DESCRIPTION

CAST

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

• 

  TheGruesomeGoblin

  100/100
  A deeply fascinating psychological horror manga that successfully manages to be genuinely horrifying.

  There's a whole ton of fucked up and strange shit in this manga. So, if you are averse to horrifically dark, strange, or disgusting series, you are absolutely in the wrong place.

  

  ---

  Introduction

  Okay, Homunculus is a psychological horror manga by Hideo Yamamoto. And right out of the gate, I have to say this might be one of the most fucked up, twisted, dark, and disgusting series I've ever read. Through the fifteen volumes, there were just entire stretches where I was just completely horrified but I just kept on reading.

  

  But that's exactly what I would want from a series entirely centered around the idea of trepanation. Just make a hole in your skull, and maybe you'll get some sort of sixth sense. Obviously, you should not attempt this, you should NOT drill a hole into your own skull or have someone else do it...

  

  Can I just say right now I love that there is a series that exists in this world that has to have a warning "PLEASE DO NOT DRILL A HOLE INTO YOUR SKULL."

  

  However, in the world of this series, this act of trepanation causes the protagonist to begin seeing things called Homunucli...

  Physical representations of people's greatest flaws.

  

  ---

  Absolute Fascination

  This manga hooked me in pretty quickly. Like even before it really started getting weird, I was already really interested in the main character. From chapter one, it is very clear that our protagonist has NUMEROUS problems. Even when he was just "Car Guy", the weird guy who hung around with the homeless but always chose to sleep in his car which he parked in front of a classy rich hotel, Nakoshi was just absolutely fascinating to me.

  

  Why is this guy obsessed with his car? Why does he sleep in a fetal position while sucking his thumb? What happened to him that led him here?

  So when the weird but lovable and almost seemingly manipulative Ito knocks on Nakoshi's window and leads him down the rabbit hole of trepanation, I think that's when the series makes the full leap from pretty interesting to just downright fucking fascinating.

  

  And mind you, it's not just all of the weird shit Nakoshi starts seeing attached to people on the street. Though, I do love all of the scenes where it's just him looking at a bunch of weird Homunculi. But no, it's when he actually starts interacting with them and trying to get to the core of their problems or disorders that it gets interesting. Because it's as he does this that he's forced to look inward to his own many problems.

  

  He usually ends up doing very strange or just outright horrible things in the process of solving these Homunculi. And this includes straight up

  rape of a high school student but then it becomes consensual when he proceeds to... drink the blood from where she had been repeatedly stabbing her own leg so SHE could drink her... own blood. No, for real. This happened. Their connection/similarity was that she enjoys drinking her own blood, while he enjoys eating his own... ejaculate. For the record, it was this whole range of volumes where I was horrified yet couldn't stop myself from reading on.

  But then you also have the conflict of… are the Homunculi actually real? Are they just merely delusions of a highly deluded and desperate mind?

  

  Even if you are of the opinion that yes, indeed, Nakoshi is just completely fooling himself into believing that if he blocks out his right eye’s vision, he can see all these strange things, that still doesn’t change that he’s going around and finding people with similar flaws and actually causing them to hopefully open up and possibly solve their problems.

  Really some of the parts where I was the most engaged were probably these arguments and discussions, or when one of the people who possessed a Homunculus actually challenged or brought up Nakoshi’s own various flaws.

  

  ---

  Nakoshi

  

  I don’t want to go too far in-depth on him, but Nakoshi is definitely a piece of the core of why I loved this series so much. I am very much a firm believer that interesting characters have to have flaws. Nakoshi is so irrevocably fucked up, that I genuinely was rooting or wanting him to actually make progress in accepting his own problems so he could work on them. Because to at least an extent he is well aware that he is not happy in his current situation. He wasn’t happy before, but even after he did what he did, he still failed to find true happiness.

  He is a vain, selfish, and horribly hypocritical person.

