I Am a Hero

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He'd better be.

A 2009 comedy/horror manga by Kengo Hanazawa.

There isn't much to the life of a struggling artist. Hideo Suzuki, 35, is starting to believe he hit his prime back when he had a printed series that died after six months. The path to manga stardom has faded from view, leaving Suzuki pitching pandering Moe series and drawing porn to get by. His editor is bored with him, his seniors are short with him, and even his girlfriend seems out of his league. Underneath a happy-go-lucky facade, Suzuki is desperate: what do you do when you play a bit part in your own life?

But there's considerably less-existential trouble brewing in the city streets. News reports have surfaced about a rash of biting assaults in crowded areas - here and there, someone seems to go berserk and sink teeth into the nearest bystander. Being around the same people every day, Suzuki's own risk for infection is low... but protagonism picks today to knock.

Go figure.

A uniquely weird Seinen series. Features realistic artwork that switches from funny faces to grotesque ones with outstanding impact.

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Tropes:

• A Worldwide Punomenon: Boob Morning! (Oppai-yo Gozaimasu!), done by appropriately busty models and actresses acting as hosts for a morning variety show.
• The Ace: Nakata, as far as artistic talent goes. There's something to be said about a series where this trope applies to a lisping, pencil-necked weirdo with the fashion sense of Jon Arbuckle.
• Action Survivor: Mitani, of all people. Who better than a materialistic slob to be Dangerously Genre Savvy?
• Aerosol Flamethrower: Employed to defeat one infected. Unusually for the threat, it works.
• Ambiguous Innocence: Hiromi is a sweet girl... right?
• Anti-Hero: Suzuki is an exploration of Type I.
• Anyone Can Die
• Author Filibuster: Suzuki has very strong ideas about the future of manga, and loves to philosophize about them at length. Played for laughs when it's clear nobody asked.
  • Unless it is meant to be a comical Character Filibuster from someone neurotic with overambitious views.
• Body Horror / Facial Horror: Yikes.
• Chekhov's Gun: With an actual gun. In plain sight. The wait shows the main character is far from an action hero, at best.
• Cat Fight: Averted. Two of Horomi's now-zombie friends (who never did like each other even while living) began to fight each other in the most brutal manner possible, with each trying to bite, gouge, and scratch as much as their disgusting undead bodies can muster.
• Creepy Child: A little boy spotted gnawing on a woman's remains, moaning for his mother. It gets worse.
• Creepy Doll: From Hiromi's point-of-view, post-infection, both humans and zombies appear as hideously-deformed plush toys.
• Daylight Horror
• Deadly Lunge: A frequent followup to Enemy Rising Behind.
• Dead Baby Comedy: The manga appears to have this sort of atmosphere.
• Dying Like Animals: Calling most of the people "bats" does not do justice to their ignorance. These people are so oblivious of what's around them (in particular the passengers on the commuter rail), that it takes a killing inches away from them to realize something is wrong.
  • Also Moles, as the passengers ask Hideo to help the man fighting for his life with an insane zombie while having chunks of flesh bitten off him while assuming it's just a mugging.
• Ear Ache: Here.
• Erotic Eating: Mi-chan fellating a baseball bat.
• Facial Horror: "Red light, green light, one two THREE!!! (chomps on nearby female passenger)
  • "Yesterday all my troubles seem so far away!!"
  • "I Love You" "I Love You Too"
• Fingore: Chomp.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Mitani.
• Horror Hunger: The zombies who completely lose themselves don't stop at the living.
• Hot Scoop: Mitani never misses the news. Not because he cares what's going on, he just likes to slobber over the anchorladies. They are the first clues that something is extremely wrong.
• Infant Immortality: Averted. One of the infected appears to be a young school girl with a crushed skull.
  • About to be averted, where Hiromi catches a glimpse through the window of an apartment where an infected man approaches a woman holding a newborn child.
• I Taste Delicious: Hideo and another survivor glimpse one zombie chowing down on its own feet http://mangafox.me/manga/i_am_a_hero/v06/c062/12.html. This prompts them to wonder if the zombies' goal is to destroy everything by eating humans, each other, and then themselves.
• Kaiju Defense Force: The SDF's having a hard time in combating infected civilians. The survivors pass by an abandoned APC with the interior drenched in blood to prove the point.
• Madness Mantra: Those who have been infected. And it is terrifying... - "Thank you for your patronage"
• Marionette Motion: As if the zombies themselves weren't pants-shitting enough.
• Meaningful Name: The Alternate Character Reading for Hideo is why he keeps saying he is a hero. Later we have Hiromi.
• Message Board: Online communities play a role. They're the most Genre Savvy about a Zombie Apocalypse, have less direct human contact, and so have better odds of survival. Not that it prevents the flaky, morally questionable types from running things...
