アイアムアヒーロー, Vol. 2 (I Am a Hero, #2) by Shogakukan

アイアムアヒーロー, Vol. 2 (I Am a Hero, #2) Reviews

• 
  Tawfek is procrastinating

  For Fuck sake he just noticed he had a bloody gun
  I am really confused about this guy He acts stupid but when he talk he is not really
  its like a really shy introvert pacifist Found himself suddenly in a zombie apocalypse before there was ever games or tv shows about the dam thing
  I am amazed that he is still alive and not for lack of trying from the zombie side lol
  the zombies in this series are very unique at least for me They talk 1 line or a word or something it feels like the last thing they said before they died , or maybe its the thing they are thinking about the most
  Did Tekko san really destroy her teeth because she knew she could infect him with them ?
  Was she saying I love you hideo because that's the last thing she said before she died or because she still have a thought pattern and its revolving around her love for hideo?
  Plus it seemed like she wanted to cut something like she is making food
  I don't know exactly how to feel about these people not understanding the disastrous situation they are facing , I mean Dead is dead right if someone looks dead you need to be freaked out and at least leave the premises not say dad/gramps/mom no stop it
  And the only guy who actually thought about fighting back so far is mitani sensei he could helped hideo out a lot to take a stand
  Where did all my babbling come from i don't even know i thought i will just write a few words and that's it but fuck it i love to talk about my books its a sign that i was immersed in it.
• 
  Jon Ureña

  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.
• 
  Mehsi

  As I said in my review for the previous volume, not that long ago, I was planning on reading this one, I decided to just go ahead and read it immediately. And boy, did I wish I didn't. :(
  
  As of now I am dropping this series. I may still watch the live action, but the manga is a big no no to me. I am practically puking here, feeling sick in my stomach. Normally I don't get this way when I read zombie books, but the way the zombies were drawn here, the over-the-top gore, is just a no no for my stomach. :|
  I already didn't like the art that much in the previous book, at times it was good, but in this one? Sorry, but what is wrong with people, even the humans look like zombies, and the zombies look like some kind of deranged alien. :|
  
  There is a lot of action, so before I knew it I had read this manga (way faster than I read the previous one), so that is good. The manga did keep me on the edge of my chair. I just wanted to know how it would go on. However, Hideo does make some stupid decisions. He keeps running away, keeps running and running and running, and then well, you will have to read it to see where he ends up now. *shakes head*
  
  Luckily Hideo's hallucinations seemed to have stopped, or something, as I haven't really seen them around this time.
  
  So, yeah, dropping this, it is a shame, the live action looks really good, and checking some reviews and other sites, it seems a lot of people love this manga.
  
  Review first posted at
  http://twirlingbookprincess.com/
• 
  Monsour

  Expectation:
  
  
  
  Reality:
  
  
  
  Never Seen so much details since I read Vinland Saga, Gantz & Berserk.
• 
  Almu

  Algo mejor que el primero.
• 
  Lucas Savio

  Um mangá com momentos de zumbi horripilantes e uma adrenalina muito boa porém achei o autor bem machista, me incomodei bastante com o modo como as mulheres foram retratadas nesse mangá e por um corte de gastos n vou continuar esse mangá (quem quiser comprar vou passar para frente) acho q vou focar no meu the walking dead mesmo.
• 
  Hossein

  بالاخره رسیدیم به زامبی ها . والیوم اول مانگا مثل تقریباً بقیه ی آثار زیر ژانر(نمی‌دونم کلمه ی درستیع یا نه ) زامبی به زندگی روزمره فرد و شخصیت پردازیش قبل از شیوع ویروس مینداخت . ولی اینجا دیگه ویروس کاملا پخش شده و شیوع یافته و کم کم هیدئو (شخصیت اصلی داستان) داره متوجه میشه که چی به چیه .. ی جاییش که خیلی دوست داشتم حرفایی پر از کینه ای بود که میتانی (ااسمش این بود اگه اشتباه نکنم) میزد راجع به آدمایی که ازشون کینه داشت ...
  خلاصه حال کردم ... هر چقدر این روزا پر از بدبختی و بدشانسی برام هست ... تهش می‌دونم میتونم حداقل ی چند ساعتی بشینم پای یک اثر داستانی باکیفیت و حواسمو از اطرافم پرت کنم ...
• 
  Angel 一匹狼

  Volume 2 of "I am a hero" brings things to a new level, the zombie apocalypse already on full on mode which means deaths, blood, horror, and some surprising hilarious moments. Hanazawa is doing a great job with a very simple story, and, even if some character development could be better, the story, the atmosphere and Hideo's motivations and behavior are top notch. And the drawing style, bloody, dirty, fits the story perfectly.
  
