1506700195 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781506700199 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 512 |
| Publication | : | Published October 25, 2016 |
"I Am a Hero is probably the greatest zombie manga ever. It has the slow buildup of a psychological horror manga, but when the zombies hit, they hit hard, and the manga accelerates into volumes-long fight-or-flight sequences that seem like they'll never stop." -Jason Thompson (Manga: The Complete Guide)
I Am a Hero Omnibus, Volume 2 (I am a Hero Omnibus, #2) Reviews
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This is an odd series. Some scenes are super intense followed by long stretches of nothing happening. The main character is mentally ill and suffers from hallucinations. I don't find that element of the story very compelling. There's very little indication what really happened and what was in Hideo's mind. There's a lot of body horror in this. The zombies walk and run in different ways often scurrying across things like bugs. It's creepy as all get out. I would like to see some rules established of how zombies can be killed in this world as it's not clear that a head shot is the way to kill them.
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After the slow buildup in the first omnibus, things ramp up like crazy in this book! Hideo is finally fully aware of the danger surrounding him. He tries to head away towards lesser populated areas and soon finds himself, in all places, in the Aokagihara forest! The artwork is amazing and this omnibus is packed with several double page spreads. I cannot wait for volume three!
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I don't know. To be so clueless, to not have a plan if there was an emergency, an earthquake, a fire or a flood. Is it just a story thing? I live in California where we have Earthquakes, fires that wipe out towns and floods and mudslides we are constantly reminded to have a plan, we are reminded to have days or weeks of food and water on hand. While at University our TTRPG club we had plans to defend building or even the campus from zombies/aliens/invaders/monsters. To have characters that clueless in this manga is frustrating. Anyway....
This omnibus was a quick read, there was little dialog for chapters on end or just the male character rambling incoherently. There are 3 pages of info (footnotes if you will) at the end to explain what is going on or cultural things. Neither character we are following have eaten in more than a day now. Well see how this story goes. -
Una maravilla. Le da mil patadas a TWD.
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Much better than the first volume. Character development is happening and I'm enjoying the art style. This volume also discusses the Suicide Forest which was very interesting!!
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Hideo meets Hiromi...
Second book starts a bit slow but things are getting faster and crazier in the second half.
Hideo is still super-awkward and way too polite despite the world is going straight to hell. Really looking forward to see the chemistry between Hideo and Hiromi. -
I like how awkward Hideo is. He is definitely a likable protagonist. It is very amusing how he continues to constantly try to be polite and not break the law despite the fact that things are all weird. This manga also manages to make me feel bad for the zombies, like or when Hiromi is also a great and I love that she is a realistic female character who has her own struggles to overcome. I am so glad that she I look forward to reading the third omnibus, if only I didn't have to wait so long for it.
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3.5 stars. Better than Volume 1. Story is building. More zombie action than the last. Artwork is amazing.
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Four stars in general, four and a half for a zombie story.
The author took his sweet time introducing the zombie aspect of the narrative: it happens at the very end of the first volume. But he had the right idea, because that allows his characters to react in idiosyncratic ways to the all too common threat of being chomped to death by a diseased pseudo corpse. Spoilers for the previous volume and for the plot developments to come: the protagonist visits his girlfriend’s apartment only for her animated corpse to attempt to smooch her boyfriend to death through the apartment’s door. The author presents his version of the zombie apocalypse: it’s a virus that manipulates its host, alive or not, to infect the nearest person. It also potentiates the host’s agility and endurance: even diseased old people end up jumping from victim to victim. The most interesting aspect of the infection is that it makes the hosts lose their minds in a realistic way: they end up mumbling phrases that relate to whatever they might have been worrying about during the last few days, or the kind of stuff they used to repeat during their day to day lives. The most poignant examples come in the next volume, so I won’t mention them here, but the fact is that the hosts manage to retain some subconscious level of awareness while the virus hijacks their motor systems. During this first scene of the protagonist's girlfriend attempting to infect the guy, even though she’s grabbing the protagonist by the hair and even pulled his head through the broken mailbox, she had the subconscious presence of mind of knowing that she would not be able to prevent herself from biting the protagonist to infect him, so she proceeded to bite the edge of the door first to the extent that it destroyed all her teeth. By the time the virus had the chance to force her to bite his hand, she couldn’t break the skin, and therefore he remained uninfected.
