Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

Disappointing. The anime adaption does not live up to the manga, and it fails to communicate with color and sound what the original artist could do easily in black and white. Very, very many characteristic scenes were deleted in the anime, probably because the director thought they "weren't important", but those small scenes were necessary for character development. One of my biggest disappointments was how the anime failed to express the "animalistic glare" that we saw so clearly in the manga. This really shouldn't have been that hard to do, especially since we know very well what is possible in the anime adaption world. Asa comparison, I felt that the Made in Abyss anime adaption was much more powerful and expressive than the manga, whereas for Kiseijuu, it is clearly the reverse.

I did enjoy the music quite a bit, except for the songs that were too dubsteppy.

I also felt that the character designs were quite strange and generic, especially for the female protagonist, although I suppose the same could be said for the original manga's characters, who are also quite generic in appearance. I am NOT a fan of how they added glasses to the main character, who didn't have them in the manga. Glasses are a powerful symbolic device for describing how someone "fails to see" or "cannot see clearly", and they seem to interfere with the director's already poor ability to express the power of the "animalistic gaze".

I give the show a 7/10 purely because the colorful animation does bring some unique quality compared to the manga, but it's still a disappointment. It could easily have done better if a more artistically-inclined director, like Yuasa Masaki, had done it. Without the character development, the show becomes more like a generic sci-fi thriller compared to the power of the manga's story.