Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu

Or also known as Parasyte: The Maxim

This one immediately piqued my interest on anichart last fall. Basically because, THIS KIND OF WEIRD MONSTER STUFF MUTATED BODIES JUST CATCHES MY ATTENTION THE MOMENT I LAY MY EYES ON IT. Man, my love for dark animes is undying.


Side note: Have I mentioned that I don't read manga? There's just no feel to it for me, I NEED colours and sound hahaha but I recently picked up this manga called 'Green Worldz' because I saw this picture

It was picking on my brain and it was so itchy, I was like nooooooo what is that thing this is too INTERESTING I HAVE TO READ THIS.

And so I did.

Now I can't wait for chapter 72 to be out because the main character disappeared for a whole 20+ chapters. Everyone is getting impatient and making a lot of noise, it gets really hilarious in the comments section.

Chapter 68 ended like this:

And then the comments:

And this is from Chapter 66:

"Da moment when you realise that you forgot what the MC looks like and his name..."

Shit.

Before I start off, as always, I'd like to share you y'all the amazing goodness of a japanese band that I only got to know through this anime's opening song. I couldn't be any more happier for having to jump straight into a pot of gold.

The opening song is called "Let Me Hear" by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (FaLIV for short). I can't seem to find the opening video with appropriate quality, but you can take a look at the full version the band released earlier this year:

I completely fell head over heels with this genre and explored more into their songs. I really liked Just Awake, Ley-Line, Love at First Sight and RAVE-UP TONIGHT. This is evident from the fact that I replayed them more than 200 times each and am still not sick of it yet:

Three Lights Down Kings is another one pot of gold I found

Moving on.

A little more information about this series:

Kiseijuu is produced by MADHOUSE studio - one hella ingenious company who also created the brutal Shigurui, Btooom! and Highschool of the Dead. And who could forget their creepy psychological film called Perfect Blue from years back. Oh, and Paprika.

But THAT is exactly why I love this animation studio, their works are promising. When you have a bad-ass looking anime that's coming up next season on a poster on the anime news, and you see that it is by MADHOUSE, you'll know that it is gonna be good. Been there, done that. I was not at all disappointed with this anime, or Death Parade.

*Disclaimer: I'm talking about genres along the lines of horror, mystery and psychological thriller, and I just think that MADHOUSE far exceeds the expectations in making these types of animes. Of course, they have other comedy, romance etc. animes which I personally do not fancy at all.

The anime series is adapted from the manga, which had a totally different feel. The character design was one example. Comparing the main character, Izumi Shinichi, the manga and anime version:

Everyone was like what the heck geeky glasses what's going on?? hahahaha

When they had first announced the animation series along with the poster, the manga enthusiasts were making a fuss about how it had better be as good, or better.

Regardless, I'd say they did a pretty good job, and in fact, a better job than the manga: characters looking a lot more pleasant was one thing, the gore was a lot more explicit too. But of course it was expected since the manga was published in 1989, and we can't have tacky clothing or big hairdos in today's animation. They kept the idea of Shinichi with his back-combed hair though.

BOYS WEARING SUPER SMALL SHORTS FOR P.E HOW OLD SCHOOL HAHAHA

There are 24 episodes in the animation series, and also a live movie that was out in January in Japan, I'm not exactly sure when will the english subs be out. I never liked 'anime gone live' because clearly, it'll never be as authentic.

Migi doesn't even look cute here tch

Plot and characters in a jiffy

Think human vs another species again, but instead of ghouls or titans, we have parasites. These parasites, initially in a worm-like form, came down as a group from above one night (no one knew exactly how it all started), and were dispatched to random hosts. You could see these 'balls' of parasites in the opening song.

They mainly infect human, although they did infect other creatures like dogs, and were capable of taking over the entire brain (you could more or less say that the infected species are as good as dead).

To successfully infect a host however, the parasite must take over the brain. But this wasn't the case for our hero of the show, Izumi Shinichi. He was infected on that night, but prevented the parasitic worm from wiggling further up his arm to his brain. That resulted in the parasite to infect only the right arm, giving rise to Migi (which also means 'right', in japanese). So now, we have two "people" in one body.

