Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

Kiseijuu or Parasyte is an anime with a title that ironically enough does not unambiguously refer to the parasites that the anime is about. Good luck figuring that one out (episode 21 4:10). Parasyte has a pretty interesting story about parasitic aliens appearing on the world. The story takes place over a relatively long period of time (more than a year) which gives the situation a lot of time to develop which makes the story way more interesting. It does however lead to a slightly jarring switch in pacing near the end when a lot of events happen in a single day. A problem with thestory is how it's situated in the rest of the world. In Hollywood movies aliens always invade New York or some other US city, it is then unsurprising that in this Japanese work the main place the story takes place is in the mid-sized Japanese city of Fukuyama. What is surprising however is that in the story the events that take place in Fukuyama have a disproportionally huge effect on the rest of the world while they really shouldn't which detracts from the story a bit. There are quite a few nice philosophical and horror elements in this story.

The characters are quite good. They are well written, have believable personalities and I often enjoyed just watching them interact. The anime does, however, enjoy putting them in situations that are annoying to watch or lead to poor outcomes. Personally I found these situations painful to watch and lamented some of the characters decisions but it's not like this is objectively bad.

The animation not amazing. There were quite a lot of cgi crowds with a crowd sometimes constituting of only 3 people. They're never present for long though and are easily ignored. Overall the animation was adequate for the story and managed to portray the parasites well enough but it's not an animation that you'll watch for the story. The music was pretty good and the main OST was very suitable.

Overall this is a pretty good anime with a nice story and interesting philosophical elements. It has good characters and adequate animation. If the idea of extra-terrestrial parasites infecting and killing people sounds remotely interesting to you then this is probably worth a shot.