Parasyte – 05

You gotta fight when they grab your girl

Sorry for being a bit slow on posting this week. It’s been busy with food poisoning and then a band gig. But let’s see about getting caught up on some anime.

An Old-style Enemy

What does she see in him?

Not all the threats come from the parasites. In fact, most of the world doesn’t even know about the parasites, so they’re going along on their daily business… which includes beating up other guys. Apparently there’s some ‘gang’ activity going on in town, and Shinichi gets caught up in it when he runs across a classmate getting roughed up by a rival tough guy. Or is it a tough girl, because it seems that Miyuki Sawashiro… er, I mean Kana is the one calling the shots, not Mitsuo, the supposed leader of the toughs. Either way, Shinichi gets himself beat up a little bit, without fighting back, but distracts these guys enough to get them to give up on beating up Nagai.

Sometimes you should walk away

How much credit do we give Shinichi for interjecting himself in a fight. I think it has to be a lot. It’s not like he’s literally offering himself as a punching bag, but he’s also not wading into someone’s fight knowing that he’s got overwhelming force in the form of Migi. In fact, he’s almost deathly afraid that Migi will wake up in the middle of the fight and interpret something incorrectly. That doesn’t happen, but I think it still shows Shinichi’s fortitude. He is willing to take a beating if it’s the right thing to do. He doesn’t run away here when threatened or even hurt, even when it doesn’t concern him. Is this related to the conversation that he and Migi were having earlier about him changing due to Migi’s influence?

Irreversible Changes

Whose will?

There have to be some changes that have happened to Shinichi. For one, Kana sees something terrible in him, which seems to both fascinate and horrify her. Migi describes this as ‘seeing wavelengths that only his kind see’, although he seems to be only speculating. It also acknowledges that this is a trait that Satomi has as well, although not nearly as strongly as Kana. But what changes explain his willingness to not back down when the person at risk is Satomi? Shinichi is hell bent on finding differences between animals and humans, and rightly points out to Migi that this is a time when a human must fight. But why? To save face? Or to try to protect the ones he cares about? I think Migi would argue back that Shinichi by himself is no match for Mitsuo and his gang, and so would have no chance of ‘saving’ Satomi by his own efforts. But would he? There was something different about “when the claws came out.” Was that Migi? Or was that Shinichi’s will, having demanded “full control” of his right arm, and his brain realizing an ability that he now had.

An unhappy reunion

The other major change this episode is much more dire: the ‘death’ of Nobuko, Shinichi’s mother. He thought they’d be safer away from the city, and statistically they would have been, just bad luck (or plot convenience) happened. But Shinichi hasn’t changed enough to have the correct reaction to the obvious when ‘she’ comes back home and confronts him. This may be the most irrational behavior that Migi has experienced on Shinichi’s part, and I wonder what it’ll learn from the experience. I don’t think that Shinichi really needed to be told that it wasn’t his mother, but there was just a much deeper response preventing that from being something he could react to. Migi actually seems somewhat confused at Shinichi’s response, and almost pleads with him to stop interfering. But in the end, because of that, he is powerless to defend Shinichi from the strike.

Well, I think we know that Shinichi’s not going to die. Not in episode 5. I’m not even that interested in what the mechanism to save him will be. It’s possible this will be the payoff for the earlier revelation that Migi can wholly separate from Shinichi for a certain time. But ultimately, the other things in this episode were much more interesting to me than the confrontation between “Nobuko” and Shinichi. The development between him and Migi, as far as possible changes to Shinichi’s mind and body. The development of Shinichi’s character as far as being one who will step in to help someone else, even though he’s fairly helpless (unless he’s deadly). And even the cute romance between Satomi and Shinichi. She’s obviously really into him, although I’m kinda surprised she didn’t stay longer. Maybe he was a little too forward with his “My parents aren’t home” (seriously, in western culture this is always a complete come on, but in Japanese it’s at least halfway a “It’s alright to just spend time together because it won’t bother my parents”), although she didn’t react poorly, just “nah, I gotta go home.” This isn’t a romance show, but I think it’s a part of the show that’s working well.

About Highway

Proving that you don't have to be young to love anime, I enjoy all genres and styles of shows. If it's not hurting anyone else, you should never be ashamed of what you like!