Before I continue reviewing this anime, let me put up a disclaimer: I will be discussing the anime of Parasyte, not the manga. If you want to talk about spoilers, I recommend you go to a site that will talk about those things. Don’t be an ass and discuss spoilers down in the comments, because I will delete them immediately. It’s been a long time since I read the manga anyways. Thanks.
Now, this episode focuses on Izumi’s character and gives further insight into Migi’s idiosyncrasies, while attempting to show Izumi’s exponential dehumanization. However at this point, it’s much too early in the series for me to take Izumi’s “dark side”seriously, because we still don’t know enough about his normal personality in order for us to really care about the change. However, this episode does do a pretty good job of showing the symbiotic relationship Izumi and Migi have been forced into, and I can very much see Migi becoming my favorite character of 2014.
Either way, this second episode was definitely weaker than the first, because although a lot of things did happen in this episode, nothing really occurred that really progressed the story. We get some drama with Izumi’s character and see yet another Parasite, but it just lays down the thematic elements this show seeks to talk about, like humanism and the concept of duality, nothing more. To its credit though, the directing was well done, and the animation complements the campy premise quite nicely, turning the story believable and rather immersive.
Overall, although this episode was weaker than the first, it isn’t a bad episode by any means, I want to make that clear. If Madhouse can keep up the solid work and tweak the issues that I listed, this can easily become my favorite show of the season.
Nice review.
I agree this is probably going to be one of the best anime of the season, although, I wouldn’t say my favourite; that spot is reserved for Shingeki no Bahamut.
The main issue, in my opinion, would be the comedy elements that the creators choose to include. To put it in another words: it’s already a little hard to digest the main horror z-movie premise “an alien parasite has taken control over my right hand”, adding fratboy-ish jokes revolving around “involuntary masturbation”, it’s just too silly.
On the other hand, I really like the how, from Migi’s point of view, humans are the true demons since they feed on everything else. It might be a simple concept, but works really well for this story. In short: despite its bizarre nature, I’m also willing to see more of Migi, specially how it sees humanity from its alien perspective.
The manga was adapted to a new audience for the anime version. I.E. in the manga, the main character was an already athletic goody-two shoes while in the anime he’s an awkward nerd with glasses. The manga was adapted from a “seinen” audience to a “shounen” audience, and part of that was to firstly make the enemies more cartoonish, secondly to adapt the main character to facilitate pathos with a younger audience, and thirdly to make the sex jokes more explicit and gag-like. For example, the mastubation joke in the manga was simply Migi asking to see the main character’s dick rather than actively jacking it off. In the anime medium, because there are in between frames, they were able to take liberties with this scene and expand it to include the jacking off gag, however they could have just left it alone as well. The adaptation of the female love interest suggests the director is interested in making her less of a perceptive extension of the main character and more of a motive for the main character. They intend to utilize her only as an object for the main character to protect, which is a shame because I feel as though this detracts from the original intent for the character. Furthermore, the main character’s transition is a bit overdone and not very subtle at all compared to the manga. Everything I liked about the manga is being thrown out with the bathwater :(.
I basically read the whole series yesterday, so it’s really fresh in my mind and these flaws are more obvious to me. Don’t worry – I didn’t give anything away.
Also, the boob grab from the first episode was ridiculously unnecessary.
Now that you mentioned, yes, the boob grab pretty much fall in the same category as the masturbation joke…
In any case, I haven’t read the manga, so I’m not comparing, still I simply can’t find any fun in this kind jokes… I can’t now and I couldn’t 15 years ago…
About the female character: I didn’t pay much attention to it, I guess this kind of treatment is pretty usual, but yes, it’s also annoying…
Anyway, the anime still has potential… let’s just hope it doesn’t get too silly…
Nice twintails.