I Am a Hero

[VIII]

I recommend that you read the first couple of volumes, it's really, really great stuff. Somewhere along the way the manga becomes a bit of a let down in my humble opinion, so be warned. Even in the later parts, there are still flashes of genius here and there, but again in my opinion it just doesn't flow the same. And if you're anything like me, this will prone you to nitpick the pettiest, silliest things instead of looking at the bigger picture of what the manga is trying to accomplish... whatever it is.

So yeah, read it until you feel it's starting to get stale. This isn't one of those manga that is worth powering through for the finale.

 

[Djay86]

seemed interesting but quickly dropped

 

[rarewaifu]

Such a great read despite the lackluster ending, the journey though was an experience i was very immersed

Highly recommend although remember what i said about the ending

 

[WaifuCT]

Ugh, it felt like there was so much potential for more but just ends like that. Not disappointed, but just...bleh.

 

[4ThaWin]

A solid 7/10. The story was nice and the art design was interesting. The ending was a bit so-so, but I think the author was just disinterested in continuing a series for such a long time (not his fault, probably just burnt out). The movie was a nice 7/10 as well, but so many things were cut out since the CGI seemed to be a bit high quality but there wasn't enough of it. All in all a good story to binge read.

 

[Meybi]

fuck me time to read 260 chapters

 

[Hawkfield240]

I always heard of this manga and damn son I love this manga already

 

[CptHornSwoggle]

FOUND IT FINALLY!! turns out i just missed typing the a these last 5 HOURS trying to find this

 

[ruhrohshingo]

Just finished this off last night and while the ending felt very rushed after mulling over it a while, I don't really mind it since a lot of the dangling ends can be inferred from previous events. There are still some larger elephant in the room type questions that go completely unanswered, though.

Spoiler

I think the title "I am a Hero" is intended to be a pun. Though the title actually is literally phontetically "I am a Hero", we're reminded multiple times throughout that Hideo is written with the same kanji as "eiyuu" (Hero). So if you were to translate the title from English back into pure Japanese, it'd be "Hideo desu" or "I am Hideo" as a reference to Hideo's sociopathic narcissism we see peppered through the story and in full display in the epilogue chapters - most notably when Hideo only thinks of Tekko (decapitated), Oda (watched die), and Hiromi ("tried to rescue") when masturbating and as he displays no interest in finding out if there are other survivors in the world.

@CptHornSwoggle the imprecision of search has been a long standing complaint of mine. I know MD switched to Elasticsearch in the backend not long ago, and I want to say most of that is caused by Elasticsearch's query heuristics. This is because when you enter in something Elasticsearch by default tries to break down what you entered into keywords it tries to match against and produce a score that is Elasticsearch's guess at how close the data is to what you entered.

Without much tweaking in settings Elasticsearch may drop common words like "the", "a", "an", etc. that generally are not going to be particularly unique. If you presume that, searching even for "I am a hero" with the intent of it being an exact match might boil down in the heuristics just as "hero" and possibly "I"...which is going to match a ton of stuff (this is actually close to how Google searches work to account for misspellings and frequently associated terms). Additionally, the search results also check aliases for titles which in this case will likely cause even more false positive results that score higher than what you actually expected to see come back.

Some better search options to disable those sorts of heuristics would be really nice at some point.

 

[Happolnareff]

imo the biggest issue I have with this manga is that there's all this implied history with Kurusu's group and Nakata's group that we don't see at all. I dunno what the deal behind the scenes was but...

Spoiler

if you weren't going to properly follow Takashi/Kurusu's journey to Tokyo, especially considering the obvious friction created between the group off-panel, and character deaths(Kowashi AND the school survivors)/injuries(Auntie's eye) what was the point of setting them up so hard for volumes? Meanwhile Nakata's group has the opposite problem of having this great history with Nakata as a leader they trust that we never see, and these weird power shifts within their cult that are alluded to multiple times.
At first Hideo's end is what disappointed me but considering his character and what the overall message of the manga is I got over that quick (I just wish it wasn't 4 chapters of literally just crazy Hideo over the course of years for an ending) and my real issue turns out to be what wasn't shown/explained about all these other characters that would have been nice build-up to this ending but instead it really did feel like the mangaka just fucked up at some point and kept going because there was no going back or was given some sort of "aim for this volume #" deadline and just struggled to make it work?

