Hideo Suzuki
I Am a Hero‘s Hideo Suzuki, the main character, finds himself unexpectedly amid a zombie apocalypse. He observed how the necks of people experiencing homelessness were bent and thin. Everyone was screaming and biting one another except the undead. Hideo, though, makes a difference. It is the opportunity he has been anticipating for a while. He must have a positive outlook while carrying a shotgun behind his back.
In essence, he is crazy and also brilliant, fantastic, and a hero. I Am a Hero is a commonplace manga that will make us wonder about the surrealistic world it contains. Before we forget, the world is amid a zombie apocalypse when one panel depicts a gigantic butterfly. Hideo, a shy, insecure 35-year-old man, chases his ambition of becoming a renowned manga artist. He is a person who strives to maintain a balance between his everyday life and his hallucinations. A granny doll protrudes from the blankets at these panels.
In addition, a floating head that impersonates Oyasumi Punpun knocks on his door and purports to be speaking to God. Either it’s fake, or it’s frighteningly honest and trustworthy. It has followed Hideo around his entire life, haunting him constantly. He still required additional materials after gathering everything.
The Interactions
He needs more aspirations, abandons his fictional pals, and craves romantic relationships and ludicrous friends. Nothing exceptional as a result. He lacks personality like most critical characters in the genre, whether comics or film. Kengo Hanazawa continually questions the reader’s interpretation while they read I Am a Hero. Things can seem genuine thanks to Hideo’s vivid imagination.
His interactions with others in the same room ensured that such a situation never materialized. He always haunts Hideo more than anything else but can’t be trusted with his senses. He was last because of his fear. He had always thought that the world was ending and that he was living through it. One of the most ridiculous mangas is I Am a Hero. First, a Japanese news report about a crazy man who bit an older woman on a bus became a popular topic of conversation.
If anything, it’s just another ordinary Ohio day. As the incident spread to several locations, Japan began publishing articles with identical headlines. In several tales, people casually mention it in conversation. The discourse raises profound awareness in society and elicits rage and fear. It seemed horrible that so many individuals had been found suddenly dead or missing, but Hideo knew the truth.
The Last Call
It doesn’t seem genuine to him. A car struck a woman, and she suffered another delusion. The driver tries to eat people alive as a final resort for the only person he loves. The night before they had a significant argument, Hideo apologized to his girlfriend over the phone. However, something strange took place. She always answers Hideo’s phone even though the call goes straight to voicemail, and nothing occurs.
Nobody had seen him all day when he asked his friends. His final option was to visit her flat to ensure everything was alright. When Hideo opened the door, he had no idea it would change everything. The last view of his daily life is that his ex-girlfriend is no longer with her. Hideo’s liminal zone speculates on the organisms found in the deep ocean. That same awareness occurs when we try to picture someone with schizophrenia trying to endure a zombie apocalypse.
Half of what he saw was attempting to harm him. He saw an illusion of the other half. Everyone became frantic and began to lose their minds. When Hideo saw his boss kill his helper for no apparent reason, he realized this. He uses a baseball bat to hit his skull, and his coworkers report it to his employer.
Falsehood
Then a man with a beheading followed him. Kengo uses the shakiest point of view to depict layers of panic and uncertainty. He cannot take all the items when he visits the neighborhood convenience store. One zombie turns into many zombies, transforming Hideo from a clumsy individual to the one with the highest chance of surviving. It draws several of these things. It’s simple to feel overpowered or even afraid with just one person.
A ray of hope appears after the zombie babies experience misery. Hiromi Hayakari acted as a catharsis for Hideo because he didn’t anticipate even a glimmer of hope to be received. Being the lone survivor of an outbreak at her adjacent school, she is a young kid in the midst of it all. The only information that Kengo omitted was that she also had the infection. Hiromi, on the other hand, is unquestionably unique from the others.
She carries the human brain and awareness after infection. It nonetheless fosters the distinctive qualities that make a zombie special, such as superhuman strength or the capacity to interact with other infected people. One of them only causes us confusion. There isn’t a falsehood in the remainder of the narrative.
