There's a lot of damned good horror Manga out there, and for a couple of months I've had my eye on a series called Parasyte. It had me at "You...are...food..."
It's a proper gorefest - within the first few pages you have a guy whose head splits clean open to reveal an unholy cross between The Thing, the Predator and one of those messed-up things from Pan's Labrinth, which proceeds to bite his wife's head off and eat it.
However, despite the gore and high body-count of this series so far, it also manages to be a strangely touching story. The protagonist is a high-school student called Shin, who was infected by an alien parasite but managed to prevent it from invading past his arm. In consequence, he has a sentient alien being in place of his right hand, who takes the name of Migi.
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| Just a normal guy, and his alien-parasite hand |
Once Shin realises that he's stuck with Migi, a strangely touching relationship unfolds. Migi (translation of Japanese for "right") knows instantly that he's failed to occupy the brain - the goal of the invading species. Being a parasite, he relies on Shin for his food, and Shin begins to rely on Migi to defend him...
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| So sweet... just like that thing from Flight of the Navigator. (Apart from the hand-eating...) |
