Homunculus (ホムンクルス) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Hideo Yamamoto. It was serialized in Shogakukan's manga magazine Weekly Big Comic Spirits from March 2003 to February 2011, with its chapters collected in 15 volumes. A live-action film adaptation, directed by Takashi Shimizu and starring Gō Ayano premiered in April 2021.

Plot

Trepanation 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. 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

Media

Manga

Homunculus, written and illustrated by Hideo Yamamoto, was serialized in Shogakukan's Weekly Big Comic Spirits from March 17, 2003, to February 21, 2011. Shogakukan collected its chapters in 15 volumes, released from July 30, 2003, to April 28, 2011. They later republished the series in a ten-volume edition from May 15, 2015, to January 15, 2016. The manga is licensed in North America by Seven Seas Entertainment. They started publishing the series in a 2-in-1 five-volume omnibus edition on June 27, 2023.

Volumes

Original edition

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 Takashi Shimizu and stars Gō Ayano. It premiered in Japan on April 2, 2021, and premiered exclusively on Netflix worldwide on April 22.

Reception

By September 2020, the Homunculus manga had over 4 million copies in circulation.