Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

To keep it short, a good story ruined by pathetic characters. Character: While the show did handle quite successfully the character development of, namely, Tamiya Ryouko, and Izumi to some degree, my main problem with the show is that most of other side/ supporting characters are either underdeveloped or just completely pointless and idiotic. We need to consider the general public of this "artificial world" as a whole, viewing this show does remind me of Mirai Nikki, and in that show pretty much every single character has something called "stupidity" to it. Parasite falls victim to the same issue, words along can't describe how idiotic somerandom characters in this show are shown to be:

There is a girl called Tachikawa, upon discovering one of her classmate is a parasite, instead of calling for help, as every single "sane" person would do, she confronted the parasite on her own with the concentrated sulfuric acid she somehow obtained, just to be injured and irritated the parasite into causing a massacre.

Another girl called Kana, who developed a crush on Izumi, who had this superpower of detecting parasite around her (Never explained). After being warned by Izumi that her power is entirely unstable and can't distinguish Izumi from the rest of the parasites, she completely ignored the warning just to be killed by a parasite she ran into. Love, you say? Now this is a thing I dislike about many animes in general, that the writer tries to justify everything with love. Now love does make people do irrational things, however, if a character's only purpose is to love someone and you try to justify that fucking stupid of a decision, I can't take it seriously. Tachikawa is even worse, falling love with a guy that has no facial expressions, no emotions whatsoever (what a convenient plot device LOVE is!) The entire purpose of kana's existence is completely pointless because her entire trait in the show can be summarised as love Izumi, as with murano also. Kana is just a random character just to add to the tragic nature of the story, her role can be easily replaced by any other character. I'd be surprised if someone can tell me anything about her apart from she loves Izumi and has a superpower. How am I suppose to feel anything for her death if I know so little about her? What is her background? How did she know mitsuo? Where did she obtain this superpower? Nothing.

And then we have Izumi's father, who appeared randomly in the story whenever the story needs him to show up, and when Izumi is on his trip to other places for like several days, his father's existence is completely forgotten. Added to that, his father does what I hate about this show in general, that whenever some character discovered a shocking truth (parasite), he or she tend to doubt if it is a dream due to the inability to accept reality, the same case with Tachikawa and the private detective. This plot convenience is so overused in the show so as to make you question whether the half of the main characters are just completely idiots or not.

And there is also a guy called Mitsuo, just your average street punk, whose entire purpose in the show is to show up, started a fight out of nowhere and move the story forward.

Keep in mind that the these examples of idiotic characters are the ones that manage to gain atleast some screen time and survived for more than 5 episodes. More pathetic, however, is the fact that most of other characters never appeared more than 3 episodes, so there is no weight to any of the characters. As for villains, they simply come by waves, after one parasite is destroyed by Izumi, the show conveniently introduced another parasite just to cover several episodes and died whenever the story needs to move forward. These parasites contribute literally nothing to the entire show one of them might as well have the name of "A". The two parasites that invaded Izumi's school served nothing but to point out the fact that "parasite kills people".

And about Hayase, a girl Izumi met in his trip to another town, who developed a crush on him (not even sure why), and never showed up for the rest of the story. Why the hell bother to give her those "love" plot when you know she is just a plot device character that no one will ever remember for the rest of show? The same issue goes to literally every other side character. Uragami, for instance, had the ability to tell parasite from human, as if he is the only serial killer in the world; tried so hard to escape from the police just to be another plot device that pushed the show to its finale, not to mention despite he tried so hard to escape, him saying "it's no point to escape, they'll capture me anytime soon" is a god-tier contradiction right there.

The general public of the world the story takes place in is also beyond stupid: there is a guy who stand up just to be killed when the police warned them not to stand up, they give a serial killer freedom without putting handcuff, a detective who kept following a "parasite" after his arm been cut off.

I'll say this: in this psychological story, 50% of the character are pretty much idiots with other 30% being underdeveloped and/or plot devices. And it is what ruined the show for me. How am I suppose to take it seriously if most of the characters are irrational?

