I Am a Hero (2016)

This one deserves a review so here it is.

I Am Hero is based on a Manga of the same name and It has been one of my favorites in recent years and let me remind you Manga is not yet finished so the movie as well, but that doesn't mean the movie will leave you hanging, in fact they adapted the best ARC in the Manga and finished it damn well and they did convey that theme in the Manga in this movie, so what is the theme? Well just read damn the title my friends.

The story revolves around Hideo who is a once a promising mangaka but his dreams always stay out of reach for the reason that his characters were pretty normal like him, he has a relationship that is about to end, in short he is somewhat your typical loser protagonist. One day zombie apocalypse happens, miraculously he's one of those who survive then he met this girl that he promised to protect with his life. One interesting thing about this movie is its setting, it is in Japan where there are only few people who owns a gun and our protagonist owns it as a hobby. This gun is vital to the story as owning a shotgun at this situation means you are the king, this became the point of conflict with humans in the story as someone wanting it badly enough to kill for it and the way it serves as a metaphor for Hideo's character development is a work of a mad genius, like only in japan, the land of metaphors.

Visual effect are spectacular as they did something very different here, zombies veins are black, they deform differently once they became zombies, They move and contorts like insects. The sound effects are amazing too, the squishy sounds once their head exploded was done right. Music is intense if it needs to be intense. Song at the end it quite nice, it captures the atmosphere of the movie well.

Oizumi Yo gives a solid performance his zero to hero transformation was believable, though he doesn't look like the character in the Manga at least his persona reflects hideo, kudos to him. As for Nagasawa Masami and Arimura Kasumi, they were at least mediocre. I was especially disappointed with Nagasawa Masami's character cause that character is very different from the manga, her character supposed to be a baddass. Kasumi Arimura's character didn't do as much here so I can't asses how he did in this film.

So how would this stack up against other zombie titles? well let's say to me it made zombies scary again and kind off remind me why this genre has been one of the favorites for these past decade and that last minutes was a FREAKING-INTENSELY-GORY-HEAD-EXPLODING FINALE.

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High tension from the beginning. Thrilling, and everything looks nice. Arimura Kasumi's cuteness, and her act when she punched the zombie are the best. I would love to tell you, it's almost the same with Train to Busan, run away from zombies and attack them to survive. But... unfortunately... the story was not good as I expected. It's just 'run away, and attack, run, and attack'. The ending? Bad... unless there will be a sequel, just like Train to Busan. The actions, though, I enjoyed so much. The shattered body, bloody road, and the sounds of weapon make me forget about the plot. Oh yea, the plot? Hmm, it's like the plot could not reach its own goal.

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