I Am a Hero
A review.
Techs; I Am a Hero is a slice of life/horror/social commentary manga written and drawn by Hanazawa Kengo, published by Shogakukan in Big Comic Spirits magazine since 2009. Currently at five volumes, it is still on-going but with no set date for any future releases. Hero is the story of 35-year old Hideo Suzuki, an assistant manga artist and social wayside, who struggles to be the lead character in his own life in spite of having few, if any, redeeming values towards himself, his girlfriend, or reality in general. Perverse, a loser by any standards, and trapped by social norms, not to mention suffering from severe psychological handicaps and hallucinations, the manga follows Hideo on the slow climb from normal Japanese loser in life through the maybe dellusional/maybe real breakdown of the world around him.
And I'm not sure I get it. In fact, I may hate it.
Maybe it's the fact that Hero is set in a different social culture than I'm currenty inbedded in, but I don't quite think that explains why this isn't working for me. I'm not about to call myself an expert in Japanese anything, but I know enough to be about to feel my way around that "world". Japanese social etiquette is extensive enough to need its own encyclopedia edition, with additional volumes released for different settings and class. You can learn it, but you may never really understand it unless you've lived it for years.
Above I listed "social commentary" as one of the genres this manga takes part in. I listed it as that myself; no other site I've found has that option, but I think it qualifies, and I'll explain that later.
Summary
Hideo Suzuki is a loser. Plain and simple, he is that sad and pathetic guy who functions in society but no one will ever give a passing glance to. He himself knows this, as several times through the story he'll repeat the titular phrase "I am a Hero", which is a play on words (his name written in Japanese can be read as "hero") and a reminder to himself that he is the main character in his own life, whether or not that's really true. He is a "failed" mangaka (manga creator), having his own series cancelled some years ago and now lives as one of several assistants to an ero-manga creator, who themselves are a mix of perverse, pathetic and creepy. He has a girlfriend... somehow... who he enjoys being with (or at least having), but fights enormous jealousy over her continual affection to and referencing of her ex, who is much more successful than he is in both work and life. Hideo exists, and seemingly little else. On top of that he suffers from dellusions and minor paranoia of - something; perhaps the fear that he's as unimportant and useless as he tries to tell himself he's not, but probably is.
Then things go to hell.
Throughout the first ten chapters things are taken slowly and only background hints are given as to whats to come. Quick mentions on television, the witnessed hit-and-run, everyone slowly becoming fetish biters, escalating until the whole country seems to have gone mad, half because of the outbreak of crazy cannibals and half because that side doesn't/won't recognize the other for what it is.
And I think that's what bugs me the most is that no one recognizes what's happening as it happens, as they watch it happen in front of them, as it happens to them, everyone just pulls a Kitty Genovese to everything surrounding them, enveloped in a blanket of "don't get involved, it doesn't concern us" when airplanes are falling into the city.
Characters
Hideo, as has been said, is a loser. Pathetic. He lives his life by his fears, his inadequacy, his jealousy, his ever yearning hope to be the hero and not the background character, even though it will never ever happen. The life we see is him holed up in his apartment either talking to a dellusion of a fat kid who acts as a stupid know-nothing who needs everything explained to him so Hideo himself can feel supeior, or being scared of things of his own mind's creation. And while I know that sometimes adults can be scared of things that aren't there, the way it's presented doesn't seem to be as meant for us to endear ourselves to him; instead, it's shows how utterly incased and blinded he's made himself from the world around him, and as such the reader can only find him shallow and repulsive. He watches the news not to find out anything, as he consistantly fails to grasp or retain anything he sees from it, but to oggle the news castors and judge how the non-pretty ones actually present facts in easy to understand, which he hates because he sees their informativeness as attempts to make up for not being better looking, versus how more entertained he is and easier to look at the pretty ones are. He considers waking up in the morning a "win" in his favor not because he didn't kill himself, but because he accomplished the act of waking up.
His girlfriend, Tekko, is an oddball herself. While seemingly having her shit together much more so than Hideo, she still exhibits a multitude of things that show she's not much better in life than he is. At one point she gets roaring drunk, and her behavior can be seen as either a) she's a mean-ass drunk, or b) she realizes how pathetic a man Hideo is and resents being attached to him, but in the sober light of day is afraid of being alone herself. If anything, she's the most personable character seen so far. Too bad for her.
