Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

I’m going to cover both the anime and the manga of Parasyte in this review. So, pretty much, Kiseijuu vs. Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu. To preface, Hitoshi Iwaaki is one of the most prolific names in Japanese horror comics, Parasyte being his most referenced and revered work. His historical work, Historie, has a lot of fans as well but not nearly as many followers as the people who follow his ever trending, cult classic Parasyte. • Iwaaki’s art style is very distinctive and he’s even made cameos in famous short story compilations like Neo Devilman, a love letter to Go Nagai more or less withmany artists interpretations, though with all of the erotic shorts, I think it should be considered a doujinshi. There was even a compilation collection, like Devilman, for Parasyte, called Neo Parasyte.

• Since Devilman went on to influence Berserk’s Kentarou Miura and Evangelion’s Hideaki Anno, and for Iwaaki you can plainly see Parasyte’s effect on the anime horror genre, he’s even had a tremendous influence on the works of Junji Ito though Ito was mostly, verbatim, influenced by Kazuo Umezu, I think that it speaks volumes if they can both inspire so many people that there’s anthology short story collection for both of them.

• You get my point, Parasyte is a very important manga! To be frank, I thought the manga was good and the anime was garbage. I may be biased, since I had read the manga years before the anime aired and I know many people love the animated version, but I, for one, couldn’t get behind it. The animation was inconsistent, if you watch the trailer for the first episode and then compare the animation quality, it’s obvious that they just used all of the well-animated scenes in the promotional material.

• The music was awful, save for the opening because Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas are my jams; there was tone-deaf dubstep playing at inappropriate moments. The comedic timing in the show is horrendous. I know it’s not meant to be a funny show, but the manga had relatively campy humor, like the penis hand and the parasite woman jogging with her top half effaced.

• The panel layout for the penis hand scene actually made it seem in good taste, where the anime version was clunky and weird. I thought the voice acting mostly sounded amateurish in the Japanese audio as well, other than Migi’s voice. I give a thumbs up to his voice actress.

• I didn’t like that Shinichi’s character was adapted in the anime to be a geek that becomes a badass, because is incredibly cliché, and it wasn’t a thing in the manga. When I first saw the character designs, I thought it might be okay, but the anime portrays him as an unlikable perverted loser rather than what he was in the manga: an average 80’s kid.

• The series is chalk full of plot conveniences and stupidity, while the manga is shorter and so, these flaws are practically non-existent. The anime is not a faithful adaptation; there are many artistic liberties taken. The plot is very shaky and unfocused. I believe anything good about Kiseijuu that you want can be found in the manga.

• Overall, don’t watch the anime adaptation. I had the same kind of clairvoyance at the ending of the Kiseijuu manga that I did when I read a good novel, like with The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao written by Junot Diaz, not quite the heightened emotional reaction I got from Nabokov’s Lolita, but a feeling that had me walking outside and the sky seeming more vibrant than usual because of my enlightenment from reading something spectacular. Like aーI’m satisfied being a human feeling.

• I don’t know if any of you can relate to that, but please read the manga instead of watching the anime, so you can actually contract some kind of feeling from an otherwise empty waste of garbage. Parasyte: The Maxim is one of the worst animated adaptations, if not the worst, in anime history. I give Kiseijuu: the manga a 8/10 and the anime a 2/10.