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Sep 25, 2013 9:39 PM
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Aug 2013
2
I think the ending really drove home what Ito had been trying to insist: that Nakoshi really was projecting things onto other people, even though it did open his eyes in some way, and eventually it drove him insane. He became more obsessed with the message and looking for them than actually trying to understand them which is why the homunculi were continually less and less clear to his interpretation. Then by the end when he's gone entirely off the deep end all he can see are his own projections (himself).

Weird ending but it worked pretty well.
Oct 15, 2013 11:45 PM
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Jan 2013
86
My perception of the ending was a little different than what i've seen from some ppl. I think that the key moment that led to this ending was when Nakoshi and Nanako were at the car and they had the blackout. At that point it could've gone either way (happy or sad) imo. Once Nakoshi demands Nanako to look at Nakoshi even though she may lie to herself by doing so, then we see that Nakoshi's main thing/purpose/desire was to be looked at or recognized. Thats when his selfish demand makes Nanako look at him as a demon. After that, when we see Nanako having his face as the homunculi, is when Nakoshi (and we) realize that everything was about himself, his self esteem, his ego, basically he just loved himself over anyone.

Anyway, I was satisfied with the way it ended, i think it was a pretty unique good manga, that always make you think and speculate. 9/10
Oct 19, 2013 7:49 AM

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Oct 2009
247
Just finished reading yesterday. Wow, I haven't read such good manga... ever.

I do not completely agree with bump809, I think he sees himself everywhere because he finally realizes that he's not that different from any other person and that there is no reason for him to hide behind lies anymore. So I don't think he loves himself over anyone, he's just seeing the reflections of his success which is to finally accept himself a he is. The main problem is that he's stuck into that fulfillment emotion because of the trepanation and he wants to share his success by drilling a hole in other's head...

About the arrest: Besides the fact that he might have killed Nanako, for any external observer, he has lost his mind. I think that is the main reasons Ito apologizes at the end, he was the one who drilled that hole in the first place.
Oct 20, 2013 12:39 PM

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Dec 2011
41
What i believe is that by the end he could easily see the heart for everyone around him but he still couldnt look at his own heart. That made him subconsiously projecting his face in every human being(trying to see himself. But he couldny see his true self so he searched for someone that can see his real self, propably even doing trepanation to random people. Thats what i believe. What do you think?
Never ending nightmare!
Oct 20, 2013 12:50 PM

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Dec 2011
41
Also i forgot to mention that he started to change at the scene with nanako at the car. When she noticed that his face changed to a demon. At that moment he became self centered only trying to find himself
Never ending nightmare!
Dec 15, 2013 11:57 PM

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Oct 2013
231
Ending threw me for a loop o_O I was surprised it ended that way but then again can't really think of anything more fitting. The world is pretty harsh and in the end he understood how he was projecting himself onto everyone else and came to terms with himself sort of. I don't know, I guess I just wanted him to get the happy ending? Bittersweet, just like every other resolution in the story.
Apr 30, 2014 3:10 AM

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Aug 2012
1098
This is one of those kind of endings that left me speechless..


and still waiting patiently for a 3rd season of Spice & Wolf :'|
May 17, 2014 11:00 PM

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Jan 2013
13743
Probably the strangest but most beautifully unique manga I've ever read.
Dec 30, 2014 10:00 PM

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Feb 2012
626
aw, figured the ending would be tragic. i took note of the documents at the beginning (possibly before the procedure) in manabu's office while nakoshi was snooping, where everyone who had undergone the procedure ended up committing suicide or in a mental hospital.

