Manga like Homunculus

Oyasumi Punpun

Also known as Goodnight Punpun.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological , Slice of Life

Meet Punpun Punyama. He’s an average kid in an average town.
He wants to win a Nobel Prize and save the world.
He wants the girl he has a crush on to like him back.
He wants to find some porn.
That’s what he wants, but what does he get…?



Tags: Coming of Age , Seinen , Tragedy , Philosophy , Denpa , Suicide , Psychosexual , Urban , Heterosexual , Male Protagonist , Anti-Hero , Time Skip , Surreal Comedy , School , Fugitive , Gods , Meta , Cult , Work , Nudity , Body Horror , Love Triangle , Religion

MONSTER

Also known as Monster.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Mystery , Psychological , Thriller

Everyone faces uncertainty at some point in their lives. Even a brilliant surgeon like Kenzo Tenma is no exception. But there’s no way he could have known that his decision to stop chasing professional success and instead concentrate on his oath to save peoples’ lives would result in the birth of an abomination. The questions of good and evil now take on a terrifyingly real dimension.

Years later, in Germany during the tumultuous post-reunification period, middle-aged childless couples are being killed one after another. The serial killer’s identity is known. The reasons why he kills are not. Dr. Tenma sets out on a journey to find the killer’s twin sister, who may hold some clues to solving the enigma of the “Monster.”



Tags: Seinen , Conspiracy , Philosophy , Crime , Tragedy , Amnesia , Twins , Noir , Fugitive , Foreign , Historical , Memory Manipulation , Male Protagonist , Ensemble Cast , Primarily Adult Cast , Detective , Police , Medicine , Time Skip , Crossdressing , Suicide , Orphan , Adoption , Torture , Assassins , Achronological Order , Episodic , Gore

Chi no Wadachi

Also known as Blood on the Tracks.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Horror , Psychological

Ordinary middle school student Seiichi Osabe receives love and care from his mother Seiko. Until one summer an incident changes the family dynamic forever. This is a story of a mother’s love that has gone too far….



Tags: Seinen , Tragedy , Family Life , Denpa , Coming of Age , Crime , Suicide , Heterosexual , Memory Manipulation , Male Protagonist , Time Skip , Amnesia , Psychosexual , Bullying , Anti-Hero , Philosophy , School , Police , Nudity , Cosmic Horror , Tomboy , Dissociative Identities , Acting

Ningen Shikkaku

Also known as No Longer Human.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological , Slice of Life

Set in modern day Tokyo, Dazai's tale details the life of a young man originally from a well-off family from Japan's far north. Yozo Oba is a troubled soul incapable of revealing his true self to others. A weak constitution and the lingering trauma from some abuse administered by a relative forces him to uphold a facade of hollow jocularity since high school. The series is composed of three parts, referred to in the novel as "memorandums," which chronicle the life of Oba from his teens to late twenties.



Adaptation of the original work of Dazai Osamu.

Tags: Seinen , Classic Literature , Suicide , Tragedy , Philosophy , Primarily Adult Cast , Drugs , Psychosexual , Nudity , Autobiographical

I Am a Hero

Also known as I Am a Hero.

Status: Finished
Genres: Action , Horror , Psychological

A mentally unhinged manga artist witnesses the beginning of a zombie outbreak in Tokyo, and he’s certain of only two things: he’s destined to be the city’s hero, and he possesses something quite rare in Japan—an actual firearm!



Notes:
Nominated for the 3rd and 4th Manga Taisho Award (2010).
Includes a new epilogue chapter that was released 4 years after the official end of the manga.

Tags: Seinen , Survival , Zombie , Post-Apocalyptic , Male Protagonist , Gore , Guns , Body Horror , Urban , Tragedy , Love Triangle , Age Gap , POV , Disability , Hikikomori , Nudity , Cult , Otaku Culture

Koroshiya 1

Also known as Ichi the Killer.

Status: Finished
Genres: Action , Psychological

Ichi is a cowardly man-until he's pushed into a mental breakdown and becomes a ruthless killer. When he gets mixed up with the sadomasochistic yakuza boss Kakihara, it triggers an orgy of blood and unmatched depravity.



