The Film (4/5)

    Hideo Suzuki (Yô Ôizumi) is a manga artist who wants to be so much more, when he finds himself in the middle of a flu epidemic that has gone extreme, and has turned Japan into a nation of viral-induced zombies. At first, his girlfriend turns into a zombie, so he grabs his sport rifle, and hits the road (not actually shooting it throughout the early parts of the film, because that's illegal). As he tries to make his way to Mt. Fuji where the virus might die off. Along the way he meets a teenage girl named Hiromi, who he becomes protective over.  The pair will eventually meet a group of survivors who live on the rooftops of a strip mall, but they are not all that they are cracked up to be, and might be more of a danger to Hideo and Hiromi than the zombies themselves.

    Zombies are pretty much a stale genre at this point. I go years between seeing zombie films that manage to catch my interest, and yet in the last 2 years I've seen 2 zombie films that have managed to excite me, and they're both Asian. The Korean film Train to Busan, and now this film, I Am A Hero, out of Japan.   The film itself is an adaptation of a manga series, which I've never read, but I feel now that I should definitely catch up on, because the book which is just over 2 hours long is solidly exciting mixing fun zombie action, humor, and interesting characters.

    The film opens with Hideo being a lowly manga artist’s assistant, living with a girlfriend that seems to not care about much, and the only things that seem to excite him in life are manga, and the rifle he has a license to keep in his apartment. He also desires to be a hero, but doesn't seem to know how to overcome his awkwardness, and cowardice to make that happen. The film follows Hideo, as he works to overcome all this in the face of the zombie epidemic that he is thrust right into, and being the only person in his direct area with a gun, he becomes quite a hot commodity.  

    The one negative point is that the film is over 2 hours long, and occasionally feels it. However, the running time is used to expand upon the story, the characters, and also give viewers moments of great action, drama, and humor so while it occasionally drags, it also pays off in the end.

Audio/Video (4/5)

    Funimation presents I Am a Hero in a solid 16:9 1080p AVC encoded transfer that looks quite solid with excellent color reproduction, decent blacks, and excellent detail. There are some soft moments due to a lot of exteriors, but overall everything looks pretty great here.

    Audio is handled by a TRUE HD 5.1 track in Japanese. Everything is well balanced, and sounds fantastic.

Extras (1.5/5)

    Trailers and teasers.

Overall

    I Am A Hero is one of the few recent zombie films that make me feel that this subgenre of horror still has some gas left in the tank. The Blu-ray looks and sounds fantastic, but is limited with extras. RECOMMENDED.