I Am a Hero - Vol. 22 Ch. 264

[MangaDex]

 

[Donkeybrains]

Well that was disappointing.

 

[77BLc9JwJGpLVARkamJx]

Pretty good end, I like it. I read about it being disappointment before and thought it would be about the alien zombie origin being extra retarded than what we got .Good shit. Time to read the spin offs as well. Thanks for completing the series Todome!

 

[GruntZone360]

Yeah but what?

 

[taesu]

For the record, the author has to end the series because he was grieving on the passing of his father. As a result, he cannot continue the story.

 

[Windiza]

I wonder what happened to the guy on the boat who was supposed to wait for Hideo for ~3 days

 

[Darthagnon]

😭😪😪😪Sigh... kinda fizzled out there at the end, huh... how depressing. Oh, well, time for the spin-offs.

So many questions left:
- Whatever happened to that plot strand about developing a vaccine from Hiromi?
- Did I miss something? What happened to Auntie's eye?
- When did she get separated from the others, or become Kurusu's enemy?
- When did those 3 guys (Takeshi/Ezaki, depending on the translator, Naked Emperor, Kurusu) merge into uber-Kuruso?
- What happened to that captain with a mask and glasses (Kowashi, I think?) from Kurusu's cult? Was he that fighter zombie at the end?
- What happened to the little girl who fell from the heli? I though she was a main character, with plot armour?
- When/where did all that happen between Oda and her sister?
- Where did the zombies come from? Aliens? And what were the point of those giant things?
- Did Spanish-Legs-Man turn into a tree?
- Where did the other Kurusu's come from? Why were they there?
- What is the deal with Hiromi/Kurusu's zombie-controlling powers?
- Why are they called "zombfags" (no homo much, eh? not that I care) initially, then ZQN (zero-qualified nucleus - unique, but meaningless) later on? Different translators? Whatever's wrong with "zombies" or "walking dead" or "zuvembie" (Marvel)?
- What happened to Hideo in the end? Just living out a boring life?
- What happened to the world in the end? Did everyone go back to the Stone Age, or did they reconstruct?
- ... and why? why?! did Hiromi have to die? 😭 😭😭Or did she die? (Spoiler:

Spoiler

She was absorbed into one of the giants. What does that mean? Will she be reborn?

- Come to think of it, why did so many of them have to die? Guess it's probably just the manga style, but kinda annoying that there are at least 6 or so likable protagonists killed off. More realistic body-count than The Lord of the Rings, though LOL (at least in Narnia, the main chars often get "banned" from Narnia, then all die at the end).

 

[Lanfear]

So many things left unfinished*sigh*

 

[imnotmakinganaccount]

That was actually awful, this whole thing took a nosedive after volume 11, I knew I should have dropped it there.

 

[Confused]

sigh, a bad ending, too many loopholes, it seems all meaningless now.

 

[ToxicPilgrim]

Guess I'm out of the loop. I really like this ending.
It's not about him winning, or getting any rewards. Just living and surviving. There's a strength in that.
Like a victory every day that the world doesn't kill you.

 

[ouranagakawa]

there may have been a lot of loopholes, but the ending is still satisfying. Even in the end, we don’t know what the fuck happened to make humanity like this (maybe the aliens just gave up or something). But honestly, at least some characters lived to the ending and are presumably still living. It’s tough to wrap up end-of-the-world scenarios without pulling some ex-machina move, and I can respect that this series didn’t really do that aka not giving us the happy/full ending.

justice for the old man on the boat though, what a true lad

 

[BobaTheFett101]

The was AMAZING! The ending was satisfactory, and I tend to like when endings leave the cause of the plot ambiguous, as it leaves the cause to the imagination. People who didn’t like the ending would probably still be dissatisfied if it ended with the ZQN outbreak being explained, so I don’t know why they’re whining. Hideo is one of my top favorite manga characters of all time, and this manga is one of my favorite as well, right next to Gantz and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Dragon Ball. It was an exhilarating ride, even if in the end, Hideo ended up looking like Steven Spielberg. Thank you, Hanazawa-San. And thank you, Todome.

 

[BobaTheFett101]

At least someone isn’t a normie who wants everything explained😂

 

[Vickyboi]

A bit too many unanswered questions for my taste, but the ride was very good so I'm glad I read it!

I was reminded of "Ressentiment" while reading it. (Same author)

 

[BruceLee]

this started to go into its nosedive around the time we found out these were aliens. That bit in europe turned out so meaningless to the story. Useless red herring.

I guess the authors circumstances forced the last couple issues. Basically he got captured by this hiromimonster whose "love turned to hatred" then suddenly timeskip and he's the dude living alone in the future. It started out nice though.

