Japanese cinema has a very peculiar perspective of the zombie phenomenon: it tends to move away from the slow and heavy undead type George A. Romero or the most recent of ‘The Walking Dead‘ and embraces the ferocity of the post-‘Dawn of the Dead’ infected, but raising the potentiometer of savagery and the apocalypse to 11, and seasoning it with comedy. Movies like ‘One Cut of the Dead’, ‘Tokyo Gore Police’ or ‘Tag’ are good examples of a disbelieving and parodic zombie subgenre that draws a lot from Korean productions like ‘Train to Busan’. Although in this case the walking dead are as slow as the classics.
It is the case of ‘I Am a Hero‘, which you can see in Prime Video and in filmin, and whose sense of humor and fast-paced action earned him a couple of awards in Sitges: the public award and special effects recognition. In this case, its most parodic affiliation is very clear, since it is based on a manga by Kengo Hanazawa… starring a manga artist.
Our protagonist lives in a dream world when in reality he has to suffer a rather mediocre professional and personal existence. Everything will change when a plague turns citizens into ZQN, cannibalistic monsters. who, despite everything, retain slight elements of their previous life, small anxieties and desires. The cowardice of our protagonist will do the rest, no matter how much he is condemned to become a hero.
Zombies are here again, as in the classics of the genre, a metaphor for the evils that corrode society and the general dissatisfaction of citizens overwhelmed by day to day life. Shinsuke Sato’s direction is also very interesting and he indulges in trickery as an initial sequence shot that describes the outbreak and evolution of the virus.
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One of the most fast-paced and funniest Japanese zombie movies of recent years comes to Prime Video