Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

For someone who doesn't like sci-fi stuff all that much (me), I have to say that Parasyte was a surprisingly digestible series from this genre, and that contributed a lot to how engaged I was the entire time. Normally, with a setup like a worldwide (probably) parasite pandemic, the plot, the characters, and the exposition would all be very clogged and extensive--to me, that's what makes sci-fi series so difficult to watch. However, luckily, Parasyte avoided that trap by being a fairly straightforward anime that focused more on being entertaining and engaging with a few strong elements at its disposal. Before I continue with the meritsof this series, however, I do want to highlight a few of the negatives I saw. For one, and this might be personal preference, but--there were a few distinct moments in Parasyte where it was far too preachy. I'm all for media that wants to convey a message, and Parasyte's message is pretty clear, but throughout this season, the immersion was broken by character monologues about humanity and monsters and nature and so on. Within such a tight story, being thrown out of it like that wasn't great. Secondly, the story felt a little lacking overall. I'd say the reason for that is because there wasn't really a centralized storyline--a bunch of events connected to one another, yes, and there was the ghost of an overarching story toward the end, but it didn't ever become and A versus B kind of series. I suppose that may have been the point of it--perhaps Shinichi and Migi were just meant to be put against everything around them as a means to serve the message of the story--but it did mean that certain things felt slightly unresolved, rushed, or anticlimactic.

However, Parasyte still exceeded a lot of my expectations. Though the lack of a centralized story was a bit unfortunate, the structure of this series can also be viewed as one of its merits. It rarely bogged itself down with unnecessary plot diversions and it continued to put Shinichi and Migi in the middle of the most interesting pieces of the story. In addition to that, the pacing was quite nice, for the most part. Somehow, Parasyte was able to constantly be in a place of excitement and action without feeling unbalanced. The slower parts of the plot were used very well--so well that there didn't have to be many of them to properly counter the fast-paced plot.

The characters were as conflicted as the messages Parasyte was conveying, and I also found that to be a significant merit. I'm used to seeing characters that are almost always aligned one way or another except in certain points of the story, but Parasyte's characters' beliefs and values were always being challenged, and so their characterization shifted a lot along the way. That's not a type of character development I've seen that often, so it was nice that Parasyte executed it so well.

Overall, I thought Parasyte matured its story and its characters very well over the course of 24 episodes, and despite the preachiness of it, the metaphors this fictional world used to parallel real controversies was impressive. If you're like me and you can't digest heavy sci-fi material that well, Parasyte may be the series for you. It's actually quite simple, but a lot of it honed nicely, and it's always interesting to watch. I haven't said this about an anime I've seen for a while now, but--I'll definitely come back to this series. If nothing else, it left me very satisfied.