![]() This rifle of his is what gives Suzuki the opportunity to become the hero he’s always wanted to be. So whereas the cast of American zombie stories will be able to get their hands on guns quite easily and get through hoards of zombies with guns blazing, Suzuki is the only character in I Am a Hero who holds such a power. Because of this most people in Japan don’t bother to arm themselves, which alongside a bunch of other cultural differences has lead to an almost nonexistent rate of gun deaths. Just about every gun is outlawed aside from shotguns and rifles, and even then you have to go through a day class and rigorous background checks before you can get a hold of one. Unlike in America which has fairly lax gun laws, Japan is very strict and tight about its gun laws. One notable contrast between I Am a Hero and American zombie films is how gun laws drastically affect the setting. So then the zombie outbreak occurs, and Suzuki just happens to be on his way to a shooting range with his rifle-a gun which happens to be his key from becoming more than just a wimpy otaku. He tells himself all the time that he’s a hero (dropping the title of the series,) but really acts more like a passive side character letting others drag him around. Basically, Suzuki is a total loser who doesn’t have much of a life outside of his job and girlfriend. And to top it off, he’s often 1-upped by his girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend, who happens to be a much more successful mangaka than Suzuki is. He suffers from delusions where frightening hallucinations jump out at him, and he often starts talking to himself much to the annoyance of others. The first volume of the story follows Hideo Suzuki, a 30-something who has a measly job as a manga assistant and who gets rejected whenever he tries to get his own series serialized. In a lot of ways, I Am a Hero is what would happen if geeks actually managed to take advantage of the zombie apocalypse and rise above the rest-except in this case we’re talking about NEETs and otaku instead of tumblr-obsessed teenagers. With zombies becoming a more mainstream genre, they’ve been pulled away from their horror origins and are now more akin to a teenagers wet dream. Never mind if they have any sort of survival or military training that would actually help them in such a situation, many of these people just fantasize about the apocalypse as if it would be some sort of survival horror game. If you happen to have some teenager or geeky friends who are really into the whole zombie fad, you’ve probably heard the saying that if the zombie apocalypse were to ever happen, it would be the geeks who would rise above the rest because they’ve “studied” zombie film and literature. ![]()
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