Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

I normally don’t go for serious genres or anything “horror” and decided to try this out, I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this. It was a bit of a slow start with some characters I didn’t like at first, but it got real good and remained that way up until the very end. This was the most fun I’ve had watching anime in quite some time! TL;DR: A really good show with lots of blood and really good at creating suspense. (Spoiler free review from an anime-only watcher’s perspective) STORY: 9/10 Cool ideas and execution, I like that it was never explained super in-depth forthe most part and kept an air of mystery which I think worked really well at keeping you engaged and interested in what was going to happen next. I didn’t find anything very predictable and definitely gasped out loud a number of times while watching, not being sure what the outcome was going to be for a number of dramatic scenes.

ART:
9/10
Looked very good overall. Some lazy scenes and characters becoming very blob-like(and not just the parasytes) when there were wide or distance shots, but I’m finding as I watch more anime that it’s almost to be expected for budget/time saving I guess. The parasytes sure did look freaky when they were first introduced and pretty solidly threatening throughout the series.
I feel like they almost could have gone more intense with the gore but I’m probably glad they didn’t as I’m the type who would probably get squeamish easily, I almost stopped watching immediately after starting the anime and seeing the very intense first scene, but I’m really glad I kept going.
Just the scenes were very dark in a few of them, with the colours being hard to distinguish the subject but that’s probably like why people dint want to see Batman in broad daylight, it ruins the mystery and literally lightens the mood too much, so I can’t really complain.
Overall, really well done and suited the tone.

SOUND:
10/10
Good OP, I love how it turns to what sounds to me like screaming and pure angst, really good for getting me hyped for the episode.
The ending was a nice contrast, being so peaceful, almost felt like tearing up several times.
One thing that was also a really nice touch for me was the music that would play for the preview shots of the next episode, it was really eerie and always freaked me out.

CHARACTER:
9/10

Okay so the main character I found pretty unlikeable at first, but his actions were always somewhat realistic(although a huge wimp at first) but it made his later actions so much more justifiable and satisfying to see. I loved seeing the character growth and interactions. Even the characters that I felt didn’t get fleshed out much or development were still mostly realistic, if a bit dull at times.
Overall, no huge relying on stereotypical character tropes like the super tsundere etc which was a nice change to see.
I liked how human (or in the non-human cases how non-human) their choices and actions felt.

ENJOYMENT:
10/10

Was not expecting to enjoy this this as much as I did. This was fun, it grabbed me in and although I was a bit skeptical at first, had me looking forward to each next episode I watched. There were a good number of cliffhangers, but also some surprising nice episode ends so I never felt like the anime was trying to be cheap with fake outs and the like.

OVERALL:
10/10

Very fun alien spooky anime drama. Had good drama and mystery and actual good characters that I enjoyed seeing progress and mess up.
Shinchi and Migi are forever best bros to me, this made me think of the 2018 Venom movie, this was almost like a buddy-cop at times which only added to the fun for me.

Almost(definitely) cried over a right hand, would watch again.