Zombie stories have rapidly filled the supernatural niche previously reserved for hot vampires, and every day it feels like a new one pops up. Loosely based on Voodoo beliefs, academics have hypothesized that the popularity of the zombie horror story has to do with cultural fears of conformity, political inefficiency, and, in the case of “fast zombies,” terrorism. Whatever the reason, we can all agree that there seems to be a lot of the human-munching monsters in manga among other forms of pop culture, so why should you, the over-saturated reader, pick up yet another zombie manga? In the case of Tsukasa Saimura's Hour of the Zombie, the answer lies in the unusual way that Saimura writes the monsters and in the reaction of series protagonist Akira, who is not the zombie assassin most heroes immediately become when faced with an outbreak.

The first volume of Hour of the Zombie probably covers roughly an hour or two in terms of time, but that hardly matters since it reads so quickly. Saimura uses large panels and fairly simple art to move the action right along, and the result is a book that is easy to read at a rapid pace. This is clearly a deliberate choice on his part, as the start of the story, before the zombie apocalypse hits, has more panels per page and a similar tactic is used to slow down our reading during non-zombie scenes. It's a nice trick and serves to tell us when we need to pay more attention, as well as mimicking the characters' panic. Not that protagonist Akira panics very often – he's unusual in that he doesn't want to kill the zombies, and in fact refuses to believe that they can't be saved. This is in part due to his overwhelming crush on Kurumi, the only girl in his trio of friends. Kurumi likes the third member of the group, Umezawa, and Akira allows his jealousy to dictate his actions. Umezawa, on the other hand, never stops being a best friend to Akira, which makes it interesting that he does not have the starring role, but also gives Akira an unlikable, yet very understandable, quality. He's a sixteen-year-old boy, and his emotions do get the better of him sometimes, to the point where he behaves in a manner a lot of us would probably call “stupid.”

Of course, he does have some reason for his actions. In Saimura's version of the zombie apocalypse, the infected return to themselves at times, having moments of lucidity when they are fully human again. During these times they cannot remember what happened while they were under the control of the virus and actively resent the way the other students are treating them. A few cooler heads prevail on both sides, but the majority of the students lapse into an “us versus them” mentality, with the zombie-bitten group feeling like they aren't being seen as human even during their lucid moments and the unbitten rushing to quarantine themselves to prevent becoming a part of the other group.

This is where the idea of fast zombies as a way of expressing worries about enemies you never saw coming theory seems to hold some water. Not necessarily in that specific way, but the story seems to be setting up a sense of disenfranchisement between the bitten and the unbitten, and there's a definite sense that the bitten are ready and willing to set up their own society of sorts. We see this very clearly when Igarashi, one of the more rational bitten, herds all of the others into a tennis court and locks them in. When Akira, chasing Kurumi, tries to get in, he is rejected by the other students, who tell him that he doesn't belong there and accuse him of seeing them as less than human. While he does not, in fact, belong in a locked cage with people who could turn at any minute and eat him, the context and the way it is said seem to be more about him being “not our kind” than about his safety, particularly Kurumi's and another girl's reaction.

Why do the bitten sometimes act like zombies and sometimes not? How much humanity do they retain during zombie episodes? The end of the volume seems to suggest that they do have at least a little control and/or awareness, and it's really this which saves Hour of the Zombie from being just another cookie cutter zombie horror manga. (It also is significantly less gruesome and fanservice-heavy than other titles available in English.) While it's too early to really tell if this is going to continue to offer something more unusual than typical zombie fare, fast or otherwise, this is still a promising first volume, and even those starting to tire of zombie stories may find it interesting. Certainly comparisons to rabies make it look like there may be more going on here than meets the eye, and it will be worth giving this a second volume to see where it decides to go.