The protagonist’s reaction to his girlfriend’s state pays off all the setup: we know him as a schizophrenic that has trouble telling apart his delusions from reality, and we also have witnessed the girlfriend being a mean drunk. He believes that he’s imagining her looking like a corpse, and that she’s trying to tear his scalp off because she’s had a few too many drinks. The whole scene is beautifully done both in the horrifying visuals, the black humor inherent to a zombie attempting to pull her boyfriend through a mailbox while he apologizes for whatever he might have done wrong, and the sadness of realizing that this poor woman’s simple life got destroyed by this pseudo Coronavirus microdemon. This scene sets up what the story is going to be from now on: regular people straight out of a depressing slice-of-life story but that have to deal with their society imploding in a zombie apocalypse. There are no heroes here, just regular, sad people pushed beyond their breaking points.
The protagonist ends up chopping off his girlfriend’s head. He’s in shock, and hasn’t been able to process the severity of the situation, but he knows that he’s done something that the police would likely end up sending him to jail for, so he leaves a confession note (“I don’t think I caused my girlfriend’s death, but I’m sure I’m the one who severed her head”) and decides to visit the local police station. We witness the mayhem around him as he barely escapes a bunch of zombies. In real life, a schizophrenic with such a flimsy connection to reality would die in the first five minutes, but we wouldn’t have a story in that case. The remainder of the Japanese population are still locked in that initial state of “why are you munching on my cheek, mom?”, before they snap out of it and begin massacring any living being they suspect might have gotten bitten.
This is one of those stories in which the people involved have never heard of zombies. Despite how many zombie apocalypse stories I’ve consumed, I haven’t decided if that improves or hurts the narrative. It would, however, probably damage the poignant moments in which someone might attempt to save his or her obviously zombified loved one.
The protagonist witnesses the police getting chomped by random zombies, so he changes his mind and decides to go to work at his manga studio. In another great sequence we get the payoff to the circle of illicit sex and jealousy. As a reminder, the main mangaka all the assistants worked for, despite being married and having children, was fucking the only female assistant. When the protagonist enters the studio he finds the zombified sensei naked from the waist down and bleeding from the hole in his groin caused by the zombified female assistant having ripped his genitals out. The forty something year old assistant I mentioned in the previous review is standing around, happy to have the opportunity to beat his boss to death with a baseball bat, which he proceeds to do. He reveals that he had been tailing the female assistant, only to discover that she was coming back to the studio to not only fuck the boss, but also another male assistant. Enraged, as the others were turning into zombies he took the opportunity to massacre all involved. It’s not clear whether all involved were zombified before the forty year old assistant killed them, nor who did the female assistant in, who is shown in a panel dead with her hands tied, her throat slit and a knife stuck in her thigh. The protagonist, an awkward schizophrenic that usually avoids interacting with people, is careful to avoid triggering the forty year old assistant, a bitter, resentful person who has just found out that he can solve his immediate problems through indiscriminate murder. To this guy’s credit, however, he softens up to the protagonist, and treats him as a sidekick that should remain alive.
At that moment, the zombified, bloated rotting corpse of the female assistant staggers out of some other room. Her drawn depiction was disgustingly horrifying; the people involved in creating these horrors have done a fantastic job so far, you couldn’t ask for more. The forty year old assistant tells the protagonist to flank the corpse and rekill her with a cutter as he takes the opportunity to enact revenge on the woman for having refused to fuck him. In one of my favorite moments so far, the woman grabs the bat, shoves it in her mouth and licks it as if it were a dick, a brilliantly deranged example of how the zombies retain a subconscious drive from what they had been interested in during their last days. The protagonist, horrified, can’t force himself to stab the corpse. The forty year old assistant berates him, paying off some of the elaborate setup, saying that he again failed to take advantage of the opportunities other people prepared for him, and that’s how he ended up working as an assistant after having gotten a manga published. In the end they explode the corpse’s head by making her chomp on a spray bottle and blowing it up.
