Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

Sei no Kakuritsu, also known as Kiseijuu, is about a student, Izumi Shinichi, who one day will be confronted with non-human beings: parasites. What could be humanely hard to accept, is that these parasites nourish themselves with real people. One of them is going to try to possess Shinichi, but will succeed by just taking his hand. The main character will have one option: survival, if possible, help the humans or protect the people he liked. Story: 9/10 Before watching Kiseijuu, I was a bit skeptical due to the genre. It describes this anime as an Horror-anime. It is true that there a few scenesthat could shock, nonetheless it should not be in my opinion over 17 years old.
On the guideline of the story, I savored all the episodes. None of them should not have been there, the twenty-four episodes were all essential to me. Not to mention that I really appreciated the fact that the director did not split this anime series in two and gave us directly all the episodes; they fit together neatly into a continuous story.
The ending for me was the best part of the story. Without telling you anything, I thought "this is the way it should end". It keeps us, the viewers, on a good question: are humans not the most dangerous species? This story returns us to current problems of our world with the themes as pollution, human rights or the development of our society.

Art: 10/10
The super realistic style of this anime made me really enjoy the show. The design of the main hero changes, when he is sad, happy, fearful or angry; every single step of the story is brought into account on the aspect and art of the characters. To sum up the following the main characters arts are unique in their own way.
Whether it is the nature, cities or parasytes everything seems to be carefully made in details. Thanks to the art, the path of the hero was well-done and it kept a part of mystery for the story.

Sound: 10/10
Do you think you'll listen to this OST in the future?
Yes of course. I especially loved the song in the Parasyte OST - « Next to You », which I would advise to anyone who is a fan of piano. For me, the best point of the music was that it had a real symbiosis with the images. The right song for the right scene, nothing more, nothing less. So the background was completely fitting to the atmosphere.

Characters: 10/10
My favorite topic: the characters. What I notably enjoyed, is that Izumi Shinichi will dramatically change through the story. Not only on his physical appearance, but also on his mental believes. He is always connected to his Parasyte, also called "Migi", and starts to have a reasonable good relation with it. Izumi Shinichi harbors various feelings to the parasite and you constantly hear what his opinion can be to any of them. I adored this internal perspective of the character. Even if you listen to all his thinkings and see his story with your own eyes, in the end, you never know if his actions were right or wrong. There never was one solution, but multiple ones. You just follow the path of his actions.

Without any doubt, my favourite character was Mrs. Tamiya Ryouko. The reason is pretty simple, she is the one who possesses curiosity. She will try to understand the human world. Also, Shinishi and her are having more often than not a few talks and she could maybe be considered as his instructor.
As many anime's, parasite gets a romantic side, where Shinichi is involved with a girl, called Murano Satomi, who is continually asking the same question: "Are you Izumi Shinichi?" Depending on the moment of the story, he answers in different ways. This is the occasion where you really see the contrast of the appearance and thinkings of the hero. It seems quite unusual at the beginning, but becomes essential with the time.

Enjoyment: 10/10
Through his philosophical, super-natural and fantastic conceptions, I recommend this show to anyone who wants to lay back and enjoy a good signing, psychological thriller that can capture your attention.

Overall: 10/10