k4nr4's Blog

Anime Relations: Houseki no Kuni

Houseki no Kuni "Land of the Lustrous" A personal favorite. I love everything about it. Like how it all works hand in hand, the music, the amazing job on the 3-d animation, the lore build up and specially how the characters were handled. The characters are very cute but more than that, they have depth in them. Can't wait for season 2 so I bought some manga of it for now.

Anime Relations: Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu, Inuyashiki

Inuyashiki is still ongoing but I see a lot of people comparing the two so I
wanted to compare the two myself and by compare, I'm talking about the
themes that were explored in the anime adaptations because it'll take a whole
day to talk about things like the protagonist's age or that it's made by different
animation studios.

Spoilers ahead.


Starting with the resemblance of the two, both had characters who had
their humanity altered. While Shinichi can live normally minus his right arm
(since Migi failed to take over Shinichi's brain) he decided to form a mutual
relationship with Migi to survive against the other parasytes. Inuyashiki on the
other hand had his entire body replaced with machinery, a weapon at that. The
two has a very different scenario since Shinichi isn't the only one who owns his
body anymore and Inuyashiki still does. Both were not aware or at least
consented of being changed the difference is that Inuyashiki would've died if that
didn't happen since he has an illness and Shinichi would not. Both didn't use their
new abilities to advance themselves in society. Shinichi and Migi only protected
themselves and those they can and want to protect and Inuyashiki only used his
abilities to save others and not to do anything that will make his life better than
others.



Parasyte explores our humanity while Inuyashiki wasn't so much about that
but explores how far we can push that humanity for our beliefs. Migi being new
to humanity becomes a perfect character to study our human tendencies like
altruism or emotions like love. There were characters in the show that were
human but acts otherwise and there were parasytes too who were closer as
humans and this happens because parasytes need humans (at least the body of
a human) to survive and advance. It expands on what a human is not just by
appearances. Being human is not enough to be human. Every fight in the show
highlights a certain aspect of humanity like being able to cry when someone dies
rather than the fight itself.


In Inuyashiki, there were no characters who really wasn't human. While
Shishigami can be compared with a pure parasyte who can't connect with people
the difference is he is in fact human. Although a stranger's life has no value to
him he cries at a manga character's death and parasytes doesn't really have
emotions even when they know someone. In episode 2 when Shishigami was
introduced, he shows his friend about
his new abilities like killing a crow with his hand held like a gun or changing the
television displays with porn. The parasytes only kill when they needed to and
they would not understand why it's funny to change the TV displays with porn
because it's irrational. They won't gain anything by doing that too which makes it
clear that Shishigami is human but lacks empathy. Because of this he becomes
an antagonist. He's just a regular apathetic psychopathic dude that was given
superpowers and that makes him a threat. Inuyashiki then comes in to punish
people like him but the problem is that violence is always used as the solution
and whether it was right for Inuyashiki to pass judgement as he like Shishigami
is just a pathetic dude who was given superpowers. So unlike Parasyte, the
results of the fights are paramount. Basically, a bad guy is presented and it
doesn't matter why they do bad things to others. They are there because there
are people like them in our world. In Episode 4, Inuyashiki blinds all the Yakuza
members and paralyzes them to repent for what they did. Would we go as far as
that to protect others?


In the end, Parasyte makes me think what makes something human and
Inuyashiki makes me think of how far our humanity can become.