Tags: Yakuza , Gore , Crime , Sadism , Masochism , Anti-Hero , Masturbation , Seinen , Body Horror , Revenge , Assassins , Primarily Male Cast , Nudity , Urban , Primarily Adult Cast , Martial Arts , Ero Guro , Memory Manipulation , Male Protagonist , Psychosexual , Tragedy

Heads

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Mystery , Psychological

This manga is a story based on a thriller by Keigo Higashino. The main protagonist, the shy Jun Naruse, is a rather average guy who works for an electronics company and loves to paint. He falls in love with Megumi whom he met at an art supplies shop and an intimate relationship develops. Whilst looking for his dream apartment to move into with Megumi the real estate office he is at gets attacked, and when the criminal tries to shoot a little girl, he saves her by jumping in front of her.

A month passes until he wakes up again and is told that half his brain got destroyed and he only survived because someone donated half a brain. Everything seems to be fine, he quickly recovers and is happy, however, he begins to change… Is the donated brain the reason for that? Or is it just a side effect of the medicine?

Tags: Dissociative Identities , Denpa , Drawing , Revenge , Suicide , Primarily Adult Cast , Tragedy , Male Protagonist , Seinen , Heterosexual , Conspiracy , Amnesia , Philosophy , Anti-Hero , Crime , Work , Twins , Bar , Nudity

Ningen Shikkaku

Also known as No Longer Human.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Horror , Psychological

Mine has been a life of much shame.

I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.

Plagued by a maddening anxiety, the terrible disconnect between his own concept of happiness and the joy of the rest of the world, Yozo Oba plays the clown in his dissolute life, holding up a mask for those around him as he spirals ever downward, locked arm-in-arm with death.

Osamu Dazai’s immortal—and supposedly autobiographical—work of Japanese literature, is perfectly adapted here into a manga by Junji Itou. The imagery wrenches open the text of the novel one line at a time to sublimate Yozo’s mental landscape into something even more delicate and grotesque. This is the ultimate in art by Itou, proof that nothing can surpass the terror of the human psyche.



Tags: Tragedy , Philosophy , Classic Literature , Nudity , Seinen , Suicide , Biographical , Family Life , Primarily Adult Cast , Drugs , Body Horror , Urban Fantasy , Non-fiction

Freesia

Status: Finished
Genres: Action , Drama , Psychological

Freesia is set in an alternative Japanese society that is at war, and has passed a law legalizing retaliatory killings. If somebody kills your loved one, you are legally sanctioned to kill, or hire someone to kill, the victimizer. The manga is set around a character who works for a firm that specializes in these retaliatory killings.



Tags: Seinen , Anti-Hero , Guns , Assassins , Tragedy , Dystopian , Primarily Adult Cast , Male Protagonist , Denpa , Philosophy , Gore , Work , Meta , Nudity , Revenge , Politics , War , Military , Suicide

Ultra Heaven

Also known as Ultra Heaven.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological , Sci-Fi

In a world where all feelings are artificial and where everyone is a potential drug addict, nothing is really changed: the excess is near at hand and very few substances are considered dangerous and put under a strict control by a hygiene office which has full power on the drug addicts who are in extreme condition.

The main character is Kabu, a little peddler and heavily addicted. Used to any kind of hallucinogenic trip, he is able to feel
the happiness through the ecstasy of the drug, while at the same time hypocritically hating who gave birth to the society that forced him the excess. After an overdose caused by mixing two incompatible drugs, he spends his days looking for stimulants until the encounter with an enigmatic man who offers him a new kind of illegal substance: Ultra Heaven.
From that moment, his incredible journey begins, where dreams and reality are fused in an undivided world, causing him hysterical and joyful reactions and unrestrained pains.

But what really is Ultra Heaven and who's really behind it? Who is the guru who is promoting the meditation as a powerful way to influence the whole universe surrounding us exploiting the quantum theory?

With the help of a special amplifier helmet, Kabu starts a trip into the deep and hidden layers of his conscience, diving into a nightmare he would never discover...

Tags: Seinen , Drugs , Male Protagonist , Primarily Adult Cast , Dystopian , Philosophy , Alternate Universe , Cyberpunk , Nudity , Tokusatsu