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EP. REVIEW: Parasyte -the maxim-


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Kraim



Joined: 11 May 2012
Posts: 4
PostPosted: Wed Nov 26, 2014 9:56 pm Reply with quote
i really enjoy the anime so far. at first i wasnt sure if i liked it but fortunately continued watching. its gotten better and better with every episode and i can hardly wait for next week.

i really like how izumi moves from his cowardly/weak self to a more cold/badass personality.

looking foward to the next episode Smile
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 1:21 am Reply with quote
I really appreciated the analysis of what was touched on in the review of episodes 8-9, but to me the ending of 9 felt like the first misstep this series has made. Why would she not tell her brother what she had seen? He would believe her. It's not her or a close friend being captured (if they can). Why in the world would she choose to confront him - alone - first? What did she think was going to happen? Oy, that was action for plot-sake on the level of that ad where the teens are trying to decide whether to hide from the ax-murderer in the basement, the cemetery or behind the chainsaws.

Everything else in the episodes was great (still not sure why taking on Migi's practical aspects results in him styling his hair now). Also, I'm so glad Shinichi's father at least knows the truth now, and that the police aren't completely in the dark.
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MatrixC7



Joined: 27 Nov 2014
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:22 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
I really appreciated the analysis of what was touched on in the review of episodes 8-9, but to me the ending of 9 felt like the first misstep this series has made. Why would she not tell her brother what she had seen? He would believe her. It's not her or a close friend being captured (if they can). Why in the world would she choose to confront him - alone - first? What did she think was going to happen? Oy, that was action for plot-sake on the level of that ad where the teens are trying to decide whether to hide from the ax-murderer in the basement, the cemetery or behind the chainsaws.

Everything else in the episodes was great (still not sure why taking on Migi's practical aspects results in him styling his hair now). Also, I'm so glad Shinichi's father at least knows the truth now, and that the police aren't completely in the dark.


I think if she tell all what she had seen to her brother, it will give her brother an impression that there must be something wrong with Shimada, and he will inquire Shimada. In case Shimada is not parasite, the girl will be most likely disliked by this handsome boy Shimada because it brings much trouble to that innocent person. That's the girl wouldn't like to see. So she just tried to talk with Shimada.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:21 am Reply with quote
Yes, that's the explanation they were trying to make us swallow, but it makes absolutely no sense unless she's a complete idiot. There is something wrong with Shimada. She saw him turn into a different person with her own eyes. She saw a baseball leave a divot in his skull with her own eyes. She's been given an explanation - a very dire explanation - for this, from someone she has every reason to trust. And yet we're expected to think she would ignore all that because he's cute? And would arrange to be alone with him where he could kill her...just in case she was hallucinating all this and her brother was lying to her?
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Levonr



Joined: 19 Nov 2003
Posts: 807
PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 5:23 am Reply with quote
She is naive, trying to convince him to be good. Well at least she got a weapon handy to defend herself in case he does attack, which he does and *cliffhanger*.

I read the manga and the cliffhangers still drive me crazy Laughing Its Attack on Titan cliffhanger syndrome all over again.
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mooneater



Joined: 27 Nov 2014
Posts: 18
PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 6:59 am Reply with quote
im sorry but i cant understand why someone would give this 2 episodes a A- because for me it wasn't more than a B. we saw almost nothing new in this episode compared to its quantity. the only thing that pull my interest was the new way of feeding which we didn't get much of information about it. and the ending part was just mind numbingly stupid! a transfer student in the middle of the semester (which is not a common thing as it said in the anime) with a fake face who can fix up his dented up head and change his face and the story of the creatures who eat poeple and then she go and tell him: "shimada-kun, i really love you and all, but if your eating people im afraid we cant be together." in this kind of situation i have the feeling that this show is turning into a lame drama!

(sorry for my bad english)
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ChibiKangaroo



Joined: 01 Feb 2010
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 10:21 am Reply with quote
mooneater wrote:
the ending part was just mind numbingly stupid! a transfer student in the middle of the semester (which is not a common thing as it said in the anime) with a fake face who can fix up his dented up head and change his face and the story of the creatures who eat poeple and then she go and tell him: "shimada-kun, i really love you and all, but if your eating people im afraid we can't be together."


Yea, I agree with you and Gina. This was absolutely atrocious writing. I don't know why it wasn't addressed in the review. I did enjoy both episodes mind you. I thought the tension/drama was pretty great and I like seeing Shinichi's development moving along at a brisk pace. However, the artist girl's actions were so stupid that there simply can be no suspension of disbelief in this instance.
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:31 pm Reply with quote
I disagree completely with the bad writing comments. From an omniscient spectator point of view Yuuko's behavior is at fault. But from her perspective it s quite sensible if you ask me. Yes, she saw with her own eyes how a baseball make a quite comical dent on a school classmate (just to see his head normal again a few moments later), in real life we sometimes see things we fail to understand and most of the time later we realize what really happened (that is why there are words like illusion and mirage in the dictionary). Yeah, she saw (thanks to her brother carelessness) how the parasytes looks, but it is a drawing (not a photo) done from the comments of a person highly perturbed by the disappearance of his wife. Yes, There is a large number of serial murderers at large, but that does not mean every transfer student is one since even if there are a thousand parasytes roaming japan, that is nothing to the 120+ million humans living in modern japan. Yeah, she tried to talk to him, but again that goes to show the difference between their worlds, she lives in a world where all problems can be talked and solved (remember that over there every police drama ends with the culprit admiting guilt without opposing his arrest) with dialogue, Parasytes live in a world where they kill or die, there is no other choice in between.