They leave the apartment and run through the chaos while deciding what comes next. The forty year old assistant goes on a tirade about how the social butterflies, all those who had succeeded in this society because of how easy on the eyes they were and how many connections they had, would be the first to fall [which is pretty much what happened during the black plague(s) that killed off half of Europe (and that also came from Asia: at what point do you realize that there is stuff you shouldn’t eat?): people used to get involved in any kind of microsocieties, guilds and community events, but after the plague seemed to transmit as easily as just being in the line of sight of an infected person, mostly the lucky and those who could stand to isolate themselves survived. And their descendants, those carrying the antibodies against microscopic nightmares, would end up erasing from history in some areas as many as 99% of the American natives]. After this apocalypse passes over, the forty year old assistant proposes, the very introverted and the hermits will inherit the earth. They decide to escape the city by taking a train, although locking yourself during a zombie apocalypse in an enclosed space along with a bunch of people seems like a terrible idea. As they were climbing the stairs to the station, a random zombie girl bites off two fingers of the forty year old assistant. While getting chomped by some zombies, he claims that it’s the first time in his life that he’s felt alive. Suddenly a random airplane hit-and-runs his head.
The protagonist gets on the train. The passengers on his wagon are oblivious to the world falling apart, and they don’t believe the calls they get on the subject. At that point it was stretching the suspension of disbelief: there are plumes of smoke rising from the city from the crashed airplanes and several fires, and they only have to look at the landscape to see people getting pursued by zombies. The protagonist cools off. He thinks about his deceased girlfriend, small moments he never properly appreciated, like her calling him to come over and eat together a meal she prepared for him. As he breaks down in tears, we see that someone in the next wagon has gotten zombified, and after tearing through the locals, one of them is attempting to enter the protagonist’s wagon.
I think that’s where the volume ended. I’m having a blast so far. I wasn’t sold on the protagonist being a mostly unlikable mentally ill person, but you feel his vulnerability in the middle of the mayhem, and you get to sympathize with him a bit. -
I have mixed feelings about Kengo Hanazawa's I Am a Hero, Volume 2. On one hand, there are some exceptional artistic scenes and some very funny moments. On the other hand, not much narrative progression happens and I think quite a bit of subtext is lost in translation.
Let's discuss the bad things to get them out of the way.
At this point, I have read 2 of the I Am a Hero omnibuses and I have the same complaint about both books: the first half of each omnibus is kind of boring. We get mostly scenes that show character development and/or background in the first part of each omnibus. Towards the end, we get some plot movement, but I'm left wondering if it is enough to keep me interested for much longer.
I hate to say the heavy focus on characters is boring, because that isn't quite the right word. Due to this being a work translated from Japanese, I know I'm missing a lot (if not all) of the cultural significance, and this leaves me with a sense of not quite getting a grasp of everything. So, its more like forced indifference than it is boredom.
So, not much happens in this second omnibus, but we are introduced to a new character: Hiromi, who is a young schoolgirl that ran into Hideo in a forest. The translation notes in the back of the book very kindly tell me:Hideo and Hiromi have names that evoke the word "hero."... Hiromi sounds like "HERO-me," and people close to her life before the outbreak would have called her Hiro or Hiro-chan for short.
So I'm excited to see how their characters develop in the next volume.
Let me talk about once scene that really impressed me in this book. Hideo, our protagonist, is crazy. Like schizophrenic, hallucinating, socially inept, and weird kind of crazy. During one of his first interactions with Hiromi, Hideo is freaking out (which seems to be his baseline status) and there is this one page of cells that I found to be artistically beautiful.
