Parasyte: The Grey – Season 1 Review
Honestly, this one pleasantly surprised me. I thought Parasyte: The Grey might not exactly be my thing, but it was only 6 episodes and new to Netflix so why not try it out right? Boy was I wrong. It was entertaining and interesting from beginning to end and left me with an interest in watching the anime Parasyte: The Maxim.
Plot
Parasyte spores (or eggs??) start dropping from the sky and out pop parasitic larva that invade human hosts through the ear canal and devour their brains.
Love me some Plants vs. Zombies ^.
But anyway, once these parasites devour the brains of their victims, they can completely take over their bodies similarly to Yeerks in Anamorphs or Souls in The Host.
Our story revolves around a young woman named Jeong Su-in (Jeon So-nee) who works at a grocery store in Namil, South Korea. She has her own tragic backstory of child abuse but she’s doing her best and trying to be a good employee. But then one day she comes across a truly terrible customer. This customer forgets to get a sticker with the price tag for his food from the meat department, so he is unable to check out. Jeong Su-in tells him he will need to go back to the meat department to get the sticker, but the man just melts down. I’m sure any of you who have worked in food service or retail etc. are thinking of some similarly interesting customers, but thankfully most disgruntled customers don’t go to the extreme this one did.
Jeong Su-in gets off work and heads home on her moped, but what she doesn’t notice is the seriously deranged customer following her in his car. He crashes into her on an abandoned road and attacks her with a kitchen knife, stabbing her several times before she stumbles off into a field where she will almost certainly die. As the man follows her screaming, “you shits believe I can kill somebody now, huh? Just watch,” and other deranged things, something falls from the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s a parasite. It crawls into Jeong Su-in since she’s the closest warm body and kills the seriously pissed customer before healing her. The only thing is because the parasite (fondly named Heidi later) spent so much energy healing Jeong Su-in, it was left unable to consume her brain.
Cue an interesting story about Jeong Su-in, Heidi, and their newfound friend Seol Kang-woo (Koo Kyo-hwan) trying to survive onslaughts from both parasites and Team Grey, the police task force assigned with the elimination of all parasites.
My Thoughts
Parasyte: The Grey was actually pretty good. I watched the English dubbed version and it sounded better than most. There weren’t any immersion issues, and you could forget about it being dubbed. The CGI was also really well done. I enjoyed how different parasites had different physical qualities. One might prefer fighting with two tentacles, and another might fight with several. Another instead focused on honing its unique anatomy into a horrifying flying squirrel/bat wing looking thing that allowed it to sneak up on its prey from above. Seriously gross but functional.
There were a few things that I thought could have been cleared up though. Parasites like to stockpile dead humans in their “pantries.” These pantries are everywhere but you never actually see a parasite feeding. I’m kind of curious how it even eats. Towards the end of the series it is also revealed that parasites can switch hosts and do a bunch of weird stuff. Is that all parasites or only elite ones? And where the hell do these things even come from?
If terrifying and at times weirdly endearing brain eating aliens are your thing, try out Parasyte: The Grey on Netflix! Don’t forget the popcorn!
