Kiseijuu
Parasyte

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Alright, let's talk Parasyte:

STORY: Alright the story as described in the paragraphs above may sound cheesy and unoriginal to some, I know. However, as the story progresses the plot thickens and is beautiful. It shows how various people with the parasites, the bad not the good, try to cope in society and that's actually amazing to see unfold. One gets pregnant, one tries not to kill, etc.

Also, Parasyte shows quite vividly how someone would live with another symbiote in their body. Needless to say, this is very cool and interesting if you're in to that sort of thing. ... Even if your not, this doesn't slow down the story all that much which is fast-paced and easy to read.
(A tiny note here: One of my friends was reading it and it was about two in the morning so he told himself that after one chapter he'd stop reading. He stayed up until 4 to finish the whole thing.)

ART: The art is well done, although some may think it's a bit too sketchy and simple for their tastes. However, one of the neat things that the author/illustrator does, Hitoshi Iwaaki, is that he makes the eyes in such a way that after a while you can tell who's contolled by a parasite and who's not just by looking at their eyes.

Another great thing about the art is the transformations. When a parasite takes over a body they can change the shape and strength of the body to suit their needs. That means that their heads unravel to reveal blades, or they turn into a massive mouth, or many other neat, and creepy, ideas. The transformations are great to look at.

Also the author/illustrator can build teh tension very well by using great panel techniques. One such example is in the second new graphic novel, fourth old one (There have been two different publications), when Shin jumps over a ten foot wall. The panels keep widening until there's a full page spread of Shin leaping over the wall, then the next page the panels shortens to half the page to show the landing. Trust me, it gets your adrenaline pumped.

CHARACTER: At first Shin is just the average teenage hero archetype that has been seen in almost every shounen manga. But when you get to the second new graphic novel, fourth old one, things start to change. The parasite in his hand has to split and about 20% of it is strewn throughout Shin's body. Then Shin begins to start losing his very humanity and has to fight to get it back.

There is also a nifty little love triangle type deal that develops at the end of the second new graphic novel. Because every shounen manga needs to have a love triangle. (Sarcasm, if you hadn't noticed.) But I have to say this one's pretty well done.

ENJOYMENT: Wow. I just can't get enough of this series. Everything about it is pretty much perfect. Sure, you get a translation error every once in a while that makes you wince a little bit but besides that the thing is great. I read all the old graphic novels when I was about twelve and they blew my mind and now that it's being rerealsed by Del Rey there is no more perfect time to buy it. (They have combined two of the old graphic novels for a nice little price of $13-14)

If you like shounen, hell if you like action in your manga, check this out. You may not love it, but you won't be disappointed.

OVERALL: I want to give this series a ten but I just can't, otherwise I wouldn't be honest. If I could it would get a 9.5.

The only problems I can see is that every once in a while there is that translation error that doesn't make sense, and some people may find the art a little two simple.

However, the pluses definitely way out the minuses. There's a little something for everyone here: the one's who like a lot of action and not too much plot, the guys who like a deep story, the people who like watching others get chopped to bits, it's all here. (It even has a bit of sexual humor if you're into that.)

Even if you don't like manga too much, don't worry. I've had people read it who didn't even know what a comic book was, let alone manga, and they all really loved. One of them even went out and bought it himself. The others are all waiting on me to give them the next one when it's rereleased.

Try it, you'll like it.
(If you don't please tell me why. I'd like to know.)

Title: Parasyte

Alternate Title: Kiseiju

Mangaka: Hitoshi Iwaaki

Rating: 5.5/10

Genre: Not really sure how to put this

... Length: 64 chapters compiled in 10 volumes


Summary: The world has been infested by Parasytes, who can take control of human bodies. They don't know why they were sent here, they don't know how they were created. What they do know is that they must kill, and feed off of the human remains. They have the ability to shape the bodies of their hosts in any way that they desire, whether to alter the body to jump 50 feet in the air, or make blades out of arms. The worst part is that noone knows of their existence, as they blend in seamlessly with society.