  

  But yet he is a horribly real and sad character. He wasn't happy with who he was so he lived with his eyes always pointed down towards the ground and away from the people and the world around him.

  

  Yet when he discards his original self and tries to become a new person, he finds that his new life of lies is also similarly an unhappy one. Nakoshi is literally stuck between worlds.

  

  Between the ritzy hotel and the park where homeless men camp, Nakoshi lives inside his dearly treasured car sleeping in a fetal position while sucking his thumb.

  Then when he's thrust into this world of Homunculi despite all of his flaws, Nakoshi genuinely tries to help other people who carry them. Granted to an extent it's for the purpose of helping himself, but Nakoshi still manages to make impacts on more than a couple of various people's lives, sometimes outright forcing them to acknowledge their problems. But it's more than that.

  Ito repeatedly tells him time and time again throughout the series that the Homunculi, ALL OF THEM, are simply representations of Nakoshi's own problems. And indeed with each one he solves, he takes a piece of it unto himself.

  

  But yet it seems with each one he solves, it seems as if he’s getting no closer to solving his problems and removing these Homunculi that have now attached themselves to Nakoshi himself. So he believes he is forced to delve even further down this path given to him by Ito via trepanation...

  

  ...I love Nakoshi's character so much not only because of all his flaws and how fucked up his life is, but he so readily descends into this world of trepanation and Homunculi that he comes across completely fucking insane. Sure, he does end up helping several other people who like him are carrying their own flaws, but the depths he is willing to sink into to do so is just completely crazy. Honestly, more than a bit of the horror vibes of this manga come from Nakoshi himself.

  

  Like starting out in the manga Nakoshi already has all of his flaws that are shown to us as we gradually learn more and more about his life and his choice, but there's just... this horrible sense of unease that just oozes from him through the entire fucking manga. It only gets worse and worse and actually crossed lines I would have never expected it to. Like it says something that when at a point another character sees Nakoshi as a goddamned demon, I kind of actually agreed with that assessment. And not even solely because of what we learn about Nakoshi's relationship to that specific character, mind you.

  

  You just want him to realize what he's doing or rather what he's attempting to do isn't just going to lead him to some magical solution to his problems. Like the manga basically presents to us on numerous occasions what Nakoshi looks like when he's going around looking at other people's Homunculi. He looks like a complete and utter fucking madman.

  

  Yet, he's actually getting people to accept their problems, the horrible things they've done in the past they're trying to avoid... he's forging genuine connections to these similarly flawed people.

  So... there has to be some validity in what he sees... right?

  

  ---

  The Horror of Homunculus

  Psychological horror is probably one of my favorite flavors of horror. And it's impossible to describe Homunculus as anything else. No outright spoilers, but it's definitely a manga that I think a reread is eventually necessary. So much stuff that is later developed is set up almost from the very beginning of the manga.

  

  Like as strange and bizarre as it gets, Homunculus never ceases being Nakoshi's story. It is the story of the aftermath of the various life decisions he has made transforming him into a business man on an "extended leave" living in his car. The sole reason he is introduced to this strange world of homunculi and trepanation because a similarly deeply flawed person wished to use him in an experiment and had his car towed away so Nakoshi would need the money Ito was offering him.

  But it didn't stop when Ito gave Nakoshi the rest of his money. He was still seeing homunculi, he was still unhappy and flawed. He needed to go further now that Ito had pushed him into this world. And Ito's curiosity led him to initially encourage Nakoshi's newly found motivation.

  

  For better or for worse. And the true horror of this manga, is this transformation that Nakoshi further and further slips into. A completely flawed to his core man desperate for things to be different. Desperate to be happy, desperate for his life to not be empty and meaningless... wanting to be himself, yet hating the person he voluntarily tries to become.

  The horror of course comes from the fact that the supposed solution he has found... is drilling a hole into his skull.

  

  ---

  Conclusion

  It's just absolutely fantastic. Like early on I was already really enjoying it on a surface level. The strange stuff, the disgusting stuff, the Homunculi...

