Anime Hajime Review: Parasyte

***Warning, the following may contain spoilers for Parasyte. Reader discretion is advised.***

Series Synopsis

One night, Shinichi Izumi (voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki) gets awoken by a strange worm-like creature trying to crawl inside him. Despite his best efforts, the thing ends up burrowing itself within Shinichi’s right hand. The shock of the encounter causes the young man to lose consciousness. He wakes up the next morning believing the whole thing to be a dream. Unfortunately, it was all too real.

The parasite (voiced by Aya Hirano) awakens within Shinichi’s right hand. It explains that it is part of species that feeds off humans. The reason Shinichi is not dead is because the creature failed at attaching itself to his brain. Because of this, the thing’s life is completely connected to Shinichi’s.

To Shinichi’s dismay, he isn’t given time to process what has happened to him. Other parasitic beings begin showing up, attacking and eating were ever they go. Shinichi feels a responsibility to act. He is one of the few people who can successful coexist with these creatures.

This sets Shinichi and his parasite, who he names Migi, down the war path. To protect the people he loves, Shinichi must hide away his secret. This burden weighs on him. At any moment, a parasite could show up and cause unimaginable carnage.

Series Positives

I’ll just come out and say it. Parasyte is one of the better long form horror anime. By long form, I mean at least twenty episodes.

Shinichi

When starting this series, I again found myself wondering if the story would be able to pace itself. Did it need so many episodes to say what it wanted to say? The general premise was straightforward enough. The dilemma of the show became clear rather fast. A lot of the plot points you would expect to happen occurred early on. At the time I assumed this was going to be an uphill battle, but Parasyte took it on like a champ.

Migi

As pure horror, this show had that. Comparing it to shows like Mirai Nikki, Paranoia Agent, and Devilman Lady though, something was missing. Each of those shows, Paranoia Agent in particular, had moments that were frightening. Parasyte didn't. It was creepy, at times unnerving, and there was tension, but it never had that one scene that got to me.

Yet Parasyte's advantage was consistency. True it never reached a peak of terror, but it also never fell into a valley of dullness. All those shows I mentioned did that and some recovered better than others. Parasyte never had to recover because it never got there in the first place. I shouldn’t get bored with a horror story and I wasn’t here.

Violence and Fear

Let’s talk about violence. There’s blood in this one, a lot of it. Not only that, there are some gruesome deaths. I’ve seen more intense, but Parasyte isn’t for the squeamish. This isn’t a fault because it got used correctly.

I’ve said it many times, gore isn’t horror. When a show thinks that it is, it’s missing the point. If a character dies what purpose did it serve to the story? What happens after a death? What kind of weight does it have on the survivors? If the answer is only violence for the sake of violence, well then I don’t care. When this happens to a significant character it feels pointless. When this happens to anyone else it comes off as a story trying to create shock value because it has nothing else to go on.

A great example of this is Blood C. Throughout most of that series, it’s brutal and a lot of characters get torn to shreds. Too bad that’s all it was. Take the gore out, you’re left with a lead that isn’t interesting, a story that's whatever, and a twist that’s unnecessary. To Blood C’s credit, at lot of its faults get made up for in the final episode. Here the show lost its god damn mind and went bat s@#$ insane. It was awesome.

Parasyte never reached Blood C’s level, but it was still intense. The difference between the two, the violence in Parasyte served a purpose and was fueling a fear. This is gore’s role in horror. Scary stories play on fears, it’s their purpose. Blood is an enhancer to two of humanities greatest fears; fear of pain and fear of getting killed.

Shows that best exemplify fear of pain are Elfen Lied and Another. Both series are violent as hell, Elfen Lied being a beast onto itself. But they both use their violence well. When someone died, they felt every agonizing moment. Elfen Lied and Another could take out the gore and they would still have brilliant stories, great characters, and intense atmospheres.

Fear of getting killed isn’t the same as fear of death. We all will face our end one day. It’s that inevitability which makes me not afraid to die. Am I ready to die right now; no and I would prefer my time to come many, many decades from now. But that’s where fear of getting killed comes in; the suddenness of just being gone.

A great example of this is Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, another violent series and another with a lot of pain. The difference, the pain was caused by friends and loved ones. Just imagined being tortured, that’s a thing that happened in this show, by someone you've known your entire life. Parasyte falls into this category and by doing something similar.

Instead of close friends doing the killing, it was grotesque creatures that shouldn't exist. Think about it, parasites were things which took human form and blended in with society. Now imagine one of these things showing up and just massacring everybody. I’d lose control of all bodily functions.

There was a moment when Shinichi’s school was attacked. One of the parasites lost control and went on a killing spree. Shinichi saw a horrific scene. A mass of student bodies lying in a pool of blood and body parts. We didn’t see their deaths, but the aftermath was enough. What happened next was a nice touch because of how f@#$ed up it was.

Shinichi finds a severed head, yeah. The poor kid’s face said it all. Their eyes were wide open. The tears were still fresh, a face frozen in terror. Odds were they didn’t feel her death.