i can understand or put the pieces together as to why he was arrested by the end. although what i am confused about is why he saw everything he saw from the sex scene and beyond. was the desperation of looking for himself manifesting in his hallucinations to where everyone had his face? but if that were the case, then wouldn't they all had to of been *just* hallucinations and a figment of imagination from the beginning? i don't think that could be the case as there are plenty of segments that suggest what he was seeing was definitely "real" (like knowing information about people that he couldn't have known). then there was a point during the sex scene where they both appeared as nanako which i also don't get.
though i guess by the point of the sex scene it was already confirmed that he was crazy by even operating on nanako by himself in the first place, so maybe that can all be explained as surrealism
twerp_Dec 30, 2014 10:04 PM
Dec 31, 2014 5:44 AM
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Jul 2011
396
I always was stuck on Vol.9 of this manga for a while but wanted to finish, it just kept being put on the back burner, for no real reason. Finally marathon through to the final Vol15 and I'm kind of taken back by that ending. I felt incredibly sad for Nanako in the end, I was hoping that moment when the blood was forcing through the bandage wasn't a deathflag but turns out it was. Her lines of "That isn't me" when she saw "herself" in Nakoshi's eyes made do a double take. Everything was a sharp downward spiral from then on.

The protag I've been reading along with and slowly watch him grow and find himself basically went insane, that hurt even more to watch. I mean I guess it's hard for Nakoshi to make a "comeback" from everything he's went through and done to himself and probably would have been less memorable overall. I dunno, just wow, series like this shows how much variety there really is in manga.
Gen2K_Dec 31, 2014 3:49 PM
Jan 28, 2015 4:50 PM

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Mar 2013
155
traed said:
But still it doesnt make sense for the police to take a full year to find him when he was in his usual spot. No way police can be that bad there can they? Only way that would make sense is if the reason it took so long to find him is because he had lived homeless for a while and didnt know much people. Or alternatively she coulda died from a slow bleeding hemorrhage that took time. Or like Araya said it coulda been just arrest for trepenation essentially a medical procedure without a liscense and she might not have died.

If it was the cops coming to him for murder or anything at all it makes no sense Ito would be there first as if he came with them and they sent him over because they would never send him (or should i say her?) over first for an arrest right?.

Its very interesting how Nakoshi seemed to be at peace with the people around him but still felt alone and burdened :( he became the savior of the world but no one would save him from himself because no one wanted to see deeper than the surface.

Wish a bonus volume or chapter would be added on to fill in the missing information of what happened and why he kept adding more and more holes to his head even though he didnt really need them since he could already see that the homunculus were just people like him shallow and wallowing in their problems and just needed simple advice and comfort to cure them :(


But that wasn't his normal place they find him at. The place he is found is on some beach whereas his "place" was a purely concrete shipping port in Tokyo. After he leaves the hotel at the end he realizes that there was no reason for him to stay there and moves on.

Also, Nanako died. When she climaxed she developed a large Subdural Hematoma that quickly ended her life. When Ito found out that Nanako had died after trepanation he and the cops went about trying to find Nakoshi. Someone without money and nowhere to go can be quite hard to find, thus it taking a year to find him. It's pretty clear by the end though that Nakoshi had gone insane.
Aug 3, 2019 11:31 AM

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May 2010
8122
The art was incredible.
Even when I was in crowd, I was always alone
Aug 15, 2019 10:11 AM
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Feb 2017
1
The story was incredible I was at a lost till the end.
Nov 3, 2019 12:18 AM

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May 2016
12380
Nakoshi had reached peak happiness and self-realization through the enlightenment he got from trepanation at the cost of his sanity... The Homunculi stopped looking like monsters and started to look exactly like himself when he finally accepted the idea of the phenomenon being delusions he himself had projected onto others which made it a lot easier for him to understand but it looks like he'd gone completely nuts because of that.

He should've rung Manabu up when he drilled that hole into Nanako since the complications from the operation and the vigorous sex they had afterwards might've been the reason why he got arrested at the end. As hard as it is to turn in a friend, Itou did what he had to do for Nakoshi who's gone far beyond the deep end.

This was a great read that didn't take me long at all to go through but damn, that ending was kind of a downer. I would've liked more stories of him doing Homunculi Analysis too~








Jan 25, 2021 5:15 AM
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Aug 2017
86
Speechless ending. Such a unique manga with a very interesting premise. Art was amazing and some shots are definitely very rememberable. 9/10 easy. Can't really compare this to anything else I know.

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