  But when it manages to descend to a level I never imagined it was going to reach, I was just enthralled. In summation, and at this point I've had some time to think on it, Homunculus is without a doubt one of the darkest and strangest manga I've ever read. And to be quite honest, while still replaying several of the very later volumes in my head, I'm not too sure it'll ever be topped.

  A 10 out of 10.

  An immediate favorite.

  
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• 

  shoe

  100/100
  A truly terrifying deep delve into the flaws of humans

  __A review of _Homunculus_ __ ___INTRODUCTION:___ Homunculus is a horror manga written by Hideo Yamamoto. It is a truly terrifying and psychological deep dive into the flaws of humanity, but also coming to terms with yourself. The series is centered around Susumu Nakoshi, a middle-aged man who has found himself living in his car between a public park full of homeless people and a high-class hotel complex. He gets picked out by Manabu Ito to become an experimental guinea pig for him to try out the procedure known as “Trepanation”. >Trepanation is the procedure of drilling a hole in the skull. It is said to increase the blood circulation and improve pressure inside the skull. It is also said to bring out a person's sixth sense, the ability to use ESP, see ghosts, move objects with one's mind. After his operation, Nakoshi starts seeing things called homunculi. Homunculi are the monsters in each human being, the things that frighten or obsess people. A physical representation of one’s greatest flaw. The manga follows Nakoshi on his journey to make sense of his newly gained 6th sense by studying and facing other’s fears, while simultaneously trying to understand himself. **_STORY:_ ** It would be an understatement to say that the story takes a few twists and turns. Homunculus does not shy away from showing some of the most grotesque and disgusting things people are capable to do. In order for Nakoshi’s to solve the homunculi, he has to go through incredibly mental distress and dreading existentialism. This often leads to Nakoshi resorting to doing strange and often very horrible things to get closer to understanding himself and the people around him that he is so desperate to feel a connection with. Without delving into any spoilers, the manga makes you question if the things that are happening are even real, or if the goals Nakoshi wants to reach are even worth it in the first place. **_CHARACTERS:_** The “main cast” and the side characters that appear throughout this manga show both an incredible amount of personality and complexity while also showing us some of the most vile, disgusting and horrifically dark sides of the human mind. Nakoshi is a man stuck in limbo. Having been unhappy and unfulfilled all his life, now that he has the ability see the homunculi, he tries to connect with people and maybe finally have a chance to rid himself of his life of lies and loneliness. But his frail state of mind and his desperation for his life to not feel meaningless and unhappy pushes him further down a downward spiral leading to only more and more horrific conclusions and interactions, and to question if the things he is seeing are real or a hallucination of a delusional and insane mind. **_ARTWORK_** To put it simply, the art by Hideo Yamamoto is absolutely astonishing. The characters are and the environment are all drawn in a very realistic way and help immensely to amplify the horror and the philosophies of the manga. The single panel drawings are highly detailed and beautiful to look at, but they can also be extremely daunting and serving as nightmare fuel. Not a single page out of the 15 volumes bore to look at. Whether it was the beauty or the horror of the art, it always had me glued to the page 110%. **_FINAL THOUGHTS_** Homunculus is truly a masterpiece. From the start I was instantly hooked. It managed to surprise and chock me in every volume, and it only went deeper and deeper into the psychological hole that was so intriguing in the first place. Some of the pages left me absolutely stunned, almost to the point where I had to take a break from reading because I never could imagine absolute madness that this manga delves into. I could not recommend this manga enough. It is an absolute classic and I will definitely come back to read it all again in the near future
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• 

  oesei

  100/100
  an extremely thought provoking narrative about what it means to be human (i said the thing haha!) heavy spoilers ahead

  i'd like to preface this review by saying i'm not the most grammer proficient person on the planet and that i'm relatively new to doing extensive reviews or analysis like this so please bare with me if you will