  The best: the atmosphere and the zombie apocalypse is magnificent
  
  The worst: the action slows down in a couple of moments
  
  8/10
  
  (Spanish translation by Marc Bernabé)
• 
  Cristian

  Very brutal, very well paced, very entertaining (though not really original).
• 
  Ostrava

  Weird. The good kind of weird I guess. About Zombies and stuff...
• 
  Met

  Sempre più fico, il crescendo di tensione è costante e mi elettrizza di pagina in pagina!
• 
  Cristhian

  Hace 8 años leí este manga por primera vez y lo abandoné.
  
  Ahora creo que lo estoy viendo con otros ojos porque lo estoy disfrutando mucho.
• 
  Juancho Books

  Un manga muy bueno, en este volumen ya comenzamos a ver zombies, ya los vemos en manada mordiendo todo lo que se le atraviesa, y el final me dejó con la ganas de leerme ya el tercer volumen.
• 
  Camilo Guerra

  Después del choque del primer libro, seguimos con el pobre Hideo en el drama zombie...aca las cosas se encaminan y se mueven en una acción sangrienta, rápida y asquerosa, la cual me gusta mucho aunque aun no supero el trauma del avión...¿nunca escucho un vión que paso a un par de metros?, uno se entrega a creer mas cosas y a bajar el nivel de criticismo, pero es aparte aun no la supero, de resto, un tomo muy bueno.
• 
  Graham

  The action has seriously picked up on this and I managed to get through this A LOT quicker than the slow burner before. The grayscale on the panels were part of some gorgeous art. I'm still interested and will keep going until it bores me, however if the action is like this then it may never do that!
• 
  Javi

  Está bien, pero nada más. Sigue siendo un poco raruno, pero los mangas no-shonen siempre lo son.
• 
  Vittorio Rainone

  La faccenda si fa complicata per Hideo: la ragazza che frequentava si dimostra piuttosto aggressiva e tenta di mangiarlo. Non è la sola a comportarsi così: c'è un'intera città in preda a creature folli che hanno preso il posto dei precedenti esseri umani e ne ripetono le parole ricorrenti come una cantilena, avendo al contempo sviluppato una tendenza a crimini violenti. Hideo scappa, raggiunge il suo studio di manga dove trova un collega che ha appena dovuto ammazzare il capoufficio e un altro collega. Anche se non si capisce bene se i due fossero già trasformati in demoni o meno. La coppia appena formatasi fugge verso la periferia, ma poco prima di riuscire a prendere un treno, il collega viene investito dal carrello di un aereo, non prima di essere stato raggiunto da un gruppo di demoni. Hideo è solo: si rifugia in un treno di passaggio che gli sembra un'oasi di pace. IAH ha un'atmosfera unica: i pensieri si distorcono e assumono la forma delle ossessioni, mentre il mondo intorno crolla. La resa grafica è davvero horror, con sequenze genuinamente disturbanti. Dopo un primo numero dalla dinamica spettacolare, il fatto che si entri nel vivo non toglie fascino al racconto.
  
• 
  47Time

  The volume starts off strong. While struggling against a zombified Tetruko, Hideo who still seems ignorant of the danger, notices that she has placed his manga on top of her desk and has readied her ex's manga to throw away. This brings a tear to Hideo's eye, though he considers everything to be a dream. Right up until he watches the news where the city has fallen into pandemonium. He tries to take Tetsuko to the hospital, but in the end cuts off her head in self-defence. He's still very cool about it and the obvious zombie attacks around him. He does the sensible thing and runs away.
  
  Hideo's colleague Mitani, the old, frustrated type, has things under control at work. He kills the second zombie, his boss, when Hideo arrives. Finally Mitani can fight back against the people he hates so much and he has the skill and determination to do so. Unfortunately, he gets bitten too, then killed by, get this, the wheels of a plane crashing to the ground. A freaking plane decapitates him! How cool is that? Hideo gets to a train, but there are zombies there too. He remembers he has a gun. Well, that has potential.
• 
  Jake

  This second volume moves into a little more action, as Hideo begins to realize the chaos that is happening around him. There are so major wow that is terrifying moments, some of which are drawn from mundane things, made worse by the knowledge of what is happening. For example, at one point Hideo is stranded in the woods at night, it is pitch black, and he is freaking out due to his own issues; however, as a reader I couldn't help but also be scared, I mean the zombie apocalypse is happening, so a lot of his fear is justified! But being scared of the dark in the woods is such a mundane fear, made real in this story.
  
  Hideo ends up joining up with the girl on the cover later in the story, and his gun finally gets fired! I am really excited to dive into the 3rd volume and see where these characters go. Hideo's odd humor and issues really resonate with me and I like the dynamic of a teen age girl constantly reassuring him, while seeming far less phased by everything.
  
  
• 
  Gustavo

  En unas pocas páginas, este manga se convirtió de un slice of life medio tonto a una típica historia de zombis y no mucho más que eso, pero es muy entretenida y con buen ritmo, si sigue así me imagino que los tomos que tengo no me van a durar nada. No soy muy fan del gore, pero en este caso por momentos me pareció hasta algo cómico.
  
