I Am a Hero Omnibus 6

I am a Hero Omnibus #6

by Kengo Hanazawa

A global zombie outbreak threatens to wipe out civilization! In Japan, some of the infected have been able to hold onto their humanity while exhibiting superhuman ZQN powers. As Hiromi evolves, affected by a zombie baby's bite, will Hideo also exhibit powers linked to the bite on his hand? Other afflicted humans seem to have supernatural abilities, too, like the leader of the Cult of Kurusu. 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 readers up with the world's strangest zombie apocalypse!

Genres: Manga, Horror, Comics, Graphic Novels, Zombies, Graphic Novels Comics, Japan

440 pages, Paperback

First published May 29, 2018

About the author

Kengo Hanazawa (花沢健吾 Hanazawa Kengo, born January 5, 1974) is a Japanese manga artist known for his seinen works. He won the Topic Award of the 2005 Sense of Gender Awards for Ressentiment and was nominated for the 3rd, 4th and 5th Manga Taisho for I Am a Hero.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A whole volume dedicated to this offshoot of characters, this cult of Kurusu as they are referred to. The Kurusu are interesting is not explained very well, such as why do they all run around in tighty-whities. My frustration with this series continues in that there are large stretches where little happens. This volume also takes place mostly at night and the panels are so dark that I'm straining my eyes at times to see what is happening. Thankfully, Hideo does appear on the final pages so maybe we'll get back to the main story.

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series rewards patience, and you'll need it for this volume wherein the main protagonists are absent for over four hundred pages as we learn more about the enigmatic Kurusu and his cult of followers. Fortunately, this new group is pretty interesting, and, more importantly, through them we receive several revelations about the nature of this particular zombie apocalypse. As usual, there are more scenes of talking heads than action, but when the action does kick in, the cool gross-out art makes the wait worthwhile.

[Lou Fillari · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's so great. 99% of this was side characters, as far as I'm concerned, and this was still superb.

Apparently there's a larger plot to the entire series and we were just introduced to it and man it's the best. Love.

I'm all caught up and it's so exciting. I have to wait now, oh my word. Can't stop gushing. Bring on Tokyo.

[Mark Will Never Cry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find it a bit sad (and a bit funny), that when I started liking Hideo, nurse and the girl, the story completely switched to the whole chatroom thing. It is cool that there is more progress in world building tho.

[Jake · Rating 4 out of 5]

***Reread Update: Delving deeper into the ZQNs, this volume focuses a lot on what is happening around Japan. Unfortunately, it's a whole volume without our main cast which holds it back.

I think the characters, and events introduced are really compelling and well done, I just missed Hideo and Co****

This volume explores and begins to hint at some central things revolving around the ZQNs following the story of some side characters.

Disappointingly thought, our main character Hideo makes no appearance until the final frame of the volume.

In many ways this felt like a filler episode rather then part of the main story.

[Shy Kuzonoha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Omnibus 6 does a fantastic job of answering a lot of questions, from a new character's perspective. It also does a marvelous job, of making you fall in love with a new cast, while also getting some insight on some of the Characters psychological trauma they're exeperencing. Omnibus 6 isn't my favorite, but it does lay out some ground work, to the point where I cannot wait to see how it all comes to an end.

[Sebastien · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one if m'y least favorite of the series so far. I don't think it had anything . The characters are unpleasant .there is Less action and the conversation are kind of boring.

[R C · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this tangent from the past books. An enjoyable development away from the original characters and a dive deeper into the nature of the ZQNs.

[Lisa Lynch · Rating 2 out of 5]

To quickly recap, I found the first 3 omnibuses in this series to be ok. They all had a mix of great and bad things, making each of them just average to me. All that changed in the 4th omnibus, which was phenomenal. The 5th omnibus was also pretty good, so I thought the forward momentum of this series would continue with the 6th omnibus.

Unfortunately, #6 was the worst in the whole series.

The 5th omnibus ended with a brief switch to a different group of characters who are far from the heroes we have grown to know and care about. Then the 6th book continues with those new characters FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK. I understand the need to add new characters as the story progresses, but the main reason why I've enjoyed this series is because of the ones we have been with for 5 books!

To make matters worse, I had a horrible time identifying the characters in this one. None of them were really introduced in proper way and it took me ages to figure out who the hell they were. They rarely say each other's names and are wearing masks the majority of the time. I found myself flipping back to look a previous pictures of characters to try to match them to later pictures, and it was super frustrating.

