Reviews

When I started to dive a little bit more into the manga media, I often looked for series that were considered as classics, and others that were a little bit out of the standard by proposing innovative ideas, in terms of graphics or narration. But with Homonculus I really enjoyed this manga by Hideo Yamamoto. This is a quite complex psycological manga, with several ins and outs not so simple to understand. First of all, because the characters are quite atypical. Hideo Yamamoto took care to work the psycological aspect. All along the manga, we dive gradually in the strange world that the protagonist discovers after the acts he committed. During all my reading, I had the impression to swirl in a maelstrom by saying to me "What I am reading?"
This cryptic aspect is reinforced by the graphic aspect of the manga. Hideo Yamamoto is a very imaginative person and it shows. In most of his mangas, he explores each time interesting ideas, as for example in the violence (see Ichi the Killer). With Homonculus, he plunges us into an incredible supernatural universe, where the elements clash every time. It is grandiose and it is rare to be able to attend such a show in the manga media.
In the end when you put all the pieces of the puzzle together you understand everything and you remain a bit amazed by it all. The only regrettable point of the manga for my part is probably the work on the dialogues towards the end of the manga. I remain confused on some passages but maybe it is wanted by the author.
In short, I think Homonculus is very well written manga and important to discover at some point. Some sequences are grandiose and we really have a work on the visual metaphors subtly approached.