 

[zerimaR]

Even though there was so much left unanswered, I really enjoyed this. Think it did a great job of defining Hideo. Even though he still is delusional, those last few chapters showed that he grew so much with all the individuals he traveled with. I believe he became the hero he wanted to be in the end.

 

[Banal]

This Manga is more... interesting than it is good or bad. It is made clear that the whole time the ZQNs were meant to make us think of the stereotypical "zombie", but the story takes it to a slightly different stage somewhere between alien invasion and universal indifference. I almost wonder if there was ever meant to be a profound end, or if it was simply a looping ballad dedicated to the cycle of life and death, regret, and the desire to escape them.

 

[VIII]

Unfortunate ending, not quite Gantz levels of unfortunate but it's up there. Zombie invasion stuff is usually allegorical, be it about consumerism, materialism, a general decline of societal values, etc., and the origin of the crisis is never really important to the events that unfold, so I don't mind unanswered questions, there will always be ambiguity and mystery in these kinds of stories. But this felt like such a mixed bag of a ride, firstly because it indeed more or less starts as a tale of moral collapse, mental disease, and consumerism, secondly because it's developed in quite a pleasantly unorthodox way given Japan's societal values (which is quite refreshing to this zombie apocalypse genre), thirdly because somewhere along the way the author gets sidetracked writing all sorts of pointless side-stories (Zombie Apocalypse 2: Euro Boogaloo, to name one example, and this phenomenon is also evidenced in the various spin-offs that came from this franchise), and finally because the ending not only feels rushed and anticlimactic, it loops right around to the beginning with Hideo not being able to overcome his delusions.

Criticisms/nitpicks:
1) Why even hint at aliens and why reiterate that hypothesis so many times? Not just the 2ch anons but also in Europe. What was the point of even bringing that stuff up? If it was just an insight on how people cope with these kinds of situations, why not give alternative competing explanations like, I dunno, the wrath of God or something? Why aliens? And why reiterate it ad nauseam?
2) What did mindbreaking Hiromi accomplished? Why leave her fate to uncertainty? Her conflict with Oda felt out of nowhere and her being mindbroken by the Zombie Instrumentality Project was just weird and aimless. They made it a point that there was a kind of autocephalous relation between nests, and if Hiromi was so important as the queen, what exactly was her symbiotic relation with the rest of the brains in her nest? Surely it was not her life experiences otherwise she wouldn't have been driven to insanity by brainchan. And if the nests are able to conjure all sorts of crazy magic (like what they did to Auntie), what exactly was going on and what was ultimately the point?
3) Why was Hideo unable to at the very least move on when it was previously established his lack of connection to people? Yajima said as much, he reveals Hideo's innermost emotions and we can't presume that he was lying. This may explain why Hideo finally defaults to being I Am A Crazy Man even if I find this non-development to be contentious and gimmicky. But when the helicopter takes off, Nakata makes it a point of nothing that there are people down in Tokyo still alive, so why have Hideo live in an utterly devastated Tokyo with no people (???) and talking to himself? What was the point of this? Meanwhile, Nakata enjoys living on Eden island while crushing that fine Auntie Eva puss.
4) What was the point of Takashi's three man fight with Naked Emperor and Kurusu? So that they would just nest up? Why? Wouldn't Kurusu be enough to accomplish this? What was the point of NE and Takashi? Wouldn't the story be exactly the same without these two characters, Takashi specifically?
5) What what the point of masked JK? I get that there are tons of senseless deaths in these kinds of stories, but why have her cling to dear life all up until the final volume, even holding to the rail of the helicopter, just so that the world's sharpest axe cut through her visor?

Shit son, I wrote more about this ending than the manga probably deserves. I thought that it was a decent read up until the mall when Oda is introduced then it goes downhill. The initial chapters have some really poignant takes on the manga industry and does an excellent character study on Hideo Suzuki, with some very candid and even oddly sincere scenes of his relationship, his job, his insecurities, etc. What was an initially very surprising and delightful read then just became schlock. I don't mean to be overly harsh on this manga, and please understand that being fresh out of the ending is indeed colouring my opinion of it as a whole, but I kinda hate what it became, this cynical, pretentious, pointless read that has ultimately only inspired me not to sing the praises of what it did right but to point out the glaring narrative faults of this series and even nitpick with increasing pettiness the pointlessness of certain characters. For all it's worth, if this manga had ended when Hiromi was infected (instead of turning into super zomb), I think it would have been a masterpiece. At some point, it felt only like disposable manga read #3984, which is quite unfortunate given just how strong the first volumes were and how refreshing was the initial development of this story.

 

[bozunee]

What the fuck is this ending. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time wondering where all this is gonna go and it just gets dumped inti nothing. Did this get axed? This feels like axe-kun's work.

Outside of this terrible stop to the story, this manga was pretty fucking good.