That image was fear of getting killed. That was the strength of Parasyte’s horror and a perfect example of how violence should get used in a story.

Shinichi

The amount of s@#$ Shinichi went through should have broken him. It maybe would have too had the story not done something to prevent it.

For Shinichi to not die, Migi had to use a great deal of energy to keep his host breathing. The result, many of Migi’s cells dispersed throughout Shinichi’s body. This allowed Shinichi to perform superhuman feats and even go toe to toe with parasites. It also allowed him to stay calm and logical in all situations.

This created an interesting dilemma and the show did a great job at portraying it. Shinichi never lost compassion, but it was nerfed. He could still feel, but not to the degree expected from a human and nowhere near to what he displayed. Shinichi didn’t lose his humanity, but he forgot what it was.

He couldn't hide it and was obvious to the people close to him. Hell, it was oblivious to strangers on the street. It caused great strain with his relationship with his friend Satomi (voiced by Kana Hanazawa). She knew something was up and he wasn’t telling her everything.

Shinichi wanted to confess. But at first, he wasn’t sure what was wrong. Then when he did figure it out he wasn’t sure how Migi would react.

Shinichi couldn’t cry anymore. Something blocked his ability to break down and feel emotions. When bad things happened, they affected him. Too bad he couldn’t release those feelings. They kept building and building with nowhere to go. He got angry and violent, but it didn't help.

The moment when Shinichi cried again was phenomenally well done. He needed closure from something. There was a hole in his heart that only one person could fix, but that person was gone.

Shinichi entire journey made him both a tragic and victorious lead. You routed for him. You didn’t want bad things to happen to him.

Migi was the one who summed it up best. Someone tried to lecture Shinichi on what the good of humanity was. Migi, with a knife to the guy’s throat, said (I’m paraphrasing):

“You need to stop talking. This kid has gone through and seen some awful s@#$ you cannot imagine. You don’t have the right to tell him what the correct path is.”

Shinichi was a fantastic lead and managed to ground this series.

Series Negatives

Parasyte justified having twenty-four episodes. Was it running out of steam at the end? Your damn right it was.

The ending wasn’t bad and didn’t loss itself. It did shoot itself in the foot though when it got rid of its best villain way too early. The replacement wasn’t awful and we got a sick ass fight out it, but they weren't the same.

That aside, there were three major issues I had with this series.

The first was with the authorities. I’m talking cops and anyone who was in charge of hunting down parasites. They were more or less useless and were nothing except exposition fuel.

A task force got established to combat the growing parasite threat. This scene was stupid and a complete waste of time. None of our main characters were present at this meeting, so that’s already a problem. Nothing new got said. Everything discussed we were already aware of.

Why were we aware of it? We had already seen it. We knew how the parasites worked, what they were trying to achieve, and how to kill them even. A new way of distinguishing who was a parasite got discussed and that’s fine. But we already had a much more reliable source. Migi could tell when his own kind was near.

Another issue with the show was how cheesy it got. I’m not against cheese. Yet when it’s not necessary and out of character, it’s kind of annoying. These moments happened more towards the end and it wasn’t that prevalent. The only reason I even mention this is because it’s tied to the series’ biggest annoyance.

The ending of Parasyte is beyond preachy.

Mer, humans are bad and destroying the Earth. Parasites are the cleanser for the human disease. Humans are the true monsters because it is in their nature to kill each other. They’re hypocrites when they talk about compassion and kindness. Their emotions are illogical and hurp a durp, shut up I don’t f@#$ing care.

I’m a so sick of this nonsense. It’s done to death. Any relevance it once had is now diluted to point of nausea. Yes, some shows can do it fine and only when there’s a counterargument to it. Parasyte didn’t have one. This sucks because there was a clear counterargument that no one brought up.

Parasites said they had a right to exist and what they were doing was the same as what humans do with cattle. Thus, why is it so wrong to treat humans the same? The initial rebuttal, it's wrong to kill a human; an argument I even agree is illogical in this instance. The parasites brush this aside and no one came up with a good reason why humans were in the right to fight back.

I’ve got one. It’s because humans have the means to fight back. The parasites talked about survival. Humans fought back to survive. If a cow army were to one day rise up a try to topple civilization, it would be their right to do so. They’d lose and we’d eat well, but it would still be their right.

The other stuff like destroying the planet and punishment for pollution, I’ve got a reason for that too. It’s because we’re assholes. My question though, where the f@#$ did that come from?

This got thrown in at the end because why not. So yeah, Parasyte might have been fine with how many episodes it had, but it was on its dying breath.

Final Thoughts

Despite the pretentiousness that was trying to sneak through, Parasyte was still a fun a show.

The horror had meaning. There was great action. Shinichi and Migi were a great team. Plus the series managed to remain intense throughout its entirety. Here's a good example of how violence and gore can work to enhance a story rather than fuel it. Finally and I’m surprised I haven’t mentioned it yet, this show is well animated.

This has been a long a review, much longer than what I normal do. It was all too just say Parasyte is worth checking out.

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