Parasyte

Submitted: Thu, 10/16/2008 - 10:52
Author: Kaiji Tang


With the imminent release of Will Wright's Spore, I thought I'd take a look at something I plan to be making in the game when it comes out. Hitoshi Iwaaki's Parasyte is the love story between a guy and his right hand. One faithful evening, Shinichi Izumi has his hand possessed by a strange little parasite whom he fondly names "Migi". Honestly, who names a parasitic organism who latches into your flesh with the original intent to kill you? I mean it's not like taking in a pet, is it? It's more of an alien life form bent who was set on feasting upon your brain pan, but got lost on the way. Only a Japanese school boy would make friends with something like that. Though the concept of gaining a small animal-like ally and pitting them in battle with other small animal like allies have been done before, the whole parasite angle is rather hilarious and hopefully I'll be able to make a similar creature, Will Wright willing, that'll be infecting yours in game in the very near future. I've lost my train of thought...oh yes, Manga.

Parasyte takes the old "fighting, get stronger, fighting" motif and desperately tries to hide it from you by splashing in the weird, bizarre and downright gory. Now that's not a bad thing per se. The old hat of getting stronger the more you fight is a classic story telling device that, more often than not, works very well. The action scenes in this manga are something else. If you're into creatures looking like something out of Lovecraft's sketchbook maiming and dicing up human beings like a nicely prepared but over priced salad, then you'll love Parasyte. Honestly it does get a bit dull during the mandatory character development scenes and you'll be finding yourself thumbing through those parts quickly to get to the next awesome parasitic duel to the death. And let me tell you, this Manga has some of the worst character development you'll ever read. It's so cliche you'll want to give up on life and move to an island somewhere and be eaten by the cannibalistic natives and the only stopping you is the promise of more alien killing in the next chapter. The "development" of the main character can be summarized by these three words: "Wow, you've changed!" I swear to God, you'll be reading that more than you'd ever want in your life. We get it. He's changing as he fights these monsters. STOP TELLING ME.

Other than poor story telling when it doesn't have anything to do with fantastic parasite fights, Parasyte is a fun read and worth the shelf price. And for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing, there is a love story in the book that doesn't involve murderous alien parasites. The problem is, though, that it doesn't involve...murderous alien parasites. Parasyte does the action well and it'll keep you entertained through the dreary death that is its attempt at an actual storyline outside of the main attraction. So remember kids, if a violent parasitic being invades your body it's perfectly okay to pit it against its own kind in death sports. It's only fair. This little slice of gory fun is brought to you by Tokyopop and should still be out and about on shelves everywhere. Give it a try. It doesn't suck.