恋する寄生虫

KOISURU KISEICHUU

NOVEL

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
1
RELEASE
September 24, 2016
CHAPTERS
9

DESCRIPTION

The story is about a man whose compulsive tendencies make it impossible for him to keep a job, and a young girl who skips school and loves insects. The two meet, come to support each other in reintegrating into society, and fall in love. There’s a problem, however: namely, the parasites in their heads.

CAST

Hijiri Sanagi
Kengo Kousaka
Urizane
Izumi

CHAPTERS

RELATED TO KOISURU KISEICHUU

MANGA PsychologicalKoisuru Kiseichuu

REVIEWS

paradoxic
100/100
A truly heart-wrenching story between two individuals that suffer from mental illnesses
A man with OCD and parasite loving high-school girl meet, fall in love, and sort out their issues. However, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. Parasite In love is a truly heart-wrenching story between two individuals that suffer from mental illnesses and their struggle to cope with them.

This novel was, honestly, an emotional roller coaster. It starts with a prologue that ties you down right away with a little look at what you're in for, fast-forwarding to a short excerpt found in the following chapters. It illustrates a conversation between the MC, Kengo Kousaka and his apparent first love as they discuss parasites. Needless to say in normal circumstances that would be pretty boring, but the way they correlated the parasite's characteristics with love alongside the way the writer prefaces this conversation, made for a heartwarming introduction to an otherwise melancholic story.

As the story progresses, you follow Kousaka in his endeavours alongside Sanagi to rid himself of his ailments. At an almost daily basis, Sanagi would visit Kousaka and spend time with him and slowly open up to him. As both characters suffer from mental illnesses, they seemed to find common ground with each other, which led to both characters slowly developing trust and eventually becoming reliant on one another to soothe the demons inside their heads. During this part of the story, the writer does astonishingly at conveying Kousaka and Sanagi's emotions and dynamic. Portraying something as complex as social anxiety and depression isn't easy, but the way in which he painted it helps readers understand and connect more with the characters. Full disclosure though I have never been formally diagnosed with depression and my words might not carry much weight, but as the story progressed, you can feel the underlying sadness in both Kousaka and Sanagi alongside the flicker of hope that gradually develops.

" Sanagi painted the colours Kousaka left unpainted, and Kousaka painted the colours Sanagi left unpainted, completing each other's worlds. By doing this, the world stood out more clearly."
-Parasite In Love, Chapter 5.

The way the writer paints the story is nothing short of mesmerising. He mostly uses a third-person limited point of view which allows the reader to experience the characters' emotions from an outside perspective. Often one might look to using the first-person point of view to create greater intimacy between the reader and the characters. However, because the characters have mental illnesses, the first-person point of view will only distort the story as the reader will then only see the world from the MCs twisted perspective. There are also times when he switches to a first-person point of view, providing insight as to how the characters feel from their perspective. The instances at which he chooses to do this is honestly perfect, and I wouldn't have had it any other way. The writer has also clearly done a lot of research into parasites and how they behave, sprinkling a dash of science into a fictitious story.

"You might be right, But it's a mistake to think you're the one who knows yourself best. There are things that you overlook about yourself. Sometimes, what other people see might be closer to the truth."
-Kengo Kousaka

.
Something that might concern readers is the age gap between Kousaka and Sanagi. With Sanagi being a high-school student and underage in most countries (including Japan for the most part), some might consider this relationship to be bordering on paedophilia. The writer, however, does a marvellous job at handling this as he refrains from writing anything sexual, making the romantic aspect of this novel quite wholesome.

Upon reaching the climax and subsequent ending of the story, readers will be pleased to see that this isn't just another romance novel. The twist that the writer planted within the narrative is like a slap to the face and the open-ended ending invites readers' imaginations to run rampant.

All in all Parasite in Love is a very praiseworthy novel. Bringing forth a heavy topic alongside a heart-wrenching romance in a 200-page book isn't easy, even more so when you consider the fact that in those two hundred pages, you are able to connect and sympathize with the characters, standing as a testament to how well-written this is. For anyone looking for a heart-wrenching romantic story, this will undoubtedly receive a strong recommendation.

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moooodie
100/100
Parasite in Love - Unison in Isolation
Before I get into the work itself, I will use this part to somewhat set the tone of this review and give an insight into my mentality writing it.

As of the time I am writing this in the drafts, it has been exactly 2 weeks since I had finished reading Sugaru Miaki’s Koisuru Kiseichuu, which I will be referring to as Parasite in Love from now on to make this easier for me. I had already decided I would make a review on this light novel, weeks before I had initially read it, as I had already read the manga adaptation prior, in which I fell in love with it.

