I am a Hero hit me so much harder this time around
I’d seen it before. I just didn’t realize back then how damn good it was so now I'm like wait… why is this so much better than I remember?
Below is a short snippet featuring a few clips from the movie itself. 👇 (Don’t forget to tap the sound button. Otherwise, it’s no fun! lol)
⚠️LANGUAGE ADVISORY: ⚠️ This article contains strong and vulgar language that may not be suitable for all readers. Reader discretion is advised.
I’ve seen I Am a Hero before, so this isn’t one of those movies that somehow flew under my radar and I only discovered years later. I knew about it, watched it before, and remembered liking it. For some reason, though, I don’t think I gave it nearly the appreciation it deserved.
Watching it again now, I found myself noticing so many things that either didn’t register with me the first time or that I simply appreciate a hell of a lot more today. Maybe it’s because I’ve consumed a lot more zombie movies, shows, and games since then, but there were several moments where I was genuinely thinking, “Wait, how did I not appreciate this more before?” It’s definitely not a perfect zombie movie, and there are a couple of things that still don’t sit right with me, but the things I Am a Hero gets right are so damn good that I think I seriously underrated this movie the first time around.
Watching a Normal Day Turn Into a Zombie Apocalypse
One of my absolute favorite parts happens shortly after Hideo leaves the apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Tekko. The outbreak is already starting, but most people outside have absolutely no idea yet, and I love how the movie lets us experience that realization along with them instead of immediately throwing hundreds of zombies onto the screen.
There’s one particular moment that really got me. You have this guy just calmly walking down the street, completely minding his own business, and a few feet away there’s a woman doing basically the same thing. It still looks like a completely regular day, but then you notice someone sprinting behind them. If you look farther into the distance, there’s another chase happening there too, and THAT is scary to me because the movie isn’t even fully showing its hand yet. The people right in front of us are still casually going about their day while something is already very, very wrong just a few feet behind them.
That’s where the dread really started creeping up on me. At first it’s just someone running, which by itself could mean absolutely nothing. Then you notice the other chase in the distance, more people start reacting, traffic gets disrupted, vehicles start crashing, and suddenly there are too many weird things happening at once. The whole scene slowly but very effectively goes from “Huh, something weird is happening” to “Alright, what the fuck is going on?!” without feeling like somebody suddenly flipped the zombie-apocalypse switch.
It gave me the same kind of feeling I got from the opening of Dawn of the Dead (2004), which is still one of my favorite zombie outbreak sequences. Ana goes to sleep with everything basically normal and wakes up the next morning to complete chaos, while I Am a Hero does something slightly different that I love just as much. Hideo is actually walking through that transition while it happens. We get to see normalcy slowly disappear around him as more and more people realize that something is terribly wrong, and there’s something about watching the apocalypse creep into an otherwise ordinary day that I find much scarier than simply opening with thousands of zombies already running through the streets.
The Civilian-vs.-Zombie Combat Is Ridiculously Good
Another thing I appreciate so much more now is the combat because I honestly think I Am a Hero has some of the best and most convincing civilian-vs.-zombie combat I’ve seen in the genre. I specifically say civilian because these aren’t highly trained soldiers mowing down zombies with military precision. These are regular people grabbing whatever the hell they can find and desperately trying not to get eaten.
They stumble, panic, miss their swings, get grabbed, fall over, and sometimes struggle just to deal with a single ZQN. Nobody suddenly becomes an expert zombie killer just because the apocalypse started, and I love that because it makes the fights feel messy and desperate. This is much closer to how I imagine ordinary civilians trying to fight zombies would actually look, especially during the early stages when nobody really knows what the hell they’re doing yet.
Then there’s the ragdoll physics, and I know that sounds more like something I’d normally say about a video game, but I genuinely don’t know what else to call it. I’ve seen plenty of zombie movies where the zombies themselves look fantastic, but the moment they get hit by a car, smashed with something, shot, or thrown around, suddenly the body looks weightless or obviously choreographed.
I Am a Hero is on another level with this stuff because when these ZQN get hit, they get fucking HIT. Their bodies twist, tumble, bounce off objects, slam into cars, crumple, and pile on top of each other in ways that actually make them feel like bodies with weight. Combine that with the already bizarre way the ZQN move and attack, and the result is some of the most satisfying zombie carnage I’ve seen on film. I genuinely think this might have the best zombie ragdoll physics I’ve ever seen in a movie, which is admittedly a weirdly specific compliment, but anyone who pays attention to this kind of stuff will probably know exactly what I mean.
Oh Yes, That Beautiful Double-Barrel Shotgun
Hideo owns a Ruger Red Label 12-gauge over-under double-barrel shotgun, and as someone who has always had a thing for double-barrel and multi-barrel shotguns, you can probably imagine how happy I was seeing that thing in a zombie movie.
