Parasyte is a story I’ve heard about and been aware of for years, but between the grotesque appearance of the titular creatures and the kinda bland looking anime adaptation, I never had much motivation to sit through it in any format be it manga or anime. That changed recently though after I read Devilman, a thoroughly enjoyable classic horror manga that put me in the mood for more works in the same genre and from a roughly similar time period, bringing me to the 1989 manga series Parasyte. I talked enough about “classics” in that devilman review that I won’t be throwing that label around here, but whether this manga is or isn’t one, it is still undeniably a really refreshing read with one of the more interesting character journeys I’ve personally witnessed among anime or manga. And as usual I’ll be keeping this mostly spoiler free, but there will be light details about the basic premise and the world the story sets up. If you want a tl;dr it’s at the very bottom of the page after the last line breaker.
CHARACTERS️
The main character of the story is Shinichi Izumi, who at the start of the story gets transformed from an ordinary high school kid to… an ordinary high school kid with a shapeshifting hand. His entire right arm has become the home of a mysterious parasitic lifeform that ultimately takes the name Migi, and for most of the story our protagonist is trying to figure out how to live with this new unwelcome roommate and what the presence of its kind means for humanity. He’s not instantly or really even at any point thrust into some grand war between humans and “parasytes” like what tends to be the case in many similar stories, instead this manga takes a much more narrow approach with its setting and we therefore have the chance to explore and grow with Shinichi’s character in a way that honestly felt really refreshing. We see him ultimately start questioning his own humanity as his fusion with Migi seems to grow more and more complete, and as his very many traumatic experiences begin to weigh on him. Once he’s recognised the change in his outlook he fights to identify and hold onto what he believes to be the core of his self and of human nature, effectively rejecting his experiences at various points. But instead of finally arriving at a singular truth about the human spirit, the story instead reveals that people can love just as easily as they can be hateful, and that whatever justification we come up with at the end for our actions or the path we choose someone else may arrive at a completely different path or even the same path as you through a completely different answer. “Answer” as in an answer to the question of what it means to be human, just to clear that up. Shinichi is a relatable and compelling character because he doesn’t have anything figured out most of the time, and more than anything else his struggles are deeply personal even on the occasions he professes to wanting to save the world. Parallel to his arc though we have a few other characters going through similar journeys of self-discovery.
Migi, the parasyte living in Shinichi’s arm, pretty much starts off completely cold and callous, fundamentally unable to understand human thinking or relationships. So much so that his primary remarks around Shinichi’s romantic endeavours start off with what can be summed up as curiosity of a very particular kind, reflected in the wonderfully quotable line “how disappointing. I thought I would get to see human intercourse.” But even having said that he started off cold, and “rational” by his own assessment, it’s actually the opposite. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me for lying in the first line of this paragraph. You see, there’s flickers of care and of individuality even in the seemingly detached persona he exudes in the beginning, and the encounters with other parasytes end up further proving that they – like humans – are not monolithic, but instead have their own quirks and desires. Migi comes to realise and accept this eventually as he grows throughout the story right alongside Shinichi in a way that’s really satisfying given his original disposition. Reiko is also one of the more interesting and complex parasytes whose arc seems to serve as a mirror to Shinichi’s, becoming progressively more “human” while Shinichi delves deeper into the world of parasytes until their paths reconnect in the final phase of the story. The story delivers a lot of great character writing considering how short it is especially, and the tensions and bonds between them usually feel real and dynamic. I say “usually” because the love interests here… well I honestly don’t know how I felt about them, they don’t have much purpose in terms of plot most of the time and they seem to exist primarily for Shinichi’s character development and possibly even for the reader to have a sense of wish fulfilment through the main character’s relationship with them. Even so, I don’t think they’re Awful by any means and against my better senses I ended up a bit attached to Kana, so credit to the mangaka for that I guess. this section is long enough already so let’s move on to
THEMES
One of the most prevalent themes is of course that of human nature, or the capacity of the human heart. So in that sense I appreciate that this manga didn’t shy away from showing humans and parasytes alike can be every bit as caring and even altruistic as they can be vile and vindictive. There seems to also be an ongoing debate through the story about nature vs nurture in determining what a person becomes, with the parasytes all being implanted with a singular directive but landing in a very diverse range of environments and hosts. It’s also visible through Shinichi’s character arc and the idea that Migi’s presence may have “corrupted” him in a way. Ultimately it seems the conclusion presented is that the human heart is not a static thing, so no single determinant is enough to set in stone who you are, and that you have the power to choose, as Shinichi ultimately did.
