parasite the maxim is up there at the
top of my list of favorite shows that
I've never actually found time to
properly talk about on this channel
outside of an offhand mention of it in
my list of the best man house Opie's
that is looking back I'm kind of
surprised that I never found a reason to
talk about it because the anime has some
absolutely killer fights and a real
banger of an Opie but those aren't the
things that I most want to talk about
when I think about parasite rather
there's this one moment from the first
episode that has stuck with me since the
very first time I watched the show a
moment that is by no means as
significant as some of the plot turns
and reveals that come later on but that
is so smartly written and relatable that
as soon as I saw it I knew that I was
going to love this show and it's
protagonist Shinichi but before I get to
that I want to take a step back and ask
you a question what would you do if one
day out of the blue you were suddenly
able to stop a speeding car with your
bare hand what would you do if you came
home and found that hand possessed by an
alien intelligence with inhuman strength
capable of shattering steel with a
single flick what would you do if that
intelligence knew your name I'm not
talking long term here yeah you might
eventually become a superhero or get the
arm amputated or I don't know try using
the disembodied alien hand to jerk off
just to see what it would feel like no
that's that's just me okay
but again we're not talking about
measured planned long-term responses
here we're talking about raw immediate
reactions so if this happened to you
what would your first instinct be if
you're a filthy millennial like myself
your answer is probably the same as mine
you'd google it and when Shinichi
discovers the parasitic monster migi
living in his right hand that's exactly
what he does as well as soon as Mickey
passes out and he assures his mom that
he's not whacking off Shinichi hops to
his computer and starts googling every
conceivable term that could describe
what's happening to him and he doesn't
stop at just one or two search queries
he keeps googling from the time he gets
home right after school until dusk which
considering that this is taking place in
early fall in Tokyo means that he spent
at least two hours poking around for
answers before give
up on the face of it this seems kind of
ridiculous to us as an audience we know
that this is just starting so of course
there aren't going to be any search
results for the parasites but we
millennial types are conditioned to
believe that Google or bingo and
parasites case has all the answers to
well literally any question that we
could think to ask so of course a
teenager in 2014 is gonna turn there
when they discover something strange and
unexpected about their body and the
existential terror of finding a [ __ ]
alien inside your [ __ ] hand will only
be compounded by the confirmation
through hours of research that you are
well and truly alone in that experience
and what's really remarkable about this
whole scene in the psychology behind it
is that parasite is based on a manga
from 1988 a time when the internet was
just a twinkle in Al Gore's eye these
elements work present in the original
text at all but in updating the story
for a modern audience writer Shoji yo
Nomura a veteran of Death Note monster
rancher hunter hunter and a ton of Kamen
Rider series created a scene that
perfectly captures the mindset of modern
youth instantly making Shinichi a
thousand times more relatable than his
manga counterpart but moreover it
creates a strong distinctly modern
context for just how fuction Ichi and
the rest of the world really are this
episode starts with a man splitting his
face open into a horrifying monster
mouth and eating his wife's goddamn head
the next time we see that guy he's
practicing impersonating other people on
television and holy hell as the image of
him morphing his face into a completely
different skin tone and hairstyle ever
creepy before going off to eat his kids
as well we see how that came to be in
the scene where Shinichi is infected
with a parasite himself which is further
expanded on at the end of the episode
and the Opie tells us that there are a
lot more of those things out there and
right after the Google scene we see a
human skin hanging up on a laundry pole
yet there's nothing about any of this in
the papers right after Shinichi again
stops a car with his bare hands we see
that the biggest story in the paper his
mom is reading is about an athlete
screwing around
twelve girls something that the show
subtly connects to what's happening to
Shinichi by showing a picture of the
athlete covering his face with his hand
mirroring the last shot of the Opie it's
not until breakfast the next day that
these murders start making the news and
still nobody even thinks to make a
connection between all of them for
SHINee cheese family this spate of
homicides is immediately overshadowed by
the fact that he touched a spider which
as heroic feats go is about ten times
more badass than Mustang killing lust
but still priorities people all of this
tells us that Humanity is woefully
underprepared for the attack that is
already fully underway we are seeing the
start of what could easily be the human
races extinction going off of the thing
rules yet petty celebrity gossip
apparently takes precedent over that
this scene is pulling triple duty
commenting on our present society
humanizing Shinichi in a way that modern
teenagers can relate to and raising the
stakes of what's going on all at once
it's some of the tightest smartest
writing I've seen in a long time and