The romance between murano and Izumi is also nothing to be applauded. Their relation is in this constant cycle of trust-Izumi becomes inhumane-distrust-parasite attacks-Izumi save the day-goes back to trust. I can not feel anything because their relation is stagnant for the entire first 20 episodes. What makes it worse is that we, as audience, know what the conflict is, whereas Murano, as a "person", despite discovering everything wrong about Izumi, about him meeting another girl and that girl got freaking killed, about his superhuman ability, about all the stupid tantrum he threw out of nowhere, still gives everything to trust him just because he saved her, as if it is normal to keep a mountains of secrets to your girlfriend in relation. This is so cringy to watch.

However, there is a reason why this show excels at all parts compared to shit like Mirai Nikki. Izumi and Tamiya Ryouko received satisfactory character development. As a parasite, Tamiya had a curiosity towards human society and gradually developed a feeling for human. Now I want to ask this, is that something so unique that while watching, you'd be like "WOW"? Certainly not, Tamiya's character development is not a masterpiece tier of development, the reason why she seems so unique in this show is because the way the show handles all other parasites. Now parasite is a organism that possess super intelligence, (migi can learn Japanese in one day, for instance). However, in this show, EVERY SINGLE villain parasite apart from Tamiya are such piece of stupid organism that every thing they do is killing human without even considering the consequence of such bold moves. Do you think this is what a "highly intelligent" species should do? It is really pathetic that the reason why Tamiya Ryouko is so surprising is that every parasite of her kind is pretty much unicellular organism of IQ lower than 10.

Izumi, on other other hand, received drastic development, from a timid, shy guy to a mature men capable of taking responsibility and his experience shaped his view of the world and life in general. However, what bothers me is that by referring to development, Izumi's change in personality isn't natural, it was the result of a inner biological mutation therefore it is ambiguous as to whether he would be like that without Migi's part inside him. However, this is not say a development from humane to sort of inhumane then goes back to humane upon the final realisation isn't a good development, it is satisfactory in my opinion. However, the main problem is that the show focus too much on Izumi's development so as to make everyone else look like stupid characters.

Story:

I have to admit I did not feel boring through the entire show, for which I will not rate this show any lower then a 6.
Parasite does a great job at keeping you on the edge of the seat. However, the problem is how the show does it. Let me describe two scenario:
A:
Migi: Shinichi, we have a problem, one of my kind is approaching.
B:
(during Izumi and Murano's conversation)
Izumi: stand here, and I'll.......(suddenly runs away)
There two scenario are so overused in this show I honestly lost counts of how many times these conversations happened. It quickly makes me feel the show is getting repetitive. In the later episodes I could literally know when such thing would happen and I was not wrong. Also, having Izumi and Murano's conversation cut abruptly every single time is god damn frustrating and is really poor directive approach to a show. I had me shouting "god damn, why can't you finish a single conversation."
Another thing to note is that being a show with so many gory deaths, the death in this show is completely random and up to the writer to decide. What I mean is that whenever a character confronts a parasite, if the character is considered still "useful" by the writer, the parasite will suddenly make a speech or talk nonsense instead of immediately kill off the character. For instance, Tachikawa and Izumi had this invisible protection shell around them. On the other hand, however, when a character is deemed useless, the parasite will immediately attack that kills the said character: for instance, Kana. The overabundance of death in this show doesn't really mean anything because it's just a cheap way to make a character disappear and add to Izumi's trauma, whenever a character should not just "disappear", the show will somehow make them escape the parasite despite their lightening speed attacks.
Although I am against this show's method of introducing a new villain after the previous one got destroyed, I'd be honest that it wasn't boring. The parasite's transformation always delivers a visual impact and the elimination of them grants you the same amount of satisfaction as when you played an online video game about destroying zombies. The story itself isn't bad, however, with such a stupidly large amount of poor characters, the story can barely be called good.

At the end of the day, Kiseijuu is no masterpiece, it fails miserably in handling most of the side characters, 90% of them are not fully realised characters. While viewing the show, I was constantly shifting between a 6 and a 8, there are high points in the show that deserved praised, but at the same time an equal amount of stupid writings. As a person who can't bare irrational characters and stupid logic, I have no choice but to give this show a 6.