Migi is a highly intellectual creature (he mentioned that it only took him a day to master the Japanese language), and like every other parasites, only thinks about securing his own survival. The parasites have not at all the slightest bit of emotion and lack values like sympathy. Apathetic and pragmatic mindsets which negate the ability to feel morally compelled to act against a controversial issue - ruthless slaughtering of humans for food - in a nutshell.

Migi on the other hand, does not require humans as food because he gets his nutrients from sharing a body with Shinichi. And speaking of which, I LOVE MIGI. He's my favourite character of this show, I kept replaying the part where Migi detached himself from Shinichi one morning to test his own abilities.

LIKE A PET DOG IT IS SOOOOO CUTE

I could literally hear BOING BOING BOING ringing in my ears hahahaha

Also, parasites are able to engage in battles by morphing into blades 

I particularly like this battle:

Anyhoo, Shinichi also has a girlfriend in this show named Murano

Who was constantly kept in the dark (she had no clue about his hand until the last episode, although it wasn't directly implied) and always fretting over Shinichi since he refuses to tell her anything despite it being obvious that he was very troubled about something. It led to some distant relationship in the later episodes but Murano never gave up. #girlfriendmaterial


I am not going to entirely spoil the plot but right below, I'm revealing *MAJOR SPOILERS*

The main things that happened in the earlier episodes:

1. Getting to know Tamura Reiko

A highly intellectual parasite who has taken over the brain. Tamura Reiko (later known as Tamiya Ryoko) initially appeared to be a very formidable foe of Shinichi, because it was very skeptical about whether or not she truly wanted peace. But it was proven later that all she wanted to do was to discover and understand the existence of her kind.

She also gave birth to a human child (she mated with Mr. A) and through her days with the child, she grew to understand a little bit about emotions, which ultimately led to her demise.

 They call it Mother's love, or Mother's Sacrifice. You'll get it if you watch it hahaha.

2. Death of his Mother, Izumi Nobuko

And supposedly death of Shinichi.

Ok, so the parents went on a trip and Shinichi's mother got killed by a parasite who was attempting to change host. Shinichi was beyond shocked to find her taken over by a parasite, he couldn't react at all and the parasite mercilessly killed him on the spot.

Thank goodness we have Migi who is that group mate you can completely depend on; he repaired Shinichi's heart which not only saved him, it made him superhuman because he now has Migi's cells. He could then scale high walls, run super fast and even landed safely from the 3rd/4th floor.

But that also made him a changed man. He was unable to cry, and gradually lost his empathy, making him more and more like Migi. That's also when he didn't need glasses and started to back-comb his hair:

3. Meeting an ally, Mamoru Uda and Joe

He also met another of his kind, a failed parasitic infection. But this one was at the jaw:

I was so worried this good friend of his would die but thankfully he didn't. Joe has a really childish behaviour and has a voice of a young brat which was really cute hahaha. He only made appearances in certain episodes.

4. The Kana Incident

Kana is undeniably pretty but this bitch must get out of the way. She fell deeply in love with Shinichi and was always in the shadows looking at him. And I'd always be like GO AWAY DON'T COME NEAR SHINICHI HAS MURANO!!!

She had a special ability of picking out parasites, but she does not know it was actually being able to detect parasites, she always thought it was just her being the special one connecting to him and knowing where he was (she had no idea that Shinichi was a parasite until the end).

It's not that she forced herself unto Shinichi, she knew he had Murano, but I needed her to die before things get ugly. You know how frustrating it can be when there's a damn third party. I was subtly cursing her to her death in those episodes and she really died in episode 12, my goodness.

Rest in peace. Oops.

This guy on the right by the way, Mitsuo, liked Kana for a long time and he was so sad to see her drifting into a world of Shinichis (╯︵╰,)

Moral of Kana's and Mitsuo's story: Don't do stupid things like love and just do your own shit.

And then after all these draggy stuff happening, we finally have the main plot coming to light. I think it was around episode 15? that shit started to get serious because it's the invincible Gotou we're talking about.

Definitely not someone you want to mess with. Nope nope nope.

Long story short, Shinichi had to kill this bad guy. 

Did he do it? Kinda. 

Anyway, there was this part when they were up against Gotou in the forest and

MIGI

FREAKING

DIED

I was devastated and weeping. MIGI LOOKED SO SO SAD. How could this be.............. But I was having this odd feeling that something else is going to happen and it's not the end yet, besides there were still 2 more episodes after this. 

