Homunculus Manga Review

Wow. What to say about this manga. This is easily the craziest manga I have ever read. People get lured to psychological genre because it makes you think and question yourself. And if thats your thing, you are in for a treat. Homunculus will not disappoint. The story follows the life of Susumu Nakoshi, a 34 year old man who used to be rich but decided to take an extended vacation to discover himself by living as a homeless person. But having lived the better part of his life as a rich person, he is not able to completely indulge into the secluded life of a homeless. To cope with this internal struggle, he lives in his car, thus hanging halfway between the life of a homeless and a "normal" person. Meanwhile, he meets Manabu Ito, a doctor who offers him money which he direly needs. In exchange, he would become part of an experiment which would involve drilling a hole in his skull. This is a real life occult procedure called "Trepanation" and is followed by cults in some parts of the world. The procedure is supposed to help you use your brain to its full potential by increasing blood flow to your head. Rubbishing these claims, Nakoshi accepts the deal just for the money. But to his surprise and disbelief, due to the operation, he starts seeing illusions in the form of weird monsters, called Homuculus, which for some reasons, he ends up believing as hidden messages to him. The story which follows is about how these illusions change Nakoshi's life and depicts his internal struggle as he realizes how connected these illusions are to his own life.



Homuculus tries to showcase how empty our lives have become in today's industrialized world and how centred it all is around money. You get to see the world from homeless's point of view and so it also deals with issues like income disparity. You might also develop your own philosophy observing everything that goes on in the manga. Its difficult to talk about the story without spoiling things but you get to see inside the minds of various people, revealing their deepest desires, fears and most concealed (and significant) parts of their life.

But what makes this manga so crazy and different is how freely the thoughts of the characters flow without any barriers or censors. It takes complete liberty with even the most controversial and taboo thoughts that occur to us almost all the time and realizes their significance in shaping our personality. So if you get easily grossed out by weird sexual situations in fiction, then read this manga with caution. The story takes complete liberty with sexuality. In fact, the persona of a lot of major characters is in some way or other highly associated to sexual reasons. There are some gay scenes, cross-dressing scenes, rape scenes and some even weirder stuff you could never have imagined existed. At one point, I was compelled to doubt the mental stability of the author himself. There is just too much crazy stuff to talk of. Seeing the psyche of the characters getting so brutally opened up, you might end up messing your own mind by drawing conclusions from your own past.

The art is great and well suits the nature of the story. There are a lot of face close ups which serve the purpose of showing the enhanced expressions of the characters. The disturbing drawings do justice to the disturbing thoughts portrayed. Overall, I have no problems as far as art is concerned.

The only problem I have with this manga is that it becomes too difficult to follow in some parts. It becomes too difficult to draw conclusions from events so you end up completely confused. Confusion to some extent is understandable and expected since the whole story unfolds based on hallucinations that our disillusioned mc sees, but I think there should have been a tad bit more clarity. Even while reading some of the most important events, you will be confused as to how the plot lead to this point. So multiple reading might be required. But still many things are left to the imagination of the reader. This criticism is certainly not a deal breaker though. What's really astonishing is that, even with the heavy content, this manga makes for a very fast and highly addictive read. I marathoned it in just 8 hours. So if you are free one day and are looking for some psychological craziness, go for it. This is a great manga and something the fans of psychological genre can not miss at any cost. 9/10 (Great)

One-Punch Man Manga Review

The biggest highlight of this season has hands down been One-Punch Man. Only one or two anime appear every year that get this kind of hype. And that hype is understandable considering the backstory that this anime has. The manga was initially released as a webcomic by an artist that goes by the name ONE. It went completely viral, surpassing 7.9 million hits in June 2012. Later the series was remade with art done by Yusuke Murata and began publication on Shueisha's Young Jump Web Comics website in 2012. Considering the inconsistent rate at which the new chapters come out, fans had never expected that the series will ever get an anime. When it was announced that the series was going to get anime, and that too done by the western audience's favourite Madhouse, it led to unbelievable amount of enthusiasm among the fans. It was due to these fans that the huge hype was generated and has resulted in the anime getting huge viewership. But does the manga live upto the hype? Here are my thoughts about the series.

I ended up reading the manga after watching eight episodes of the anime since I couldn't live with the anticipation that the episode created with a cliffhanger at the end. I have only read the remake done by Yusuke Murata, since the art in that version is hugely better. But I don't think art plays that big of a role in this series since even original comic with art done by ONE got huge viewership. Anyway, since a version with better art was available, I could not find any reason to choose the original version over the remade one.

The series follows the story of our main character Saitama, who is a hero for fun and has ended up becoming so overpowered that he ends up defeating all his opponents with just one punch(hence the name). The story is actually intended to be a parody of the conventional shonen battle series which usually have an overpowered main character who simply can't lose because he is the mc(or because he has plot armour). Similar to these main characters, Saitama also gains followers as the series progresses. But the big difference here is that Saitama isn't even enjoying this journey. Since, he can destroy all his opponents with just one punch, there is no fun in the battles anymore and everything has become boring for Saitama. The series parodies several characters from other series as well as takes several plot points from other every famous series too. Its fun to recognize what they are referring to as different scenes come up.

The jokes are actually funny and create an great upward experience in the beginning of the series. But they get tiring after a while. I get it that its a parody series, but nonetheless, it should atleast have a moving story. A sign of a moving story was seen when they introduced the existence of Hero Association but that too very soon became just an excuse to introduce a new character in every episode. Character development is almost absent in this series. As the main character is too overpowered, he just keeps on defeating his opponents again and again and thus this kind of story leaves no scope of character development for him. A new villain is introduced in almost every chapter and chapters end with Saitama finishing off his opponent with just one punch. This really lead to the manga getting boring for me in its later part. But then again, I have a critical mind so I guess its natural I wouldn't enjoy this kind of a story that much.

But all is not negative with this series. It has actually in my opinion been very successful in what I believe it was trying to do. Although the series is a parody series, a lot of the fanbase doesn't even realize that. And that just proves that people just love anything that has been put into the shonen formula, even if the whole story is intended to be joke. The so called elites of the anime-manga community have this stereotype of shonen fans about them being kids who are just action hungry and don't care about the plot or characters. People taking this series seriously just proves that in their eyes. Although, I disagree with this view about shonen series as I believe some truly inspiring and meaningful stories can and have been told using shonen mangas, I still think that people really shouldn't take this series seriosly. I see people all over the internet analysing every episode, and making comparisons between powerlevel of the characters and trying to analyse the story, I think they should just stop. If taken for what it is, this manga actually made an enjoyable light read. Just go along with the chapters and absorb yourself into the hype and you would really have a great time.The art is phenomenal and the backgrounds are really detailed so that will also keep you gripped.

So if you are looking for a light comedy series to pass time and want to become part of the huge culture that has been created around this series then go and give it a read. Whether you like it or not will really depend on your taste but still think everyone should give it a go even if just ti become part of the conversation and getting to know the series that has arguably been the biggest highlight of this year.