It isn't about "oh where did the aliens come from/what was their purpose" for me and I didn't have an issue with the anecdotal nature of the "foreigner" segments that showed us what was happening elsewhere. There is indeed a lot that can be conferred and pieced together like others have already said, I just felt like the characters themselves deserved more development since the entire thing was DRIVEN by them rather than the zombie apocalypse in the background.

Oh, and the 'twists and turns' of the little boat-man segment were indeed dumb and a total plot device. Especially considering how the "bargaining" was "resolved". I'm not surprised the dude took off without Hideo, though I don't think that was even specified, unless I'm supposed to believe Hideo was knocked out for days/just decided not to try and contact him or kayak back out or w/e.
Oh, and Auntie getting melted down into a hot baby-maker was THE moment I could tell Kengo Hanazawa was like "Idgaf here's your ending"

With all that out of the way tho, I'd recommend this every time. Its a fun ride at least, just some disappointment over things that may or may not have been rushed/cut/etc.

 

[CuddleStruggle]

This manga is good. For example: MC get his way with a virgin underage girl while being 35 y.o. himself. He deserves no less for being a hero.

 

[drainodraino]

I hate who ever recommended this manga to me. I enjoyed it through and through despite what seems to be major plot holes...but in a way I'm satisfied with the ending. Still, fuck the guy that recommend this. I am now sad because of you

 

[Happolnareff]

btw the moral of the story is "be a Nakata, not a Hideo"

 

[KhrystSolo]

Manga along the way sometimes seems really like pieces of different stories and even when they connect together those pieces doesn't have any significant meaning.

Spoiler

There is sex in the plot. Surprisingly even MC has got some.

Story seems rather interesting though I've skipped some dialogs and didn't miss anything.
Ending in my humble opinion feels really axed and

Spoiler

th with that thing and that building? nests, what are those and where this all got out of? There were no facilities that survived such incidents? There is a number of hardly accessible places.
Also what has happened to Hitomi? She became part of that thing and? It seems like the ending wasn't thought through.. And the main point to that complete ending for side characters. If author wanted to leave a cliffhanger then he shouldn't have given them ending. Meanwhile it seems to me like MC's arc misses 1-4 pages, where that thing starts to move and we find out what happened to Hitomi and others.

Basically it ends with MC killing again living things. Hanging by himself in abandoned and crumbling Tokyo. Sometimes getting drink, sometimes doing Exhibitionism in front of statues and manikins

I don't know whenever there any symbolism or deep meaning but I felt frustrated with such an ending meaning but I felt frustrated with such an ending!

 

[thatsheinous]

No spoilers review

It is without a doubt a good read, but you need to know what you're getting yourself into. The best way to describe this manga is that it feels like it was never supposed to end. So, when the ending eventually comes it will without a doubt leave you wanting more. This is a story where nothing is spoon-fed. You're never going to have a character verbalize the plot for you and having an acute attention to detail will only earn you subtle rewards. If you ever reach a point of wanting to put it on pause, i encourage you to do so. The story isn't so complicated that even taking a few months off will allow you to reenter without feeling confused. Questions you have will rarely be answered, but this isn't a story of uncovering truth. This is a story about Hideo and what will become of him.

 

[Toshraka]

@thatsheinous thanks for the review and the insights!

 

[AnotherRat]

An interesting read lol

 

[agnii-san]

good manga just couldn't wrap it up in the end, I have stopped reading this before its been translated where

Spoiler

the 3 kurusus duked it out and maybe a bit more

and heard the same issue came about with the series before I resumed reading, so it's good to set your expectations low and enjoy the ride. It's a piece of work if you can appreciate it at length rather than its conclusion.

 

[FrostySeven]

Fuck the ending. Don't read it if you hate evangelion ending type of shit. Overall good manga. But fuck the ending.

 

[jonkk]

why is he so cute??