Review by Frank Plowright

After spending most of Omnibus 2 in the woods around Mount Fuji, Hideo and Hiromi have emerged, and heard an official message describing the zombies as experiencing medical symptoms, which is a funny comment on administrative weasels. There’s a moment of wonder to open this volume, though. Kengo Hanazawa has people gathering to walk to a shrine at Mount Fuji as a rumour has spread, and without any foundation people believe it. More fool them, as it turns out, and Hanazawa comes up with a glorious thinning of their ranks.

The certainty for Hideo and Hiromi is that not enough people are taking the zombie threat seriously yet, and that’s understandable. Despite being a few hundred pages into I Am A Hero only a couple of nights have passed since Hideo first saw a zombie. A nice insight into Hideo’s personality is that even though everything has changed so rapidly, he still has difficulty not behaving lawfully.

Just before halfway there’s a possible shock to the status quo as experienced by Hideo, which is the point when Hanazawa takes an extended break from that possibility to switch to online conversations and videos showing things spreading across Japan. It’s a prolonged interlude of rumour and speculation, longer than is required to spin out the suspense, but such is Hanazawa’s storytelling. When he does return to the primary cast 48 hours later there have been changes. What possibly hasn’t quite been appreciated by readers outside Japan is just what an advantage Hideo has in possessing a shotgun. It’s a rarity, and he uses it sparingly, which serves to differentiate I Am A Hero from American zombie series.

In the two days Hanazawa filled with texts, much has changed in the wider world, and people are being encouraged to make their way to a shopping mall for protection, which is where this volume ends and Omnibus 4 opens. The ending features a comment that’s not occurred to Hideo and concerns a possible cure for the zombie outbreak, but as there’s another eight books to go, don’t expect that to play out anytime soon.

Hanazawa still lingers during scenes that other creators would move through with greater rapidity, but that’s the price for everything he manages so well.