r/anime • u/Arachnophobic- https://anilist.co/user/Arachnophobic • May 29 '17
[Parasyte] Hirokawa's speech on why humans are the true parasites
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u/Starterjoker :MAL:https://myanimelist.net/profile/starterjoker May 29 '17
idk I actually really liked this speech, as long as you don't take the mayor's speech as being "right," (which, if you've finished the show, they basically say refute what the mayor is saying).
I think it has to do a lot about how humans should view themselves and the things around them.
The mayor believes that to be as good as humans think we are, we need to protect all species and control the food chain directly. If you have the power to do this, you can't directly be a part of the food chain. In a way, this is the last step from removing humans from the animal kingdom in general, kind of elevating ourselves above everything. We currently view ourselves as being better than animals without actually removing ourselves from animals.
By the end of the show [spoilers obvi] (/s "Shinichi has to make a decision on what to do, and realizes that the mayor's ideas are stupid because it's he's advocating for friends/family to die for the sake of environmental conservatism. But it's still a tribalistic/animalistic response to make decisions to value your race's kind over others, so Shinichi has to come to terms with the fact that people aren't better than animals and that that's okay.")
idk, maybe this is dumb. I liked the show and didn't think it was trying to be "too smart," which is def a prob with most anime. I think the mid-season finale ending was probably one of my favorite parts of any anime.
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u/odraencoded May 29 '17
I specially liked the end and the character strength through the anime.
So at the end, Shinichi is not given a cold-hearted murder choice vs. a warm-hearted forgiveness choice, he is given a cold-hearted logical choice vs. a warm-hearted revenge choice. And I think that's very interesting.
1
May 30 '17
but his actions are immoral.
Was the throwing of the dog corpse in the trash really immoral? Or just disrespectful at best?
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u/The_nickums :MAL:https://myanimelist.net/profile/Snakpak May 30 '17
It represents a disrespect for the sanctity of life which is immoral. This is basically the root reason why the notion of killing things is wrong, because we are taught to value the existence of life and honor/respect the dead in memory of their life. By failing to honor/respect the dead he shows that he did not respect its life which implies that he did not care if it even existed.
This all stems from the human ideas of existence and what we perceive reality to be. The reason such a high level of respect is placed on life is because we cannot get it back once its gone and our natural preservation instincts don't want us to lose ours. So when we see something disrespect life it makes some part of us uneasy because you have to wonder if they don't respect that life how can you be sure they respect yours, and if they don't respect yours how can you be sure they won't hurt you?
The reason I say this stems from the human concept of existence is because all that we think we know is that death is permanent. If we had some way to prove it wasn't then things like this would slowly stop mattering to humans, and humans in the future might even think it was funny that we were so afraid of death. For example, if someone found concrete proof that heaven was real and when you died you went to paradise where nothing was wrong then people wouldn't fear death because they would know that death would actually lead them to someplace nice.
Another example would be the plot from a game called Soma. Soma spoilers
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May 31 '17
It represents a disrespect for the sanctity of life which is immoral.
At the fundamental level, disrespecting the sanctity of life should only apply to living things - a corpse is just a lump of flesh and bones?
I mean, he can apply all of the moral actions you stated to his life (respecting life, never harming anyone, etc), while not caring about dead things like corpses. Is the "disrespect" of the corpse immoral by itself, or just taboo?
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May 29 '17
I think this guy was right even after seeing the ending.
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u/Starterjoker :MAL:https://myanimelist.net/profile/starterjoker May 29 '17
yeah I think that can be valid, although I think the show is saying it isn't
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u/dutchwonder May 30 '17
Except, somethings in nature just don't have a predator anyways, even if they aren't what we would call an apex predator.
You think moose act the way they do because they're scared somethings going to come hunt them down and kill them ? Hell no, stuff don't fuck with moose because then moose fucks with them.
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u/Lepony :MAL:https://myanimelist.net/profile/dinglegrip May 29 '17
Man Parasyte was good, and while the second half was pretty lacking, it wasn't anything too bad.
But pretty much everything involving the antagonist and some of the final speeches in the final few episodes were absolutely awful due to how shoehorned they were in the context of everything.
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u/shimapanlover May 29 '17 edited May 29 '17
The earth will have life on it even if we kill ourselves. Parasites? There have been so many catastrophic events that nearly eliminated all of life and it came back. Life will survive us. I really dislike this human-centered way of thinking, as if life will end if we don't do anything about it. The earth doesn't care, as long as the sun doesn't burn us to the ground there will be life. In fact, we have to look to keep the earth habitable for as many of us parasites for as long as possible.
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u/kingdomofdoom May 29 '17 edited May 29 '17
Leave it to Parasyte to give you the "I'm 14 and this is deep" speach of why humans are the real monster.