There’s also recurrent ideas and arguments around environmentalism which it honestly doesn’t go very deep into, but is still a major aspect of the story and I think very reflective of the time this story was written in. Heck, the mangaka said himself in the afterword of the last volume that his approach to writing parasyte was influenced by public attitudes towards the environment that he eventually grew frustrated with. I don’t know if you can say the story ever takes a definitive stance, but a huge part of the argument presented by certain characters is that it’s not right to act like humans are above or separate from the environment, or that nature exists to serve our aims. Of course, the manga also shows the flaws in taking that line of argument to its most extreme ends, as the result is the philosophy of one of our antagonists in the latter portion of the manga who’s pretty much Japanese Thanos, just without the ballsack chin. I don’t think this is an example of “enlightened centrism” as much as it is leaving room for the reader to interpret though since he’s not exactly condemned by the way the story’s framed, especially considering the characters on the other side of the confrontation with him at the end. In my interpretation it’s an extension of the previous theme about the potential of the human heart, as it’s not as simple as saying humans are a poison or parasytes are a poison. It’s not necessarily human nature to destroy, and if it is then that inclination can still be overcome, and we can learn to meaningfully coexist with each other and with nature. There is however a seeming criticism about how authority figures are complicit in environmental degradation and shortsighted in that regard, demonstrated in really just a tangential scene where police officers let someone go that they know was polluting a forest just because they cared more about a short-term threat than the dumping that had been going on in that area even prior to their arrival. Ultimately though, Parasyte is a very streamlined story so I don’t feel as though it explores these ideas very extensively, though I could just be stupid, so if you have an active interest in this area then it may be a lot more engaging and stand out to you more than it did for me.
GENERAL STUFF AND FINAL SCORE
With how efficient and compact the storytelling here was overall, the ending stands out as a real disappointment. It does tie up a loose character thread but honestly it’d be better suited to some random side story or something because it wasn’t strictly necessary either thematically or narratively, and a big part of what makes this manga so great to read is as I said in the first section it tends to take a more narrow approach, and that means it doesn’t usually get bogged down in chasing every single mystery or character. This can be hugely beneficial like in the room it gives to Shinichi’s character arc, or kinda detrimental like with Kana in particular getting a little crowded out and squished between the arcs of other characters. For better or worse though it’s the core of this manga’s writing and tone, so having us deviate to wrap up the storyline of a random character we have no reason to care about at all is just a bizarre choice, and might leave you feeling a bit less than plus ultra. It’s worth saying though it did also tie up another thread going on in the background of the entire manga by having Shinichi wear a shirt with black and white stripes, which is really basic and obvious as to the intended meaning but also made me go a little unhinged with a maybe crazy theory I just Need to share somewhere so it’s going (in brief) in the next paragraph I suppose.
It’s either I am completely crazy or Hitoshi Iwaaki, the manga’s creator, is a genius, there is no in between. The honestly pretty ridiculous prints on Shinichi’s shirts a lot of times seemed like an obvious way the manga could communicate his state of mind, and I at first thought that would be more prevalent than it was, but with my attention being at least partly on his shirts I started to notice it was instead the colour – or shade to be more accurate – of his shirt that seemed to reflect his state of mind or self-perception quite a lot, and that this applied to some other characters too at different points. The first look we have of him is in a white shirt before Migi entered his arm, and during his first encounter with a humanoid parasyte he’s wearing a white shirt with black sleeves while the parasyte is in all-black, as if to reflect the level of integration the two human characters in that encounter have with the parasytes infecting them, and visual cues like this are repeated often enough that it seems to play into entire character arcs like with the last we see of a certain character being them dressed entirely in white as they’ve fully embraced the human world while Shinichi at a point is entirely in black as he feels forced to leave behind his human life. Other than that, while I’m talking about the art, it tends to be pretty good and though the parasytes are less freaky to me than they seemed in the anime (probably because there’s no sound lol) they’re still designed really distinctly.
Overall Parasyte lands a score of 86 out of 100 for having well written and engaging characters, interesting themes that drive you to reflect on them, and solid artwork. The only real downsides are its sloppy ending and a couple of characters who felt a bit shallow. Absolutely a strong recommendation and a fun read but once again it does merit a general content warning as there’s lots of gore and some mild sexual content, so heads up I guess. The anime isn’t overly different from the manga, so you can go ahead and engage with whichever medium you prefer, though it bears mentioning that the anime is set decades after the original manga was written even if it doesn’t really do anything with its more modern setting.
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