Parasyte -the maxim-

Episode 19

This was a pretty fun episode of Parasyte, but not necessarily always in the way the show intended. With the Tamiya Ryouko and is-Shinichi-a-monster arcs safely behind us, the show laid out the groundwork for its final act, with Shinichi taking a little time to relax before getting pulled into the police's final operation. It's looking like the final arc of Parasyte will be heavy on the action spectacle, which I am all for. We've had plenty of melancholy and self-doubt, I'm ready for the show to go out with a bang.

We started this week with a peek into the psychology of the serial killer Uragami, who possesses the ability to sense parasites. Passively musing to himself as we witnessed a sequence of grim killings, he hypothesized that his power came from his special “understanding” of humans - “I know all about the qualities of humans. I sure fooled around a lot.” But it was his description of his power as “something most animals have” that made it clear what the show was doing here - in contrast to Tamiya Ryouko, the parasite with human empathy, the show is now introducing a character who's clearly humanity but is utterly lacking in “humanity,” the intangible quality of sympathy and empathetic concern. Turning this murderer's eye on Shinichi, he ultimately concluded that though he “thought he saw something not entirely human in his eyes,” “when I took a good long look, there was nothing to it.” Uragami may be lying for his own amusement, but he doesn't seem like the type to think over his actions that deeply - it seems more likely that Shinichi has once again been tested for his humanity and once again been proven human.

The next scene essentially treaded over material we already knew, and not in the most graceful fashion. While Shinichi recuperated in a hotel, he and Migi took a moment to go over the cliffnotes of the last major scenes, spelling out the contrast between Tamiya and Uragami and even outright stating “Tamiya healed the hole in my heart.” The nice thing about storytelling is that information can often be inferred, which makes it feel more personal for the audience. Outright stating all of your show's subtext is generally not the most effective call.

The writing issues continued into the following couple scenes, as the police prepared for their final operation. The first scene, where Hirama was introduced to operation chief Yamagishi, set up a classic cop conflict - while Hirama wants to use Uragami and cautions against underestimating the parasites, Yamagishi sees this as a bug hunt, and is absolutely confident in his team's abilities. It doesn't take a genius to see whose prudence will be proven justified, and whose bluster will likely get him killed. But the genre cliches definitely peaked in the next Hirama scene, when the detective went to recruit Shinichi from his school. The sequence played out in perfect “we need you to come back for one last job” action movie fashion, complete with Murano crying at Shinichi's constant suffering. I found this scene very entertaining, but I can't say it was because I was honestly engaging with the emotions it was attempting to evoke.

The last scene set up the police stakeout, as riot squads completely surrounded the building housing the parasite mayor and his associates. Despite my mixed feelings about the genre-default scenes that carried us to this moment, I was still excited to see Shinichi and Hirama working together, as well as the story's overall scale moving to the point where it feels like tensions between the species could boil over entirely. Though this episode's pieces weren't particularly fresh, the overall narrative moved with real momentum, and it's just satisfying to see the story finally moving towards a new, external conflict. It's a little awkward to admit, but the show's ideas about the nature of humanity really seem to have run their course at this point. I'm ready to see some heads explode.

Rating: B

Parasyte -the maxim- is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Nick writes about anime, storytelling, and the meaning of life at Wrong Every Time.