YMMV / Parasyte

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • In the anime, there's a scene of Migi saying he'll find a way to make Shinichi feel better... while they're in the shower. Shinichi smiles.
  • The entire premise is based around a teenaged boy learning to bond with his hand. Hm.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: How much of Shinichi's growing coldness throughout the series is influence from Migi, and how much is the very real trauma he'd been facing? Between the shocks, the near-death experiences, and the deaths of friends and family, his emotions shutting down isn't implausible from a purely human standpoint.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: In Episode 21, Commander Yamagishi of the SAT fires his AA-12 from the hip with one hand. If this was any other shotgun, it would be ridiculous. But the AA-12's recoil actually is low enough that it can be fired one-handed.
• Anti-Climax Boss: After dealing with Gotou, who is Shinichi's final adversary? Uragami, who is a petty serial killer. Overlaps with Dragon Their Feet, as the story is over by the time Uragami and Shinichi throw down, and the latter's reaction to the former showing up is, essentially, "Not this shit again." In addition, Migi is dormant by this time, putting them on more equal footing (but Shinchi still has his super strength, speed, etc).
• Awesome Music:
  • NEXT TO YOU, which plays during tense emotional moments.
  • The battle themes, ill-fitting as they may be:
    • I AM.
    • HYPNOTIK (source of the Ominous Latin Chanting used in previews and sometimes within the episodes).
    • GALAXY.
    • LUNA.
    • KILL THE PUPPETS.
    • BLACK NAIL.
    • COMPLEX.
• Base-Breaking Character: Anime Satomi is this for some viewers. Her fans find her character sympathetic and believe she's completely justified in her actions considering the situation she's in regarding her feelings for Shinichi, whereas detractors dislike her for her negativity towards Shinichi's change from kindhearted Nice Guy to Jerk with a Heart of Gold, along with annoying tendency to repeatedly ask, "Are you really Shinichi?" It also hurts that she's more demure and less feisty in the anime compared to the manga. Standing up to Uragami in the final episode improved her standing somewhat.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The sex scene between Shinichi and Murano can come off as this as it happens pretty out-of-the-blue.
• Broken Base:
  • The anime's soundtrack in general. Its use of dubstep is very controversial in contrast to the other fan-favorite tracks like "Next to You".
  • The art style and character design changes and Setting Update have also been divisive among fans of the manga. Some accept them, some don't.
• Complete Monster: Uragami (or Kabuto) is a human being who manages to be many times worse than the man-eating parasites of the story. A sadistic Serial Killer, Uragami considers other people his "playthings" and gets off on all acts of cruelty he can inflict them, including murder, rape, mutilation and cannibalism. After Uragami was caught and forced to work for the army, he gleefully helped them slaughter dozens of parasites along with a few innocents before killing the police officer escorting him and escaping. Knowing that it was only a matter of time before being caught again, Uragami decides to spend his last days as a free man forcing Shinichi Izumi, who had never done anything to him, to confront him. Uragami does this by killing more innocents, capturing Shinichi's girlfriend Murano and threatening to "have a lot of fun breaking this little doll" if he doesn't comply, only to throw her from a rooftop and stabbing Shinichi when he does. A depraved fiend, Uragami was even able to see through the parasites' disguise because he was, like them, a monster hiding behind a human appearance.
• Creepy Cute: Migi might be an alien parasite full of body horror, but the way he acts early on is pretty adorkable (then again, he knows nothing about human society, so it's to be expected.)
• Cult Classic: While the manga is considered a straight-up classic in Japan, in the US and elsewhere it was more obscure for decades until the anime (and live-action movies) hit, causing a Newbie Boom. It was one of the very first manga translated by Tokyopop (then Mixx) in the late 90s along with Sailor Moon and Magic Knight Rayearth, and so while it didn't have the massive fanbases both had, it was well-regarded by its comparatively smaller audience at the time.
