Hello everyone, I continue my focus on horror themed series with this week’s review. The series I’m looking at this week is Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte, also known as Kiseiju, which translates to Parasitic Beasts. Parasyte focuses on an invasion of alien parasites that take over human bodies.The parasites decent down to Earth in tennis ball-sized spores and the parasites initially look like worms. Once they escape the spore they were carried in, the parasites seek out human hosts and burrow their way into the heads of their hosts, effectively killing the host and turning their bodies into vehicles for the parasites.
One of the parasites tries to enter the head of Shinichi Izumi, our protagonist in the series, but Shinishi was listening to music at the time so it couldn’t enter through the ear canal and thus tried entering through Shinichi’s nose, but Shinichi pulled it out before it could burrow in. He loses track of the parasite, when it suddenly lunges at him from above. Shinichi shields his face with his right hand and the parasite burrows into his right hand instead.
Well that's certainly going to make alone time a pain....
He traps the parasite by tying off his right arm, preventing the parasite from going anywhere. The noise from Shinichi’s struggle with the parasite wakes up his parents, who think he is hallucinating when he tells them what had happened, as the hole caused by the parasite burrowing into his hand was healed. The next morning we see the result of a “successful” take over of a human body.
Honey, you got a little something on your face. . .
While Shinichi is at school, his hand starts moving on its own, doing things such as feeling up a girl without him knowing about it, as well as instinctively protecting Shinichi from a piece of chalk being thrown at him by a teacher for talking in class. Eventually Shinichi’s arm starts to change.
Sweet, I'm turning into Reed Richards!
On the way home from school, Shinichi’s arm gets him in trouble with a group of bullies from another school. In the ensuing fight, the parasite detects that Shinichi is in a fight from how hard Shinichi is breathing and from his heart rate. This causes the parasite to knock out all but one of the bullies all at once. When Shinichi gets home he takes a knife and tries to stab his hand when it suddenly grows a face.
GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The next morning, Shinichi wakes up to the parasite reading various books and transforming itself to look like pictures found in the books. Throughout the day, the parasite gets Shinichi into embarrassing situations, such as making some other male students think he’s talking to his crotch in the bathroom. The parasite especially does this when Shinichi is around a female classmate of his, named Satomi Murano, the biggest example of this was turning Shinichi’s entire right arm into an erect penis while Shinichi and Satomi were eating in a McDonald’s, but the parasite changed his arm back before anyone else noticed.
After a while Shinichi and his parasite slowly start to get along. Shinichi decides to give his parasite a name and the parasite wants him to call him Migi, the Japanese word for “right” as he’s in Shinichi’s right hand. A short while after Shinichi gives Migi his name, Migi senses another parasite host nearby and tracks the host down, revealing the host to be a massive dog.
Good Cujo. . .
Migi senses the other parasite’s intent to kill Shinichi, so they run away. The dog parasite sprouts giant wings from the dog’s head and begins flying into the sky to chase after Migi and Shinichi when Migi decides it is time to fight back. Migi makes quick work of the dog parasite by ripping its heart out, instantly killing both the dog and the parasite.
The rest of the series continues to focus on Migi and Shinichi fighting other parasites as well as the strengthening of their symbiotic partnership. Namely Migi doesn’t try to take over Shinichi’s body as he’s getting enough sustenance from all of the food Shinichi eats. Parasyte lasts for 64 chapters which were bound in 10 tankobon volumes. The series was originally licensed in the West by Tokyopop in which they used a mirrored version of the series, thus turning Migi into Shinichi’s left hand and as a result Migi’s name was changed to Lefty, several other characters also had their names changed in the Tokyopop version. The series was later licensed by Del Rey Manga, and they released it in the original format. There is also supposedly a Hollywood film adaptation being made, but whether or not that is true, I don’t know.
Parasyte is an interesting series. It follows the commonly used body snatching variant of the alien invasion story, and with how the parasites can physically change their appearance, it makes me think of both The Thing and Resident Evil 4, especially as a lot of the parasites use sharp blades on the end of long fleshy whips as their primary weapons in battle. I personally think it is a great read. Of course I do have to give a warning about the content. There is plenty of gore, and some cases of nudity, like the aforementioned McDonald’s scene. Still, with all that in mind, I think you should seriously check it out.