I Am A Hero Omnibus vol. 9

This is a volume of two halves, one of which is considerably more problematic than the other.  The first half introduces us to another group of survivors living out of an office building and led by the implausibly charismatic Asada.  He’s set up his own cult of personality called Asada-ism which he wants to spread to the rest of the world. While the majority of the building’s inhabitants have subscribed to his doctrine, there is a minority who dislike the way he’s been running things.  Their plan is to get behind former mangaka Korori Nakata and have him run things instead.

We got a brief glimpse of Korori at the end of the previous volume (and on its cover) and he’s an interesting addition to the cast.  While not exactly an optimist, he’s the kind of guy who isn’t about to let something like a zombie apocalypse change his worldview or who he is.  Seeing him in action here, I can’t imagine that he wasn’t an avuncular loudmouth whose greatest passions were manga and being a pervert as evidenced by his proclamations regarding groping and women’s stockings before the world went to hell.  Yet he’s a guy who has the best interests of his teammates at heart, is willing to take crazy risks to screw with the ZQNs, and has the courage and/or common sense to not take Asada at his word.

Korori’s presence energizes the volume’s first half is is mostly the reader’s point-of-view character as we’re taken through Asada-land.  As post-apocalypse communities go, it’s no Alexandrea. I honestly can’t say whether or not it’s better than Negan’s Sanctuary given the discontent within the rank-and-file and the generally awful living conditions for anyone who isn’t Asada and his inner circle.  It’s a place where it’s clear that things are slowly falling apart, but no one really wants to step up and do anything about so long as the day-to-day status quo is maintained.

Why should we care about it besides seeing Korori and his team soldier on through these problems?  It feels pretty obvious, before some graffiti near the end makes it virtually explicit, that this is where the series is going to have its climax.  Mangaka Kengo Hanazawa is just doing the setup here so that he doesn’t have to introduce a whole new setting and cast when things start ramping up in the final two omnibi.  I’m fine with this approach since the mangaka has shown multiple times that he knows how to keep the narrative engaging when Hideo and Hiromi aren’t driving it. That’s true here too.

What about our two protagonists?  It’s their personal drama which anchors the second half of this volume.  They’re still making their way to Tokyo by bike with thoughts about what happened to Oda still fresh in their minds.  The uncertainty prompted by that and the general state of the world is what finally, haltingly, and very awkwardly prompts the to hash out their romantic feelings for each other.  That, and the booze and condoms they pick up at a nearby supermarket.

Now, I can’t say that it’s unrealistic that two people who have been through so many traumatic situations together would start to develop feelings for each other like this.  What makes it awkward is that Hideo’s a full-grown man and Hiromi’s still a(n underage) high school girl. Not helping matters is the fact that the growth she’s experienced since her infection now feels like Hanazawa’s effort to bridge the maturity gap between the two characters.  As opposed to being just a weird side effect of her infection.

There’s also the fact that this wasn’t really a plot development that I really wanted to see.  Having Hideo hook up with Oda made a certain sense as her characterization made it easy to believe that the only way she’d go for him was with a no-frills encounter like that.  Hideo and Hiromi never had anything approaching even that minimal level of chemistry. That’s why seeing them together in this manner only makes sense if you consider it as a by-product of their damaged mental states, the current state of the world, and booze.  Either that, or if you subscribe to the idea that any long-running series like this has to have some kind of romantic development between its protagonists. I really don’t.

To Hanazawa’s credit, the actual depiction of sex in this volume is about as un-glamorous as you’re likely to see in manga.  There’s panels of naked bodies, but no real shots of genitalia or breasts. We get lots of talking as the act starts, and it’s either Hiromi irritatedly asking questions and Hideo doing his gangly best to try and answer them.  Then there’s the cut-away to what is best described as the ZQN collective unconscious, so the whole encounter is not without its weirdness as well.

By the end of the sequence I’m left feeling that there was little salacious intent behind the pairing of these two characters. Adult/high school girl pairings are never not going to be problematic, but the sheer unsexiness of their encounter here at least allows one to consider that it was down to two people trying to find a moment of solace and connection in the madhouse that their lives have become.  The fact that it’s promptly followed up by a chase scene involving a giant bulbous ZQN and a bunch of regulars serves to underscore that pretty well. It’s a fitting send-off for this volume as it serves to re-establish Hideo and Hiromi’s awkward partnership in ways that we’re familiar with before the endgame really gets going.