• Evil Is Cool: Gotou is by far the most dangerous being in the story, being comprised of five different parasites working in near-perfect unison in a single body. His overwhelming strength and creative use of his parasite powers give him some of the most tense and memorable scenes in the series.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Parasyte vs Tokyo Ghoul can be quite a heated debate at times. Both have relatively the same dark-toned setting, and their anime adaptations were released around the same time as each other.
  • In the West it has developed one with Akame ga Kill!. Both are 2014 anime that were picked up by Sentai Filmworks and weren't only considered two of the most popular shows of the year but two of the most popular shows the company has licensed. Both shows feature gratuitous amounts of violence, action-packed fight scenes, and the use of character deaths to develop the main protagonist. However, Parasyte fans aren't very fond of Akame ga Kill! because they find that unlike Parasyte the violence is simply used for shock value and that it's completely shallow. The rivalry was only further amplified when both shows aired on Toonami as Sentai's first anime. Though not all Parasyte fans have been hard on Akame ga Kill!
• Fanfic Fuel: As Uda and Jaw revealed, the possibility of there being other humans out there with parasites fused with another part of their body besides their brain.
• Fan Nickname: After the life-saving surgery below is explained in episode 7, the concept of Migi's cells affecting Shinichi's body became known as "Migi-chlorians". The resulting drastic Art Shift for Shinichi also gave rise to the term "Shinichi 2.0".
• Friendly Fandoms: With fans of the 2011 adaptation of Hunter × Hunter due to both series being developed by MADHOUSE.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Initially upon airing airing, the anime was extremely popular with American audiences, especially considering that the manga was a bit more obscure there at the time. This was in stark contrast to the more mixed reception it first got in Japan, where the original manga is considered a bona-fide classic and a lot of viewers found the adaptational changes unnecessary. It got to the point where some denizens of the Japanese imageboard 2chan expressed outright surprise and disbelief that the anime was getting so much positive reception from Americans. Creator Hitoshi Iwaki certainly doesn't seem to mind.
  "It's always fun when people from other countries like your work. I've never wanted to draw the kind of manga that can be enjoyed by only one group of people, in one country, for a short time".
• Hype Backlash: The anime's intense popularity has caused others to denounce it for being poorly adapted, trying too hard to be dark and edgy or a blatant attempt to cash in on the success of Tokyo Ghoul.^note Never mind the Tokyo Ghoul manga began twenty-three years after Parasyte.
• Magnificent Bastard: Tamura Reiko is the most scientifically-inclined and philosophical of her race. Finding safety for her fellow parasytes in rallying them together under the parasyte-sympathizing politician Takeshi Hirokawa, Tamura also invents the immensely powerful parasyte Gotou through experimentation. When she's attacked by three rival parasites, Tamura proves her ingenuity by feigning madness to throw them off before easily dispatching them all. Taking interest in the unique bond of Shinichi Izumi and his parasite Migi, Tamura eventually tells the two of her hope for humanity and parasytes to coexist before she allows herself to be gunned down by the police, shielding and then passing off to Shinchi the only thing she ever really loved: her human child.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Mimicking of Shinichi's Google searches. Case in point.
  • Thanks to the hero's surname being Izumi and Aya Hirano's involvement, there's a lot of fanart with Lucky Star.
  • Uragami's realization that he's staring at a parasite-infected Shinichi as he goes from nonchalant to a completely hardened stare became something of a reaction meme for people realizing something is amiss. In late 2023, the scene would actually resurface as a sped-up edited video set to an edited track of Tenseoh's Heartburn, used to depict someone "locking in" or getting extremely serious over a certain game or task.
• Narm:
  • When Shinichi is at death's door, Migi fills the roles of trauma surgeon, nurse, and organ donor in order to save his life. It should have been the dramatic turning point of the story in more ways than one, but thanks to the visuals that accompany this scene... not so much.
  • Shinichi's big scream in episode 24. You know the one.