If you know me, you know very well that I almost exclusively use shotguns whenever a game gives me the option. World War Z: Aftermath is probably the best example because you’ll almost always catch me using the Multi-Barrel Shotgun, and if I can’t get my hands on one, fine, I’ll settle for the Combat Shotgun. I just love these things, especially multi-barrel shotguns, so giving the main character of a Japanese zombie movie a beautiful over-under shotgun already had me invested before Hideo even started properly using the damn thing.
What makes it even better is the buildup because Hideo doesn’t immediately turn into Zombie John Wick just because he owns a firearm. For much of the movie, he has serious issues actually using it against something that still resembles a human being, which fits his character perfectly. At the same time, I knew what that Ruger was capable of, so part of me was just waiting for him to finally stop hesitating and let that thing loose.
Thankfully, when the movie finally gets there during the shopping outlet battle, they don’t get stingy with the shotgun at all. After making us wait that long, Hideo actually gets to use the damn thing over and over again against the horde. He fires both barrels, breaks it open, reloads, fires again, and keeps repeating the process while the ZQN continue coming at him. I especially love that the movie doesn’t hide the two-shot limitation either because every time he has to reload, there’s another opportunity for the zombies to close the distance.
There’s also something incredibly satisfying about seeing Hideo finally commit after spending so much of the movie struggling with his confidence and questioning whether he’s useful to anyone. When everybody is about to get completely overwhelmed and somebody finally has to step up, the timid manga assistant with the double-barrel shotgun becomes that guy. For a movie literally called I Am a Hero, I’d say he finally earned it.
Hiromi’s Whole Thing Felt Like Wasted Potential
One of the things I really didn’t like, though, was what the movie ultimately did with Hiromi’s infection. I could’ve swallowed the whole idea of her becoming partially infected while somehow retaining part of herself if the movie had eventually done something big with it. The way they were building her up made me think her unusual condition was eventually going to become important, especially once we saw that she wasn’t behaving like a regular ZQN.
So when everyone started getting swarmed during the final battle, I genuinely thought this was where all that buildup was finally going to pay off and Hiromi was about to join the carnage. Instead, that never really happens and Hideo basically ends up doing all the heavy lifting himself, which is where the whole thing started feeling like wasted potential to me.
If you’re going to establish that Hiromi is somehow different, give her these unusual abilities, and spend that much time on her condition, I expect it to significantly affect the biggest conflict in the movie. I’m not saying she needed to suddenly transform into some ridiculous zombie superhero and start throwing ZQN across the parking lot, but give me something. I wanted her condition to actually matter when it counted, especially after the movie had given me every reason to think it eventually would. Instead, we got all that setup without the kind of payoff I was expecting.
Guys, Maybe Survive First and Feel Guilty Later?
The other thing that didn’t sit quite right with me was just how much self-pity and guilt some of these characters carry around while a zombie apocalypse is actively happening. Yabu feels terrible about leaving the hospital where she worked, while Hideo constantly beats himself up over being a useless manga artist and not being able to protect people.
I understand what the movie is trying to do, and I actually appreciate that Hideo isn’t written as your typical fearless action hero. These people aren’t suddenly going to lose all their insecurities, regrets, and emotional baggage just because zombies showed up. At the same time, there were moments when I just wanted to tell them, guys, maybe we can survive first and unpack all of this later? People are getting eaten, the ZQN are everywhere, and I only have so much patience left for another round of “I’m useless” while something is actively trying to bite your face off.
I also wonder whether some of this hits differently within Japanese culture, particularly when it comes to ideas surrounding personal failure, responsibility, guilt, and being a burden to other people. I don’t know enough about that specific cultural context to confidently say that’s exactly why these characters were written this way, so I’m not going to pretend that I do. I can only judge how those scenes landed for me, and personally, the self-pity occasionally became a little too much considering the absolute chaos happening around them.
Yeah, I Definitely Underrated This Movie
Despite those complaints, I came away from I Am a Hero wondering why the hell I didn’t appreciate it this much the first time. Maybe I’ve simply consumed enough zombie stuff since then to notice these things more, but looking at it now, there’s a lot here that I wish more zombie movies would do.
That slow transition from an ordinary day into complete chaos is exactly the kind of outbreak storytelling I love. The civilian combat feels desperate and believable, the ZQN are genuinely bizarre and unsettling, and those ridiculously good body physics give the action a brutality that a lot of zombie movies just don’t have. Then, of course, there’s Hideo and that beautiful Ruger Red Label. I’m obviously biased when it comes to shotguns, but I don’t care. If you’re going to make me wait most of the movie for a guy to finally unleash a double-barrel shotgun on a zombie horde, that is how you fucking pay it off.
I still think Hiromi deserved a much better payoff, and Hideo and Yabu could’ve dialed down the self-pity a few notches, but those issues don’t outweigh everything I rediscovered and appreciated this time around. I’d seen I Am a Hero before and remembered it being good, but apparently I walked away the first time without realizing just how much good zombie stuff was packed into it.
After finally giving it another look, I can comfortably say that I Am a Hero deserved way more appreciation from me the first time around, because this movie is a hell of a lot better than I remembered.
