# Introduction Susumu Nakoshi lives in his car, parked between a homeless park and a fancy business hotel. A strange man pays Nakoshi to undergo a surgery that will open his 'sixth sense' and he begins to see creatures called "Homunculi". These surreal and distorted creatures are the physical manifestations of a persons deepest traumas, mental state, and world view. # The Story Homunculus begins with the fascinating premise of visually representing trauma in surreal and symbolic ways, and expands and explores this premise expertly and almost completely. Homunculus played with my expectations by turning from a slice of life character drama, into a hidden world shounen creature hunter, and eventually evolving into a deeply introspective examination of the human subconscious.

The characters are compelling and well developed, and the competent knowledge of psychology (especially Sigmund Freud's views on the subconscious and desire) make Homunculus a symbolically rich character study that keeps the reader engaged by utilizing fantastic surreal imagery and interpretive subversion. Playing with expectations of what makes a character good or bad, as well as the general heroes journey, Homunculus kept me engaged the entire way through.
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The Art

The art of Homunculus blew me away. The art progressively gets better with each volume as the characters look considerably awkward in volume one. However, when the story gets psychedelic, the art is an absolute knock out. The visual designs of each Homunculi are distinct, surreal, memorable, and most impressively, each have a psychological explanation for exactly why they appear so psychedelic.

The visual symbolism in this manga manages to be nuanced and up front, without being ham-fisted or forced. The fact that every strange visual is a mystery to solve tickled my critical analysis brain every time a new Homunculi appeared on the page.

The panels of Homunculus are huge and few, and the dialogue is limited and never densely packed, overall leading to a very easily consumable experience where the pages fly by and the reader is washed in a sea of interesting imagery without feeling overwhelmed by text or dense pages. The experience of reading Humunculus is a mostly seamless flow state that makes revisiting it a very easy decision.
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The Content
Honestly the only detractor from this manga for me is how frequently horrific and twisted the sexual content is. There is some very prominent sexual taboos and even a very troubling and morally grey sexual assault scene that is pretty prolonged. While the story ultimately does not frame any of the perpetrators of such action as just (in fact, quite the opposite), the severity and detail of the situations outstayed its thematic purpose. Additionally, while the questioning of what should and should not be considered sexual taboo in society is worthwhile and intriguing, I felt these scenarios and their frequency served more as shock fodder rather than as thematic exploration in the grand balance

There is some supremely messed up stuff in here and I highly advise caution to any potential readers.
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Analysis (Minor Spoilers)
As I mentioned earlier in the Story section, Homunculus plays with character arc expectations expertly and leads the reader along with various situations and interpretations. Ultimately however the story of our main character is that of a man that falls in love with his own trauma reflected back at himself by looking at others. This being an interesting subversion of the tale of Narcissus, in that instead of Nakoshi being captivated by his own beauty and splendor, it is his ugliness and trauma that he cannot look away from. Even the character the Nakoshi says to have truly loved was only because that character was the only person to truly look at him and explain what they saw. The ending cements this idea in by his refusal to let go of his journey to see more of himself. In a way, the story of Homunculus is ultimately that of a man lost so deep inside of himself that return has become entirely impossible.
# Summation (TL;DR)
Overall Homunculus is a deeply fascinating interpretive look into the human subconscious with satisfyingly surreal art that is only brought down by its frequency of questionable and somewhat extreme sexual content. Highly recommend from me if you know what you are getting into content-wise. This manga has a well earned place among my all time favorites.