So the page shows Hideo trying to explain something to Hiromi and he can't bring himself to look her in the eyes because, I believe, he knows he sounds crazy and he also knows that he is very crazy. So the artwork shows only the lower half of Hiromi's face because that is what Hideo sees when he looks at her. The middle of the page shows Hideo's shifty, downcast eyes and clearly communicates his awkward anxiousness. Hiromi tells him he should look someone in the eyes when talking to them, so we see the framing of the cells shift to include Hiromi's entire face as Hideo looks up.
I know I'm not doing the artwork justice in describing this scene, but just trust me. It was a really cool moment with lots of information conveyed through both text and through the visuals. It is exactly this thing that fascinates and excites be about manga and graphic novels. They are like watching paper movies.
There is another really cool scene that I thought was drawn so well. I know I will not do it justice, but let me try to describe it. So Hideo and Hiromi run into this zombie in the woods whose neck is caught on a rope tangled in a tree. Hiromi doesn't quite get that they are in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, so she has been struggling with accepting that all these zombies are no longer people.
As readers, we know that the zombies seem to hold on to some part of themselves even as zombies. Hiromi doesn't know this, so she thinks the zombies are still people when the say and do things that indicate they are, in some way, still human. So she sees this zombie reaching for his backpack and looks inside to see what he is reaching for. She finds a photograph of the man and his family and hands the picture to the zombie. The zombie, clutching the photograph, drops to his knees, causing his head to rip off in the rope that was around his neck.
I thought this was such a cool scene! And the look on Hiromi's face after it happens is really poignant. And then Hideo's act of kindness is wiping blood from her face... it was just so damn good!
Despite all the good I did find, I'm still struggling with I Am a Hero's narrative. Things just move soooo slowly. I've decided to read one more of these omnibuses, but if the third one still has the same pacing issues as the first two, I think I will call it quits on the series.
I thought this one was average. I rated it 3 out of 5 stars.
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This book continues to make me put in down in parts just to give it a second to sink in with each new scenario the main character finds himself in. The art work really brings home the emotional stress he's going through.
Spoiler alert: There's one panel in the middle section where he's stuck in the "Sea of Trees" in Japan and he's not sure if there's really ghosts in there or not. He's fighting his mental-illness based hallucinations all the while trying to keep an eye out for actual zombies and not sure what monsters are real or not. As he lays paralyzed with fear at the heart of the deep dark forest his phone (and only source of light) starts to slowly die. The way Hanazawa illustrates those slow but detailed page by page panels as you see the cell phone light die is absolutely breathtaking and really drives the scene home. He has a way of highlighting parts of his books with those page wide panels that absolutely suck you into the scene and feel for the character whether you like it or not. I'm excited to see the third installation and have it on hold at my library when it comes out. -
Great series, and I eagerly look forward to the third omnibus volume.
This volume is more zombie-centered than was the first, which I thought wasn't necessarily a zombie manga (or at least something defined primarily in that manner). -
I'm so bored of zombies. This book has surreal zombies and Japanese horror. So i give this book some credit for making zombies interesting again. A fun book and series.
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Volume 1 of I Am A Hero is a tough act to follow, and this volume doesn't quite eclipse or even equal it, but it's not bad.
One thing they did keep consistent between volumes was Hideo's anxious delusions. This helps set a mood of "can I believe in what I'm seeing" for the reader at times.
We do get introduced to a new character halfway through the book. They're OK, though not as interesting as Hideo or a few of his acquaintances from back where he lived.
We move out of the city and into a bit of a woodsy area this chapter. The setting goes with sort of the mysterious nature of what may be lurking, as it's shaded darkly, and the trees + cover are tangled in crazy formations. Nice setting, though there's a lot less movement in this chapter. It probably won't feel as adventurous as part 1. -
Segundo volumen y se acabó. Paso de seguir, eah.
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Sin duda supera al primero , tiene un final que te deja con ganas de seguir con el siguiente tomo.