  

  homunculus is one of my favorite pieces of media ever (no seriously) despite it's flaws which we'll get into later it i think it tells an extremely important story that is both touching, tragic and also totally fucking terrifying and twisted. i think it's important to note that my take on the series is just that, my take, i think alot of homunculus is to your interpretation but i also think there's an equal amount of it that isn't and is yamamoto's view of the world (which can sometimes be wrong, again i'll talk about it when we get into the flaws but i'm sure you probably know what it is already) i feel like the same can be said for alot of these kinds of stories, it's not only important that you get something from the narrative but that you get something from the author themselves, that's the whole beauty of it.

  homunculus starts off with our main character nokoshi in his car sucking his thumb while sleeping in a fetal position (weird guy huh?) we the audience are immediately hit with one if it's central themes, the want to return to childhood innocence but what does this mean exactly? i think we can all unfortunately relate to a time in our life where our actions weren't exactly the best, where we did things to people or to ourselves that we now regret, often times when we come to this realization we naturally have the want to be a better person, to say sorry to those we wronged, to stop carrying our guilt everywhere we go, run away from our problems and to return to a time when we had our childlike innocence and looked upon the world with a big smile and cheerful eyes, or simply put, to be our former selves again. nokoshi's strange ritual of sleep is in part his form of doing this as well as a form of symbolism for this point in the narrative and is one of the many things i think homunculus does wonderfully in just it's introduction alone. i feel like it's important to talk about this before we continue to do a deep dive into nokoshi's character as the first part of the review but i feel as though alot of the discourse i've seen online about him is either a little misguided or at worst plain wrong. it's my belief that i don't think we're supposed to really like or hate nokoshi (at least not until the end) his character as is ito's serves the purpose of being an embodiment of the narratives themes, he's not a fundamentally bad guy, he's flawed, equal parts good and bad. part of the reason why so many people i think misinterpret his character has to do with the one real problem in this story, the as i like to call it nightmare therapy rape scene is indictive of some yamamoto's more problematic world beliefs that i think is honestly best ignored and completely out of character for nokoshi at that point in the story imo (it just makes no fucking sense, to me atleast anyways)

  nokoshi throughout the course of the story is struggling with a battle he's having with himself, his former job almost completely dehumanized not only him (so far as to see himself as a literal robot, less then human) but the people around him too. seeing others as nothing but numbers as he played with people's entire lively hoods just working a simple office job of all things. this isn't just a problem with nokoshi, it's a fundamental problem with capitalism and how it dehumanizes people and after confronting one of the many people who's lives he ruined he finally comes to the realization that he's just as much of monster as everyone else and immediately runs away from his former life realizing he had become the very thing he feared, the great twist in this story though is that this isn't the first time he does this, or the last.

  nokoshi's past is kept hidden throughout the course of the story, we at first believe it's nothing more then what he did at his banking job but a huge narrative climax happens in which nokoshi confronts the true source of his trauma, his forgotten past. this is actually brilliantly foreshadowed by ito in earlier volumes. alot of the time we try our best to forget the worst things that happen to us, sometimes we even do this unintentionally and in the case of nokoshi he's not only completely forgotten his past, but what his true face even was. throughout the story through the homunculi nokoshi sees this is hinted subtly although we aren't able to truly make sense of it until the end. when nokoshi begins to truly remember everything that happened there's a fantastic scene in which ken tells nakoshi about how he has no right to look at the ground as he walks from to place trying to avoid society, laying around not doing anything just waiting to finally stop existing and wallow away. what's said in this moment is absolutely spot on and it is horrible habit people fall into everyday that can literally destroy lives but there's a process to it, a reason for people picking up that behavior wether it be because their homeless or struggling with their own form of body dysphoria as told in the story but it all leads to the same feeling of alienation from society, a feeling of utter worthlessness and disconnection from the world around you because you can't "fit in". what's important is that the story doesn't say this is okay but rather that your not alone in your struggle and destroying your own identity isn't the solution, if people don't accept you for who you are (assuming your not a horrible person) simply put, fuck them. you have no right to stop living your life, even more so when your more fortunate then others even by a little bit, personally i learned that the hard way.
  now i know i clearly haven't covered all of nokoshi's character here but all i wanted to do with this review is cover and analyze my favorite parts of this series so with that said...

