Homunculus (manga)

Plot

Trepanation, the drilling of holes in the skull, is said to increase blood circulation and intracranial pressure, awakening a sixth sense that grants ESP, ghost sight, and telekinesis. Susumu Nakoshi, a 34-year-old homeless man living in his car, initially refuses a stranger's offer to participate in trepanation. After his car is towed, he agrees to let medical student Manabu Itoh drill a hole in his skull for ¥700,000.

Itoh, interested in science and the occult, performs the procedure and tests Nakoshi for ESP. Nakoshi begins seeing distorted humans when using only his left side, which Itoh identifies as homunculi. Itoh later explains psychoanalytic theory to Nakoshi following a yakuza incident.

Characters

Susumu Nakoshi is a 34-year-old homeless former bank employee and pathological liar, living between upper-class and homeless worlds. After trepanation, he sees people's homunculi, or distortions. Manabu Ito is a 22-year-old medical student who proposes the experiment and researches Nakoshi's reports; he dresses flamboyantly but hides this from his ailing father, a hospital director. Yukari, also known as 1775, is a 17-year-old girl working in a burusera salon and one of the first homunculi Nakoshi interacts with.

Media

Homunculus was serialized in Weekly Big Comic Spirits from March 17, 2003, to February 21, 2011. Shogakukan collected its chapters into 15 tankōbon volumes from July 30, 2003, to April 28, 2011, and later a ten-volume bunkoban edition from May 15, 2015, to January 15, 2016. Seven Seas Entertainment licensed the manga in North America, publishing a 2-in-1 five-volume omnibus edition starting June 27, 2023. A live-action film adaptation, directed by Takashi Shimizu and starring Gō Ayano, premiered in Japan on April 2, 2021, and on Netflix worldwide on April 22.