One of the parasytes, however, messes up. Instead of taking control of his host's brain, he gets forced into the host's right hand instead. The name of this host is Izumi, and after waking up to this horror, he and the Parasytes, called Migi [which means right in Japanese, not a very creative name] form a symbiotic relationship, in order to fight the other parasytes.


Analysis: This entire manga is a coming-of-age story, focusing on Izumi. Because he and Migi each are two people in one body, they each retain their own minds. However, Izumi is influenced by Migi's cold, harsh, logical mind. The story tracks him and those surrounding him, as he changes and he deals with the changes. That part is pretty interesting. Additionally, some of the Parasytes [such as Migi, but there are others] see the human race as an interesting experiment, and its interesting watching them interact and learn about humans.


Whats also good about it is that its hinted, both at the beginning and the end, that the Parasytes were sent to the earth in order to cleanse it of a plague, that plague being the human race, for all of the evildoings that we have been inflicting on the earth. Its a very eco-friendly manga.


However, my problem with it are the fights. The manga, even though it is set up as such [what with the body changing], cannot do fights scenes. When they're done, they're done ok-ish, however they have no read purpose in the plot. Its almost as if the mangaka said 'Allright, I think I'm going to put a fight in here for no reason at all'. I can only think of 2, maybe 2.5 fights in the series that were actually important and helped the plot and the characters along. The rest of them, I feel like the manga could have done without. [Its because of that that I gave it a low score]


The main reason that you would want to read this manga is because of the characters, and how they develop. Thats the best part of it, and probably the only part worth reading [except for the 2.5 fights that actually matter]. Asides from that, you'd read it to read the insights on humankind, the world, and society as we know it.


Characters:


Because this entire manga is basically character devlopment, I'm going to be very brief with the characters, and I'm only going to mention four of them. There are more, and they do play important parts, but I feel like if I say anything about them, it will ruin it.


Izumi Shinichi: The protagonist of the series, he starts off as an uncaring boy, with a dim view of the world. After his right hand is inhabited by Migi, he changers, becoming more and more parasyte than human.


Migi: The other protagonist of the series, he inhabits Izumi's right hand. He is very interested in human society as a whole, but only sticks his neck out for himself and Izumi. He has a very narrow view of the world, and is very smart.


Murano Satomi: She is the childhood friend of Izumi, and spends some of her time in a romantic pursuit of the titular character. However, for the most part, in the series she serves as a sort of barometer to Izumi's humanity.


Tamura Reiko: She is a full bodied Parasyte, however she is not as mindless as the rest. Maybe its the fact that she possessed a teacher, but she sees the entire world as an experiment. She looks at the world through an outside observer's eyes and shares that perspective with us. Throughout the series, we see how the views of humanity changes. She is not as violent as the rest of the Parasytes, and is more logical and contains more reason than them too.

review taken from animeruwelz, see my profile for more details

I don't like this manga. I think it's overrated and very poorly written. I've no idea how it receives 10's and 9's from other people, I simply don't get it.

>Story
The story in this manga is actually... decent. It has a cool and relatively unique premise, and it's (sometimes) interesting to see what happens next. However, the author has no idea how to properly move with it. The structure of the story itself isn't dynamic at all, it's too slow for its' own setting and there's a lot, and I mean A LOT, of filler and just stuff that isn't very interesting to look at in ... a world where Parasites exist. Also, apparently, now that I have finished this manga, the author doesn’t even want to come up with an interesting explanation to Parasites, dismissing their existence to “lol they just came from space”. 5/10.

>Art
It's very bad and disappointing, and the few color pages at the beginning of each volume don't save it. The art is bland, everything feels so empty and soulless most of the time because of the lack of backgrounds. All we get is characters in an actually neat-looking artstyle in front of a white square (https://i.imgur.com/fzG6Lrv.jpeg - perfect example of what I'm talking about, laziness like this is all over the place). Riveting. Is this your award-winning manga?
While I'm on the topic of art, I'd like to touch up on the subject of the designs: they're repetitive as hell. I mean, come on, the mangaka creates a world in which there are intelligent parasites that can shape a human's head in any way, shape, or form they want once they inhabit it, and all he does with that is just draw the samey-looking stripes and blades over and over again. There was a breath of soul in terms of design somewhere near the beginning where the characters meet a Parasite-infested dog that transforms his head into a pair of giant bat wings, how cool is that? I wish this manga had more unique and interesting stuff like that, but, unfortunately, the mangaka doesn't seem to share my wish. 3/10.

