Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Parasyte -the maxim-
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Levonr
 Posts: 808 |
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It started out as a crush that lead to suspicion. It seemed like her crush was over afterwards. She thought she was the only one that knew he might've been a monster so she wanted to actually know if it was true.
People describe being visited by aliens and we get sketches all the time, doesn't mean the artist believes it. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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it is more like you are seeing each odd situation as hard boiled evidence, you no doubt would have been great at witch hunting in salem at the end of the 19th century.
The key word here is "she", no one else saw the same thing, no photo, no video, no sound recordings. nada.
What!? You are jumping to conclusions, there are other explanations to both odd incidents that do not deal with aliens (or the supernatural) to be explored first, google Occam's razor,
Again, hearsay, she did not heard or read said accounts, has no idea of how many, when or where they happen.
There was no gut reaction, she was stalking him because she had a crush and then she was witness to two odd situations which lead to her believing that he might related to the weird "alien" incidents.
I still count only two (unless you are including the scene where he reveals his alien form).
You seem to imply she was an idiot for confronting him at school. Lets play the devil advocate, lets say she believes he is a murderous alien and calls the police on him, then waits for days. Do you realize the police went to shinichi's dad weeks after the fact and only because there was a missing person report associated with it. We will never know but maybe they went only after the wife's corpse (with a severely disfigured head) was found. Meanwhile do you think they will take seriously the report of a teenage girl that claims something so outrageous without any hard boiled evidence? Same thing happened in the movie Fright Night. Maybe in a few months as the death toll continues to pile they will return her call, Meanwhile, would you go to school believing there is a murderous beast just a few steps from you? |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11352 |
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I think she's an idiot for confronting him at all. I've already explained why several times. I see no point in rehashing everything I've said when you won't look at all of it as part of a whole situation and instead keep looking at just the individual pieces to explain them away one at a time. As I said, if her behavior is rational to you, that's fine, enjoy. It's irrational behavior to me, given the entirety of the circumstances as laid out in the anime.
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mooneater
 Posts: 18 |
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now that's a good explanation. the way the story is told in the manga it makes perfect sense. Still i can't accept what i saw in the anime as reasonable. |
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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Some people can get into a cage with an untamed and hungry Bengal tiger and say here kitty kitty kitty. Let's be friends OK? Some people isn't me, or anyone with brains.
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Levonr
Posts: 808 |
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Parasyte explores human flaws. We don't use our instincts as much as other animals(or the Parasytes), we see something that doesn't make sense and we can hesitant or be confused on how to understand what is going on instead of using our instincts.
Humans are special: 
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ChibiKangaroo
 Posts: 2941 |
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If any one of you would be crazy enough to personally confront some creature that you highly suspected to be a psychotic, human-eating alien that morphs it's body into blades, well... I am not going to be hanging around with ya'll. You would live like 1 minute in any horror show. You'd be the person who, having full knowledge that evil demonic killers are on the loose, would walk off on your own and into dark alleys or sewers to investigate strange and disturbing sounds.
As for me, if you told me you were about to do something like that, I would say: "Good luck with that. Enjoy the next 5 minutes of your life." I don't get why people are trying to rationalize her crazy behavior. "Shimada-kun! I have reason to believe you are a deadly alien monster who eats human beings and can morph your head into blades that could cut me into mincemeat. If that is true, go home and stop killing! I simply will not forgive it if you keep turning people into mincemeat! Oh... what's that? You have to try and kill me now that I made it clear that I know too much??? Kyah!!!" *teardrop* |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11352 |
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Btw, you never answered my question about this. If the men in suits were not the police, who were they? By whose authority are they keeping a lid on this? And why was her brother there if he wasn't working for them? Why would she suggest the police if the authorities (whatever branch they're from) are already involved? Why would he still be skeptical if these authorities he seems to be working with are apparently convinced? |
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Levonr
Posts: 808 |
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It was the government. (I'll try not get into details but mild spoilers ahead). spoiler[Later they mention continuing to hide it from the police after a certain event that happens. Shinichi & Migi will talk about why the government is hiding them. The politicians will debate this and get into how to stop them. This should happen within the next few episodes, unless it cut of course.] I never said he wasn't working for them. Wouldn't anyone be skeptical on such absurd rumors? Although it would appear he becomes more convinced with time in the manga at least. |
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omelette
Posts: 5 |
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Human beings often:
