Not the best episode this week – Kana’s story just didn’t feel that well-integrated into the rest of the narrative, and this episode in particular was not that gracefully constructed. The Shinichi-Migi material was stellar, though, and the ending was quite good. I’m certainly excited to see the larger-scale questions of the parasite politician and the government response come into focus again.
Here’s my full ANN piece. Notes are below!
Gotta stop having these crazy dreams, Kana
Migi is excited and almost proud about the politician. A diversity of parasite types
Shinichi’s being the practical one here, whereas Migi is being emotional
“If they happen to kill a celebrity, there’d be an uproar.” A pretty cynical thought, but one that’s already been born out by how little humanity has already reacted to the parasites
“I’m just curious.” Migi has certainly become increasingly more flippant over time
“Is it because it’s coming from one of those ‘parasites’ that everyone’s talking about online?” Oh dang, nice people of natural exposition there
“We will never develop what humans call ‘sympathy’”
“Tell me the truth. You just don’t want to see me anymore.” Damnit Kana
Kana’s personal romcom world is clashing pretty heavily with Shinichi’s horror-drama one atm
The politician gets elected!
I feel sorta lukewarm about this focus on Kana’s story when there’s so much interesting higher-level stuff going on
“We’re linked by fate.” Damnit Kana
Aw shit, Kana’s sending off parasite radio waves now
Oh no she’s telling off poor dickbag Mitsuo
The scene transitions here don’t really feel that naturally – the story feels like it’s rushing to get through this subplot a bit
The scene where Migi and Shinichi are honest with each other is great. They each make concessions, they each accept the perspective of the other. One of the best scenes of their relationship so far in the series
Kana’s unfortunately gotten more one-note as her story progressed
OH MAN PISSED SHINICHI HOLY SHIT. “Migi, handle the defense.” YEAAAAAHHHHH
This show sure has learned how to make its action count
Awkward CG entering the building, though
A little bit of insight into the investigation in the wake of Kana’s death
His confrontation with Mitsuo at the end is great. Probably the most emotionally true moment of this episode
This episode felt so odd. Jumping all over the place. Don’t really understood what was the goal of that tiny arc to be honest.. It gave a lot of attention to this story without adding anything interesting to it. ”not that graceful” is being generous.
Though I agree that the end scenes were great!
Yeah, this just felt like a kind of obligation-driven translation of a misstep arc from the source material. Not much more than a speedbump, though.
I’ve always found the Kana subplot to be the weakest part of Parasyte, mostly because it was a wheel-spinning divergence that occurs right when the plot was about to kick into high gear, and it relies heavily on gluing a lovestruck idiot ball to Kana’s hands. It also doesn’t help that Kana’s powers neither play any role in the plot outside of said wheel-spinning divergence nor get an explanation for their existence, thus leading us to wonder if there was a point in introducing the concept at all. There were good parts to it (the literal heart-ripping scene, Shinichi making use of Migi’s daily 4-hour coma, etc.), but I don’t think they make up for the rest of the subplot.
Yeah, it didn’t really contribute much to this story that didn’t already exist. Good to hear the plot’s about to kick into high gear, though!
Yeah, the second half of the series is when we shift away from high school, give parasites more focus, get other humans more directly involved, and force Shinichi into the position of a desperate prey animal.
I actually saw a good reason behind Kana’s sub-plot. Since shinichi’s struggle is whether he’s losing his emotions or not, Kana could have been a good contrast as she has become obsessed in emotion to the point of doing stupid shit. Ultimately the message of her existence was maybe to reinforce his acceptance of becoming inhuman as he has at the end of this episode. At the same time though I still felt like they could have done more with her rather than going on and on about her power, only to end in that so quickly. I guess the writers realized the message they intended with her had already been brought home and they couldn’t think of anything else to do with her.
Though it feels very similar to that girl earlier who thought it’d be a good idea to meet with the maybe serial killer alone in a classroom, thinking she alone could defend herself.
Can we have a girl not doing stupid shit please?
Well, we always have Ryoko.
Really though, I’ve just looked back at the manga and… sheesh, the anime didn’t do Kana any favors. At all. Manga Kana was never a favorite of mine, but she practiced picking out auras in the park to distinguish Shinichi from false positives, was pretty facetious about the soulmate radar thing (“The ability to sense the red string? Yeah right.”), didn’t keep stalker totems, thought her dream was completely ridiculous and embarrassing rather than anything significant, and didn’t have a cell phone to stupidly leave behind. She still held the idiot ball in the end, granted, but she wasn’t that dumb.