When we left Shinichi (Sometani Shota) and his inseparable parasite companion Migi at the end of Yamazaki Takashi’s Parasyte Part 1 (Kiseiju), the alien organisms who had found human hosts in the city of Higashi Fukuyama were not only slaughtering random humans for food, using tentacles that snapped like whips and cut like knives, but organizing for what looked to be a take-over of the planet, with City Hall as a base and the newly elected mayor (Kitamura Kazuki) as a plausible sounding, creepily smooth frontman.
How can one high school kid, albeit one with parasite-like fighting powers (courtesy of Migi), hope to stop them? But Shinichi, bent for revenge over his mother’s death, goes out fearlessly to hunt for parasite prey, while his sweet-but-feisty girlfriend Satomi (Hashimoto Ai) fears that he is slipping away from her, in more ways than one. Shinichi himself is disturbed by the changes he senses. Is he doomed to devolve into a one-of-a-kind hybrid – human in appearance, but an emotionless parasite at heart?
Meanwhile the police, led by an intrepid SAT (Special Assault Team) leader (Toyohara Kosuke) and a grizzled police inspector (Kunimura Jun), battle an enemy that is hiding in plain sight in human guise. They find an unlikely ally in a wild-haired, dead-eyed serial killer (Arai Hirofumi) who has the psychic ability to tell human and parasite apart. But parasites have evolved into formidably scary forms, with the most menacing being Goto (Asano Tadanobu), a fighting parasite who can split and attack in ways mere bullets can’t stop.
Based on Iwaaki Hitoshi’s best-selling manga, the film seems headed toward a big, explosive showdown between the cops and Goto and his minions, but Yamazaki and co-scriptwriter Kosawa Ryota complexify this generic story line with a question not often found in alien-invasion flicks: What if the parasites can also grow and change? Instead of single-mindedly trying to devour and dominate humanity, what if at least some of them wanted to co-exist?
Their exemplar is Tamiya Ryoko (Fukatsu Eri), the smartest of the aliens, who has given birth to a human baby and begins to see it as more than an interesting experiment. She also realizes that, as weak and helpless as humans appear when faced with the flashing tentacles of a hungry parasite, they can be dangerous indeed when united in a common purpose: the survival of their race. And even one lowly journalist (Omori Nao) can become fearsome, first with the power of a few revealing photos and later with a father’s heart-stricken rage.
As this life-or-death drama plays out, the film’s real battleground, we see, is Shinichi’s soul. This glint-eyed parasite hunter finds himself in the difficult, life-threatening role of peacemaker and protector. He even develops a real attachment to his – attachment, Migi (voiced by Abe Sadao), who proves to be a resourceful fighter and loyal companion, one-eye or no.
This may sound somewhat soppy, but Sometani Shota, who proved he was adept at both comedy and action in the first film, handles the second’s even more melodramatic scenes with all-out commitment, but without going embarrassingly overboard. Also, Asano Tadanobu, as the take-no-prisoners Goto, provides a bracingly chilling counter to the film’s “What can’t we all get along?” rhetoric, as does Arai Hirofumi as the serial killer, though he is hardly the first to play cold-blooded murder as a private joke.
What is the film’s final take away? Not one found in the usual Hollywood alien sci-fi pic, with its us-versus-them storyline. Instead, the message is that all of us, human and parasite alike, are living products of the same universe, facing many of the same survival problems, if not solving them the same way.
But when a parasite wants to make you so much dead meat – or dinner – the light of cross-species understanding will only penetrate so far. Better to have a good right hand, with two sharp blades.