I had struggled trying to handle my emotions in preparation for this review because this became a very personal work for me. This work became a piece of comfort and somewhat of a hard-to-swallow pill after I realized how similar the situation in it was to a recent event I had experienced. I feel if it wasn’t for said event which had left me in despair, I would not have been able to love this work to the extent I do now, as I would not have been able to truly understand how both the protagonists in this story feel.

I pondered on how to approach this review; whether it be from a purely objective, third-person view, or a more emotional and personal stance. I wondered if I should make comparisons to the manga adaptation or strictly keep it light novel. Well I think I’ve managed to find a balance in that. A main goal of this review is to make it comforting for the target audience of this novel, which is something personal favorite reviews of mine succeed in doing, hence I would take a more emotional and personal approach. So in a way this review will appeal more to those who have already read this and had consequently fallen in love with it. Hopefully those looking for an emotional and heartbreaking tale to read will be persuaded by these words to give the light novel a chance.

With all of that out of the way, what mindset are you in going into this work? And for those that have read it, how was your mindset after?

“Being aware of your own abnormality is a feature of this disorder. Those who have it don’t try to “make others understand.” Because they acknowledge they won’t be able to have people’s understanding.”

Have you ever fallen in love? Chances are you have. Did you at one point ever feel the love had control over you, or in better words did you feel that chemical reaction in your brain became the only thing keeping you alive? Still a good percentage of people experience this, but how does such a feeling come?

Parasite in Love is a tragic story stemming from such a question. Two individuals, isolated from people, from their family, from society are brought together and are able to paint each other’s lives. These individuals, suffering from depression, find unison in such, and give each other all those joys they had missed out on all their lives.

This brings the question, why did it have to be him/her? Could have another individual not sufficed in bringing them both their respective joys? Well no. It’s still something I can’t fully understand(even if it’s something I had recently experienced) but it could not have been just anyone. It had to be someone just as broken as them. Someone who was just as isolated, as misanthropic, someone who had been dealing with despair daily all their lives, as it had to be someone who could, from the bottom of their heart, understand, sympathize, and always be there for the other. Opposites do attract, but not in this case. It had to be someone who was also stuck in a hole all their lives, a hole they had given up all hope of on climbing out. When this person would find another person stuck in a similar hole, they would enjoy the view from the bottom of the hole, together.

(Frankly all of Miaki novels I’ve read so far follow this premise of unison in depression, but Parasite in Love was the work I had felt that the most, and resonated with)

Miaki uses parasitology to paint a picture, and symbolize this depression and misanthropy that went on in the novel, hence the naming “Parasite in Love.” ~~It being a purely artistic choice or it being a way of getting the idea better across to readers is something I’m still not sure of.~~ It symbolizes how these isolated individuals got in unison, it shows how this depression, could pass on from one loved one to another, and in the climax, it shows how once this tragic bond is broken, can completely devastate the individuals involved.

The two individuals, Kengo Kousaka and Hijiri Sanagi, are characters you start to understand throughout the story. From the third-person view Miaki uses predominantly throughout the novel to the occasional first-person view to make you understand how these two characters think and feel at a moment helps the reader to connect with these truly broken individuals, they make the reader understand why they’re feeling this way at a certain point, or why they commit certain actions most normal people would not.

These two become support pillars for each other for integrating into society. They make the other person be able to bear with society more, as they now have someone that truly understands and can resonate with them. They’ve become closer than normal couples due to this mutual brokenness, and one can’t help but envy such a warped bond, but also root for said bond to prosper.

The novel also proposes what I consider is the main focus of this work; if there exists such a love between two mentally ill individuals because of said illness, and they are treated, will the love still stand tall? Was the love even genuine in the first place? Miaki illustrates the answer to these questions through these individuals in a way that you can’t help but feel the author himself has been through this.

“So what if it’s an illusion?…What’s wrong with a sham of a love? If I can be happy, I don’t care about being a puppet.”

Sugaru Miaki has not only succeeded, but in my personal opinion has excelled in writing a 9-chapter emotional masterpiece. A tale that had to have been backed up by research on parasitology and a personal understanding of depression, a tale that won’t fail to keep the average romance reader entertained with something deferring from the norm, and a tale that won’t hesitate in making the reader’s heart wrench.

What I consider to be the pinnacle of his beautiful “hole” analogy illustrated in the Afterword to his work “Itai no Itai no, Tonde Yuke”, Parasite in Love shows you how two broken individuals find happiness in themselves and how they could always smile no matter how deep the hole is, as they would have each other.

“…Well, in the end, at least I’m able to have this beautiful sight all to myself”

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