As the story is all about Hideo and his lack of, any other characters introduced are slim and shallow at best. The story being what it is, no one is seen or presented in any real good light. The manga artist Hideo works for is rarely seen and when he is there's not much to glean, aside that he's fucking an assistant on the side while being married. The other assistants are just as sad as Hideo is, and in some cases worse. One is a stalker and border/crossed-the line pyschopath, interested in the only female assistant there (who's already "taken") mainly because she's the only female he sees on a regular basis who talks to him and he has any semblance of authority over, and another is just there, with little to add and so much a background even the others forget what his name was. Hideo goes to a social mixer with some, I guess they'd be considered, "friends" but they're forgettable even before you meet them.
The only other likeable character is a high school girl introduced late into the 34 chapters published, Hiromi, who comes in so late she has no effect the story presented so far.
The Art
Life is ugly, and this manga wants you to know that. While the backgrounds and environments are detailed well (you will see every blind on that window shade, every brick in that staircase), the people who make up this world are not nice to look at. Many have rounded, potato-ish heads, ugly expressions and facial features, and more than once someone will look like they're constipated. It's not that it's bad character art; the style fits the story theme and mood very well, but it's almost done with the notion that nothing is ever truly beautiful and even what is supposed to be "pretty" aren't really.
While it is a slice-of-life, it's a realistic slice, meaning there's no (wildly) extreme faces or sweatdrops or strange backgrounds or anything that most people say is in all of manga. No speedlines. No noodly arms. Everything you see is as normal and real as it would be in real life, just cartooned a bit because it is being drawn. The artist has a very good grasp of anatomy and miming expression, and it translates well to Hideo's mood swings and improvized dances.
Aside of unattractive character designs, it is not the the art that is the downside of this manga.
The Spoiler(s)*From this point on*
It's a zombie apocolpyse. Freaking Dawn of the Dead played out over several days instead of all at once. And no one seems to understand this.
My Problems
That spoiler right there? That's my whole beef with this manga. Nobody, nobody gets that what is happening around them is a devestating undead virus transferred by blood. And it kills the whole story.
Here's the thing, the world this story exists in is not "another time", it's not "not Earth", it is the here and now, with seemingly all our past culture. So people should know of zombies. It would make no sense for them not to; they have zombies in Japan, hell, they'd have seen American zombies most likely. It's not like the concept is so foreign that it's nonexistant. So why does nobody ever recognize this? Hideo especially, as he's made out to be an otaku (extreme geek, for those not knowing) and should know what's what; at minimum, be able to recognize the genre symptoms. But he doesn't.
That's the second thing I hate here, Hideo's utter lack of real world reaction to the world happening around him; hell, everyone's lack of reaction. This is why I said earlier I believe this to be some sort of social commentary, how (Japanese) people are so wrapped up in rules and etiquette and social grace that they will willingly and actively ignore what's right in front of their face. That they care so much about their own lives and how they're precieved that they won't step outside the bounds of their 1'x1' square of self rather than interact, not if they can avoid it themselves or goad someone else to do what they won't. The best example of this is when Hideo witnesses a hit-and-run. He doens't panic, he doesn't call the police or an ambulance, he doesn't try to help, he does nothing expect watch and then walk away, never mentioning it again expect in brief passing to his girlfriend who also fails to react in any way.
When the shit finally hits the fan and the story starts to pickup the pace, it starts with Hideo going to Tekko's apartment, only to find her turned and now undead; earlier Tekko showed off a bite someone gave her (which was brushed off as just "strange"), and later said she went to the hospital. When he gets there she doesn't answer the door, so he peeks in through her mail slot. He watches as she, literally, slithers up and over to him, looking and acting in no uncertain terms like she's healthy or normal in any way. Her hand reaches through the mail slot and grabs his head, the other opening the door and promptly tries to bite him, though only managing to break her teeth off on the door in her inability to get close enough to bite flesh.
