Josiah NeoReview: Parasyte
There’s a certain fascination with film adaptations of Japanese manga, much more so if the movie involves a hint of violence, a dash of the supernatural, and is topped with 400 liters of blood.
This is the recipe for the 27 year old manga Parasyte. Fans turn out in droves at the cinema to catch director Takashi Yamazaki’s take on the first half of the series, originally written by Hitoshi Iwaaki. And boy was it a killer recipe indeed.
Parasyte tells the story of Shinichi Izumi (Shota Sometani), a 17 year old high school student unfortunately infected in the invasion of a species of worms unoriginally called the Parasites.
While the Parasites are inherently malevolent and constantly on the prowl to consume humans, Shinichi’s parasite (named Migi after the Japanese word for “right”) is an affable creature that the audience can immediately take to and like, thanks to his adorable voice and his single-eye stalk that bulges from Shinichi’s finger. The placement of the stalk changes during the course of the film, and so does Migi’s number of eyes.
As more Parasites begin to control humans both ordinary and influential. Shinichi and Migi (voiced by Sadao Abe) are introduced to 3 of the infected, one of them a new teacher at his school, Ryoko Tamiya (Eri Fukatsu).
The 2 others – a policeman named Mr. A, and another student Hideo Shimada (Masahiro Higashide) – don’t believe that Shinichi and Migi deserve to be alive, seeing the former as a weaker species and the latter as having failed his mission. But Ryoko forbids them from killing Shinichi (once the host dies, the Parasite perishes as well), as she’s never seen such a unique pairing, and treats them as her little experiment.
Over the course of the film, we also meet human characters vital to the story: Satomi Murano (Ai Hashimoto), Shinichi’s love interest and Nobuko Izumi (Kimiko Yo), his mother, as well as a forgettable detective-assistant duo that we’ll hopefully see more of in the next instalment.
Like any print-to-screen movie, most fans would already know exactly what happens. The film doesn’t deviate much from the manga, save for Shinichi’s father whom we had no idea where he was. The film also gives us the experience of seeing another human eaten alive by an expanding face, however gimmicky it might look.
As much as it’s puzzling how the Parasites can transform their host’s face into a weapon of mass destruction (SPOILER ALERT: A certain character goes on a killing rampage 2/3 into the movie), props have to be given to the graphic effects team for depicting raw flesh and blood realistic enough to not want to cringe.
Action sequences are hard to come by in the movie, which boils down to director Takashi Yamazaki compensating quality with quantity.
While lacking in character development – there is only so much you can do with little less than 2 hours – Parasyte more than made up for it through the topical messages portrayed. A casual conversation between Shinichi and Migi revealed what either character thought about the importance of their own survival. Migi only cared for Shinichi, because his host’s death signals his as well. Is the parasite then more important than the host?
In fact, an uncanny reference can be made to Shinichi as the Japanese Bruce Wayne with his sidekick Migi. And there’s something sinister about the duo as Shinchi goes on a monologue about killing every single Parasite (cue a Hans Zimmer-esque score). The sequence fits into the grand scheme of things especially in a Part 2 to be released in May.
Parasyte is definitely no Battle Royale, but Shinichi Izumi might just be the hero that Japan deserves – as long as audiences can overlook the lack of a Lamborghini Aventador because let’s face it, a shape-shifting hand is just that much cooler.
Parasyte Part 2 will hit Golden Village theaters May 21.
Rating: 4/5
Information:
Release Date: January 15
Runtime: 109 minutes
Language: Japanese, with Chinese and English subtitles
Censorship rating: NC16
Genre: Sci-Fi
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Cast: Shota Sometani, Eri Fukastu, Sadao Abe, Ai Hashimoto, Nao Omori, Tadanobu Asano
Photographs courtesy of Encore Films