Parasyte is a series written and drawn by Hitoshi Iwaaki. Unfortunately this is his only notable series so I can’t so much about his career. I mostly picked up Parasyte on a whim and also because my favorite manga reviewer, Y Ruler of Time mentioned it on his Seven Deadly Series list. But I digress, lets get started.

Story: The story is your standard alien invasion story. Little spores about the size of tennis balls fall from space and give birth to little worm like creatures. The creatures then invade the heads of humans and take over their bodies. The end result being that the creatures can flex the heads into any shape or size, making them stretch and snap like rubber, or turn them into blades.
Our story follows a teenage male named Shinichi whom a creature tries to invade, but, due to a fluke, the creature ends up stuck in his arm. Shinichi ends up naming the creature Migi, and they develop a rather odd relationship. For the most part their relationship builds around the fact that they have to fight off creatures that have successfully invaded human heads. Why do they need to fight off the aliens? Well, only because that the aliens that successfully invade human heads have to survive by eating other humans. Needless to say Migi can change Shinichi’s arm into pretty much anything, so that makes for some pretty awesome fight scenes.
What’s really interesting about this series though is that a small group of parasytes inherit human personalities (whilst still remaining homicidal creatures) and end up banding together to not really destroy, but to simply observe and survive. One of them even ends up being the closest thing to human in this series what it started out the most brutal monster of them all. Though later the government actually steps in and takes care of some of them.
I have to say the story didn’t get quite as repetitive as I thought it would, it always kept moving at just the right pace. However, violence does seem to take up a good portion of the series, so if you’re squeamish it’s best not to look into this series. Sometimes the way humans die are just brutal. The story itself was interesting enough to keep me reading.


Characters: Our main character as I said is Shinichi, a young teenage male. I would like to say he’s your standard shonen hero, but he isn’t quite. Migi does most of the fighting in the stories, though Shinichi usually delivers the finishing blow in the more serious battles ironically enough. Shinichi is definitely interesting as a character, he doesn’t quite develop so much as a person as through relationships, in fact, due to some bad flukes, he gets a little worse as a character through the series. But that is mostly Migi’s fault to be fair.
Ah yes, Migi, who undoubtedly is the best character. Migi develops the best, and the most subtly throughout the series. While most aliens are heartless and emotionless, Migi ever so slowly starts to understand human emotions. I even got a little sad when…Well, I don’t want to spoil too much.
There are a few villians but most of them die off pretty quickly. Shinichi also develops a relationship with a girl, Murano, but Migi’s relationship is more important and prominent.

Art: I’m not so much one to criticize art in a manga, since everyone has their own style and what I am presented with, will automatically become my standard. It’s also clear that this was made in the 90’s with the manga style, but I really liked this art. It could become quite gritty and dark at times but was detailed and precise when it needed to be.


The Bad: If I had any complaints about Parasyte, it would have to be the violence. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a prude or anything it’s just some of the fights are way too violent, too pointless, and overall seemed to be layered in bullshit. Most of the fights do help develop in the story, even the seemingly inconsequential ones, like where they fight a dog that got invaded by a parasyte. But sometimes it’s just aggravating seeing so much blood and violence


Parasyte overall: I have to say with Parasyte you can’t go wrong entirely, I enjoyed the characters, the fights, and the ending especially. The morale and whole idea at the end through me for huge loop. It really raised some philosophical questions.

As this is my first shot at reviewing please don't be too harsh. I would much appreciate any comments on thoughts you had of the review. thank you very much.