Parasyte: The Maxim has been a bit of a weird experience for me. On one hand, I think it’s a good show, but on the other, I don’t get the massive hype surrounding it. The show’s themes and plot definitely appealed to me, so there’s that bias. And by and large, I enjoyed the show. But there were a number of elements, mainly early on, that I simply couldn’t overlook. These are mainly personal issues, granted, but they bear mentioning. So, before I get into the specific sections below, I’ll run through these.
First, I was not able to take this show seriously for the first few episodes. In fact, if I didn’t know better, based solely on the first episode, I’d have thought this show was supposed to be black comedy. Contributing to this is the fact that I couldn’t take one of the main characters, Migi, seriously for about 9 or 10 whole episodes. I tried, trust me, but it wasn’t working. In addition, despite the show really trying to sell the viewer on the whole “the Parasytes are horrifying and threatening” thing, they just looked more silly than scary the vast majority of the time, which made it really hard to get into it.
And secondly, a number of events occurred/decisions were made that I thought were just awful. A certain transformation in episode 5 in particular was so ham-fistedly an homage/rip-off of Peter Parker/Spiderman that I rolled my eyes so hard I almost burst a blood vessel.
Now, on to the main stuff.
Story: 9/10
Easily the best part of the show. The presentation of themes, the way the plot moved and the handling and resolution of most events were wonderful. There were a few plot-related hiccups, and it wobbled a bit thematically near the end, but it righted itself and succeeded in telling a well written, well thought-out and profound story, and for that I applaud it greatly.
Art/Animation: 8/10
The art and animation in Parasyte is very good. The character designs look mostly good (and they actually look their age, which is rare in anime), the animation is smooth and consistent and the backgrounds are excellent. The biggest issue I have with the animation in this show is in the Parasytes’ fight scenes, which have a bad habit of devolving into blade-spam, which can be downright boring to watch. The fight scenes are really only interesting when human bodies are doing the fighting.
Sound: 4/10
Easily the worst part about this show. The soundtrack is heavily influenced by dubstep and electronic music, so unless you’re into that, which I am not, you probably won’t like it very much. Also, it just doesn’t work. It fails in setting the tone for the scenes, which makes many of them have a lot less impact than they would otherwise. What makes this even more unfortunate is that there are a couple (and by that, I mean like three) good songs on the track that are not overly (or at all) electronic/dubstep, which shows that the creators knew how to integrate fitting, emotional, non-dubstep music into the show, but chose not to. I cannot fathom why they would make that choice. Because of these moments, though, I’ll give the show a 4, rather than a 3 or even a 2 for music.
Characters: 6.5/10
This would be the best part of the show… if Shinichi and Migi were the only characters. Alas, they are not, and we have the misfortune of being forced to suffer through laughably shallow, poorly-written side characters. I will give credit where credit is due: Shinichi and Migi are two of the best, if not the best, characters of their respective seasons (both fall and winter). They are awesome, and they are even better together. But just about every other character is a cardboard cutout masquerading as a person. Granted, Shinichi and Migi are the focus, but it was still painful watching everyone else. At times, some of the characters do become legitimately interesting (only towards the end of the show, though), but this leads me to another huge problem I have with this show: it has a bad habit of killing off characters right as they become (or start to become) interesting. If this show handled its side characters even a quarter as well as it handled Shinichi and Migi, the score for this section would jump right to a 9. But it didn’t, so it won’t. Out of respect for the beautiful Shinichi/Migi duo, I’ll give it a 6, but it would be much lower otherwise.
Enjoyment: 7/10
Even with the aforementioned flaws, I found myself enjoying this show each week, liking it and being interested in what would happen the next week. Shinichi and Migi were a treat to watch, and the story and plot were compelling, appealing and deep. For the reasons given in this review, however, I was never able to fully engage with this show, but it was an overall enjoyable experience.
Overall: 7/10
Parasyte: The Maxim is an overall solid, good show. It stumbles, it messes up, and it has some issues that I will never be able to get over, but all things considered, it is a good show and an enjoyable experience.
