"Someone on Earth just happened to think, 'If the human population was halved, how much forest would not be burnt down....?'"
"Someone on Earth just happened to think, 'If the human population was reduced 99%, would the amount of toxic waste be reduced 99%....?'"
With those lines this story starts. One may be lulled into thinking that this story will end up being some low rate ecological sermon with its key story element being a set of monsters that happily chop up humans to make the planet over all more enjoyable. The art on the cover of the first volume tends to reinforce this opinion. It seems rather crude, and while the beginning is somewhat novel, it also tends to foreshadow the story's ultimate purpose.
Luckily, this is not the case. KISEIJU is one of those rare stories that starts out rather intensely, and then manages not only to keep this intensity, but also to build upon it all the way through the ten volume run. Fairly rapidly, the story introduces many key plot elements and then instead of petering out about volume five or six, the tension just continues to rise.
The story becomes fairly involved once the reader begins to identify with the characters. How they grow, change, and face very immediate life and death situations forces one to anxiously read each following chapter in rapid succession. Occasionally the story permits the reader a sigh of relief, but the final release from this spell will not come until the rather surprising, gentle-seeming ending.
The basic premise is that about present day, a series of small spheres, approximately the size of tennis balls, fall to earth. We have no idea of their origins, and this will remain a secret throughout the story with some tantalizing hints being dropped from time to time. When these balls land, they crack open and a creature, sort of like a snake with a drill comes out. They seek out an unsuspecting human and then dive in to their ear, or their nose, or just drill through their skin in to their head and eat it.
A word of caution, this series tends to be rather gory and violent although definitely not to the extent of splatter-punk. Once this parasite enters the head, it eats it from the inside out, at the same time replicating the appearance of the head and assuming control over the body.

Shinichi's first impression of Migi. "What happened to my hand?" "I ate it."

Our hero, Izumi Shinichi, is a fairly common, if a bit wimpy high school student. In his case, the parasite is prevented from entering his head because he is listening to music through a set of earphones. Instead, the parasite tries to enter in through Shinichi's nose. Shinichi, who had his eyes closed until this point, instinctively reaches up and yanks the parasite out of his nose and sneezes. It is not until then that he notices what is in his hand and shows his surprise. Reacting quickly, he drops the parasite. It then launches itself towards Shinichi's face only to be blocked by his hand, which it then drills into. Shinichi manages to trap this creature in his arm where it seems to vanish.
Soon the truth comes out: this parasite has eaten and now taken the place of Shinichi's arm. These parasites are rather unusual. They have immense control over their individual cells. They can shape themselves in any fashion, appear as anything, and form blades out of themselves that are razor sharp and then move these blades with a speed greater than the human eye can track. What is their purpose? Despite their fantastic intelligence, they are driven by what Migi (the name the parasite that takes over Shinichi's arm comes to be called) calls an instinct, a program: they must use as a food source the creature whose body they have taken over. These parasites start to do this in a rather gruesome fashion causing a series of what become known as the "mincemeat murders". The name comes from the state the bodies are found in after the parasites are finished with eating them.
Shinichi has to learn to deal with his new partner sharing his body. He can not reveal Migi to anyone because of what may happen to him, he can not let the other kiseiju (the parasites) go on living off of humanity. Since the kiseiju are extremely cold and logical, they go about their programming with what seems a frigid, uncaring

Shinichi and Migi have to work together to fight the kiseiju called 'A.'

methodology. This forces Shinichi and Migi to fight for their lives because whenever they meet another kiseiju, it decides that they are a threat and must be eliminated. Luckily for Shinichi, Migi relies upon Shinichi being alive to support him. Migi cannot be a body on his own. He needs life support from Shinichi's body.
With that setting in mind, we watch Shinichi as he slowly changes too. He becomes stronger, cooler, and more aware of humanity as seen from an observer who is not human. The first novel hits its major turning point when one day Migi declares that a kiseiju is somewhere inside the school. The kiseiju can detect one another's presence down to the direction and distance up to 200 meters away. The kiseiju in Shinichi's school is a new teacher who, instead of just feeding off humanity, has started to arrive at some rather troubling questions as to what put the kiseiju on the planet. They can not be natural for they have no means of reproduction. She considers Shinichi not a threat but an interesting case to study. However, most of the other kiseiju would disagree that Shinichi is worth studying for very long.
The story is compelling because of these questions that get raised. What happens next? What is the point? And what possible ending could this story have? The artwork at first appears crude, unpolished. This however is not Iwaaki Hitoshi's first story. The art gets somewhat finer as the story progresses but it continues to maintain a rough edge. The images present a clarity of what the author wants to focus his readers on. The scenes where the kiseiju are in full action are very breathtaking. It shows how well Hitoshi Iwaaki can capture their deadly speed and alien angles. When a character expresses emotion, that feeling sings. There is an immediately impression of exactly what the character is feeling, everything from an extremely surprised gasp down to a gentle smile with a helpless shrug.
Although currently this manga is only available in Japanese, apparently there is an effort to publish it English in America under the title PARASYTE. If the translation does a decent job, this title will definitely be one to seek out if the English version is a decent effort. It deserves it. Along those lines there is also a rumor that a KISEIJU movie is being made with a very high budget. Although the story would suffer drastically being compressed into ninety minutes, it may still be quite good.

Written and drawn by Hitoshi Iwaaki
Copyright © 1990-1995 Comics Afternoon / Kodansha
10 volume series

The English Kiseiju comic "PARASYTE" © 1997 Mixx Publications Inc.