>Characters
WHOOOOO BOY, HERE WE GO! Lots of spoilers in this bit, so be sure to skip it if you still want to read this manga.
The characters here are one of the stupidest I've ever seen in a manga. And to explain why, I'll just write about the two examples which frustrated me the most:
1) The case of the sukeban girl (I forgot her name because of how bland of a character she is, more on that later). So, you're trying to tell me that when there are rumors of Parasites going around all of Japan, that when these rumors are being even further explored in national television, that when the MC tries to tell this girl the truth about Parasites and actually explains what they are in great detail, that when said girl can literally SENSE THEM WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT SHE EVEN SENSES OR WHY, SHE DOESN'T BELIEVE THE MC AND SIMPLY DISMISSES HIS WARNINGS!? I'm sorry, but this is atrocious. To top it all off, because she doesn't believe the mc, she proceeds to die right in the same chapter by the hands of a TOTALLY RANDOM parasite-infested human. Absolutely brilliant.
And when she dies, am I supposed to feel sorry for her? Am I supposed to feel sorry for her because she's in love with the MC and is jealous of the girl he's going out with? Am I supposed to feel sorry for her because she got an "embarrassing" dream about the MC once? Those two things are the only things I remember about this filler of a character.
2) The case of the detective (guess why I don't remember this guy's name either). Alright, I can give the girl the benefit of the doubt, maybe there is some human out there stupid enough that wouldn't believe in the existence of Parasites in the sort of sutiation she is, but this guy? This guy? You're telling me this guy only "half believes" in their existence WHEN THERE WERE TWO OF THEM RIGHT BEFORE HIS VERY EYES A DAY AGO THAT ALSO THREATENED TO KILL HIM!? He got told not to meddle in this kind of business by two people: his wife and a woman he fears, and he still goes to investigate the matter of Parasites further with the help of his detective friend. To top it all off, not only have the humans told him to buzz off, one of the Parasites that he saw ALSO told him to mind his own business. And only when his detective friend gets killed by a Parasite, only then he realizes that hey, Parasites are actually dangerous! Who would've thought? God, what a joke.
The main villain of this manga is laughable. He barely gets any development, he barely has his ideologies shown and the final fight with him is just extremely underwhelming. Then again, at that point I was speedreading the manga because I was so bored of it, so maybe I did miss a few crucial points of his character.
But, it's not all that bad, I found the MC and his partner relatively interesting. The MC's development in partucular was interesting to watch, so there's that. But even he isn't safe from mediocrity, because he only gets a clear-cut goal by the 38th chapter, which is more than half of this snoozefest. Unfortunately, even with his flaws, I think that Shinichi is the only decent character in this manga. Every other one is just a stupid device to incite forced drama in the story. 2/10.

>Enjoyment
I didn't enjoy this after the first few chapters in the slightest. This manga is very stupid, and it really boggles my mind how stupid it is. The mangaka expects us to care about characters when he can't properly set them up for us to care about them. The art and the general designs are too boring for the premise the author created, becoming more and more repetitive as the manga goes on. I honestly hated it. The underwhelming villain, the stupid characters, the bad art that gradually got worse and worse (honest to God, defend this https://i.imgur.com/ECj2fQo.jpeg), it's all just terrible. 2/10.

>Overall
The story needs to be more dynamic in order for the story and the world to work and coexist. The art is borderline painful to look at. The characters are stupid. I didn't personally enjoy it, and I think it's highly overrated. What is there to look for in this manga when the only good thing about it is the distinct atmosphere of the 90's it has? I really just don't get it. 3/10.