Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

I'm not going to waste my time making a good introduction for this show, because I don't think it deserves it. Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu is a boring show, that hinges on attempting to make intelligent philosophical ideas a few times throughout the show so that the viewer believes they are 'an intellectual' as they are watching it. In actuality, the show spends the whole time on the main character, Shinichi, and his 'pet' parasite, Migi, fighting off random other parasites, with underwhelming character development and an empty plot. Warning: Spoilers Ahead. The show is focused around a male high school student by the name of Shinichi,and a parasite, Migi, that inhabits his body, while they both have some control over aspects of his body. Shinichi is a standard high school anime character, and then has a large shift in his personality after Migi inhabits his body, to a much more emotionless person. After this, he slowly progresses back towards humanity, where the show attempts to suggest he has reached some form of enlightenment. In reality, he just became a confident teenager with a base level of philosophical introspectiveness.

There is virtually zero actual plot to this show, as the viewer is led to believe that Shinichi may attempt to do something about the invasion of the parasites, it turns out that Shinichi loses the will to perform such an undertaking, and so the majority of the show is spent fighting off parasites that see Shinichi and Migi is a threat, or find him interesting. Either way, the fights are acceptable and unique, as different parasites tend to have different traits. However, it was clear that the writers attempted to make it look like Shinichi and Migi had good teamwork, however the impression I got was that they won all their fights because the enemy underestimated them (which of course it could be argued that the enemies underestimated them because they had such good teamwork, however I felt like it was average teamwork, while the enemies assumed they would be an easy target). Throughout the show, there is many random plot tangents that Shinichi goes through, making it very hard to work out what the purpose of the show was or where it was going. This may have been on purpose, however I believe it just meant that there wasn’t enough time to develop a proper plot, and so very little happened overall in the show. Then to finish the show, Shinichi ends up achieving essentially nothing, except this supposed philosophical enlightenment. This realization that Shinichi has is an incredibly basic outlook on humans, and was essentially a simple commentary on why humans are ignorant, leading into arguments for vegetarianism/veganism. Anyone who thinks this is a smart or unique take clearly has no level of introspectiveness or extrospectiveness, and has no ability to consider any philosophical arguments for themselves.
The only interesting thing that happened in this show was Migi’s feelings towards humanity, as Migi clearly felt some sort of emotion towards humans, juxtaposing how most of the other parasites felt. It is as if when Migi inhabited Shinichi, Migi accidentally stole some of the human emotion from Shinichi, as he became colder and Migi developed a desire to help humans. However, this avenue was barely explored.
The ending felt immensely rushed, as suddenly all the parasites either just disappeared or were able to blend into humanity (likely the latter). This potential has an interesting implication if they did blend in with humanity, as it may be a message from the writers about how humanity is simple and easy to replicate, although I doubt the writers had this in mind. It may also be a commentary on what our definition of a human actually exists – are these humans that contain parasites human or not? On one hand, there is clearly something about them biologically that is different, and the definition of human would be considered a biological one. However, it could also be argued that all these parasites want to do is survive, and they realised that humanity was too powerful for them to simply wipe out, due to the sheer number of humans, so they realised they needed to learn to act as humans. It is likely that as these parasites learnt to be humans, eventually the emotions they are faking will become real, and so they won’t be faking that they are humans anymore. Additionally, humans are not any different – in the stone age, all humans cared about was surviving, and also causing their race to survive (reproduction). Humans then adapted to become better at this, causing social interaction to begin, and eventually we became as we are today, so are we that different from parasites? Perhaps parasites just have incredibly fast adaptation (which is shown to be true in many cases in the show), and so they went through a similar cycles to humans, just much faster.

Regardless of the downsides of this show, it is well animated, as the parasites are intended to incite terror in the hearts of the humans, and even as a viewer they can be very disturbing to watch. The writers use good cinematic devices that are rarely used in anime, particularly monologues, which are a great way to emphasise a characters thoughts and push a narrative. The sound was also, well done, producing tense scenes when necessary, and more light-hearted ones, giving a nice juxtaposition between the ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in the show.

Overall, the show was average, but I ended up having to force myself to finish it as action does not interest me, and this was the majority of the show. I felt the show was incredibly disappointing, as I went into it expecting that there would be thought provocative political or philosophical points, but I was greatly mistaken for the most part, and essentially wasted 8 hours of my life. Would not recommend unless you like watching aliens fight.