So, how do you beat a parasite monster when you’re only human? Your one human, against a combination of 4 or 5 inhuman creatures that are faster, stronger and all around better than you? You make things up as you go.
Try to hit him with a clever while he’s sleeping and it doesn’t work? Welp, time to make a weapon out of a branch and try attacking him with that. That fails? Well uh, RUN.
So basically, Shinichi starts fighting with Gotou and let’s be honest with ourselves. We know he’s gravely outmatched. He gets the crap beaten out of him for the first part of the episode. I felt myself wincing almost constantly in pain as Shinichi was thrown against trees and into a landfill. In which he would of met his end if it were not for his sudden memory of the two gunshot wounds on Gotou’s side a few episodes prior.
So he jams it with a metal stick, and runs. This wouldn’t of been enough to help finish off Gotou if not for the toxins that were on the metal stick and the parasites that made him up rebelling against him. Even then, THAT might not of been enough but then Migi who had been assimilated into Gotou returns to Shinichi.
I’ve never been so happy to see a right arm in my life, pretty sure Shinichi felt the same way.
So Shinichi and Migi beat Gotou and go to leave, but he’s not actually dead. Despite being pretty much blown up, there are a few organs intact that are calling the cells back to the host. This is where the show goes rather deep and asks the hard questions. Is it right to take the life of a creature despite the fact it’s not human? Is it still murder?
To the ecosystem, are the parasites as we know them the cure to the parasites we are to the earth? Since their purpose is to cull us out and try to save the worlds ecosystem as far as we understand their purpose so far.
In the end they do decide to take him out entirely, but is it for the earth? For humans? What’s right? What’s wrong? Now that we’re rid of him, what’s next for Shinichi?
This review is kind of short because talking about fights does nothing for them, and most of the episode is the fight. There is the moral struggle, but honestly that’s something that is entirely up to you as a person. Your beliefs in the future of the world, your beliefs in killing. I think that, along with the character development, gore, and storytelling is why this manga has as strong a following as it does, even almost twenty years after it’s print.
Next episode, Parasyte. The final episode. It’s been a really good run, I’ll give my final views on the last episode but I can tell you now. It’ll take something crazy in the last episode for me to say anything bad.
~Midnight