- rationalize a whole lot of things that we can't understand all the time; and, - poke our noses at things that, in hindsight, might have been better left alone in order to determine if the things we've seen are true or if it's just our imaginations. Unlike us who've seen first-hand what parasites are and know the extent of the danger (and know it's just an anime anyway), she's basically going off of: 1) two highly absurd scenarios (baseball, shape-shifting) that she's probably rationalizing inside her head already; and 2) an equally unbelievable scenario that her brother didn't even see himself (which puts it in theoretical/hearsay territory) accompanied by an equally absurd sketch. She hasn't seen any of the dangerous things he's done so she has no sense of how dangerous the parasites are, only a vague sense of the possible danger which is why she arms herself with something to defend herself with but goes with confronting the source to get an actual truth first-hand. If he wasn't someone she was interested in, she'd probably weigh the pros and cons and determine it's not worth the effort and just forget about it. But because she is interested in him, she arms herself in pursuit of a factual truth out of him, which also kind of highlights a very typical human trait - being curious about the unknown that interest us. And it helps move the plot along too so it's two birds with one stone. |
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Etrien
 Posts: 525 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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I've always felt like Parasyte was basically "The Thing, if The Thing had a cute talking hand mascot." I would at least be genuinely surprised if The Thing was not a major influence on it. Even if the setting and story are different, there are so many similarities in visualization and execution. Heck, even our first "threatening" encounter with one of "them" in both stories is a dog whose face rips apart into a fleshy monstrosity. And that opening sequence in the first episode always reminded me of a very similar moment in The Thing. |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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In the horror genre there is no right choice, everybody are sheep in their way to the slaughterhouse who at most can change the order of execution. If this was an action shonen then yuuko would get an ass pull powerup and avoid death by the smallest margin. If this was a musical they would start singing and dancing (as in Little Shop of Horrors). But this series is none of the above and that is what makes it interesting, the setting is real life, characters act as flesh and blood humans (not as 2d stereotypes) in sharp contrast to parasytes, who lack any gregarious inclination (even moss form colonies). |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11352 |
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See that's the thing then. If my brother was working with the CIA and told me that they believed blade-wielding, shape-shifting aliens had escaped from Area 51 and were responsible for a series of "mincemeat" murders in the area where I lived, having seen bizarre things with my own eyes that fit perfectly with that scenario, a) I'd believe him and b) I wouldn't suggest going If I were her brother, I'd figure they had more information about this than one guy whose sketches I was drawing for them, and wouldn't write it off as mere rumors. If there weren't some truth to it, they wouldn't waste their time suppressing it since most people would just write it off as lunatics, like we always sensibly do with stuff like this. Now, if I'd seen what she saw, with absolutely no corroborating information, then sure, I'd be doubting myself and might even try to suss out the truth, but she got confirmation from a trusted source who had no idea of what she'd seen and could not have been influenced by her story. When people independently tell the same story without any knowledge of other people experiencing the same thing, you have to pay attention. (and it's why you don't have to take Bigfoot and ufo's seriously since the public imagination is already contaminated by those stories and becomes the go-to for any unexplained phenomenon). So yeah, still not ringing true for me, even in the manga version (which I pretty much don't care about anyway). And the only reason this bugs me is because to my eyes it's the first major misstep this series has taken and it's disappointing to find a flaw in the diamond. 
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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A reality check is needed at this point. The CIA, FBI, NSA and any security agency over the world have secrets that their agents are told NOT to tell the populace at large. Someone who does is either totally unprofessional (and sooner or later will fired and charged for breaking a NDA) or is making incorrect deductions out of the meager information shared at non clearance level. At this point in the parasyte story I think the government has yet to acknowledge the presence of aliens, that is the only reason they would hire someone without security clearance to draw sketches from the victims account.
In Japan people are teach to reach their local authorities for any crime, they will alert whatever agency needs to deal with it. The system works since Japan has a very low crime rate. Of course said system would break when a new menace that no agency is assigned to deal with appears.
You seem to overestimate human nature, mass hysteria can spread quite easily even if most people would think nothing of it. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11352 |
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That's because the people who panicked missed the disclaimers and thought War of the Worlds was a legitimate news report, back in the days when people could somewhat reasonably trust the major networks to fact check before hitting the air with the rampant speculation that's par for the course now. But you don't see the CIA going to any lengths to suppress reports of ufos, other than some random anonymous military guy saying it's swamp gas, if they even bother anymore. Because no one is panicking over those reports and videos. They tend to die a natural death in a day or two, except for the biggies from the past like Roswell.
Also, her brother was not telling the public at large. He was warning his sister because he believed it and was concerned for her safety. And we don't know he doesn't have a security clearance. You keep talking about the Japanese as if they're mindless drones who can't logic and all behave exactly the same. They wouldn't report something to the police if they knew authorities higher than the police already knew about it. What would be the point? So the police could tell the higher authorities about something they already knew about? oO But your argument does raise the question of why she wouldn't tell her brother, who is in contact with those higher authorities, if all the Japanese have this knee-jerk alert the authorities response. |
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