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Credibly creepy.
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The slow burn of this series continues in this omnibus, as a good 70% of the plot here has the protagonists finding their way through a forest. This does give us a lot of time to get into their heads, but what we see isn't always likable.
I guess I should start by elaborating on the fact that I've mentioned multiple protagonists. While wandering through the woods, Hideo crosses paths with a high school girl named Hiromi--and let me tell you, I'm already liking her far more than I like Hideo. Hiromi is surprisingly strong-willed, resourceful, and courageous; sometimes she makes decisions that aren't the wisest ones, but she always follows through with them. By contrast, this omnibus paints Hideo as a cowardly misfit. We already knew he was a social outcast, but his complete lack of backbone is an unpleasant revelation. There are a handful of times when he shines (such as giving instructions as to the right way to hold/fire a shotgun), but a lot of the time, his cowardice is downright unpleasant.
At first, his fear is almost excusable, because it's clear he's clinging to any shred of normalcy he can find, to try and shield himself from the reality of his situation. These instances fluctuate between the understandable (Hideo not wanting to aim a gun at a zombie on the subway, because taking his shotgun out of its carrying case in public is a violation of firearm laws), to the downright ridiculous Where he starts becoming an unlikable character is when he meets up with Hiromi. She's half his age, and is somehow more responsible, dependable, and level-headed than Hideo is. It makes her a great character, but significantly lessens Hideo in my eyes.
That said, it's Hideo's constant hand-wringing that makes me give this volume 3 stars. Hopefully he has some character growth soon, otherwise this series is going to become a little hard to get through.
As a side note, I have no idea why the cover of this omnibus has penguins in the background. The characters never go to a zoo, or anything like that, so it's just weird. -
The sequel ramps things up quickly as Hideo outruns his zombie girlfriend and coworkers from the first omnibus edition. He now finds his way in the “suicide forest.” This is a famous and creepy forest in Japan, and it was cool/perfect to see its inclusion in this story. The ideal setting for such a story! There’s some gnarly art here, very striking with some of the zombie attacks and whatnot. Being that there are 11 omnibus volumes, this one naturally ends on a cliffhanger and made me want to read volume 3 even more.
The best thing about manga, or these books in particular, they don’t take long to read! Being that text is mostly minimal compared to the art, I can blow through these in a day or two even with a busy work schedule. It’s been ideal for my busy schedule that I can still read and enjoy reading even though I don’t have much time.
Finally, this volume really hits the news regarding they zombie virus spread. It’s now we’ll known and news outlets are reporting on it, mandating people to stay home and away from big crowds. Eerily Covid-19-esque… sort of a timely read this series has become! -
I enjoyed this volume so much more than 1. Not only was the action more intense and interesting, I found there were less boring and confusing slogs to get through that seem to be the biggest complaint from readers. I feel like the readers really get to see the significance of the main character's mental illness (still unspecified, but he is paranoid, especially of the paranormal, and hallucinates), especially in the forest-scene (). His break down scene where he is finally alone and no longer running on pure survival adrenaline was pretty scary, but ended with a pleasant surprise. Another character comes to join his party as the situation around them continues to devolve into chaos. I'm particularly enjoying the depiction of people falling ill to the zombie infection and how it is sometimes a slow burn and at other times a very quick change. I'm really interested to see if his mental illness comes to light at some point soon, and how the relationship with the new character develop.
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Okay so I will say that this 2nd omnibus was not as great as the 1st. The first omnibus blew me away and slammed my face in the door repeatedly, this one didnt have that same feel at all. Hideo is still funny and so so Japanese. By that I mean dude is literally apologizing to undead when he rushes by and pushes them over lol. But it just felt like this one was lacking a lot of what I loved so much in the first. And there was also a lot more of those parts where characters were acting a certain way or saying things that I had no fucking clue what they were talking about. It felt like the writer was adding a lot of inside jokes that only like him and his brother or something would understand if you get that feeling. I wonder if a lot was just lost to translation?? It almost feels like images are missing at times, I doubt they are though.