What does Hideo do? He keeps yelling that "that hurts" and trying to communicate normally with Tekko, like it's just a matter of explaining why he's in pain, who only proceeds to pull his head through the broken mail slot and gum his hand hard enough to leave a bite-looking mark on his hand (though doesn't break the skin). And no point does he acknowledge that Tekko is what she is, he persists in treating the whole incident as just an "illness". Even later, after he admits to himself he cut off Tekko's head to stop her from trying to bite him anymore (after having watched her arm be ripped off by another zombie, and after having cleaned her whole apartment like it was nothing) he still doesn't admit what is happening.
And that's the most annoying thing here, how he sees it happening, has been involved in several incidents but never fucking does anything about it! No one, ever, actually listens to what they hear on the radio or news; they say "something weird is happening" or "did you hear about" but they don't see what's directly in their face. Hideo runs down the street, witnessing more attacks as he goes further in; parents attacking their children, people falling out of tall apartment buildings, people getting jumped and bit again and again, undeads being hit by cars. Where is everyone's reaction? It's like everyone one sees the inconvience of the attack happening directly to them and not everything else surrounding them. When a man is jumped by two zombies, there's no scream of pain, no counterattack.
He repeated yells "Hey! That hurts!" and that's about it. He tries to push, not hit or punch, or kick, push them off.
I guess the arguement could be made that Hideo is in constant, functional shock. That he's not totally sure that anything he sees is real, because of his past history with hallucinations and dellusions. Okay, yeah, if he's had to function with this problem for a while, I could see him fighting a reaction to what's going on. But even then, at some point a person would react to their environment. And he, at several points, points out how it could not be a hallucination and convinces himself that what is happening is real but still continues to adher to social protocal. Case in point; after a taxi driver turns undead and tries to attack him and they crash; as the driver starts to burn from the ruined engine, trapped in the broken glass and metal; Hideo still pays the taxi fare, leaving it on the trunk of the taxi, explaining to the driver that he hopes it's enough as he apologizes for running away from the crazed zombie man who just tried to probably eat him.
MORON.
Everyone is like that; people are attacked in the open, and no one helps (granted they may have issues of their own at that moment), most don't react to pain in real ways (a girl has her face ripped of by a man's teeth and at no point does she scream in pain), and no one seems to see what is happening around them, namely it's fucking zombies.
Only once does anyone have the idea to fight back, and low it is the stalker-assistant. Hideo runs to the studio (I forget why, he's stupid). Inside is his boss, turned. Stalker comes up behind him and beans him with a baseball bat, continuing to beat the bloodly hell out of him while screaming about all the past grievances he was put through, real or imagined. He then points out to Hideo another assistant on a chair, beaten to death, and explains how "they'll survive" because they're shut-ins and only the social people will die for going out and having lives; basically the whole "geeks will rule because they're prepared" speech, but not convincing because they don't acknowledge what the problem is, only that there most likely is one. The female assistant shows up (bloated, she was killed the previous evening by the boss and drowned in the bathtub with her throat slit, it was a weird image, but she was probably the source of the boss's transformation) and they don't really kill her but manage to get away. As they run, Stalker says that with only the two bitten, they should be safe. Hideo points out there were three bodies left behind; Stalker remains silent, then smirks it off saying "it probably doesn't matter anymore". So, yeah, he went full psychopath and killed the other assistant for whatever precieved wrongs he saw; it was probably only luck that the zombie outbreak coincided with his breakdown that it all turned out how it did. As is, Stalker dies not long after (by having his head taken off by a crashing airplane's landing gear, while in the midst of being zombie jumped) so he gets his come uppance.
But, again, here's the thing; Hideo continued run with and make plans (sketchy as they were) with Stalker, even after hearing and realizing he killed the assistant who wasn't zombied. And seeming was going to continue following him further, had he not been karma'd to death. So Hideo had no problem working with the psychopath and wasn't going to say anything, because the culture insists on not embarassing or inconviencing someone else regardless of the event or occurance; that it is better to refrain from defending yourself from attack, rather than cause a "disturbance" or bringing attention to yourself by reacting to them.
Final Wrap Up
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from this. Are we to feel for Hideo, see how he's not really that bad a guy in spite of his pathetic life and reactions? Is it a social face slap, supposed to wake us up to our head-down trod through life and give less rigourous adherance to self-implaced social chains? Is it just the story of a slightly less-than-everyman and his journey through a catastrophic event?
