I Am a Hero Omnibus, Volume 9

I am a Hero Omnibus #9

by Kengo Hanazawa, Kumar Sivasubramanian

Hideo and Hiromi try to make their way to Tokyo on a bicycle, as the ZQN virus continues to change humanity across the globe. A small group of survivors, led by former manga creator Korori Nakata, considers breaking from a large, organized group of humans who follow cult leader "Asada" and have taken control of a high-rise apartment building in Japan's biggest city. On a collision course with our main survivors, the high-rise survivors face extremely powerful ZQNs and strange ZQN-human hybrids that may hold the key to unlocking the global zombie epidemic! Hideo and Hiromi bond, hoping to share a moment of romance while the rest of Japan falls apart. This omnibus collects two thrilling original Japanese volumes into one huge Dark Horse Manga edition!

Genres: Manga, Comics, Horror, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book, Zombies

424 pages, Paperback

Published March 12, 2019

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]

One of the strangest series that I've kept reading. All of the characters are unlikable and half of them have strange pervy tendencies like keeping women's used stalkings. The main characters don't show up until the last third of the book. The first two-thirds following around the main character's old boss before the zombie outbreak as he survives with a cult in Tokyo. Still I'm curious where this is headed in the final two volumes.

[Rod Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This continues to be the oddest Zombie Apocalypse I've come across. The main characters don't show up until the second half of the book, and even then they are so involved with each other romantically they fail to notice, say, the giant combined zombie form looming nearby.

The first half is given over to an otaku-cum-survival hero and his group of survivors. This gross fellow brags about his subway groping and collects and cherishes worn women's stockings. There is talk of a coup, one group member is revealed to have a significant secret, but nothing much happens.

So many of the characters are disgusting, the pacing is super slow, and yet I'm still looking forward to the next volume.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

The series gets weirder, I can't decide how I feel about the direction things are going. I am enjoying the discussion of the ZQNs origins, but I feel like jumping between groups of survivors, and moving away from our main cast makes the events feel less important.

[MargReadsManga · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series just keeps getting better and better!! That ending was so suspenseful!! I’m starting to get some Cloverfield vibes now with the big monsters that we don’t know much about! I hope Hideo and Hiromi have found a good group of people on that boat. But something tells me that’s not going to be the case. I will say that the first part of this volume was kinda boring with this other group of characters. I wasn’t really interested in that part. I’m going to start the next volume immediately!!

[Mark Will Never Cry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would like to remind everyone, that Hiromi is 16 and Hideo is 35. You can keep talking about how she is of age and is so emotionally mature, but that is pedophilia. Also, can this author stop just making women either completely empty like in the first part or just traumatized like Hiromi? I will speedrun through the remaining volumes just to finish this shit.

[Lisa Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kengo Hanazawa's I Am a Hero manga series has been an inconsistent adventure to say the least. Even though I only had 3 volumes of the omnibuses to finish, I decided to take a break from this series at the end of last year. Now, 3 months later, I've decided to pick it up again and finally finish this story.

In volume 9, we spend the first half of the book with a group of soldiers in a sort of militia group that seems to be fairly well organized and led by a cult leader of sorts. I have to admit, while I enjoyed what was here in Volume 9, I kind of wish this series hadn't changed perspective to groups outside of our main cast. It only adds more questions that I suspect will not be answered in the final 2 volumes of the series.

The 2nd half of this volume returns to Hideo and Hiromi. And this is where things get a bit... not ok.

Before I get in to what made this not ok, let me start off by saying that I really enjoyed this volume. The humor has been one of the strengths of this series and I laughed out loud several times while reading this volume. Other than the oppressive feeling that this series will not resolve in a satisfactory way, I have to say, I enjoyed everything else here. Well, everything except this one thing...

So when Hideo meets Hiromi early in the series, I believe he is 35ish and she is sixteen. Throughout the series, we get pretty consistent mention of Hiromi being a young schoolgirl. I got the impression that Hideo and Hiromi's relationship was that of a brother and sister from the moment they met. Now, I'm not too sure on how much time has passed in this series, but I suspect it has been maybe a year or less. And certainly it has only been a short time since Hideo's previous love interest was uh, crushed in a trash compactor.

I'm just going to get straight to the point here, but Hideo and Hiromi end up having sex in this painfully drawn-out scene that I have to admit felt genuine and emotional and kind of sweet...

EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT SHE IS A MINOR!!

AND THAT THEY HAD BEEN LIKE BROTHER AND SISTER.

I totally get that fucking little school girls is a popular fetish/kink/fantasy/whatever-you-wanna-call-it (and over-sexualized school girls is a popular thing in Japan) but I don't understand why it was done here.

Why didn't Hanazawa just make Hiromi an adult??? Her being a minor adds nothing to the story other than the cringe factor and feeling of inappropriateness when our main characters finally hook up. I actually don't mind Hiromi and Hideo hooking up because I thought their feelings in the moment were genuine, but I just wish the author had made her an adult.

To be honest, I felt like a pervert reading this book. The sex scene is way too long and pretty graphic (this is a graphic novel after all lol). It made me feel gross for reading it. If she had just been an adult I wouldn't really have cared, but the knowledge that I read a graphic 20+ page sex scene between a creepy manga artist and a little school girl kinda makes me sick.

Now, I've thought a lot about this whole "but she's a minor" thing and how it should impact my rating for this book. I don't think that age would matter in the event of a zombie apocalypse. Perhaps more importantly, I think that Hideo and Hiromi's feelings were genuine and passionate.

What doesn't sit right with me is how this series emphasizes the fact that Hiromi is a minor but doesn't seem to have anything meaningful to say about it other than to shove a taboo sex scene in our faces.

Despite the fact that Hideo and Hiromi's relationship seems sincere now in this volume, I just can't excuse the fact that this was handled so poorly. Not just that Hiromi is a minor, but also with how quickly Hideo jumped on her after his previous love interest died considering it just happened in the volume before this one!

I have this feeling that the series, overall, wasn't really planned out from the start. Why present Hideo and Hiromi as brother and sister if they were going to start a sexual relationship by the end?? (Also, while I'm on the subject of things not feeling planned, wtf happened to Hideo's hallucinations?? Those kind of things just don't go away!)

So, to conclude. I liked this book overall, but Hideo and Hiromi's relationship has been mishandled. I took a whole star off my rating because of it, making this volume 4 out of 5 stars.

I don't know if I would recommend this series anymore. I'll have to see how it ends to determine that.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hideo and Hiromi move to the next level of their relationship.

About half of this book was Hideo and Hiromi and I loved that part. Given the world they live in, their getting together seems reasonable. A new worry of Hideo possibly getting infected with the zombie virus by sex is briefly brought up.

The first half of this book is about a different group, with a few members wanting to splinter off because they don't agree with the things that are being done (and the fact that they're being used to gather supplies). It was ok. I deeply despise the possible leader of the splinter group, but maybe that's what the author intended.

I'll be starting the next one immediately!

[Lou Fillari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Still we're meeting new characters. And one old bit player who is suddenly seemingly important. That's fine.

Hideo and Hiromi are A #1 though. First half of the omnibus is 3 stars. 2nd half is 5 stars.

[Spot · Rating 4 out of 5]

i liked it, but there is some *sensitive* stuff in here that was a little hard to read

[Vivian · Rating 5 out of 5]

sad;(