I hope you weren’t watching this show for Shinichi, because he’s pretty much not in this episode. Yeah, that’s right. You heard me, the main character is almost completely not in this episode at all. He’s in it for all of about 4 minutes maximum time to make faces and ask Migi if they should be doing something to help. Which they don’t, for this episode at least.
So what does happen this episode? Well, you remember when I said that people were going to die? Well I was right, people die. Humans, Parasites, no named or important characters so I can’t be like “Oh, so and so died!” or “oh no, i loved -insert character name here-” it was a bunch of random people in the town hall that we’d never seen or heard from before.
So why do we care?
The answer? Well to be honest there isn’t much to get invested in this episode. I think the most interesting part of the episode is the guy who is escorting Uragami and his struggle emotionally with what’s being done. As he questions if shooting someone in suspect that they might be a parasite is justified self-defense or if the person was committing an obstruction of justice.
His moral struggle is pretty much the most interesting thing in the episode. Oh, I guess there is this part near the end with the guy who absorbs all the bullets into his body and murders these riot squad members with their own bullets. That’s kinda cool.
I think my largest struggle with this episode as a whole is any sort of human connection. The people are being monsters, the monsters are being monsters. The most human and logical of them all is the police officer leading around the serial killer, who is sitting there pointing out that the head of the riot squad is being a monster. This might not be a problem for some people but to me I find it off putting.
Let’s see, does anything else of note happen this episode? No, no character development for Shinichi. No relationship progress between anyone. Wow…I feel bad that this review is going to end up so short but honestly the episode left me with an absolute lack of things to talk or care about. I think next episode will be a lot more productive….it has sex in the title.
WAIT, Migi are we going to see that human intercourse at last? -crosses fingers- Seriously though, i’m hoping next episode has a lot more Shinichi and a lot more human interaction because when I can honestly say the best part of the episode is some unnamed character sitting questioning the values of life. You’ve left me with a pretty lack luster episode. Not a bad episode, but one I just can’t get invested in.
~Midnight
While I did enjoy this episode, I do think that the end result was just as you said.
It only contributed more to my hope at the end of the previous episode, that the first person they tagged as an enemy would have actually been someone like Izumi or the one with the Parasyte in his chin. I think that would’ve added some nice dimension to the conflict (and could have possibly prevented a death) even if it may not be part of the manga. I think it would’ve been a justified change. Something to mix up the extermination, or failure of one that was certainly on its way.
On top of that, the flamethrower idea was totally discarded even after the field commander acknowledged the idea last episode. Hopefully he has it stashed somewhere and uses it, because I doubt Izumi and Migi will use something like that when it comes to their next fight. At best it’ll be a gas pipe or explosion that they trigger.
All that said… Yes, next episode: Migi gets to see what he wanted (I guess he could tell how fake online depictions were) and hopefully Izumi and Murano both get what they want in terms of understanding each other more than anything.
Still, that’s for next week. For now, and I hope this will cheer you up about this episode, here’s the entire Parasyte opening redrawn and animated “classically”! Although, it’s been out for some time and I only found it this week…
–Solo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbl4fRHYuus)
–Side-by-side (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlUQGi7lAdU)