Saving the World
However, a pupil who is both human and a monster makes her the antidote to the zombie apocalypse. She opposes the main character, who is attempting to protect humanity from a dangerous species. The remainder of the story is a drawn-out journey that demonstrates how both will ultimately be capable of saving the world. Chance will determine Earth’s future. We can hint at how destiny began in what occurred to Hiromi.
It might result in the identification of a drug that cures everyone. The notion that all zombies are hallucinations, on the other hand, seems unconvincing. Contrary to common assumption, it is among the most pointless clichés writers and filmmakers can employ in a plot of such a nature. I Am a Hero, on the other hand, also makes observations on the degree of craziness that each of the manga’s protagonists may encounter in trying circumstances.
Not to mention that it was both horrifying and hopeless. Trapped people who never escape make up half of the surviving survivors. The other half is a criminal and psychopath who craves such a chance. In all likelihood, nobody is going to rescue them. Zombies destroyed the military and police, and smaller opposition organizations installed new governments.
Sane Person
The cult leader began to exploit the circumstances and rose to power. As the number of followers increased, the enigmatic figure drew most survivors. The figure is an unidentified person using the alias Kurusu. He asserts that he is the only one who is aware of the origins of everything. The causes of the virus were many of the unresolved questions he left unanswered. Inside the outlet mall, Hiromi and Hideo run across the survivors.
They located a location with plenty of resources where they could establish themselves. The environment is excellent but dead. The fact that the populace formed a sect is what’s wrong. The only thing the leader is interested in is grabbing a gun. Tsugumi Oda is the lone sane person at the outlet mall. The three of them needed to leave, she determined. Once one person contracts the disease, things move quickly.
In the city’s center, one zombie is masturbating while another is burning himself. They choose to travel to Tokyo. Tokyo, nevertheless, ended up being far worse. It turns out that several cults are even worse than the individuals in the mall. A superhuman zombie sect like this one also has Kurusu as one of its members.
Kengo Hanazawa
Someone didn’t simply succeed in becoming the only one in Japan carrying a shotgun. Later, epidemics of zombies also affected nations like France and Italy. The fact that the zombies were an alien race that had combined into one enormous behemoth made the situation worse. People must be aware of why the considerable beasts spread over Japan. The transformation of a thousand zombies only gets a billion times scarier.
When Kurusu spoke to Hideo telepathically about the chosen one, the hallucinations began again. Hideo was at a loss as to why Kurusu wore staples at this moment. Was Hiromi the designated person, and what transpired? It’s like reading someone else’s thoughts when we read I Am a Hero. At first, Kengo thought it was crazy to know that the manga characters were so stubborn.
Being a combination of it and an awareness of Kengo’s art style, it gives some indication of what’s happening. The closest similarity is reading the Berserk manga for the first time, besides Kengo depicting the plot through extraordinarily detailed artwork. Each panel in both mangas tells a story that makes the action seem genuine. It’s like staring at a real-life version of an old painting.
In his own words, Kengo didn’t want his tale to resemble anything from the real world.
Surrealism
He attempts to stay as faithful to truth or surrealism as possible. Each chapter included one of his intricate manga panels. Because of this, he appeared to be an alive machine. In another interview, he acknowledges that he would never have become a mangaka if he had a girlfriend while Kengo was in school. We will never be able to compare reading I Am a Hero to anything else. Hideo claims he wants to write a story that people will remember for 100 years in another chapter.
It takes on a message, or even the author’s reflection, that he wishes to express to himself as a writer.
Bibliography
- Kim, J. (2019). Biocalyptic imaginations in Japanese and Korean films: undead nation-states in I Am a Hero and Train to Busan. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 20(3), 437-451.
- Sas, M. (1999). Fault lines: Cultural memory and Japanese surrealism. Stanford University Press.
- Simon, P. (2019). This Zombie Apocalypse Fooled Us: I Am a Hero Closing Thoughts. Dark Horse Comics.
