Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

first review on here, pretty long and un-organized, but I hope it can entertain some of you (also, my native tongue is not English, so forgive me for I have almost surely made some mistakes) First of all: I don't watch many seinen-animes. I just don't like these fantasy/sci-fi/monster/robot-plots and ideas. They always seem kind of childish and most of the time it's just violence for the sake of violence with the supernatural element trying to be a justification. Don't get me wrong, both sci-fi and fantasy are legitimate genres and I can completely enjoy an "unrealistic" universe if the rules within the diegesis are coherentand there is a genuine, not-too-far-fetched idea behind it. For example I really enjoy distopian stories like shinkansekai yori or fantasy elements in stories like the one of kokoro connect.
Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu was, for me, an enjoyable anime just because of the fact that I watched every episode of it. It is very flawed and this review is 90% negative, but I can't shy away from the fact that I did like it somehow. Most of the time, with these monster stories, I can't even finish the first episode (I do try!).
spoilers, duh
It is a partly childish premise: Parasites just happen to come to a particular town in Japan (and to nowhere else on the Planet) and it turns out that they do not only love to eat humans, but they also kill them in a very brutal manner so we get some violence on the screen instead of just having them be efficient like the indicated intelligence of them would suggest. I can put up with this because the anime does not leave it at that but tries to implement philosophical question going along with it: what is human nature, what is a life worth, are humans worth more than animals, how can you justify eating them while judging parasites for eating humans, aren't humans the true parasites to this planet?
These questions are stated at the beginning of the anime and they are dealt with pretty – o.k.- for the first few episodes. Then they are just dropped for the majority of the series and replaced by hollow set phrases. Only at the end of the show these questions get picked up again and are a liiiittle bit deeper explored but the show just does not use them to their full potential - I mean, these questions are not new. If you wanna take part in a very frequented debate which takes place pretty much all around the world you just need to add some new ideas and perspectives. Well, none of that. Yet it IS enough to make for an pretty OK monster-anime. Like always, it could have been much better, and like often times, it should have been.
Let's get to the main character. At first, he is a relate-able character, not too nerdy, not too ballsy, he is not constantly picked on and also not loved by each- and every one. It is pretty rare for a seinen-show (and modern anime in general) to have these black-and-white, cliché characters and I am thankful that Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu did not do that (at first). Then he gets confronted with all these supernatural and horrifying events taking place around him and he has to deal with it because he is part of it. He remains relate-able and believable. He asks questions, he struggles with reality, he wants to be strong and mature about it but fails at plausible points.
Then he gets killed and his parasite is able to repair him because parasites can do pretty much anything if it is convenient for the story and maybe, at a later point, they won't be able to anymore (if it is convenient for the plot, eeeey). I mean, how can Migi just replace his heart and then go back to being his arm and suddenly there is a heart again. I thought Migi would just be his heart for the rest of the series and he would be missing his right arm for the rest of the series. In many ways that would have made the character development taking place later on much more plausible and unique.
Then he just regenerates his body for a few days and as he wakes up, he is a completely different character. He just did a full 180 kick flip on a wave board. I understand that he does not need glasses anymore and his senses are sharper, that's a nice idea. But why is he fucking ripped like a wrestler after basically sleeping for a week. The body develops muscles if you fuckin use them, and only then. He could have just trained and be really efficient at it, because he has superhumanly senses now, but nah, he just wakes up ripped and with a more masculine facial structure because plot convenience. Oh and he hasn't shat himself or even peed. Migi did feed him, right?
After that his character is:
>people get murdered all around me the whole time and are turned into mincemeat and I am mildly upset about it for a few minutes
>my mom died and my whole world is in shatters and I am concerned but basically it's ok.
>lol, I am lying in between dead bodies and these guys totally think I am dead too, rofl ( thats a bit later but it fits)
And everyone tells him that: wow, you are different, you are like a complete cliché now, you boring piece of seinen-main-character
A few days later he remembers that and has a hard time beliving it, because he didn't even notice, so we get a montage of retrospectives of people telling him that like we needed the anime to explain to us the completely flat main character and his uninteresting behaviour like we didn't had to cope with it for two episodes now.
It does make sense for him being that way, at least a little, but it just makes for a main character I do not care about and a fuckin cliché.
His main bitch does not really like that either and he really wants to explain it to her, but migi does not let him do that because for sure Satomi (her name) would tell the police. hmh.
