Homonculus

Homunculus, is a Horror/psychological senin manga by Hideo Yamamoto. The manga takes place in the middle of Tokyo by a local park that is camp to homeless people and across the street is a hotel for the wealthy, this is where a handsome homeless man, Nakoshi, lives in his car on the street between the too. One day walking through the park a punk guy, Manabu, stop and asks him if he can perform trepanation on him for 700,000 Yen(the surgery where they drill a hole in your skull, medieval surgery) in belief that by opening a hole in Nakoshi’s skull he can open a sixth sense. Nakoshi is a misanthrope who does not believe in the supernatural but goes with Manabu who is a surgical doctor who is quite interested in the human behavior from psychological, medical and occult.

Homunculus was awesome, its one of those manga’s that is like super glue but also a headache at the same time. You love it, and where it’s going but just can’t figure it out! Homunculus makes close to no sense as I’m reading it, but is still completely interesting, a lot of it, even though 12 volumes in, has a lot of mystery. Nakoshi does develop a sixth sense, he is able to see other peoples ‘Homunculus’ which are illusion type deformities and when he gets close enough to a person with one he can slowly unravel them and disarm them of their homunculus, but it will then latch itself on to him. The concept is great, I love mangas from Japan where they are realistically from Japan, like the art is actually real and the people are Asian. So along the way of figuring out these ‘homunculu’s’ Nakoshi must deal with his own past, he is a pathological liar who never  tells anyone about himself till he is actually confronted by it when Manabu starts to try to figure this strange homeless man out.

If I could I’d make everyone at least try this one out, it’s a nonsense concept and I love it!
Grade = A-