I'm not zombie/horror connoisseur by any means nowadays because it tends to be all the same, where there is a break out of a virus and every one fights to survival. But I Am a Hero is different. It takes a 180 approach to the zombie genre and turns in up on it's head. Not to be specific, when the outbreak begins, the reaction of from Japan is much more realistic, not your atypical Marshall law panic as seen in many movies, but a more subtle and unusual response to the sudden pandemic.

The main character stars, Hideo suzuki, a socially awkward and average unfulfilled mangaka until the outbreak. He is turned into the most powerful person in his periphery due to his possession of hunting shotgun (guns are rare in Japan) and the lack involvement of the government and the Japanese SDF. The plot mainly follows suzuki's escape into the less populated prefectures of tokyo while having people to join up on his journey. Though Suzuki is the main character, the plot later on branches out into other side characters and subplots later on.

This manga is quite the thriller. I can't stress enough how deep it delves into the sense of ambivalent paranoia that you the reader feels and the characters are subdued to. The key of survival and the interaction between survivors is a major plot driving point. Not to mention the manga is quite scary moments at times, where I was personally freaked the shit out of my seat. The psychological impact that this zombie plague has on the cast of characters is very underlying, in other words, the psychological impact deconstructs the meaning of human society as they try fight off the infected. There are a whole lot of themes in I am a Hero such as morality, fear of death, and facing reality, which leaves a lot for the reader to explore and interpret.

The art is drawn in pretty meticulous detail and at times the panels feels "episodic", only showing certain framed shots. What strikes me most about the art is it's feeling of motion, or rather lack of it. I mean this by the panels seeming to be very static, like stills of real life (This could probably be explained by how his art resembles photographs, very still snapshots but realistically captured). This boils over to how it affects action panels in the series. The action feels more like a photographer taking pictures of the scene rather a fluid continuity of motion as one may have seen in other manga's presentation of action sequences, for example shounen manga.

The affect of this becomes a contradiction to the eyes. The first contradiction being that the action appears to be lacking a sense of motion and that movement is static. One would typically expect, or subliminally expect, visual artistic cues like motion blur to guide the viewer's eyes and to indicate the direction of motion and the immensity of the associated kinetics. But functional drawing techniques such as motion blur or "speed lines" is entirely absent in the action sequences, leading to more probable confusion and ambiguity from the reader as to direction the motion, where it starts and stops, and it's rate of change. Therefore, much of action panels being played out in its own reality, which when observed, must necessarily represent great acceleration and momentum, in order to fit logically the frames of reference. A nod to this hypothesis could be if this series ever gets an animation or live action, I think it would be very interesting how it would turn out.

Though story pacing at the beginning might be not engaging, it really picks up in later volumes. I really recommend this if you like a different sort of riveting zombie horror manga.

2016 Update not really spoilerish but anyways
I bumped the score up to a 9 from an 8 which I believe to be the rating of the series from when I wrote the write and the point in the manga there. But currently, the this manga deserves a resounding 9, as it blew expectations in terms of where the plot is climaxing, unsuspecting turns, and overall newly found grandiose scope, which makes the manga go far beyond my initial impressions.

2018 Update regarding the ending, I think some people reviewing must really reflect on their interpretation of the ending with the whole manga in mind. As in my opinion, the ending, was very befitting so what series had built up and expressed thematically, to a tee.