Parasyte Volume 2 Review
Premise
Shinichi is beginning to notice the impact that Migi’s presence is having on his life. His concern about losing his humanity causes him to continually engage in actions that he believes will prove he his human, including jumping in a fight when his classmate is being attacked. This concern about losing his humanity only intensifies after an attack from a parasite necessitates Migi fusing part of himself with Shinichi to save him. Meanwhile, his parents are in danger after encountering a parasite while on their seaside vacation.
Junji Ito Influence?
I want to start on a bit of a sidenote. I believe that art style of Parasyte was an influence on Junji Ito. This is a brief tangent that I intended to include in my review of the first volume, but it got lost somewhere in the writing and editing. But I felt compelled to include in in this review because I once again was thinking of Junji Ito as I read Parasyte. The way that they draw faces is eerily similar, especially the women. All of the female characters look like they could easily fit within any of Ito’s works, and even some of the men look like Ito characters. I couldn’t find anything stating that Parasyte creator Hitoshi Iwaaki was an influence on Ito, but I couldn’t help notice the similarities.
Better Plotting and Pacing
Although I greatly enjoyed reading the first volume of Parasyte and thought that the collection worked as a whole, the individual chapters were sometimes a little sloppy with the storytelling and moved at a break neck pace. Part of this can be contributed to the fact that there was a ton of information that needed to be divulged for the reader to understand the world that the author was building. Now that the foundation has been laid plenty of time can be taken to build the house. We had to get a basic understanding of what the parasites were and how they fit into society before we could get to the core of Shinichi and his story.
There is a greater focus and cohesion that binds the individual chapters in the second volume. The first volume didn’t have a specific focus. Shinichi was dealing with his new reality and it saw him go in several different directions. But this time around he has a specific mission and a specific concern. He wants to save his parents and he wants to prove to himself that he is still a human. The individual chapters build upon each other and contribute to a specific arc, rather than haphazardly jumping around.
Spoilers Below
Warning! The rest of the review contains spoilers for anybody who has not read volume 2 of parasyte. Please read the manga before reading my review if you do not want anything spoiled for you!
A New Threat
Shinichi and Migi have already have had to deal with two parasites that exist near their home. Now they have to deal with a new threat that is more intelligent than Mr. A and one that is in the same seaside town where his parents went on vacation. Shinichi encouraged his parents to go on vacation in a rural town because he thought that he was getting them out of harms way, but he was actually sending them straight into the lion’s den. At the seaside town, the parasite searching for a new host after his previous host died in a car accident. This parasite was able to claim a male host, but it is incapable of understanding the male anatomy and is being rejected by the new host. Fortunately for the parasite, Shinichi’s mom is nearby and makes the perfect host. This parasite wants to kill Shinichi’s dad and Shinichi won’t hurt somebody who looks like his mom, making the new parasite a perfect threat.
Journey To The Seaside
An exciting part of this volume was the fact that Shinichi and Migi left the ‘safety’ and comfort of their hometown. They headed to the seaside town where Shinichi’s parents were vacationing to protect his dad, Kazuyuki, after he was hospitalized from the attack that killed Shinichi’s mom. Not only is Shinichi heading to an unfamiliar location while knowing that the parasite wants to kill his dad, but Migi now requires four hours of uninterrupted sleep after sacrificing part of himself to save Shinichi. That means that Migi will not be able there to provide radar detection of the parasites or assist in any fighting that may take place.
Compounding the problems is the fact that the parasite has taken over Shinichi’s mother’s body. Shinichi was able to kill a stranger that he had no connection to, but the thought of harming his mother is a bridge too far. He knows what must be done, though he doesn’t know if he can do it. If he fails to kill the parasite occupying his mother’s body, the parasite will hunt down his father and kill him, because his father knows the truth.
Shinichi not being able to rely on Migi and forced to stand on his own two legs was thrilling. For the first time in Parasyte, Shinichi was in genuine danger. He was going up against a species apparently designed to kill humans for sport. They have the ability to change their appearances and it could easily sneak up on Shinichi and kill him before he even knew what was happening. It didn’t help that Shinichi was in a town full of strangers, so he couldn’t even tell when somebody was behaving in an unusual manner. Hitoshi Iwaaki created conditions that put Shinichi through his greatest trial and provided the reader with plenty of concern for the protagonist.
The New Shinichi
While dealing with external dangers, Shinichi is also dealing with internal dangers. Shinichi undergoes drastic changes throughout the second volume of Parasyte. A big critique that I had of the first volume was the idea that this person who we never met prior to having his body invaded by an alien species underwent some kind of drastic transformation that his family and friends noticed. We never knew who Shinichi was prior to Migi and he acted the same throughout the first volume of Parasyte. It was a noble attempt to convey that Migi changed Shinichi with poor execution.
Discontent with his failure to convey his idea, the author successfully conveyed Shinichi’s changes from Migi in the second volume. Shinichi changes from a non-violent, unaggressive recluse to a more outgoing, aggressive person. He begins to take on the burdens of others and uses violence to solve problems, such as when he intervenes in his classmates fight with a group of students from another school. Shinichi becomes more animalistic and begins to frighten strangers. He becomes territorial and possessive, threatening a man who attempted to inspect his backpack.
