What happened to parasites?
Parasyte spoilers ahead!
Parasyte: the Maxim (Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu) tells us a story of a regular school boy, Shinichi, who fell victim to an alien parasite, trying to capture the boy’s body. The parasite fails to succeed, and now both of them are forced to coexist with the alien living in Shinichi’s right hand. The boy names the parasite Migi (which is the Japanese for “right”) and tries to deal with the fact that he’s no longer alone in his body.
The anime adaptation has received a lot of positive reviews, and fans mention good writing, engaging story and relatable characters when they discuss the show. Shinichi and Migi’s bond is especially endearing, and seeing them grow closer and having an impact on each other is one of the main reasons the audience deems Parasyte so appealing.
Despite being so well-received, the series still has its problems, and fans mention feeling a little bit unsatisfied with the conclusion of the humans vs. parasites story. The main issue is that the key conflict, that is parasites eating people, has just disappeared. Fans are puzzled by it, and feel like the ending was rushed and had much more potential than what was actually shown in the anime. Parasites just stopped eating people and thus becoming a problem. Besides, due to Migi’s appearance in the last episode and him saving Shinichi’s friend, we can understand that parasites still exist, so it’s not the issue of their extinction.
Throughout the series we see that parasites are not all senseless beings that are driven solely by their desire to consume human beings; they can also show emotion and intelligence. This makes some fans speculate that parasites might have gained more understanding of how the human world works and they learned to adapt. Killing and eating groups of people randomly would definitely attract a lot of unwanted attention, so the idea is that the alien beings just became more subtle and mastered the technique of lying low.
The opposite side of this conversation still finds this explanation unsatisfactory. Why was the point of the story if parasites were just gonna stop? For some fans the anime lacks any events that would influence such an outcome directly.
When a series is great, fans want to analyze every little detail of it, so there’s no wonder that some felt like they needed more information and reasoning. You may agree or disagree with the mentioned points, but at the end of the day, isn't providing the opportunity to think and discuss what makes a show good?