[Spoilers ahead, obviously]

I started off enjoying Parasyte. It has an interesting premise and as far as thrillers go, the concept of losing control of part of your own body to another being is inherently deeply mortifying. Bodily autonomy comes as an expectation of living as a sentient being, and there's a certain degree of fear that comes sheerly just from that aspect alone. Watching the relationship between Shinichi and Migi form with the juxtaposition of chaos and bedlam going on as a result of the parasites allows for a really intriguing and horrifying form of contrast. That being said, at the same time you begin to feel sympathetic for Migi and by extension his entire kind the show turned their intention into a political message, and at that, a flawed one.

The show, consequently, all but entirely lost me at this point.

If you're going to try and do some form of redemption arc for the antagonistic faction of any form of media, doing so off of the premise of ecofascism is a (putting it lightly) bad way to do so. Though the ideology hasn't been used in full in any country, its routes are the same as those that have inspired mass murder and policies which resulted in the deaths of a good number of people. The show tries to make viewers sympathetic for the parasites by justifying their actions in a fake-deep, sanctimonious attempt at a Joker-esque mantra of "What if the real monster was society all along?" And though that may work coming from a different angle regarding power dynamics and circumstance, trying to play off mass murder by saying "oh, you eat chicken and overcook your planet by having too many babies" doesn't exactly work. Nor is it strictly factually accurate.

A thriller routed in environmentalism is entirely possible to pull off, and given how real of a threat that is, it could make for something that could truly shake its audience to their very core. Parasyte took this opportunity and instead used it to misplace blame for the degradation of the ecosystem on the actions of humans as individuals. If you found yourself agreeing with the points made regarding how humans are the ultimate evil and that overpopulation is the real villain, I truly do recommend reading up on the harm of ecofascism. There are people who are a lot more intelligent and well-read than I regarding the topic.

Needless to say, this decision made the media somewhat insufferable to watch. I frankly only continued to the end of this car crash to see if the show would try to redeem itself and, unfortunately, it did not. I will, however, say that the animation itself was quite good and the sheer fluidity of the monsters added an extra layer of horror.

Tl;dr, the show starts off really good (though a little corny at times), but completely lost me with the shoddy attempt at making a political message regarding the environment. Though there are ways to properly execute this, Parasyte instead takes the route of promoting a demonstrably harmful ideology.