The most drastic changes come from his fusion with Migi, who uses part of his alien body to heal a fatal wound Shinichi received. He becomes capable of superhuman feats, such as matching a parasites speed and easily scaling a seawall. His superhumans powers come at a price: part of his humanity. Though his body his now capable of feats that no other human could dream of, he can no longer cry. Even the death of his mother, which bothers him down to his core, cannot cause him to produce any tears.
Shinichi was concerned about losing his humanity from Migi, and his physical changes make the concern impossible to ignore. It doesn’t help that the other parasite he met can cry so easily. Is he still human, and if he is how long will he remain so? It’s a problem that will plague him as long as he remains the way he is, and it will cause the reader to question just what is going on with the protagonist.
Migi’s Slow Evolution
Shinichi is not the only character to undergo an evolution. Migi also begins to change, albeit at a much slower and less noticeable pace than Shinichi. Migi was a self-centered narcissist without any concern for the well-being of other creatures. He viewed Shinichi’s concern about the lives of others as confusing and bizarre. Down to his core, Migi was concerned only about Migi.
This slowly begins to change when Shinichi receives a life threatening injury. Migi can briefly exist away from Shinichi. He had the option to abandon Shinichi and seek out a new host to occupy, an option that he was acutely aware of. Rather than leave his original host with a slim chance of survival for dead, Migi chooses to save him. That’s right. Migi chose to save Shinichi, and it required him to sacrifice thirty percent of his body to do so. Despite claiming that he cannot understand self-sacrifice, he voluntarily did so.
It could be argued that Migi’s decision was done solely because he thought that saving Shinichi was his best shot at surviving. But we also see him make a decision that actively endangers his life, and he does it for the well-being of another person. Migi is on the verge of needing to fall asleep, so he decides to rest in the shape of a sword, allowing Shinichi to fight the other parasite. If Migi wanted to ensure his survival, he could have fallen asleep as a normal arm, leaving Shinichi unable to fight the parasite and necessitating a retreat.
A big question that lingered throughout the first volume of Parasyte was nature vs nurture. Are people the way they are because of an innate traits or are they shaped by their environment? Migi’s unrelenting concern about his survival and the parasites brutal campaign of carnage suggested that nature determined how species behaved. But do Shinichi’s actions impact the way that Migi thinks and behaves? Migi’s change comes after he witnesses Shinichi continually intervene on the behalf of others at his own expense and after Shinichi has no concern for his own life when his mom’s life is in danger. There’s no clear answers, but questions like this that keep the reader struggling to get to the answer of nature vs nurture make the series more interesting.
Mamoru Uda
By far the best part of Parasyte Volume 2 is the addition of Mamoru Uda to the cast. Like Shinichi, he is a human who managed to prevent the parasite from entering his brain and must share his body with the invasive alien. His alien occupies his face, chin, and chest. When the parasite emerges, it occupies so much of Mamoru’s face that they must take turns speaking. It also presents obstacles for them when fighting because Mamoru’s lose of his mouth makes it very difficult for him to breath and see. This means that he cannot help in fights, unlike Shinichi.
Mamoru is a great character because him and his parasite(named Parasyte) contrast so greatly with Migi and Shinichi. Mamoru is happy that Parasyte infected him. Prior to meeting Parasyte, Mamoru was suicidal and hated himself. Now he has a friend and they enjoy everything together, especially watching movies and television. They are both content with their lives and seem happy. Mamoru is highly emotional and has no doubts about his humanity. Unlike Shinichi, Mamoru is confident about his relationship with his parasyte and is secure in the fact that he remains a human.
After spending so much time with Shinichi, who can be very dour and depressing, Mamoru’s jolly nature was a welcome respite and provided some much needed joy doing a bleak point in the story. He is an example of what Shinichi and Migi could be if they strive toward happiness rather than survival.
Kana Kimishima
Shinichi has plenty of problems at the seaside town, but he also has problems in his hometown due to a female that he met. Kana Kimishima is a student from another school. She met Shinichi when her classmates were fighting one of Shinichi’s classmates, and she instantly noticed that something was off with Shinichi, a person that she had never met. Kana is attracted to Shinichi because of his animalistic nature and she becomes a stalker, constantly showing up to his school and looking for him.
Her introduction was interesting because she presents the first human threat to Migi. While she could never possible physically hurt Shinichi or Migi, she is the sole person who could out their existence to the world. She is an outlier human. Kana is one of the few, if not only, people who can sense the existence of parasites in the same manner that the parasites themselves can. Shinichi cannot evade her because she can detect him whenever they are within 50 meters of each other. Kana is a threat that they cannot get rid of, because Shinichi would never kill a person and lose his humanity, and she is also not going anywhere because of her attraction to Shinichi. She is a threat that can upend their lives if she should ever figure out their true nature, but there is nothing they can do to protect themselves. Kana is the ultimate danger and her obsession is just getting started.
Final Thoughts
Parasyte Volume 2 is a drastic improvement over the first volume. The author was able to find various means to convey the ideas that he struggled with in the first volume. He also managed to improve the plotting and spacing of the series, while also giving us a deeper understanding of the two main characters. Not only that, but he up ended Shinichi’s life and gave him a new threat that he couldn’t just kill. I’m excited to see how Shinichi and Migi will continue to evolve and develop now that they’ve grown through the rigors of adversity.