Procure Homunculus 1 Penned By Hideo Yamamoto Manuscript

a genius way to start a mangea, Every movements they do seems very interesting like there is always a meaning to that,

Nakoshi is now able to notice and deduct psychological traumas hidden by people inside their minds through symbolic images, I bet the ability is going to help him understand and appreciate humans again, And he'll probably discover his own hidden traumas, A very interesting start to this manga series! Nakoshi, a recently homeless man living in his car is approached by a med student, who offers to pay him to be the subject of an experimental surgical procedure.


That surgical procedure is called trepanation, which is essentially drilling a hole in the skull, It's still sometimes used today to treat brain injuries, However, some believe that we "only useof our brain" and that trepanation is a solution to unlocking our brain potential and activating our sixth sense,

After the procedure, Nakoshi starts to see things differently, He sees people as either "normal" or "monsters, " These monsters are the physical representations of the demons in their subconscious, Feelings of guilt, fear, caution, emptiness, etc, are shown plainly.



The monsters aren't scary or disgusting looking, They can be as simple as a woman with no neck, or as creepy as a girl made of "sand, " However, it can still be unsettling in context, Four for the story so far, an additional half star for the artistic proficiency on display, I'm reviewing the first volume,

After I finished what I could find from the last series I hadn't read of Shuzo Oshimi, I asked Google for similar authors, The first one it suggested was Inio Asano, another author whose entire bibliography I've devoured, This author, Hideo Yamamoto, was the next one in line, Apparently he wrote "Ichi The Killer", a manga I only know by name and reputation, But amongst his works this series, "Homunculus", seemed more interesting to me at the moment,

The first things that impressed me were the drawings, It features the kind of ultra detailed panels that make you feel guilty for spending just a few seconds on each, if even that, However, the combined effect makes the world of the story feel solid, as if you were browsing through pictures of events that happened, Adding to that is the subtlety with which the author treats the characters: for the most part we just know of them what we see them do, how they present themselves to the world, and what each attempts to figure out about others.
As the protagonist we have ayear old who constantly wears a suit and sleeps in his car, From the car alone I supposed the story was set in the seventies or mid eighties, but the computers present suggest early nineties, In any case, by the protagonist's actions we have to suppose he's homeless, as he has made his home a parking spot in between a first class hotel and a park where other homeless people gather.
The guy sleeps in a fetal position, with a thumb in his mouth, He knows plenty about cars, given that he can diagnose everything wrong with his, and presumably every one, by feeling it, hearing its sounds and vibrations, We know he doesn't trust anybody by how he keeps the other homeless people at bay, as well as the single person from the "normal world" that ends up interacting with him.
There's a moment in which he can't access the car anymore and we see him get sicker, likely because of a panic attack, the more time he spends outside of it.
The few details he offers about his past life get contradicted by other homeless people, who have heard him say contradictory facts about himself, They classify him as a pathological liar who won't last too long in "their" world, because he keeps his dignity, symbolized by wearing a suit constantly, and believes he has somewhere to go anymore.
My favorite piece of symbolism happens when the protagonist is watching one of the homeless people feed some pigeons lovingly, but when a crow wanders in and wants to eat some of the bread as well, the homeless man throws a rock against the crow's head, opening a wound, and the crow flies away with difficulty.
That gives you the sense that the protagonist will perpetually find himself on the outskirts of every "society" he has to deal with, taking care that they don't lash out against him violently.


What you could call the iceberg method of introducing characters is the optimal one: you get how they present themselves, what they do, what other people know about them.
Those details make you imagine a fuller life than he could possibly have had, Something bad must have happened to him that destroyed his life and threw him on the streets, Maybe a betrayal, which is why he distrusts everybody, Maybe he carries with him a significant trauma as well, given how he sleeps and how he needs his car as a safe space, Not being sure makes the protagonist more solid than if you had been told, It's the classic "show, don't tell", really,

In any case, the story is nuts and intriguing so far: as he's hanging out in his car, a guy dressed like a punk from what you would imagine that subculture in Japan during the eighties knocks on the window of his car and offers him what I suppose must be a significant amount of money for a "job" of sorts: the guy wants to perform a trepanation on the protagonist, drilling a hole through his skull and exposing the outer membrane of his brain.
Naturally, the protagonist is weirded out, but his demeanour suggests that he's gone through so much shit already that he can barely get surprised by anything, When asked why he would pick the protagonist of all people as if hiring homeless people for shady jobs was unheard of, the punk guy says that the protagonist has a foot in each world, living between the first rate hotel and the world of the fully homeless, and that's the kind of person who would be suited for his job.
The guy looks shady, not someone you'd want drilling through your skull, so the protagonist shoos him away, Next thing he knows, his car has gotten towed, He suspects that the punk guy was responsible, but in any case he can't pay to get it back, We see him grow sicker the more he spends without that safe space, as if the air outside were toxic, He ends up spotting the punk guy offering the "job" to another one of the homeless people, but our protagonist intercedes and says that he'll be the one doing it.


The punk guy offers to buy him lunch at the hotel, The doorman greets our protagonist with a "long time no see", giving us a hint about the kind of life he came from, and surprising the punk guy in the process.
During the lunch we learn more about the punk guy, at least what he intends to convey: he's a rich kid that has gone through medical college, and is interested in the occult, weird studies and in general the kind of shady procedures that no official entity would approve.
He studied trepanning, how during the last few millennia, and in some cases overseas in modern times, many people were documented to develop extrasensory powers after the operation: they could see ghosts, predict the future, etc.
The scientific explanation that the punk guy was working with had to do with how as we grow from babies, the soft spots in our skulls get fused, and that "locks" the brain in a particular pressure that limits the blood flow.
In the hypothesis he's studying, that would close off abilities such as seeing the "immaterial world": very young children casually seeing ghosts, and stuff like that, This punk guy has the money to spare, he just needs willing participants,

The protagonist doesn't give much of a shit anymore and he needs the money, so he agrees for this guy to drill a hole through his goddamn skull.
He follows him to a converted apartment, parts of which he has furnished like a clinic, Through the stuff we see in his apartment, this punk guy seems to be the real deal: he used to be a straight edge medical student interested in obscure topics, only to end up disconnecting from the orthodoxy even in the way he dresses.
After the operation, the punk guy intends to follow our protagonist for ten days as he tests him to see if any sort of extrasensory abilities awaken, First he guides him to some famous ghost spots, but the protagonist doesn't sense anything, During lunch, he tries to figure out which cards have a star symbol, He picks four out of five, which already suggests something beyond the ordinary, But as he separates from the punk guy for the day and he wanders through the streets, he realizes he can see really weird shit: if he focuses in a particular way, some people morph into sheet like thin forms, others turn into trees, others' bodyparts get weirdly separated from the remaining, others turn into robots, etc.
In addition, the morphed people can also act differently, which makes both the protagonist and us not being able to tell whether something is happening or not, In the end of this volume, our weirded out protagonist returns to the homeless camp, He's taking a piss next to one of the homeless people, When the protagonist looks at him, the guy turns into a ball of brushed metal from which a single eye, as if hidden inside, peeks out and then hides again.


So, a complicated guy with a shady past develops supernatural powers, This story can go anywhere, The author's vast imagination and his artistic talent guarantees this will be a great ride, .