I don't know, and while a reader's experience on any work of art is always up to their perspective, the artist's original take should still be present. But it's not there and I don't know what it is he's trying to say, or wants to say.
The pacing is good in the first third (chapters 1-10), having had a full reading of the series published to date. Most other stories would introduce the zombieness in the first few chapters, get right into the thick of it (think how the Dawn of the Dead remake got the undead going within the first five minutes). Hero takes its time, introducing the sinster elements slowly in background materal and dialog while building the (annoyingly) mundane daily life. The art is well detailed and the style fits the tone the story is telling.
But while the slow pace works great for setting up what's to come it doesn't make up for the extreme lack of anything remotely interesting happening during the set up, and the same attitude is continued even after the story's change up moment, past the point of acceptance so instead of "pacing" it becomes "stupidity". The characters while perhaps real in their protrayal, are not engaging and really more unlikeable than anything, Hideo most of all, especially in their strict need to not acknowledge reality. Shawn of the Dead played with the same notion in not recognizing a zombie outbreak when it happens, but unlike here they picked up on what was happening after so long and reacted accordingly to what they knew or thought they knew about zombies. They didn't deny what was happening. Hero denies itself again and again, thus denying the reader the experience of getting behind Hideo as a good focus character.
***
I Am a Hero can be found and read here, which has all the known and published chapters translated to English. I'd say the usual anti-priacy/support the offical release bit, but there is no offical release and this work is never going to see an English print (or the chances at least are extremely slim) so this is really the only way to ever be exposed to it. Future release dates are unknown. The story is currently still ongoing, with 34 chapters so far into what feels like a half-way point through a complete story, but nothing new has been added since December of 2010.
Would I recommend it? If you want something engaging, hell no. The concept is interesting, but the dearth of a likeable main character kills this quick. However, the concept alone can get you through what's there, if only because it's like watching a train wreck and you can't help yourself seeing what this moron actually does next, and it is thought provoking, though probably not in the normally intended ways.
Soo... maybe?
Techs; I Am a Hero is a slice of life/horror/social commentary manga written and drawn by Hanazawa Kengo, published by Shogakukan in Big Comic Spirits magazine since 2009. Currently at five volumes, it is still on-going but with no set date for any future releases. Hero is the story of 35-year old Hideo Suzuki, an assistant manga artist and social wayside, who struggles to be the lead character in his own life in spite of having few, if any, redeeming values towards himself, his girlfriend, or reality in general. Perverse, a loser by any standards, and trapped by social norms, not to mention suffering from severe psychological handicaps and hallucinations, the manga follows Hideo on the slow climb from normal Japanese loser in life through the maybe dellusional/maybe real breakdown of the world around him.
And I'm not sure I get it. In fact, I may hate it.
Maybe it's the fact that Hero is set in a different social culture than I'm currenty inbedded in, but I don't quite think that explains why this isn't working for me. I'm not about to call myself an expert in Japanese anything, but I know enough to be about to feel my way around that "world". Japanese social etiquette is extensive enough to need its own encyclopedia edition, with additional volumes released for different settings and class. You can learn it, but you may never really understand it unless you've lived it for years.
Above I listed "social commentary" as one of the genres this manga takes part in. I listed it as that myself; no other site I've found has that option, but I think it qualifies, and I'll explain that later.
Summary
Hideo Suzuki is a loser. Plain and simple, he is that sad and pathetic guy who functions in society but no one will ever give a passing glance to. He himself knows this, as several times through the story he'll repeat the titular phrase "I am a Hero", which is a play on words (his name written in Japanese can be read as "hero") and a reminder to himself that he is the main character in his own life, whether or not that's really true. He is a "failed" mangaka (manga creator), having his own series cancelled some years ago and now lives as one of several assistants to an ero-manga creator, who themselves are a mix of perverse, pathetic and creepy. He has a girlfriend... somehow... who he enjoys being with (or at least having), but fights enormous jealousy over her continual affection to and referencing of her ex, who is much more successful than he is in both work and life. Hideo exists, and seemingly little else. On top of that he suffers from dellusions and minor paranoia of - something; perhaps the fear that he's as unimportant and useless as he tries to tell himself he's not, but probably is.
