Review of Parasyte: The Maxim

What if Spiderman was Rated-R? Animation: 8 Some noticeably bad CGI background character moments but I’ll give it a pass because it makes up 7 minutes of the entire 10-hour show although it becomes very annoying and noticeable in episodes 20 and 21. All of the 2D stuff looks amazing and thank God Madhouse decided to make all of the main characters 2D. The fight scenes are easily some of the best made in anime. After watching Berserk I’ll never complain about 3D character backgrounds because we could end up with a show that uses CGI 90% of the time (God Eater, Ultraman, Berserk). Sound: 9 I never onceskipped the OP. It bangs and is in English don’t listen to the full version that one sucks, the 1 minute and 30 seconds have less of the annoying fat guy shouting in the band. I skipped the ED but in episode 18 it appears in the middle of the episode during an emotional bit that genuinely made me sad. There is an excellent use of music throughout the show. There were only 1 or 2 times where the music felt out of place and that was when they played upbeat action most while a sad scene was occurring but that was for like 2 minutes. The rest of the score is awesome and brings a sense of awe and style. The sub is fantastic. Each VA fits their respective characters pretty damn well.

Characters: 9
While I wanted to give this a 10 I had a significant problem with Murano’s character, not her appearance, character, or personality itself but mainly the dialogue she spews. I haven’t read the manga but the way she speaks feels strange. All she says over and over again is “Shinchi? Are you human?” Or that phrase paraphrased a different way like; “are you the real Shinichi? Where is the real Shinichi? Shinichi is that you?” It was very strange and nobody speaks like that in real life. It was just injected because of the themes of the show but it felt so unnatural and out of place. Although the rest of Murano’s personality such as her humanity and kindness felt good and she isn’t useless. She drives Shinchi forward even through her stilted dialogue especially in episode 20 where Izumi found the will to live thanks to tapping that ass once. Although the best girl in this show is easily Kana, her character’s dialogue is a significant step up from Murano and unlike Murano, her devotion to Shinchi is 100% all the time starting from episode 3 or 4 onwards you can tell she likes and cares for him. She drives the plot forward in more ways than Murano and she has all these hilarious comments and wet dreams that brought a sense of realism to the high school love triangle that the show was going for.
Now let’s move on to Izumi Shinichi. While he isn’t my favorite seinen anime male MC of all time he’s up there. We see him slowly lose and regain his humanity for half the show and we spend the rest of the show following him around as he slowly but surely improves his fighting skills and intelligence to help ward off the monsters while losing what makes him the Izumi that Murano fell in love with and the Izumi that his parents raised.

Enjoyment 10
I don’t have much to say here while Migi and the rest of the horrific body horror inside the show took 2 or 3 episodes to get into once you’re hooked, you’re hooked. This is first and foremost a horror-action show kind of like Attack on Titan but with a lot more high school and a more contained environment which the show uses to its advantage. The horror aspect mainly involves blood, guts, and gore. Surprisingly this show doesn’t have much nudity, maybe a couple of naked dead bodies or the like. A couple of wet dream segments where Kana imagines a naked Shinichi and herself as literally a white knight which is pretty funny given the author was making fun of the damsel in distress meets hero in shining armor trope. Some of the deaths were very predictable and others flat out came out of nowhere quite enjoyable. I'm not going to lie. Some of the deaths were very emotional and made you feel for the character dying especially the ones in episodes 12 and 18, I thought it was brilliantly done. The relationship between Izumi and Murano is developed pretty well and spoilers end up with a happy ending for both of them. This isn’t a romance anime but the romantic subplot is handled very well. The banter between Migi and Izumi helped to lighten the mood a lot for the show and take time away from all the dark devastation occurring around them.