  Lo que más me gustó de todo fue la escena con Tekko, cargada de tensión y muy bien lograda en cuanto al viaje emocional de Hideo, cuando pasa todo parece frío y automático y después cuando tiene un momento de respiro finalmente cae en todo lo que está pasando.
  
  Me está gustando mucho este manga y quizá lo peorcito sea la forma en la que Hanazawa dibuja a las personas por momentos, pero no me importa mucho. Estoy enganchado y me da mucha curiosidad saber hacia donde va a ir Hideo ahora.
• 
  Gabriel Benitez

  El apocalipsis se ha desatado y los infectados comienzan a atacar a la gente en las calles de Tokio que comienzan a convertirse en un infierno. Hideo tiene que escapar de la ciudad si quiere sobrevivir.
  Es interesante ver como esta obra es al mismo tiempo una especie de catarsis y de cuestionamiento a la sociedad japonesa y la presión que esta ejerce en los individuos, gente que crece llena de resentimientos y miedos. Así, para algunos, el apocalipsis es el momento de cobrarse todo lo que los demás le han hecho, mientras que algunos otros, como Hideo, no pueden evitar seguir un marco rígido de comportamiento (Hideo pide constantemente perdón a los muertos vivientes mientras huye de ellos y posteriormente, aunque no en este libro, dejará en una tienda abandonada, dinero para pagar por los alimentos que se lleva).
  El dibujo sigue siendo excepcional.
• 
  Sandra

  Degenerierte horny Otakus, die es zu nix gebracht haben, überleben den Zombieausbruch ..ich weiß immer noch nicht, wieso ich den Titel bis Band 10 weiter gekauft habe... alle überlebenden sind Looser, die alles und jeden für ihre Probleme die Schuld geben, obwohl sie selber schuld daran sind. Nervig. Und die komischen Panty- und BH-Shots sind auch einfach wtf...
  
  Oh und ganz zu schweigen, das die Weiber hier auch immer Schuld sind, wenn Kerle fremdgehen, und natürlich nur zum Vögeln da sind, weswegen die Mangaassistentin ofc eine Affäre mit einem der Kerle hat, und so geil auf Schwänze lutschen is, dass sie als Zombie das weiterhin machen will - und das bei dem Baseballschläger dann auch versucht.
  
  
• 
  Leonel Buelvas Garcia

  Hanazawa en este segundo volumen aceleró el ritmo y vaya con que estilo. Este tomo que contiene los mangas del 12 al 22 expone como el mundo que Hideo conoce se va cayendo violentamente y la única regla parece moverse, correr para vivir.
  Es así entonces que encontramos un manga que acelera y no permite casi reflexionar lo que está pasando nuestro héroe en formación. La consiga entonces es "correr por tu vida", sin que ello sea garantía de nada.
  En general un manga con buen arte, veloz, pocos diálogos, muchas preguntas. Un volumen muy bueno que ya proyecta una historia emocionante.
• 
  Giovanni Panico

  Questo volume mantiene il ritmo serrato e l'azione intensa del primo, offrendo alcune sorprese sorprendenti e sviluppi inattesi. La trama è ben costruita e mantiene il lettore incollato alle pagine, mentre i personaggi sono ben caratterizzati e hanno tutti una propria personalità distinta.
  
  Inoltre, la qualità delle illustrazioni è eccezionale e rende perfettamente l'atmosfera cupa e disperata del mondo post-apocalittico.
  
  In sintesi, "I Am Hero" volume 2 è un must-read per i fan del genere survival horror e per chi ama i manga di azione e avventura.
  
  
• 
  Michael Schrader

  Wie erhofft kommt die Reihe nach dem recht behäbigen ersten Band im zweiten so richtig in die Gänge, wobei es für meinen Geschmack schon eine Spur zu chaotisch zuging. Aber so ist das wohl, wenn alles zusammenbricht. Ich werde jedenfalls dranbleiben und mir bald die Folgebände zulegen.
• 
  burnie

  a lot better than the first volume, fast paced, the tekko arc was SUPER interesting, nice to know more about the other employees in the studio, hideo only negative, his ignorance/the fact he was unaware of the severity of the situation until late in the volume was annoying
  
  edit: 3.5 stars
• 
  DCinterests

  Now, I appreciate the art style of this manga and the story picked up from 3 to 5 stars really quick... I love the artwork so much in this vol... It seemed more alive and it’ll give you real stakes now that the zombies guarantee no man will escape...
• 
  Facundo Mosquera

  Pasamos de un tomo que es un patada en los huevos de leer a este que es muchísimo más dinámico y entretenido.
  Me gusta el tipo de zombi rápido que hay (me gusta cualquier versión de zombis) y tiene algunas escenas buenas. Pero por ahora no es nada muy loco ni nuevo.
• 
  Carmen

  Algo mejor que el primero, en este ejemplar comienza la acción. No puedo decir más ya que solo llevo dos volúmenes, tan solo que seguiré leyendo.