it's made all the more impressive by the
fact that it's being integrated
seamlessly into a story that was written
more than a decade before anything that
it's talking about even existed it makes
me wish that the whole series could have
been updated the same way as the anime
goes on it tends to stick closer to the
events of the manga instead of changing
things up to be more like this and
there's value in that approach as well
since this is the first time that
parasite has become a proper anime and
it just makes sense to try to please the
people who've read the manga and have
been waiting decades for that kind of
adaptation but whenever studio madhouse
is able to put its own stamp on the
series it really sings and it would be
amazing if the whole show could be like
that when I look at this scene I see
parasite coming this close to being a
perfect modern reimagining of an older
story instead of just a really really
good anime adaptation
fortunately parasite isn't the only
manga about a lone young man fending off
an invasion of transforming monsters
masquerading as humans using powers that
he borrowed from those monsters and
masaaki yuasa was allowed to fully
update devil man for his 28 teen
adaptation cry-baby
if parasite the Maxum adds
layers of modernity on top of its
original source material then devil man
crybaby mixes them into its very
foundations its principal characters are
all modern-day teenagers with varying
degrees of social media presence and it
often uses internet broadcasts where the
original would have used TV or
newspapers instead but that's really
just the tip of the iceberg social media
isn't just an element of crybaby's story
it's the catalyst for it it acts as an
accelerant poured on the embers of human
paranoia and violence to turn them into
a raging wildfire that consumes well
everything a single bit of concerning
misinformation that's never properly
fact-checked by anyone spreads like a
virus and kick-starts the end of the
goddamn world and the semi anonymous
nature of open online forums just ends
up multiplying people's mistrust of one
another while removing all empathy from
the equation despite looking like a
monster akira is able to really connect
with a group of humans and stop them
from hurting each other but only when he
talks to them face-to-face meanwhile
Mickey's heartfelt pleas to the Internet
are met with rage further distrust and
ultimately she gets turned into a
lollipop devil man crybaby uses the
themes and ideas at the core of the
original work of how violence is part of
human nature and we have to fight our
own worst instincts to avoid destroying
ourselves and finds a modern context in
which that message is arguably more
relevant than it's ever been it says
something about a kind of society that
gonna guy could have never even imagined
when he wrote devil man yet it does so
in a way that's perfectly in keeping
with everything devil man is about and
that is what I want to see from well
pretty much any adaptation because all
art is a product of its time and place
and any updates to or translations of
that art need to be made in
consideration of the new time and place
that it's being made for in addition to
whatever new medium the work is being
rendered in but it's especially
important when you're dealing with older
properties that doesn't mean you always
have to change everything about a story
though I mean to go back to the subject
of my last video the Jojo anime works so
well in part because it embraces
the anachronisms of jojo as a period
piece rejecting almost any kind of
modernization and there is definitely a
place for real throw backs like oshio
and torah and more recently megalo box
which feel like the kind of old-school
anime that they just don't make anymore
and sometimes needless modernization can
even create continuity problems for a
series like cow it's kind of weird that
when Cardcaptor Sakura is in elementary
school it's a really really big deal
that Madison can afford a big ugly brick
cell phone and then two years later in
clear card everyone has a smartphone
same goes for the new series of lupin
though i think it works a bit better
there regardless it's still something
that you have to really think about with
any adaptation or even a localization
project because if you don't you can end
up spending hundreds of millions of
dollars to say absolutely nothing of
value about anything and at worst even
end up subtracting meaning from the
original text even if you end up going
with a totally faithful adaptation of an
older story it still pays to consider
ways that it could be updated because
that can help you determine whether the
original work has a message and themes
that are still timeless and resonant now
and how to best draw those themes out
without fundamentally changing the
setting or story if you're working with
this kind of adaptation you need to
always be thinking how can I make this
relevant to people today or by the same
token what is at the core of the foreign
themes of this piece that I can make
resonate in my country neither is an
easy question to answer but if you can
answer them you'll be a long way toward
making something that's actually worth
people's time this way of thinking is
especially important when it comes to
adapting sci-fi works like parasite and
on that note book Walker has a Kodansha
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let me know in the comments below what
other seemingly small scenes from anime
have stuck with you over the years and
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mother's basement content every week i'm
jeff thew professional [ __ ] signing
out from my mother's basement