Manga: Kiseijuu - Parasyte

Well, here's the winner of the first round of "GW Reading the Same Manga: New Edition". To all of you who said that they will take part in this, please read the manga. If you don't like it, at least read some of it and comment on what you've read or the impression you got from it at least.

Since this round was for "Completely Scanlated" mangas, I advise that you should be careful reading the posts that follow this ones if you haven't read it fully if you don't want to get spoiled. For those who have read the manga completely, try not to say much about what happens until at least 1 day from now to give some people a chance to read it.

Anyways, this is a pretty cool manga if you like violent fights, some of the supernatural nature.

You can download everything from here:
http://www.mangatraders.com/manga/series/157

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From Del Rey:
They arrive in silence and darkness. They descend from the skies. They have a hunger for human flesh. They are everywhere. They are parasites, alien creatures who must invade–and take control of–a human host to survive. And once they have infected their victims, they can assume any deadly form they choose: monsters with giant teeth, winged demons, creatures with blades for hands. But most have chosen to conceal their lethal purpose behind ordinary human faces. So no one knows their secret–except an ordinary high school student. Shin is battling for control of his own body against an alien parasite, but can he find a way to warn humanity of the horrors to come?

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Have fun reading it, and let the discussion begin!

This manga is really good, I'm already at volume 10.

So basically we're reading it all in one go then discussing it after a few days?

Sounds good, I'm already half way through, heh.

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Originally Posted by Raven

So basically we're reading it all in one go then discussing it after a few days?

Sounds good, I'm already half way through, heh.

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You can do whatever you want. Just be mindful that some people may be ahead of you and may post some spoilers, so you might as well don't enter the thread again until you're done.

I'm about halfway done. Pretty good so far.

I really like Migi's design, he's cute.

Whoo, I'm done.

I'm done too.. I laughed so bad when migi transformed into a big dick. haha

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Originally Posted by oyabin

I'm done too.. I laughed so bad when migi transformed into a big dick. haha

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Hehe, yeah. That was my favorite scene from the series. Anyways, I'm finally done too. I only had 4 chapters left too read.

I liked the ending a lot, which is something very rare.

I really didn't like the ending, it was okay.. I just felt they made and excuse for the manga to end by Migi sleeping.. But Like the last chapter with the killer :D

I've only just finished volume 7, but I'll post a couple questions/impressions in case you want to respond. Most of you are ahead of me at this point, but I'll put a disclaimer anyway.

Below references material including volume 7



- I really didn't like the shift in the story after his mother was avenged. The new hairstyle, the new attitude, the super-human abilities, it all came off pretty lame to me until the Kana arc. The series started to pick up again there, and hasn't gone back down since.

- The biggest question obviously is, where does Tamura Reiko stand? How much has motherhood influenced her? She's not nearly as cold-blooded as the others are, even Migi. A big question now that Saitoh has stolen her child. She's abusive to it, pretty cold towards it (as expected, she's another species), but she does fulfill it's needs and looks after it. It's a lot more than can be expected from a species whose sole purpose is hardwired to exterminate the human race. Has her child already stopped being a mere experiment? She's been the strongest advocate of hiding within the humans, and exercising caution over hunger.

- As a side note, her fight against the 3 parasites was very impressive. Bloodlust never enters her mind, at least so far. She recognizes and doesn't ignore any of her own weaknesses. She takes them into account, uses her enemies' knowledge of those weaknesses against them. Migi and Shinji have done the same, but haven't been doing it so well lately. Arrogance seems to be a big key in defeating parasites.



end spoilers

Spoilers of the ending:

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Originally Posted by oyabin

I really didn't like the ending, it was okay.. I just felt they made and excuse for the manga to end by Migi sleeping.. But Like the last chapter with the killer :D

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Migi could've not gone to sleep and it wouldn't have affected the ending of the manga in anyway. So I don't buy that it's an excuse to end it there. They showed us the aftermath and what has become the life of Shinji, and that's the important part. No loose ends.

I would have cut my right arm off if it turned into a huge penis or employ myself in extraterrestrial porn perhaps. I wonder if this is where Midori no Hibi got its idea for a premise. The taking over of the right hand must be something that Japanese are paranoid of happening.

The whole hiding at the old lady's house seemed a bit out of place to me, the rest worked just fine to my liking. Took me two weeks to read though.....don't have as much extra time as you guys. Overall a decent read.

Finished this series last night, and have to say that it was good. It was good that it didn't continue on either, as this series could go even further, but the mangaka knew when to stop it.

Migi went to sleep, but he's still there and can wake up at any time really, as you see from the last part of the manga, you don't actually see it, but it's portrayed to make you think so. Migi had done and learnt so much by the end of it. Also, he got the very human trait at the end, where he sacrifices himself for Shinji. So, it does kind of bring in the humans and parasites are the same.

All in all, it was a good read.



I think the next time we do a manga read between us all, we should do it in like volumes, say we read 5 volumes a week, so we can have discussion midway through, and predictions and what not.

I finished the series by the way. I liked the ending. Shinji had a lot of personality growth, and became a much better person, with a greater understanding on how he should treat the world around him. He realized that the poison that had been left around was a danger, but at the same time it saved his life.

The final Tamura Reiko arc was probably my favorite of the series. Lessons for both sides and Shinji resolved his personality issues.

Just got done rereading the series.

Personally my favorite part in the series is when shinji decided to tell kana the truth and migi was warning shinji not to get him into any danger. The conversation ended up with shinji yelling "You really don't have any emotion" and migi responding "Damn right". I cracked up both time during that part for some reason, maybe the reason was because it's one of the few "comedic" exchange between shinji and migi during the series.

Overall, the series ended really well and having the "final" villian to be a twisted human rather than a parasyte is ingenious.

This is one of my favorite "horror" manga and i'm glad you guys liked it.
This gotwoot reading the same manga thing is nice because the general manga section is usually pretty dead.

A good manga. It felt somewhat bizarre from the beginning but in a good way. The ending was fine as well. Like Kai said, it's important to know when to finish a story.

I personally felt the philosophical aspects of the story were quite sidelined. In a certain sense the only concrete outcome of them was the fact Shinji didn't try to fight the parasites that actively, but even so I reckon that was more because he was afraid or cautious than because he really thought they should be given an equal chance to live. Not that there would be any sense in that philosophy anyway (but I think that was made evident by the manga itself as well by calling it only a form of selfishness).

Migi was the one often advocating they flee. He was always about his own survival. After his mother was killed, Shinji wanted nothing more than to kill every one of them. Until the final Tamura Reiko arc, he was out for blood and didn't outwardly feel anything but hatred. That arc was full of your "missing" philosophical aspects.

That's why I thought she was the most interesting character. She was still filled with the compulsion to eat humans, but she was deeply concerned with why. In the end, she even started to care for the tiny life she had brought into the world, protecting it while letting her own body take the abuse. A lot of it was underneath, but her arc definitely had the most thought provoking questions from their point of view.

Shinji might have wanted to kill them all but he didn't. In a sense that's very realistic: People want all kinds of things and may even speak how they plan to achieve them, or some of them, but often they end up changing nothing, only planning endlessly. So, in that sense the change in Shinji's attitude played only a theoretical role and little in practice, which is one reason why I said it was sidelines (I never said missing in my post if you check it again). In the end he never really hunted the parasites, only killed those that he happened to meet under unfotunate circumstances or that were hunting him (you pretty much knew that if Shinji met a parasite that was about or had just killed a human, that parasite wouldn't anymore see the next sunrise).