  

  let's talk about ito! allow me to preface that i'm not a trans person and because of this i'm not going to pretend like i know or understand the struggle trans people often go through everyday but as an LGBT person i believe what yamamoto does with their character is nothing short of one of the best and genuinely sweetest things about homunculus, i will also be referring to ito as they/their/them as they don't transition until halfway through the story and also because i believe gender fluidity is a big part of their character. ito comes from a family background that is suffocating, not ever being allowed to truly express themselves ito locks their identity away, eventually allowing it to become a homunculi but finding compromise in dressing expressively and hiding it from their father. during the sand girl part of the series ito has a fascination with her as she represents a part of them that's been locked away for so long as her struggle with being her own person free from her parents will goes hand in hand with that of ito's hidden trans identity. towards the end of the story nokoshi catches onto this and tries to confront their homunculi in one of the most intense scenes i've ever read in a manga. i've often heard from people that nokoshi has a problem with trying to make people face their homunculi before their ready to face it themselves but outside of nannako nokoshi purposely waits until after seeing what ito has to deal with on a daily basis with their father on a trip to the hospital to finally tell them what he sees. it's heartbreaking to watch ito strip themselves of whatever true self identity they have left just for the conformity of others and i think nokoshi catches onto that too.

  the relationship and chemistry between nokoshi and ito despite how hilariously insane it is at times (wannabe tyler durden drills a hole into a homeless guys head in the pursuit of self discovery and science, dudes rock!) is entertaining and easily my most favorite part about homunculus. both the opposite yet the same the conversations they have throughout the series are always a treat and serve to further develop their characters and most importantly make the ending all the more impactful.

  so let's talk about that ending shall we? i know alot of people don't like it but it's important to understand nokoshi was never going to have a happy ending, time and time again even though it was technically their fault ito told nokoshi what would happen if he became too self absorbed with the trepanation. remember how nokoshi always struggled with feeling like a boring nobody, when given his new "godlike powers" that all changes for him. at the beginning of the series nokoshi is shown to already have a similar ability to not only feel things intricately, but even people too. the only reason why the trepanation worked the way it did was because it was basing itself off of something that was already there however nokoshi ultimately failed to realize that and walked down towards his downfall trying to run away with someone who's life he ruined that doesn't even love him anymore because of his new obsession with wanting to be seen by others (even though that person was right in front of him the whole fucking time cough cough ito cough) the "forms" thing is going to be the last thing i really wanna talk about with this review because i believe it's also the most important, homunculus in my opinion goes about this topic i think the best way it can, for what it really is, just an unfortunate fact of reality. humanity's been like this since almost the beginning of time (this is debatable to some folks obviously) but people often obsess themselves with the material world and/or themselves. nakoshi realizes this and at first decides the solution is abusing it (it isn't) and at the conclusion of his journey he decides it's desperately looking for others who might look into him even if he hurts them (which also doesn't work) we can't really blame society for something it's been doing since the beginning of time hell most of us do it consciously or not, we ourselves are to blame but it doesn't mean we should punish people or even ourselves for it. the best thing we can do is keep living.and not fall into the same pitfalls nokoshi did. we can't avoid or be mad at an issue we can't fix, all we can do is find those who see us the way we want them too, find those less obsessed with your "form" and more with who you are and just be happy with that, because they do exist and your gonna drive yourself insane thinking they don't or in some cases not realizing your apart of the problem and obsessing yourself too much with it (like nokoshi at the end of the story)

  if you somehow made it this far i'm so sorry why did you read all of this? but seriously thank you this was very much a treat to write

  tl;dr: as i said in the review summary, this is a story about what it means to he human, the good, the bad, all of it and it totally owns.

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