Parasyte: The Maxim Review

Parasyte: The Maxim

Full Review

Initial Rating: Meh/Not Good, Not Bad

 Themes/Genres:    Horror/Sci-fi; Overpopulation/Pollution; Balancing Humankind; Humans vs Nature

Main Characters:   Shinichi Izumi; Migi; Reiko Tamura; Gotou, Satomi Murano

Overview:

The general plot of Parasyte is that these small, worm-like creatures, the namesake's 'parasites', start appearing around Japan and possibly the rest of the world.  We don't get much of a look outside the one city our main character resides in, so we're unable to tell how far-reaching these creatures actually are.  The parasites mostly appear at night, while people are sleeping, and enter the ear lobes to crawl through and reach the brain, where it takes over the rest of the human body.  The body then takes on the abilities and thoughts entirely of the parasite in its head.  The human that it used to be is no more.

During this initial invasion, one of the worm creatures goes to the home of our main character, Shinichi, and tries getting into his head, only to be blocked by headphones and fails.  The creature looks for a different way in, but Shinichi wakes up during this, so it's only able to make it into his arm.  Shinichi manages to keep it locked in his arm long enough that the creature only takes over his arm and is no longer able to move to the brain.  Once the creature learns to talk on it's own with a separate mouth appearing on his hand, it gives itself the name of 'Migi', for 'right' hand, and explains as much of the situation as he can to Shinichi.  Thus begins a strange, but mutually beneficial, friendship between a normal human and a 'parasite'.

Main Review:

General opinion on this anime seems to be fairly high-rated, it’s been nominated for a couple awards and the entire reason I found this anime is because it’s been on several different ‘Top 10 Horror Anime’ lists or ‘Top 10 Goriest Anime’ list and the like.  On imdb, the series has an 8.6/10, so most people seem to have a decent view of this anime.

…

Which means my opinion on it ends up being the unpopular one.  I finished this anime and immediately took to Twitter to rage about how disappointed I was about it, so let me explain why.

First off, it isn’t that Parasyte is just a poorly written or animated anime:  It’s an alright series.  My problems with it lie in the fact that it’s been hyped up to me as a good horror anime, and it’s just not.  If anything, my overall feel for it was more like a shounen action/comedy than a horror.  Especially with the ending, but we’ll get to that.  When people can review it with statements like “it’s a bit gory but good” or “I just can’t understand why it’s labeled as horror”, it should be a giant red flag that maybe this anime shouldn’t be in a Top 10 Horror Anime list.  It’s bloody, yes, but that doesn’t automatically mean something is horror.  Just because people die, doesn’t mean its horror.  Horror has to have a specific atmosphere, a storyline that chills you to actually think about or imagine, imagery that leaves you unable to sleep at night or antagonists that haunt your dreams.  Parasyte just doesn’t do that in my opinion.

Every good anime needs a mood-setting opening, it’s the first thing you hear when you start, the opening is vital to setting the atmosphere for any series that has an opening song.  Parasyte’s… not only fails miserably at sending a chill down your spine, but honestly annoyed me every time I had to listen to it.  It was far too ‘pop boy band’ to be an opening for anything that’s meant to scare or horrify.  Again, it’s not that the song was bad, but it was ill-fitting for a series that would be decapitating people, splitting their entire heads clean open, and devouring the common population.  Music and sounds are always important to atmosphere, and Parasyte’s opening and closing songs were complete misses for me.

The visuals and animation were pretty good, however, both in the opening sequence and the series, itself.  The designs for the various monsters once they inhabited a human were unique and certainly interesting to see, I actually thought they were rather cool looking.  Not in the most horrific way, but neat nonetheless.  This leads me to all that hyped up gore and bloodshed that had initially drawn me to the show.  Despite a couple of the monsters having some actually wicked cool appearances, such as this fucker here:

Most of the series was filled with so much of Shinichi’s confused face and running and spats with his not-girlfriend that it was easy to forget how cool some of the designs and fights actually were.  There was a lot of off-screen action, as well, that I would have preferred to have seen.  A lot of the other parasites’, such as the sudden social hierarchy that formed while Migi was browsing the internet, was left entirely off-screen.  Experiments on other parasites and the brutal murder of several of Shinichi’s classmates, all just happened.  You see the result of the experiments, Gotou, and a brief glimpse at the slain classmates for a split-second fake-out about said not-girlfriend, but it didn't leave me with a very 'oh shit' feeling.