Then things go to hell.
Throughout the first ten chapters things are taken slowly and only background hints are given as to whats to come. Quick mentions on television, the witnessed hit-and-run, everyone slowly becoming fetish biters, escalating until the whole country seems to have gone mad, half because of the outbreak of crazy cannibals and half because that side doesn't/won't recognize the other for what it is.
And I think that's what bugs me the most is that no one recognizes what's happening as it happens, as they watch it happen in front of them, as it happens to them, everyone just pulls a Kitty Genovese to everything surrounding them, enveloped in a blanket of "don't get involved, it doesn't concern us" when airplanes are falling into the city.
Characters
Hideo, as has been said, is a loser. Pathetic. He lives his life by his fears, his inadequacy, his jealousy, his ever yearning hope to be the hero and not the background character, even though it will never ever happen. The life we see is him holed up in his apartment either talking to a dellusion of a fat kid who acts as a stupid know-nothing who needs everything explained to him so Hideo himself can feel supeior, or being scared of things of his own mind's creation. And while I know that sometimes adults can be scared of things that aren't there, the way it's presented doesn't seem to be as meant for us to endear ourselves to him; instead, it's shows how utterly incased and blinded he's made himself from the world around him, and as such the reader can only find him shallow and repulsive. He watches the news not to find out anything, as he consistantly fails to grasp or retain anything he sees from it, but to oggle the news castors and judge how the non-pretty ones actually present facts in easy to understand, which he hates because he sees their informativeness as attempts to make up for not being better looking, versus how more entertained he is and easier to look at the pretty ones are. He considers waking up in the morning a "win" in his favor not because he didn't kill himself, but because he accomplished the act of waking up.
His girlfriend, Tekko, is an oddball herself. While seemingly having her shit together much more so than Hideo, she still exhibits a multitude of things that show she's not much better in life than he is. At one point she gets roaring drunk, and her behavior can be seen as either a) she's a mean-ass drunk, or b) she realizes how pathetic a man Hideo is and resents being attached to him, but in the sober light of day is afraid of being alone herself. If anything, she's the most personable character seen so far. Too bad for her.
As the story is all about Hideo and his lack of, any other characters introduced are slim and shallow at best. The story being what it is, no one is seen or presented in any real good light. The manga artist Hideo works for is rarely seen and when he is there's not much to glean, aside that he's fucking an assistant on the side while being married. The other assistants are just as sad as Hideo is, and in some cases worse. One is a stalker and border/crossed-the line pyschopath, interested in the only female assistant there (who's already "taken") mainly because she's the only female he sees on a regular basis who talks to him and he has any semblance of authority over, and another is just there, with little to add and so much a background even the others forget what his name was. Hideo goes to a social mixer with some, I guess they'd be considered, "friends" but they're forgettable even before you meet them.
The only other likeable character is a high school girl introduced late into the 34 chapters published, Hiromi, who comes in so late she has no effect the story presented so far.
The Art
Life is ugly, and this manga wants you to know that. While the backgrounds and environments are detailed well (you will see every blind on that window shade, every brick in that staircase), the people who make up this world are not nice to look at. Many have rounded, potato-ish heads, ugly expressions and facial features, and more than once someone will look like they're constipated. It's not that it's bad character art; the style fits the story theme and mood very well, but it's almost done with the notion that nothing is ever truly beautiful and even what is supposed to be "pretty" aren't really.
While it is a slice-of-life, it's a realistic slice, meaning there's no (wildly) extreme faces or sweatdrops or strange backgrounds or anything that most people say is in all of manga. No speedlines. No noodly arms. Everything you see is as normal and real as it would be in real life, just cartooned a bit because it is being drawn. The artist has a very good grasp of anatomy and miming expression, and it translates well to Hideo's mood swings and improvized dances.
Aside of unattractive character designs, it is not the the art that is the downside of this manga.
The Spoiler(s)*From this point on*
It's a zombie apocolpyse. Freaking Dawn of the Dead played out over several days instead of all at once. And no one seems to understand this.