I am perplexed as to why the whole of #6 revolved around these new characters who I didn't care about in the slightest. Even by the end of the book, I didn't really care about them. Only one, Ezaki, was memorable, but I wouldn't say he was a good character. Yet. I think Ezaki has potential to have a great character arc and I'm excited to see where things go. But so far we have gotten off to a rough start.

I would have felt so much better about the new characters if we had returned to Hideo and his gang at some points throughout the book to tie everything together. We do get 1 page at the end that switches back to Hideo and it was one hell of a cliffhanger, but it only made me all the more sad that I hadn't spent more time with him.

I know that the reason for the switch was to show us how other people are dealing with the zombie outbreak and to introduce new characters who, I assume, will end up meeting up with Hideo, Hiromi, and Oda relatively soon. I am excited about this happen, but I can't help but feel that things could have been woven together much more seamlessly.

I read #5 and #6 back to back, which I think was to my benefit. If I had waited between these volumes, I would have had no clue what was going on. And I just can't help feeling that a lot of the story here was drawn out and unnecessary. I think the plot points and information that was important could have been done better and could have been done much more succinctly.

My last complaint with this omnibus is that there was an overabundance of jokes about whether or not the characters were virgins. This kind of thing has been joked about in this series before (I think it might be a Japanese humor thing), but it made sense because we knew the characters. In this situation, it just seemed... weird. Like inappropriately weird.

Now I have to admit that some of the story we get in this omnibus is good. We meet several people who have been bitten by zombies who, instead of turning into regular zombies, become a human/zombie hybrid that has incredible strength, speed, reflexes, etc. It is a pretty cool concept.

So, in the end, I rated this one 2 out of 5 stars. It is definitely below average for the series and hopefully the next one will bring everything together. I still recommend this series.

[Craig Schorling · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is here is solid. The art continues to be great. The world and the characters are fun and varied. We get some really interesting story beats and moments that hit hard. What is keeping this at 3 stars is that we get all of that at the expense of not interacting with the main characters at all. If they had been mixed in it would have been an easy 4 start or higher score. This felt more like a spin off that is connected to the main story. I am interested to see how the author mixes this with the original crew. We finally start to get some glimpses as to what may be happening with this outbreak.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A side character falls in with members of the cult of Kurusu.

While still good, this volume wasn't the best. I didn't really want 400 pages of a side character; I wanted more Hideo. Even so, this did add to the backstory of what other people were doing during the zombie outbreak. It's interesting to see how Japan's shut-in population would deal with it. I'll be reading the next volume with fingers crossed for more of our main characters.

[Jamrock · Rating 5 out of 5]

🧟‍♀️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♀️What a time to be reading a series about a global pandemic taking out society 😷🙊😆 I absolutely love the slow-burn of societal collapse throughout this series and I have to take time off between volumes as there is some Junji-Ito levels of horror and suspense in each one that takes time to recover from. I never expected a "Zombie horror manga" to have such depth and complexity of characters and world building (or collapsing lol) 🧟‍♀️🧟‍♀️🧟‍♀️

[William Hayman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Immensely detailed. Plot is akin to knots that seem to spiral endlessly yet with strong purpose. A great range of characters were introduced in this volume; enough to revamp enthusiasm and its fanbase.

[Zach · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not sure how something can be confusing and boring at the same time.

[Vivian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This other story plot side is interesting and i am excited to see where this leads and connects to hideo

[Aildiin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is still great but the art is way too dark to really appreciate

[Grg · Rating 2 out of 5]

I never thought I'd say it but... I miss Hideo. I don't know who these new guys are but I hate them, and they're awful at staying alive.

[David Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read both this volume and the previous back to back, introduces a new cast of characters and parallel narrative, these two volumes are a big step up from the first four and the build up is starting to pay off. Unfortunately at the time of writing I Am A Hero has become like gold dust to find so hopefully Dark Horse will reprint so I can continue the series!

[ダンカン]

I Am A Hero has transcends to another whole new level. This volume reveals more of what is happening and how humans become ZQNs and even reveal more revelation about who 'Kurusu' really is. As we take a break away from our hero Hideo, we learn more about Takashi Ezaki, a shut-in saved by a group of survivors from the last volume. Together, we learn more about ZQNs and the trust between the survivors seems to reveal more about the personality of who they are... especially Kurusu. As they realize they can't hide in their safe house forever, they need to find shelter... in Tokyo.

I am now truly fascinated over what this manga series is heading and intrigued by its revelation. There is so much more to love and enjoy and hopefully, I get to read more about Hideo since he's partially appeared on the last page and now we get to understand why Hiromi is in her state. Another great volume.