Damn, that was good. It's based on a manga (8 years, 22 volumes), but I expect this film's better than the source material. It has strong performances and a satisfying character journey, only let down for me by not giving Hiromi a hero moment at the finale. (Alternatively, it only needed one or two shots to make it clearer that she's incapable of physical action right now.)

This one's a keeper. It got me checking for Blu-rays and DVDs, which as far as I can tell exist but don't have English subtitles. You're in luck if you speak German or Spanish, though.

Our hero is Hideo Suzuki. It's written "hero" and pronounced "hideo". He likes mentioning this, because he's as far from heroism as you could get. He's a 35-year-old manga assistant with no status, bad pay and a girlfriend who's losing patience with his lack of success. Editors give him the brush-off. He's doomed to be a failure... but then comes a zombie apocalypse. Hideo, you see, also has a shotgun fetish.

It's a big film, both in length and ambition. The filmmakers spent proper money and you can see it in the action and apocalypse scenes. Intimate, claustrophobic zombie films can be great too, but this film has spectacular chaos and a few BLOODY HELL set-pieces. The zombies are creepy and weird, with unique qualities and all sorts of one-off ugly designs that made me think "Junji Ito". They made me want to see the manga pages. Some zombies transcend the limits of human strength, not caring how many bones they break or skulls they crunch. One can jump storeys. Another scuttles like a godforsaken spider-thing. They might run like hell, or go into frenzies. There's no way of knowing any one zombie's abilities and behaviour, but you know that a bunch of them is bad news.

I like Hideo's character journey. Initially, he's a loser who invents boring stories about heroes. Two hours of screen time later... wow. Also, his last line is perfect. My favourite character, though, was Hiromi and I kept being surprised by the storyline's choices with her. I'd watch the hell out of a Hiromi film and I prefer this film to what I've read about the manga's plans for her. (Kasumi Arimura plays her perfectly, but it's a strong cast all round and there are other memorable performances too, e.g. Masami Nagasawa as a nurse who's made bad choices.)

I enjoyed the throwaway gag of our heroes knowing it's bad when TV Tokyo interrupts its anime broadcast. This is true. They're famous for not interrupting their cartoons just for a mere international crisis.

I loved this film. It has lots of charm ("any cat food?"), but also creeps, scares and surprises. Its zombies would eat most movie zombies for breakfast. Going into the finale set-piece battle, my reaction was "our heroes are so screwed". It's both dynamic and subtle, with little details that make its world feel lived-in and thought-through. Human survivors can be as creepy as zombies.

And I'm cheering so much for Hideo and Hiromi.