As for the main character, himself, Shinichi, I just couldn’t get a grasp on him for the life of me.  Right from the start there are unexplained, relatively pointless habits that apparently replace actual personality and then throughout the series and right until the last episode he goes through complete 180-shifts that, for the most part, seem entirely unnecessary.  Apparently not needing his glasses means he has to change everything.  It’s the most typical nerd-to-sudden-cool-guy shounen bullshit with no real reason why it even happened.  There are changes, such as his ability to remain completely calm in just about any situation, that make sense given he’s got a parasite in his –heart- by that point, but there’s a lot that doesn’t.  None of this helps that complete lack of horror atmosphere, either, and just edges itself more to the action subtext than anything.

Migi is no help, either, and even supplies a bit of fucked-up comedy with his consistent sass.  He may be doing it in a monotone voice while tearing monsters apart, but that little fucker is a sass master if I’ve ever seen one.  He adds a neutral-party fun to everything.  He doesn’t care what’s happening around him as long as he can learn and stays alive, that’s the only thing that matters.  He got a couple of smirking giggles out of me, that’s for sure.

Then there’s Reiko, this supposedly high-tier parasite, for whatever reason, we don’t know.  She has several run-ins with Shinichi and Migi, and at some point entirely off-screen creates Gotou by putting several parasites in one body.   She likes to experiment, as is stated several times, both with humans, other parasites, and even herself as she gets pregnant with another parasite just to see what would happen.  She’s also supposedly some highly-respected parasite amongst the others in a group that we never see even form or what its actual purpose is or how it even works.  We get brief glances, but that's about it.  But instead of giving that more insight and maybe learning more about the parasites, themselves, which Reiko was constantly trying to do, we just get this ‘motherly’ imagery of her in white with the baby in her arms pounded over our heads several times.  While she does see a lot of growth throughout, some of the best development in my opinion, I don’t see how this is supposed to disturb me and it just gets annoying after a point.  Losing that horror aspect again.

(But when she was on point, she was on point)

So let’s get to the conclusion, then.  Now we get to be all feels-y with another fake-out from Migi, himself, being chased down by Gotou and not being able to reattach to Shinichi.  Of course, after Shinichi spends some quality time with a nice old lady going grocery shopping and cleaning her house for her, he then decides he needs to go fight the Gotou-monster because he was so useful against him every other time WITH MIGI.  During this ‘fight’ there’s some straight up bullshit about the cells in Shinichi’s body from Migi, you know, the ones that couldn’t be reached at all throughout the entire rest of the series and Migi had said several times could no longer be reached even by him and had explained how the smaller the portions get the less responsive they get, protecting Shinichi just long enough for Migi, himself, to come back from Gotou's body to the arm he belongs to.  Then it throws a heap of environmental awareness at you and Migi suddenly decides he’s going to bugger off.  To another world.  Because that’s suddenly a thing.  No mention of anything like that throughout the entire rest of the series, but because it’s the last episode and our main character needs to return to complete normalcy, Migi’s heading off to another world.

Meanwhile, most of the parasites conveniently go missing or into hiding.  They learn to change their diet so the entire reason for the bloodshed and ‘horrors’ becomes moot so, you know, everyone can have a happily ever-after and no one gets eaten anymore.

AND THEN WE HAVE FAKE-OUT NUMBER THREE!  Because you didn’t believe the not-girlfriend with a confusing relationship was dead the first time, so let’s do it again with the now-girlfriend!  But, of course, Migi comes back from his other-worldly adventures just to save her from falling to her death from the top of a building and then leave immediately again.  Because reasons.  And that’s where it ends.

After finishing this series, having been looking for brutal, actual -horror-, I felt completely lied to.  Considering I found this anime on the same lists with Berserk and Corpse Party: Blood Covered and the like… I feel nothing but lied to.  Let me reiterate a point here: just because something has blood, doesn't make it horror.  Just because people die, doesn't make it horror.  ENTIRELY from a horror standpoint, Parasyte doesn't deserve its placing on the many, many lists I found it on.  Especially considering the fact that most of the parasitic beings find ways to completely divert their original need to eat humans, the only thing making this anime even remotely horror-themed… it was a disappointment.

It’s not necessarily a bad anime, but it’s definitely not a good a horror.

And who knows, maybe the manga answers a lot more of my burning questions, as books tend to do, but that's another monster for another day.