Homunculus

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Tragic.
A story about a man searching for his true self. It hurts to read, as I think it shares a lot of common with a lot of people (yes, me included). Nakoshi's journey is lonely and at the same time its complicated. He deals with lies from other people, from the world, and from himself. He had to endure with himself all his life.

Story? Unexpected. A wild read through the end.
Art style? Amazing. Some scenes were portrayed beautifully.
Characters? Ito's iconic! Others have a good composition with the story.
Enjoy? Absolutely! You might get confused in some parts but just go and you will understand.

Btw listening to ... Ichiko Aoba is just perfect for reading this manga.

Homunculus is a manga that believes it has more to say than it actually does.

It's not bad, by any means, but it insists upon itself (thanks, Peter) so much it really does feel like the author thought he had more to say, when all he does in most occasions is scratch the surface of what could be done with the premise. There is a feeling permeating the manga; a feeling that keeps you reading because it looks like, at any turn, things are going to get a bit stranger, its themes a bit deeper. Spoiler: they never really do, and while the ride is by ... no means bad, by the end you feel a bit disappointed the destination isn't all it was building up to be.

And don't get me wrong; when this manga wants to get insightful, it does. The second half of the manga is the best part because, after a myriad of cyclical repetitiveness, the main characters sit down and truly get to know each other through a very tense, bizarre sequence with a lot of interesting twists and turns. Of course, the almost rhythmically repetitive pacing is still there, and you will get the feeling that several conversations are carbon copies of each other, but at least the manga is daring to explore its main characters in a more interesting way than it did in its first half. It never reaches the philosophical catharsis it keeps promising, and its themes are on-the-nose almost to the point of condescension, but the way the characters are written, as well as the panel composition, kept me reading until the end.

The art is beautifully bizarre and the imagery it manages to evoke is top-notch. Yamamoto knows how to twist a normal human face into something that feels uncomfortable, even alien, with just a few changes. Visually, it is a very interesting manga, its art only brought down by the sometimes recycled feel of some panels, an inevitable victim of the cyclical writing mentioned above.

Overall, while I recommend it as an intruiging and artistically refreshing manga, I would warn against expecting anything particularly deep to come of its reading. It teases the reader with high-concept ideas that it never really builds upon while it keeps repeating the same 'we live in a society' style of messages we've seen a million times.

Homunculus had me seat-strapped for whatever way it journeyed till four straight volumes. The panels felt methodical and grounded — bubble-lessly scanning perspectives, picking eye movements, twitches, winces, squints, smug grins and an array of facial expressions that gave weight to any dialogue that followed. But then the trick got old: repetitive dialogues, repetitive expressions, and going way off into the "deep shit" (rather dipshit) territory where characters sit around wide-eyed at their own musings. So. Much. Percussive. Yammering. Not to mention it had a disorientating amount of weird moments that didn't click with the themes in right ways. Ending did though.

Hot mess. It would ... have benefited from a shorter and tighter narrative.