My Problems
That spoiler right there? That's my whole beef with this manga. Nobody, nobody gets that what is happening around them is a devestating undead virus transferred by blood. And it kills the whole story.
Here's the thing, the world this story exists in is not "another time", it's not "not Earth", it is the here and now, with seemingly all our past culture. So people should know of zombies. It would make no sense for them not to; they have zombies in Japan, hell, they'd have seen American zombies most likely. It's not like the concept is so foreign that it's nonexistant. So why does nobody ever recognize this? Hideo especially, as he's made out to be an otaku (extreme geek, for those not knowing) and should know what's what; at minimum, be able to recognize the genre symptoms. But he doesn't.
That's the second thing I hate here, Hideo's utter lack of real world reaction to the world happening around him; hell, everyone's lack of reaction. This is why I said earlier I believe this to be some sort of social commentary, how (Japanese) people are so wrapped up in rules and etiquette and social grace that they will willingly and actively ignore what's right in front of their face. That they care so much about their own lives and how they're precieved that they won't step outside the bounds of their 1'x1' square of self rather than interact, not if they can avoid it themselves or goad someone else to do what they won't. The best example of this is when Hideo witnesses a hit-and-run. He doens't panic, he doesn't call the police or an ambulance, he doesn't try to help, he does nothing expect watch and then walk away, never mentioning it again expect in brief passing to his girlfriend who also fails to react in any way.
When the shit finally hits the fan and the story starts to pickup the pace, it starts with Hideo going to Tekko's apartment, only to find her turned and now undead; earlier Tekko showed off a bite someone gave her (which was brushed off as just "strange"), and later said she went to the hospital. When he gets there she doesn't answer the door, so he peeks in through her mail slot. He watches as she, literally, slithers up and over to him, looking and acting in no uncertain terms like she's healthy or normal in any way. Her hand reaches through the mail slot and grabs his head, the other opening the door and promptly tries to bite him, though only managing to break her teeth off on the door in her inability to get close enough to bite flesh.
What does Hideo do? He keeps yelling that "that hurts" and trying to communicate normally with Tekko, like it's just a matter of explaining why he's in pain, who only proceeds to pull his head through the broken mail slot and gum his hand hard enough to leave a bite-looking mark on his hand (though doesn't break the skin). And no point does he acknowledge that Tekko is what she is, he persists in treating the whole incident as just an "illness". Even later, after he admits to himself he cut off Tekko's head to stop her from trying to bite him anymore (after having watched her arm be ripped off by another zombie, and after having cleaned her whole apartment like it was nothing) he still doesn't admit what is happening.
And that's the most annoying thing here, how he sees it happening, has been involved in several incidents but never fucking does anything about it! No one, ever, actually listens to what they hear on the radio or news; they say "something weird is happening" or "did you hear about" but they don't see what's directly in their face. Hideo runs down the street, witnessing more attacks as he goes further in; parents attacking their children, people falling out of tall apartment buildings, people getting jumped and bit again and again, undeads being hit by cars. Where is everyone's reaction? It's like everyone one sees the inconvience of the attack happening directly to them and not everything else surrounding them. When a man is jumped by two zombies, there's no scream of pain, no counterattack.
He repeated yells "Hey! That hurts!" and that's about it. He tries to push, not hit or punch, or kick, push them off.
I guess the arguement could be made that Hideo is in constant, functional shock. That he's not totally sure that anything he sees is real, because of his past history with hallucinations and dellusions. Okay, yeah, if he's had to function with this problem for a while, I could see him fighting a reaction to what's going on. But even then, at some point a person would react to their environment. And he, at several points, points out how it could not be a hallucination and convinces himself that what is happening is real but still continues to adher to social protocal. Case in point; after a taxi driver turns undead and tries to attack him and they crash; as the driver starts to burn from the ruined engine, trapped in the broken glass and metal; Hideo still pays the taxi fare, leaving it on the trunk of the taxi, explaining to the driver that he hopes it's enough as he apologizes for running away from the crazed zombie man who just tried to probably eat him.
MORON.
Everyone is like that; people are attacked in the open, and no one helps (granted they may have issues of their own at that moment), most don't react to pain in real ways (a girl has her face ripped of by a man's teeth and at no point does she scream in pain), and no one seems to see what is happening around them, namely it's fucking zombies.
