News
'I Am A Hero' Zombie Film Gets Live-Action Tie-In Special
posted on by Egan Loo
The live-action film of Kengo Hanazawa's best-selling zombie manga I am a Hero is itself inspiring a live-action video special. The dTV service to run the I am a Hero: Hajimari no Hi (I am a Hero: Day 1) special in April.
The story of the special will focus on the nurse Tsugumi "Yabu" Oda (played by Masami Nagasawa). It will also star Reika Kirishima, Kōdai Asaka, Hirona Yamazaki, and DAIKI Shiomi. Toshikazu Nakae is directing, as well as co-writing with Momoka Meriyama.
In the original manga, Hideo Suzuki (played by Yō Ōizumi in the live-action film) is an aspiring manga creator who once struggled with discontent with his assistant artist job and his relationship with his girlfriend — until people started turning into undead "ZQN" creatures overnight. After he is attacked by his ZQN virus-infected girlfriend "Tekko," Hideo flees the overrun Tokyo metropolis with the shotgun he happens to own as a hobby. He travels with Hiromi (played by Kasumi Arimura), a high school girl whom he meets by chance, and they face the desperate situation with the help of a nurse named Yabu (played by Masami Nagasawa) at a shopping mall.
Shinsuke Satō (Gantz, Library War, Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, Princess Blade) directed the "A-grade survival panic horror" movie. Akiko Nogi (Library War, Sayonara, Robinson Crusoe) wrote the screenplay, and VFX and makeup expert Makoto Kamiya (Gantz, Cutie Honey, Resident Evil: Degeneration, Resident Evil: Damnation) was in charge of special effects.
Principal photography began in early June 2014, and the film will open in Japan on April 23. The film premiered at the 48th Sitges Film Festival in Catalonia, Spain in October, and it won the Grand Audience Award and Award for Best Special Effects.
Hanazawa launched the manga in Shogakukan's Big Comic Spirits magazine in 2009, and its compiled book volumes have over 4 million copies in print. Dark Horse Comics will release the manga in North America starting in April 2016. Yuuki Honda (Tokyo Yamimushi) launched an Osaka-based spinoff manga in June, and the manga will end on December 26.
Source: Comic Natalie