Story: 10
Now we can get to the best part of the show. This segment will take at least a whole mini-essay paragraph by itself so make yourself comfortable, grab some snacks and prepare to read my take on the brilliant philosophy of this show. This is probably the deepest anime ever made so obviously, it will take quite a while to show respect to its philosophy and arguments it makes when humanity is introduced to animals that are above them in the ecological food chain. This isn’t SAO where you can just put it on your tv and enjoy all the fan service and Kirito smacking up bad guys like it’s nothing. You have to put your brain in focus and at work, this show is very emotional and even though we’re with the characters for a short time I still grew to like every one of them.
I feel the best way to describe the story is Venom meets Tokyo Ghoul (don’t worry I won’t spoil Tokyo Ghoul and I couldn’t spoil all 33 years of Venom lore even if I wanted to). The funny thing is that Parasyte was inked around the same time as Venom (1988) and over 20 years before Tokyo Ghoul. There is no doubt Parasyte inspired both of them but Parasyte makes Venom and Tokyo Ghoul look Mediocre in comparison to its brilliance. I suppose I will have to explain the similarities between it and Venom. Both shows deal with a symbiotic relationship between a parasitic feeder and a human host. Both of them also give the main human host superhuman strength and agility and both of them grow to care about one another as best friends. I feel Izumi and Migi’s relationship is a lot more fleshed out and doesn’t feel like your basic generic superhero stuff as it was penned before superheroes became mainstream and were read by mostly comic book geeks.
Now that I’m done explaining the brutal parasitic aspect to the show I suppose we should move on to the battle horror brutality similarities between Tokyo Ghoul and Parasyte. I feel Tokyo Ghoul is different enough to where I can’t say it is very similar to Parasyte and it didn’t even copy some of the main plotlines of the manga which I can respect. Now let’s look at the rightfully justified comparisons. We have young male teenagers Izumi Shinichi and Kaneki Ken who are 17 and 18 respectively and they are brought into the brutal underground dark world of parasites and ghouls in modern-day Tokyo during the very first episode. After being brought into such a brutal world they must navigate their way through death after death, trials, and tribulation that are in their path towards their ultimate goal of making Tokyo a cleaner place. They each have a female protagonist that is initially hesitant towards them but grows to fall in love (tsundere it’s always the tsundere). Personally, Touka feels like a better character than Murano, and surprise surprise they both get happy endings with both of the female MCs. The comparisons don’t stop there the brutal action-horror of both shows and the cannibalism that occurs makes both shows a disturbing watch for sure. Even the Parasyte weapons and Ghoul kagan look similar enough and act in the same way aiming to kill the heart. Finally, both shows deal with the loss of humanity when both Kaneki and Shinichi become half monsters and half-human. While I think Parasyte does it in a superior way in contrast to Tokyo Ghoul wherein both the manga and anime the loss of humanity comes across as edgy deep 14-year-old stuff while Parasyte seems to be aimed at an older more intelligent audience that doesn’t just kill off characters and half-blood gore and tits for shock value.
I’m sorry I spent so long giving you a comparison to other media but I kind of felt it was important to do that to make you aware of what exactly this show is because when you look at it from those perspectives it’s harder to spoil the actual plot of the show. I’m sorry to keep you waiting but we can finally dive deeper into the actual philosophical nature. I could dive into the similarities between Parasyte and The Thing (1982) but that would take a 2-hour essay and I don’t plan on doing another one today.

WARNING: THE REST OF THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE SHOW YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

We meet Migi at around the start of the show where thousands of parasitic snake-like viruses inject themselves into a human host and kill him or her while gaining and maximizing all the human abilities of their host. Interestingly it appears as though once the parasite gains control of a human host it can swap the sex of its host or transfer its parasitic head into a different human host if that host has different sex. For example, at around the start of the show, a parasitic woman was trying to feast on a man while on a date through the mountains and they both end up in a car crash where the parasite kills and takes over the male without realizing the sex difference makes the male hard to “drive” around. Sadly this parasite ends up being the killer of Izumi’s mother (who we will return to).
For Migi and Izumi’s case, it appears he manages to stop Migi from entering his head and completely taking over his human host and thus stays in his right arm where he becomes Migi (which is the literal Japanese translation of right arm) the fact that the Parasites are bad at naming shows their lack of individualism and care for human things like anything that doesn’t have to do with survival the only reason Migi decides to help Izumi fight and keep his friends and girlfriends (if Kana counts) alive is to keep himself alive even if it means killing his race. This brings up an interesting philosophical discussion between Migi and Izumi where Migi asks Izumi if he would be willing to kill hundreds of his species while the parasites are trying to survive. This plot point becomes more and more important as the show goes on. We see the Parasites being covered up and referred to as the mincemeat murders where thousands of humans are killed across Japan and the rest of the world. We see the government discussing with a top scientist how the American’s are weaponizing the ghouls. I'm not going to lie, that made me roll out laughing because it just seems like something the Americans would do. The humans slowly start defeating the ghouls one by one using the hair test where they take out a hair of a person and if the hair reacts weirdly then the cops recognize them as a ghoul and can wipe them out by destroying the Ghoul’s heart. There are a few plot holes here especially with the mayor of Tokyo arc, but it isn’t important enough to discuss here once the parasites take over the government of Tokyo I knew from the get-go I was snapping my fingers like hell yeah we’re getting a mother-flipping SWAT episode. This review is getting long as hell so I’m going to try to summarize my thoughts on certain plot points and philosophy real fast. So starting we have to deal with the idea of humanity and the selfishness that comes with being a human and carrying about the human race and keeping the Earth clean to ensure that we as a species don’t go extinct.

Overall- 9.3 rounded -> 9
I added my ratings divided by 5 and got 9.3 rounded that to a 9 most people gave this show a 9 but this is easily one of my favorite anime out there from the 75+ shows I’ve seen so far it would feel kind of cheap to give this anything but a 10 given it keeps up the pace from episode 1-24 it never once let’s go once you take the show’s hand it takes you on a journey that I think you’ll enjoy it’s not as large and expansive as AOT or TG but it does have the same emotions, action, horror, and romance.