Also I'm quite disappointed that the cover lied to me! I didn't see a single penguin.
I still definitely plan to continue reading the series, but I won't be continuing with as much gusto as previously expected. -
(((I am fairly new to reading manga. I've read some in the past (One Punch Man, Mob Psycho 100, much of Junji Ito) but I am by means well-versed or knowledgeable about the genre. But I have problems with some of the other manga I've tried -- see below.)))
This is a weird book, a weird series.
I enjoyed this one maybe a little more than the first.
And I'm digging the zombie shit, the way the turn, the way they act once they've turned -- they still seem to keep a bit of themselves once they're zombies, uttering phrases they've said while alive, etc. All that stuff is okay.
But I cannot stand the characters. The way they talk, mostly about women and sex. It's pretty gross.
Cringey is a word I hate to use...but it fits (it's the same reason I stopped watching the Chainsaw Man anime after a few episodes). The characters are like obsessed with sex and with women and how women are only good for their vaginas and tits. It's just weird.
The book reads easy, though. I finished this in like 30 minutes and if you get past all the misogyny and whatever else it's ok -
The series started off a bit slow, but going into vol 2 of the Omnibus (so 3-4 of the original release) it really picks up.
Hideo has to survive a LOT in the initial frenzy of the outbreak, which starts the volume off with a pretty frantic pacing, he then meets up with Hiromi and the story becomes even stronger. Hideo is an interesting protagonist, but works particularly well when he has other characters to play off of.
Hiromi gives a nice foil of both a woman and a high school student, this creates some great interplay between the two as they figure out how to survive, and provides another perspective on the outbreak.
I particularly loved some of the downright creepy segments in the Sea of Trees, the "zombies" in this story can play up the creepy angle to the Nth degree. -
This one was actually really good. I have no clue why there is such a difference in quality of story between the first and second omnibus, but you know, it does not really matter, what matters is that it is better. Every woman that speaks is still questionable, but at least there was less of them here and our second protagonist (?) is not focused on sex despite being a woman.
Reading notes:
It was pretty funny seeing the main character go "ah yes, that would break the law and make problems for everyone with a gun, I will not do it."
When he slept in the tunnel I just wrote "Project Zomboid experience" in my notes, if you know you know.
Woman = empathy, empathy = solving the zombie virus? -
I really enjoy the balanced pacing. We have chapters that are slow and character building. There is an entire chapter on how to properly fire a shotgun. Then we get chapters that are intense and adrenaline pumping. The art is great and there are several multi-page moments that are absolutely fantastic. After these two Omnibuses, this is already in my higher ranking of zombie stories. I love how they act after turning. They retain some of their human characteristics and repeat things they would have said before turning. Really good stuff so far.
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Mucho mejor que el volumen 1 ,mucho mas acción ,mas entretenido, feliz de que su compañero se muriera y espero que haya mas desarrollo en el personaje principal por que todavía me cae mal pero el arte es muy bueno! Hasta ahora nada del personaje principal me grita HEROE, hay algunas partes entre medio de que me aborrecen y estaría bueno que no siga pasando ,tipo hay zombies por todos lados ya nadie le importa tu trabajo o explicaciones largas que no tienen que ver con la trama del futuro!
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Yeah this is something special. There’s moment of terror and comedy right next to each other and genuinely fresh invention in the zombie genre. The horror of seeing the threat spreading in confined spaces while our bumbling cowardly hero just about manages to survive is very effective.
Just as the hero being on his own was starting to get stale, we’re introduced to a new character who is very different from him and challenges his cowardice. -
Ok. After reading through the first omnibus I have finally decided that Hideo Suziki is stupid. Ha ha. It’s not even funny at this part in the story. He is running around with his legal shotgun and afraid to use it during the zombie apocalypse. After meeting the school age Hayakari Hiromi he still shows hesitation. The art is good.