But his side hoe also need to now the truth and he finds a way to tell her without migi noticing it. Because migi sleeps 4 hours a day. wow. he has a 4-hour-window each day to use and tell his dad and his girlfriend about his secret and jet he only manages to tell Kana; which should be the person he least cares abut.
I know that the anime tries to explain this by her completely unexplained ability to feel parasites but she thinks she just feels the presence of ther true love so Shinichi has to explain it to her so she does not constantly put herself in danger.
Uh but she does anyway.
Besides, Kana is one of the most unbelievable characters ever. She lives in a room which looks like it belongs to a 12-year-old princess-loving girly girl, she dreams and behaves like that as well, while in fact she hangs around a pretty violent street gang. On these occasions she behaves like she hangs around a street gang. Her ability to feel parasites has no reason to exist (other than plot convenience) while later in the anime, the mass-murderer dude has a very nice and plausible explanation for the same ability. She is cute tho.
Then Shinichi manages to convince migi to enlighten another human being about her existence. And he is an detective. So the risk of being exposed to the police or government is quite high; certainly higher that with his dad or his girlfriend. But that turns out ok. The detectives dies tho, and Shinichi is mildly upset about that for a few seconds.
And jet still he does not manage to tell Satomi. He rather breaks up with her and has a reason to be mildly sad some times. How convenient for the plot. Other then that there is not much wrong with Satomis character and she was somewhat of the character I could identify with. She should be a lot more traumatized but that goes for every character on the show (except Shinichis dad, he seems to be really devastated, which is also a plus) - she has a reason to be in love with our hero, she has a reason to be confused about him while staying interested nonetheless.
The last major issue I have with the show are the way humans fight against parasites. At the beginning of the show, when a parasite enters the school as a "transfer student", the girl who falls for this guy soon finds out about his identity and confronts him. She is a very clever girl (no sarcasm) and protects herself with acid and it turns out that it works pretty well to stun and weaken parasites. Good thinking. Her brother is a policeman involved in the very investigation about this whole thing and she knows it. Yet she does not feel the need to tell him that she found out about this method, or maybe she did but the police didn't care. That is unlikely and it would have needed some explanation why they decided to drop the idea.
Shnichi tells the police at a later point that flame-throwers would be his weapon of choice against these monsters because he knows it is their weakness. First of all: he didn't even use fire against his numerous enemies of that sort until the final boss. Second of all: the police laugh this idea off and then proceed to use every possible option and advantage they could get against the parasites. They seem pretty desperate and they are even vocal about it at some later point. Wouldn't it have made sense to at least bring some flame-throwers, in case things get a little bit messy? The man who is the head of the operation knows that Shinichi is hiding something, that he knows something, but he does not believe that the flame-thrower idea was more than just a wild guess. How convenient, because only trough this, they aren't able to defeat the strongest parasite.
Then, the boss battle.
The only reason Shinichi wins this is because apparently parasites have no possibility to sense humans through sound or smell. This is just not believable. On the one hand, genes of this very species enabled Shinichi to get superhumanly senses (and strength), but on the other hand, this species isn't able to use this gene-material for them selves; which would be pretty nice for hunting humans, you know, they eat them They are designed to kill humans and yet they just can't smell them. Uhm, what?
Then, shinichi is fast enough to attack and seriously injure his foe by simply stabbing him with a pipe. Even with migi, and he is without migi at this point, he was not fast enough to get a hit in, Gotou was just faster and superior in every way. When he stabs him, Gotou does not even try to react. Yeah, he was already injured, but so was Shinichi, and Gotou even had more time to recover. He wins. And, oh, Migi is back. He is not a cripple.

Then the last 10 minutes of the show are basically unnecessary, but fail at trying to give the whole thing a deeper meaning.

So why did I even enjoy the anime?
Because it was okey. Mainly, because it was exiting and managed to keep the tension up in every episode. I cringed and shook my head often times, but it was just good enough for me to klick on the link for the next episode. Also it did a good job at conveying emotion, even though some of these emoitions could have been avoided or dealt with in a more siutable manner if the characters would have been a little smarter. Some fights are pretty good and are executed in an unpredictable and exiting way. The story itself lacks a bit of deapth and plausible development, I mentioned that, but it's not too flat and has its moments.
Objectively, it is maybe a 4 or 5 out of 10. The art was nice. The music was sometimes good, sometimes not soo good.
My enjoyment was pretty high, at 8 maybe.
And for a monster/seinen anime, it was somewhat above avarage, because this genre is mostly far-fetched bullshit.
hate me