And then drowning in my tears I was like

What happens next you'll have to watch it yourself huehuehue. And yup that's pretty much about it. There are still many other supporting characters like:

Hideo

 Takeshi Hirokawa

 Hirama

But I'd be spoiling it all if you allow me to. Oh and just so you know, Shinichi and Murano...

They did it.

YA THEY HAD SEX IN LIKE EPISODE 19 OR SOMETHING

But that's not the main problem. This is the problem:

Someone cropped in Gotou's face on Murano's and said, "Plot twist: Murano was actually Gotou doing some shapeshifting."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO HELP ME PLEASE I CAN'T UNSEE

What I liked about this series:

THE INTRO, most definitely, got me all hyped up. This was just few seconds into the show:

Of course, the predicted response of mine would be

WHOOAOAOOOAOOHOHOHOAOAOAOAOAA

You can't stop me from loving these kind of things hahaha. I love animes that start off with a BIG BLAST, it has to be really good and promising in the beginning to ensure we'll continue right? No? Just me? Ok.

Kiseijuu was all good the first few episodes. Back to the days where the anime first came out and I religiously refreshed the webpage numerous times because I just couldn't calm my tits for the episode to be released:

Yes, I'd wait till 2+am to catch it

On a side note, I was checking out Shinichi on wikia and came across the forum...

Like what the heck is wrong with humans sometimes hjahahahahah

But as it proceeded to episodes 11..12.... it was really draggy and going around in circles. It was continuously Shinichi being frustrated at his life, relationship etc. and they had that Kana girl interfering, all of which really irritates me.

You feel me too, Shinichi?

I had no more excitement in waiting for the next episode so I decided to wait till the series finished before continuing where I left off. And it was only in April 2015 that I embarked on this again. 

There was also an appropriate amount of gore. Thank goodness FUNimation wasn't in this else they'll have it all censored like Tokyo Ghoul o(-`д´- ｡) It was however, not that intense (I expected more) but since that wasn't the main highlight of the show, I'm glad they stuck to their agenda.

Character development wise I'd say it's pretty decent. You'd more or less know the names of the significant characters in the show, and it was well developed for our main character here. They'll bring you through his thoughts, his agony, his worries and you'll slowly witness how he grew a pair of balls, or in a polite way, someone with competence.

I didn't like the fact that everyone was popping up so timely though, but it was great to have some side-stories instead of Gotou Gotou Gotou all out 24 episodes. Man, that'll be tiring, because did I mention? That guy is seriously dead boring. Miki was hilarious though. Then again, I'm not going to spoil who Miki is. 

The animators aren't lazy that they'll come up with sloppy-looking supporting characters, and they also didn't have the tendency to reuse faces. Each character looks like they've been carefully discussed and designed. I typically like Uragami's (a supporting character) design, because it was so befitting for his sinister character.

Neither did they make our hero look unnecessarily outstanding in his appearances, Shinichi was just another normal next-door neighbour kid. 

Now, I must applaud them for making Kana look so pretty, and at the same time bitchy:

Sooooo pretty don't you think?

But I also want to scold them for giving Murano such a high forehead:

-____________-

Lastly, and of course, I love the author's creativity, having to come up with again, something beyond my imagination. I give this series, an 8.5/10 (*≧▽≦)

I'll end this review off with that damn good looking curry rice from the earlier episodes

I COULD ALMOST SMELL IT

P.S
I just wanna talk about how annoying it can be that anime magazines rarely feature the lesser known animes. I like to buy PASH!, animage, animedia, spoon 2di. etc. but one thing that pisses me off is that most of these magazine companies are publishing the same thing over and over again. I'd tell you: K Project, Free! and Kuroko no Basuke, sometimes Yowamushi Pedal too, KEEPS ON APPEARING IN EVERY ISSUE.

There is this lack of coverage for underrated animes like Kiseijuu, Death parade etc., it gets quite hard to find Haikyuu features as well. I really think they should really consider the global audience (because apparently, the japanese only watch the mainstream animes, how ironic) and start integrating articles about many other series too.

PASH! is really nice though, they cover a broad range of animes. I recently got my hands on some old issues, Natsume Yuujinchou on the cover and another one was Ao no Exorcist, I got them cheap too!