Thoughts on Kiseijuu: Sei no Kakuritsu (Spoilers, Explicit)

Put on-hold during my latest anime hiatus.

Hello, cliche. Thy name is Parasyte.

It’s interesting to note the general trend of two-cour anime starting to lower in quality as their episode count increases. However, this isn’t true. The real truth is that it has always been lacking in quality, ever since the beginning.

Kiseijuu is subject to this as well. It takes on a more mature tone than its shounen siblings. It has blood, strategic planning, and likes to be, er, mopey. Gee, that’ll make a great show!

Except it didn’t, really. It’s still shounen.

The enemies babble and spit insults at our gracious, conflicted hero, giving him time to think of how to defeat them. Wouldn’t it be easier to, I don’t know, kill him? You seem to do so with other ordinary humans. Why not with him? Because that wouldn’t fit in time to get our hero’s inner struggles with humanity in there.

This title has A LOT of inner monologues.

One word to describe Kiseijuu would be “preachy.” There are a lot of “ARE WHAT HUMAN BEINGS DO RIGHT???” questions that are thrown at the viewer to ponder whenever there isn’t fighting, especially later on. It kinda feels like a ploy to keep the viewer entertained when the action/suspense portion of the series isn’t playing. This is an even trade, because anything outside of the action/suspense portion of Kiseijuu is boring.

The relationship between Shinichi and Satomi, in particular, is so illogical that it makes my head hurt. And it’s dull. Shinichi saves her a couple times early on, but then he keeps pushing her away, trying to hide the fact that he’s a monster in order to protect her. Satomi, obviously aware of all of this because she’s psychic, doesn’t question any of his douchebag behavior and proceeds to offer him sex because she trusts him. FUCKING. WUT.

The logic in Kiseijuu has always been off-kilter, but Migi made it seem somewhat processable. This only pertains to the action scenes, however. Everything else just feels like edgy, teenage drama (later on).

I’m basically just hating on the second half of the show. It takes one giant leap into clicheville once it gets to episode eighteen or so. There are still a lot of good things about this series. Migi is fun. Reiko is interesting. The fight scenes make sense… occasionally, and are generally fun to watch. The suspense can be really gripping. The start to this show (other than the horribly dull relationships) had a lot of really good episodes. At one point, I was considering whether this series could become something really special.

The last four episodes proved me wrong.

Cliche and dumb. And illogical. And preachy. And most of all, shounen fanfare. It just went head-first into the muddy dirt. Just a complete and total train wreck. Wow. I haven’t experienced a turnaround this bad since Allison to Lillia. It’s really, really unfortunate that it turned this unbearably bad. But hey, it was enjoyable, right?

The art was pretty good, though.

It’s a good series. Just cut out the last quarter of the series and make Satomi less of a doormat and you’re golden! Really though, it’s a shame that so many of the interesting characters had to die off early, only to be replaced with characters that only serve as Shinichi’s stepping stones. Shinichi himself can be interesting at times. And with everything that’s happened to him, his mopey behavior is excusable. But some of the things that happen in the series, like Shinichi’s descent into parasyte-hood and the final few episodes, really could have used some touching up. It’s simply not as good as it could have been.

I was thinking of giving this series an eight out of ten, too. It only took the final few episodes to completely derail it for me. God, damn it.