Forget Avatar, Netflix’s Best-Selling Sci-Fi Horror Manga Adaptation Is Our New Hope

Netflix doesn’t lose hope to revitalize the public's faith in the genre of live-action manga and anime adaptations, despite the huge flop of the 2017 Death Note, which received a whole bunch of critics’ claims, and the mixedly reviewed recent Avatar: The Last Airbender, released on February 22 and already renewed for the next two seasons.

Mixing it with the South Korean direction style and fully relying on the asian bet, which worked out successfully in 2021 with Squid Game fever taking over the whole world, the platform is going to drop their new try at manga adaptations, Parasyte: The Grey.

Inspired by a Japanese science fiction horror manga series by Hitoshi Iwaaki, which was already adapted for the Parasyte -the maxim- anime series, airing from 2014 to 2015 with 24 episodes and gaining massive success and iconic status, Netflix’s show will presumably feature not a simple remake, but a new vision of the manga’s lore.

The synopsis, though, remains similar to the original: Parasyte: The Grey is set in a world where parasitic aliens can occupy human bodies and control their brains. However, an unexpected error in the system happens, as one of the aliens fails to enslave Jung Su-In (played by Jeon So-Nee), and the two start to cooperate, sharing the same body.

The series, directed and co-written by Yeon Sang-Ho, famous for his well-received zombie horror Train to Busan, is going to combine body horror, inventive sci-fi and elements of the Korean culture, which can respond to the trend of the last years and attract more viewers and fans of the respective genres, despite prejudice to live-actions.

Besides, it is remarkable that the co-writer here is Ryu Yong-jae, who gained much recognition as Money Heist.

Being Korea’s main screenwriter, he knows how to adapt hyped stories to Korean realities, as the above-mentioned remake of the Spanish series jumped in Netflix’s global chart of the most-watched international TV shows.

It’ll be quite difficult to impress fans of the original manga or its anime adaptation, which already presents an excellent example of the parasites’ story demonstration. However, as Parasyte: The Grey is scheduled to release on April 5, it’ll be clear soon whether it can compete with Parasyte -the maxim-, which is now available on Netflix.

Source: Netflix