is a Japanese

manga Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...

series written and illustrated by

Hideo Yamamoto is a Japanese manga artist. He is best known as the creator of the manga series ''Ichi the Killer'', which was adapted into a live-action film by Takashi Miike in 2001, and ''Homunculus''. Recurring themes in his manga are crime, sexual devi ...

. It was serialized in

Shogakukan is a Japanese publisher of dictionaries, literature, comics (manga), non-fiction, DVDs, and other media in Japan. Shogakukan founded Shueisha, which also founded Hakusensha. These are three separate companies, but are together called the Hit ...

's ''seinen'' manga magazine ''

Weekly Big Comic Spirits is a weekly Japanese ''seinen'' manga magazine published by Shogakukan. The first issue was published on October 14, 1980. Food, sports, romance and business are recurring themes in the magazine, and the stories often question conventional va ...

'' from March 2003 to February 2011, with its chapters collected in 15 ''

tankōbon is the Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or cultur ...

'' volumes. A

live-action Live action (or live-action) is a form of cinematography or videography that uses photography instead of animation. Some works combine live-action with animation to create a live-action animated film. Live-action is used to define film, video ga ...

film adaptation, directed by

Takashi Shimizu Takashi Shimizu (清水崇 ''Shimizu Takashi'', born 27 July 1972) is a Japanese filmmaker. He is best known for being the creator of the ''Ju-On'' franchise, and directing four of its films, internationally, in both Japan and the U.S. Accordi ...

and starring

Gō Ayano is a Japanese actor. Career Ayano was featured in several roles beginning in 2003. In 2009, he appeared in Takashi Miike's '' Crows Zero 2''. His role in the film was described by Mark Schilling of ''The Japan Times'' as "a tall, pale-faced, del ...

premiered in April 2021.

Plot

Trepanation Trepanning, also known as trepanation, trephination, trephining or making a burr hole (the verb ''trepan'' derives from Old French from Medieval Latin from Greek , literally "borer, auger"), is a surgical intervention in which a hole is drille ...

is the procedure of drilling holes in a person's head, supposedly increasing the circulation of blood and helping to improve the pressure inside one's skull, bringing out a person's sixth sense and causing them to gain superhuman powers such as ESP, being able to see ghosts, and controlling objects remotely with one's mind. This is speculative fiction based on the concept of trepanation. Susumu Nakoshi is a 34-year-old homeless man living out of his car. For two weeks, he has declined his fellow homeless men's invitations to set up a tent with them, preferring to sleep in his car. However, one day, he is accosted by a strange-looking man searching for participants to subject themselves to trepanation. Nakoshi tells the man to leave, and discards the flier he'd placed on his windshield. However, when his car is towed, he agrees to let medical student Manabu Itoh drill a hole in his skull in exchange for 700,000 yen. Itoh claims to be interested in trepanation for the sake of science; he is interested in humans, fascinated with ESP and the sixth sense, and wants to disprove the existence of the occult. Itoh's father owns a lab facility, as his father is a rich hospital director. Itoh performs the trepanation surgery on Nakoshi and does a variety of ESP tests. When Nakoshi reveals that he sees distorted humans when using only the left side of his body, Itoh researches and discovers that Nakoshi can see homunculi. Itoh explains psychoanalytic theory to Nakoshi after the yakuza incident.

Characters

; : :A 34-year-old man. At the beginning of the series, he is shown to be recently homeless and living out of his car. He is living between two worlds, that of the upper class and that of the homeless. He is a former employee of a foreign bank, and a pathological liar. After the trepanation procedure, he gains the ability to see peoples homunculi or "distortions". ; : :A 22-year-old medical student who proposes the trepanation experiment and investigates material relevant to Nakoshi's reports. He dresses in an overtly flamboyant manner, but hides this fact from his ailing father, a high-ranking doctor at a hospital whom he has a strained relationship with. ;/1775 :A 17-year-old girl working in a

burusera is a paraphilia, specifically a sexualized attraction to the underwear or school uniforms of girls or young women. It is a word of Japanese origin, coined by combining , meaning bloomers, as in the bottoms of gym suits, and , meaning sailor suit ...

salon and one of the first homunculi Nakoshi interacts with.

Media

Manga

''Homunculus'', written and illustrated by

, was serialized in

's ''

'' from March 17, 2003, to February 21, 2011. Shogakukan collected its chapters in fifteen ''

'' volumes, released from July 30, 2003 to April 28, 2011. The manga is licensed in North America by

Seven Seas Entertainment Seven Seas Entertainment is an American publishing company located in Los Angeles, California. It was originally dedicated to the publication of original English-language manga, but now publishes licensed manga and light novels from Japan, as we ...

who will release the series in an omnibus format.

Volume list

=Original version

=New edition

Live-action film

In September 2020, it was announced that ''Homunculus'' would receive a live-action film adaptation. The film is directed by

and stars

. It premiered in Japan on April 2, 2021, and premiered exclusively on

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

worldwide on April 22.

Reception

As of September 2020, the ''Homunculus'' manga had over 4 million copies in circulation.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Homunculus (manga) Films directed by Takashi Shimizu Live-action films based on manga Manga adapted into films Psychological horror anime and manga Psychological thriller anime and manga Seinen manga Seven Seas Entertainment titles Shogakukan manga Japanese psychological horror films Japanese psychological thriller films