Only once does anyone have the idea to fight back, and low it is the stalker-assistant. Hideo runs to the studio (I forget why, he's stupid). Inside is his boss, turned. Stalker comes up behind him and beans him with a baseball bat, continuing to beat the bloodly hell out of him while screaming about all the past grievances he was put through, real or imagined. He then points out to Hideo another assistant on a chair, beaten to death, and explains how "they'll survive" because they're shut-ins and only the social people will die for going out and having lives; basically the whole "geeks will rule because they're prepared" speech, but not convincing because they don't acknowledge what the problem is, only that there most likely is one. The female assistant shows up (bloated, she was killed the previous evening by the boss and drowned in the bathtub with her throat slit, it was a weird image, but she was probably the source of the boss's transformation) and they don't really kill her but manage to get away. As they run, Stalker says that with only the two bitten, they should be safe. Hideo points out there were three bodies left behind; Stalker remains silent, then smirks it off saying "it probably doesn't matter anymore". So, yeah, he went full psychopath and killed the other assistant for whatever precieved wrongs he saw; it was probably only luck that the zombie outbreak coincided with his breakdown that it all turned out how it did. As is, Stalker dies not long after (by having his head taken off by a crashing airplane's landing gear, while in the midst of being zombie jumped) so he gets his come uppance.
But, again, here's the thing; Hideo continued run with and make plans (sketchy as they were) with Stalker, even after hearing and realizing he killed the assistant who wasn't zombied. And seeming was going to continue following him further, had he not been karma'd to death. So Hideo had no problem working with the psychopath and wasn't going to say anything, because the culture insists on not embarassing or inconviencing someone else regardless of the event or occurance; that it is better to refrain from defending yourself from attack, rather than cause a "disturbance" or bringing attention to yourself by reacting to them.
Final Wrap Up
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from this. Are we to feel for Hideo, see how he's not really that bad a guy in spite of his pathetic life and reactions? Is it a social face slap, supposed to wake us up to our head-down trod through life and give less rigourous adherance to self-implaced social chains? Is it just the story of a slightly less-than-everyman and his journey through a catastrophic event?
I don't know, and while a reader's experience on any work of art is always up to their perspective, the artist's original take should still be present. But it's not there and I don't know what it is he's trying to say, or wants to say.
The pacing is good in the first third (chapters 1-10), having had a full reading of the series published to date. Most other stories would introduce the zombieness in the first few chapters, get right into the thick of it (think how the Dawn of the Dead remake got the undead going within the first five minutes). Hero takes its time, introducing the sinster elements slowly in background materal and dialog while building the (annoyingly) mundane daily life. The art is well detailed and the style fits the tone the story is telling.
But while the slow pace works great for setting up what's to come it doesn't make up for the extreme lack of anything remotely interesting happening during the set up, and the same attitude is continued even after the story's change up moment, past the point of acceptance so instead of "pacing" it becomes "stupidity". The characters while perhaps real in their protrayal, are not engaging and really more unlikeable than anything, Hideo most of all, especially in their strict need to not acknowledge reality. Shawn of the Dead played with the same notion in not recognizing a zombie outbreak when it happens, but unlike here they picked up on what was happening after so long and reacted accordingly to what they knew or thought they knew about zombies. They didn't deny what was happening. Hero denies itself again and again, thus denying the reader the experience of getting behind Hideo as a good focus character.
***
I Am a Hero can be found and read here, which has all the known and published chapters translated to English. I'd say the usual anti-priacy/support the offical release bit, but there is no offical release and this work is never going to see an English print (or the chances at least are extremely slim) so this is really the only way to ever be exposed to it. Future release dates are unknown. The story is currently still ongoing, with 34 chapters so far into what feels like a half-way point through a complete story, but nothing new has been added since December of 2010.
Would I recommend it? If you want something engaging, hell no. The concept is interesting, but the dearth of a likeable main character kills this quick. However, the concept alone can get you through what's there, if only because it's like watching a train wreck and you can't help yourself seeing what this moron actually does next, and it is thought provoking, though probably not in the normally intended ways.
Soo... maybe?