Which, as far a I know is the most recent translated one.
From here on, there will be spoilers about the manga, don’t continue if you don’t want spoilers (as slight as some might be)
But I also peeked at Volume 13 where from what I understood we get to see a bit of the situation in France (Human centipad!!!…I know, I know…centipede [I am a hero, chapter 145, page 8]). Funny how the french guy was just laying down on the floor in the middle of the street and how the place was almost devoid of ‘zombfags’ (yeah, ZQN/zombfag, you call them whatever you want) except for ‘centipad’ (yes, I will continue to call it that) and a couple of ‘zombfags’, on the other hand the guy’s wife/girlfriend/mistress is on a castle being raided by zombies. Ought to turn out interesting. (but then, it turns from french to moonspeak, and I can’t read moonspeak)
Anyways, back to all the volumes before 13, I won’t go in depth just some points I wrote down while reading, I think I won’t spoil any important plot detail, but I already warned you that there would be spoilers.
Now, back on topic.
From the beginning, both things I liked and disliked in no particular order (well, mostly chronological order):
— Mitani-san, I expected more from him, he was a fat ass creepy stalker but he seemed to grasp the whole situation pretty quickly and sure as hell he was right that bugging-in would be an advantage (short term, but still an advantage, see all the neets/hikikomoris hanging around 2chan later on the manga), so I was kinda sad when… (next point)
— Mitani-san’s death, airplane to the head motherfuckers!! Probably the first time I saw a decapitation by airplane (either in fiction or reality at least with a fucking airliner)
— People did take quite a while to react, I mean there’s people biting heads off, airplanes falling from the sky and a good part of the population just…keeps going as usual, with their everyday lives, even in more close quarters situations. (cue subway/train scene)
— What I’ll call SZS (Shit zombies say), they manage to utter the most out of context stuff, sometimes to hilarious effect.
— There’s still too much ingrained politeness and ‘sheep thinking’, especially in Hideo. (is that satirical, a tongue in cheek observation of the overly polite Japanese society? Possibly, but I don’t know)
“Oh, jeez, a burning taxi driver, I better pay him for the ride that nearly killed me.”
I mean, in a zombie apocalypse I’m not saying I would start pillaging, raping and killing and what not, but sure as heck I would for example steal some food and water from an abandoned shop, the bare minimum to keep me going, but I would. Which brings me to…
— Does he have infinite ammo…or would it be a good idea for him to go and grab a couple of boxes of ammo out of the nearest gun shop? (if I’m not wrong normal boxes of 12 gauge is 25 shells, so…he started the whole adventure with only 4 boxes worth of them, heck those are reasonably cheap, I bet he could even have paid for them)
— Liked the concept that zombies kept repeating their day to day life up to a certain degree, good one.
— The idiots at the outlet mall (or whatever it was…let’s call them roof dwellers), airsoft/paintball masks, when going close quarters with god knows how many zombies? Really?! In a scenario where you need to be as aware as possible of your surroundings, they go and grab masks that act as horse blinders) Anyway…fairly realistic, not everyone is tactically gifted like me. (LOL)
— Lack of weapons…bear with my reasoning, the guys from SDF didn’t have authorization to shoot, doesn’t mean they didn’t have weapons…so…grab a car, go to the nearest SDF armored vehicle/SDF check stop, grab whatever weapon is available, look for respective ammo. Not a very hard plan to come up with, is it? Not saying it would be fool proof, nor easy as pie, but quite feasible.
— Kinda liked the different (quasi-parallel) storylines.
— Zombies are moving south…let me guess…super powerful aware zombie is controlling/calling them for some super evil plot. (if I’m not mistaken there’s a Stephen King book that kinda goes like that)
— Kurusu and the other ‘super humans’ ‘awaken’ or whatever you wanna call them, as soon as I saw that I felt the same exact way as I did when I was playing CHAOS;HEAD and found out it was a ‘magical girls’ plotted video game. There was an instinctual reflex of “Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!”. But for now I’ll give it the benefit of doubt.
And for now that’s all. As I said, no important spoilers, nor did I go in depth.
As an aside, seems like Kengo Hanazawa has a certain predilection to make his protagonists complete losers, I’ll be checking out his other works. (should I mention the fact that Hideo Suzuki, the main char is the same age as Kengo Hanazawa was when the manga started? 35. Gotta love self deprecating jokes.)
*edit*
LOL, he did the same in “Ressentiment”, he was 30, the protagonist was also 30. Self deprecating jokes!