Review of Parasyte: The Maxim
Since Parasyte an action anime with underlaying ideas, reason behind watching it can be different based on what they are ire interested in, is it the action, fight scenes and the gore or how Show discuses and explores ideas of human interaction with rest of eco system, overpopulation and morality? While viewer should be interested in both aspects to fully enjoy the show, I have good knows for those who don’t. It is that whether you only like story or action you will be equally disappointed in shows poor executing of both halves. Show tries do dive into complex topic of humanity and our interactionwith rest of the world and in 24 episodes it does fuck all to actually develop a thought process or give an interesting way of looking at the issue, instead it resorts to low effort , surface level moral preaching and virtue signaling.
Show wants parasites to seen as product of ecosystem and human actions, so that their goal of human extinction is Humanity’s fault . Problem is though neither of it is true, it’s never truly shown there they came from, but they clearly aren’t from earth rather some alien species who happened to land on our planet.
So, unless our planet sent out some wuju signals to invite them over for cup of tea and human intestines, trying to portray them anything over them alien invaders seem silly.
Secondly , parasites are supposedly have a drive to exterminate humanity, yeah alright but that’s a lie, early on we see parasite who attached to a dog killing dogs so, drive is to kill species which parasite inhabited, ones who happen to take control over humans have driven to kill humans. If that wasn’t enough parasites seem to only really kill then they need to eat, and on top of that it is shown that parasites can survive solely on human food and some do implying they don’t even kill human’s but exist in their society.
So, show undermines its main idea with it whatever it was trying to build on top of it.
Even if you were to miss all of that, show does awful job of exploring human over population, our morality and etc.
You see most if not all good works of fiction can be viewed and enjoyed at different depths. This is true for almost any semi decent work of literature and its same with anime and I will give you few examples.
Demi-chan wa Kataritai can be viewed as a Moe slice of life show about few high schoolers and they teachers and its fucking great show. But it can also be seen as a commentary of how individuals with special needs try to function with rest of society and how support, love and care can help them overcome life’s challenges.
One punch man is a show of awesome super here punching the shit out of monsters, but it also explores themes of human happiness and how overcoming challenges, difficulties is as important for human happiness as our hobbies.
Psycopass is show about detective squad who try and catch terrorist in future dystopian japan, but it’s also about human conciseness, how much of us do we really have control over or if we even have any control over our actions and desires.
This are 3 but there are hundreds of not thousand examples.
Now how does Parasyte manage with this,
Well animation is adequate, it’s not good but its good enough not to be called shitty, fight scenes aren’t creative nor have interesting choreography, there seems to be only 2 osts show has slow melody for “feel” moments and some dubstep/hip hop mix for action sequences.
Voice actions was weak and none of character’s left an impression on me, main and side heroines only really exist so that protagonist to project security and safety over and get mad when they get hurt, rest of cast is even more insignificant.
Story itself is disappointing, it had strong start combining gore, horror and mysterious degraded as show went on with very uninspired final antagonist
Well that half is shit but my its commentary is better, I hear you asking in dishopefull voice, unfortunate aside from few interesting dialogs in first few episodes show has nothing give aside from excuse that was final narration where it does shiftiest moral preaching of most cookie cutter opinions and ideas. Either show thinks its viewers are 3rd graders and need to have premise of the show chewed out and presented for them to understand or it released how horrible it handled rest of episodes and stuffed final commentary as hail marry to salvage the mess.
Overall, I found Parasyte waste of time to watch, far from something I would recommend.
But sitting at 8.47 its clear that a lot of people have enjoyed the show immensely so it is up to you to decide who to believe.
Final Score 3/10