  • The first victim's wife's head being bitten off. It started of horrifying, because the man's face split open, but this page makes it more funny because of the 'watermelon' face.
  • In the anime, the scene where Shinichi and Murano have sex with each other late in the series. Not only does it nearly come out of nowhere, but Shinichi's response is a love confession afterwards while they're still in bed, followed by the two spontaneously being upright as they gaze into each other's almost-sparkling eyes and kiss, complete with dramatic background pan behind them. It's not much smoother in the manga either.
  • Reiko declaring her intention to eat her baby if it isn't interesting enough to her is likely intended to be Nightmare Fuel. Due to how completely outlandish the statement is, though, it ends up crossing right back over the line into being hilarious.
• Older Than They Think: The source material of Parasyte actually came first than that of Tokyo Ghoul despite some viewers thinking that its anime adaptation was made to follow the trend that's set by the latter. It doesn't help that both series have the same premise of "monsters hiding within human society", so the two were compared a lot in retrospect.
• Shocking Moments: The action sequences are really impressive. Shinichi's rock headshot is one of the earliest examples.
• Signature Scene:
  • In the first pages of the manga, a man's head splits open into a many-fanged horror to attack a woman. This was featured in the anime trailer, the live-action film trailer, and was even featured in a 'your-photo-here' app.
  • The Yakuza Massacre.
  • Shinichi's final battle with Gotou.
  • Shinichi throwing a rock to score a headshot (thanks to Migi's morphing his hand) is one of the most memorable segments, most likely because of its elegant simplicity.
• Special Effect Failure: The live action movie has some pretty noticeable CGI. The most notable example being the infamous head devouring scene at the beginning, which looks like the woman's head was cropped off with Photoshop.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Before the anime adaptation even aired, many fans of the manga disliked some of the changes in character designs, such as the decision to give Shinichi glasses and Satomi a new hairstyle. The Setting Update also was a point of contention for some.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Mitsuo, who disappears after Kana dies.
  • Uda and Jaw are the only other known human and parasyte to share a body besides Shinichi and Migi, and have rather funny personalities and interactions, especially next to the leads. Unfortunately, they rarely appear in the story. It would have been interesting to see Shinichi and Uda bond over their similar issues.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Kana and Uragami's ability to sense parasytes is never really explained in detail. In the manga, Migi says that Kana is "perceptive," and Uragami muses that he can tell parasytes from humans because he's spent so much time seeing human emotions (mostly fear) intimately, so he can tell when someone doesn't feel those emotions simply by looking at them.
  • Shinichi spends a good chunk of the series having to work with the authorities and evade their watchful eye since incident after incident keeps leading back to him and Migi. What happens after Uragami reacts specifically to Shinichi and no one else, and one of the remaining parasites targets him complete with a name drop in front of the police? Well, besides a brief questioning about it, nothing. He's basically sidelined for the bulk of the volume where Uragami and the police raid the parasyte headquarters, and after Gotou escapes their capture, the entire police storyline is effectively dropped afterwards in favor of Shinichi and Migi's battle with Gotou.
• Ugly Cute: Migi when in "talking" form, especially in the anime, where he's voiced in an impeccably soft-spoken manner by the legendary Aya Hirano. Averted, however, in the live-action movies, which give Migi a deeper voice and his creepiness is turned up a notch.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Given that Migi is voiced by Aya Hirano in the anime, it's easy to believe he's supposed to be a female character. In reality, parasites themselves have no gender; when they possess someone they'll adopt that person's pronouns.
• The Woobie: Poor Shinichi. He was living a perfectly normal life before the parasytes invaded Earth and turned his life upside down. Things don't get any better when his mother is killed and the fusion between him and Migi causes him to become more emotionally distant and cold, even losing the ability to cry, much to his frustration. He finally gets that ability back when he watches Tamura sacrifice her life for her baby. The guy really needs a hug after what he's been through.

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