• Mind Screw: See Unreliable Narrator.
• Most Writers Are Writers: Hideo of course, being a mangaka and all.
• Murderous Thighs: The added strength, agility, and lack of pain means the thinner infectees use their entire bodies like a vice. Squickier than the usual version.
• Mummies At the Dinner Table: With Tetsuko. He understands the situation, though - it's out of respect.
• Nightmare Face Have a nice sleep everybody
  • Did you really think it was over?
• Not a Zombie: With a few exceptions, the entire city is under this impression as few people who encounter them survive long enough to pass it on.
• Not Using the Z Word: The online term for the infected becomes ZQN, a portmanteau with the Japanese slang DQN.
• Panty Shot: Squick inducing as it's flashed towards Hideo in the taxi while a recently zombified couple are both making out and tearing each other apart. Hideo unintentionally gets socked in the mouth for his troubles.
• Police Are Useless: Lampshaded for laughs as Suzuki obsessive compulsively keeps mentioning laws long after they have nobody to enforce them.
• Removing the Head Or Destroying The Brain: It's hard to say just how much is necessary for the latter as several of the infected have partially crushed skulls. Just knowing the method isn't an easy ticket for the police to control the outbreak.
• Safe Zone Hope Spot
• Sealed Badass In A Sleeping Bag: Hiromi is used in this way, after she becomes infected.
• Sequential Artist
• Shaky POV Cam: Impressive in a rather detailed comic.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: The change in mood makes Suzuki unable to imagine Yajima any more.
• Staking the Loved One
• Somebody Else's Problem: Taken to ridiculous extremes inside the suburban rail where an infected staff member has just bit a chunk out of a Too Dumb to Live passenger's head who had continued to antagonize it as it tried to get through the door into the other car, spilling his brains out. Then it attacks the nearest passenger who's fighting for his life while calling out to the passengers to help him. What do the passengers do during this commotion? They continue sitting and joking, wondering if they should help out in what they believe to be a molestation. Not until a few more deaths do the passengers finally get it in their skulls that there's a Zombie Apocalypse going on.
• Tainted Veins: Infected people are marked by both Prophet Eyes and full-body standout veins.
• Technically Living Zombie: However, the infection gives them the unnatural resilience more often associated with traditional zombies, and increased strength to boot.
• This Is Reality
• Too Dumb to Live: The bit characters, which includes our hero. Apparently nobody watches the news.
  • On a commuter train, rather than running as fast as humanely possible, an angry youth continues to yell at a staff member staring through the window on the other side of the car even while it's clear blood is seeping from the staff man's eyes, nose and mouth, is constantly spouting Madness Mantras ("Thank You For Your Patronage"), and has tainted veins sprouting all over his face. Once it gets through, it takes a nice bite out of the youth's head, who stares unbelievingly at the mush of brain in his hand while touching the hole on his forehead before passing away.
• Uh-Oh Eyes: The first sign of infection.
• Unreliable Narrator: Suzuki hallucinates on a daily basis. Most of the time it's harmless, like his pudgy little imaginary friend Yajima... but it does throw the veracity of his account into question.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Society is depicted at its most apathetic. And then there are the infectees who haven't completely lost their minds.
  • Although as the new chapters show even those who have long been dead appear to not have completely forgotten their humanity. A hanged zombie finally dies when it's handed a portrait of its family (although it could have just been the head separating from the body after much straining on the zombie's part)
    • Ditto for the Hiromi's former friend (whom it's implied got killed after Hiromi left the house to go on a stroll in the woods at night) who appears to offer her a shoe.
  • Hiromi herself becomes a zombie after being bitten by a zombified baby. She is still able to maintain some of her mental faculties and so far has not tried to attack or eat the main character, Hideo (she even tries to protect him when watching him get chased by a fellow zombie). However, as a zombie she often experiences periods of dissociation where, after tearing off the aformentioned zombie's jaw, she experiences herself in her room washing dishes when she is actually using the the ripped jaw to rub the zombie's now jawless face. She then mutilates the unfortunate zombie, thinking she is performing surgery on her stuffed toy. Her behavior may explain the zombies' erratic violent behavior and tendency to spout Madness Mantras.
• Zombie Infectee: Played with. Most infections are too instantaneous to hide but some characters, or even others around them, cannot tell if what they got counts as a bite.