If anything the glaring error was in the scene where the parasyte changed clothes, he should have also changed his face (an probably used a diferent bag to carry the unused set of clothes). but lets suppose that since he changed clothes in a room without mirros and forgot to change his face, anyone gets a bit carless now and then.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 3:35 pm Reply with quote
Thinking about this some more, it seems to me that the baseball-shaped dent in his head reveals something about what's going on inside, though I'm not sure exactly what. Normally a baseball wouldn't do that to a human skull, which suggests there's no longer a skull beneath the skin at all. Previously I'd thought they just break open their skulls and rearrange things on the fly to do battle or eat.

I'm starting to imagine that the insides of brain-controlled parasytes is something like the tangle of tentacles inside the infected hosts in The Thing (1982 version). Actually, I think the whole story owes a lot to that movie. Smile

@mangamuscle: If you see one odd thing, you can write it off as an illusion. When you see two odd things of a related nature occurring with the same person, and coupled with all the rest of the information she had after that (it wasn't just the drawing, her brother laid out the whole situation for her to warn her), that's a bit harder to write off. When murder is involved, it's better to be safe than sorry. It's not like she was meeting with him to clear up a rumor that he was a serial philanderer before deciding to pass along the rumor.

And now that you bring it up, it's blatantly contrived because plot that he didn't change his face in private, instead of out where someone could possibly see him do it.
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:01 pm Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
@mangamuscle: If you see one odd thing, you can write it off as an illusion. When you see two odd things of a related nature


The second thing you mention is seeing one person enter a badly lit alleyway and then going out with a different face, but it could have been another person with similar cloths going out the alley, coincidences do happen in real life.

Remember "Once is bad luck, twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action".

Quote:
occurring with the same person, and coupled with all the rest of the information she had after that (it wasn't just the drawing, her brother laid out the whole situation for her to warn her), that's a bit harder to write off. When murder is involved, it's better to be safe than sorry. It's not like she was meeting with him to clear up a rumor that he was a serial philanderer before deciding to pass along the rumor.


Lets not forget that she did not meet him in an empty alleyway or in his house, he meet him to talk inside the school when other students and teachers are in the building. Remember what I said earlier, in modern japan in said situation a culprit would either run or turn himself in now that his cover has been blown, her sense of security is rooted in real life, not in naivety.

Now that I think of it, what is really odd is that the police is already talking about aliens at this moment, in real life at this stage (not having a living specimen) it would make sense to think about some organization trying to create mass hysteria by making the murders looks as if they are perpetrated by aliens.
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Levonr



Joined: 19 Nov 2003
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:22 pm Reply with quote
The manga is more detailed on her actions.
Her brother told her there wasn't enough to prove what that man(Shinichi's father) was real or not so going to the police or press was useless. Thats when she decided she needed some actual proof she wasn't being delusional like Shinichi's father might've been.
Her weapon of choice was wise. In the manga anyway she thought about how close range weapons like a knife wouldn't work if in fact he was a shapeshifting monster.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:28 pm Reply with quote
mangamuscle wrote:
The second thing you mention is seeing one person enter a badly lit alleyway and then going out with a different face, but it could have been another person with similar cloths going out the alley, coincidences do happen in real life.

But that's not what she saw. She saw his hair change color and style, then he turned around with a different face. He never disappeared into the alley out of her sight.

And I think that bit about Japanese immediately confessing when confronted by civilians is an anime contrivance. The Japanese have a different culture, but they're not idiots. They may not lawyer up so readily when confronted by the police, with evidence stacked against them, but maybe Japanese police refrain from arresting people without evidence?

@ Levonr: I thought her brother was a sketch artist for the police or whatever authorities those other investigators were from? And they had other witnesses, and apparently other information to back them up (else "aliens" wouldn't be their go-to explanation). At any rate, the anime's explanation for not going public wasn't lack of evidence, but public panic.
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mangamuscle



Joined: 23 Apr 2006
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Location: Mexico
PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:42 pm Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
But that's not what she saw. She saw his hair change color and style, then he turned around with a different face. He never disappeared into the alley out of her sight.


Again, she saw that in a far away dark alleyway, shadows can do tricks on the mind since you might fill in for the missing data, that is why you easily see shapes in a dark room. Do you realize you are starting to fill in the profile of somebody that believes in ufos, yeti and other urban legends out of hearsay?

Quote:
And I think that bit about Japanese immediately confessing when confronted by civilians is an anime contrivance.


It is not, no ands, ifs or buts.
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Levonr



Joined: 19 Nov 2003
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:53 pm Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:

@ Levonr: I thought her brother was a sketch artist for the police or whatever authorities those other investigators were from? And they had other witnesses, and apparently other information to back them up (else "aliens" wouldn't be their go-to explanation). At any rate, the anime's explanation for not going public wasn't lack of evidence, but public panic.


In the manga he was told by those men in suits to keep it a secret so there's no panic because of lack of evidence. He brought the sketch home and his sister told him to take it to the police but he thought it was useless and he didn't think if they were real anyway. He is just an artist, not a detective.
The anime seemed to change this and make him as if he was completely convinced they were real.


Last edited by Levonr on Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 27, 2014 4:56 pm Reply with quote
^^ You're still looking at each thing separately. She saw his head change shape, she saw his hair change color, she saw him turn around with a different face, she saw the sketch her brother showed her of what another witness saw that corroborates what she saw with her own eyes, she was told that there were still other witnesses and more details about what was going on. And let's not forget her gut reaction that made her suspicious and follow him in the first place. All of those things together paint one picture. As you said, once, twice, thrice. She's got more than thrice. And her only justification for risking her personal safety was because he's cute and might get mad if she's wrong. Fine, if that makes her a rational heroine to you, enjoy. She's an idiot to me.

Levonr wrote:
The anime seemed to change this and make him as if he was completely convinced they were real.

And to make him a professional sketch artist. If he's just some random guy, why was he at the meeting with Shinichi's dad?
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