Parasite Eve Totally Explained

Everything about Parasite Eve totally explained

Parasite Eve is the name of a Japanese novel by Hideaki Sena, first published in Kadokawa Horror Bunko, which has been adapted into a 1997 film and a 1998 video game for the Sony PlayStation by Squaresoft. A sequel to the game was released in 1999, also for the PlayStation.
The story of the novel revolves around a geneticist whose research in mitochondria leads him to take extreme measures to revive his wife, and eventually leads to the creation of a new threat to all mankind. The scientific basis for the story is the endosymbiotic theory, which holds that mitochondria were originally free-living bacteria that coevolved with host cells to become mutually interdependent. Scientists have traced mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited matrilineally, to a single woman in Africa, dubbed "Mitochondrial Eve." This report appeared in "Nature" in 1987. The fictional premise of the story is that mitochondria are able to rebel and to develop unusual capabilities.

Plot summary

The novel opens with Kiyomi Nagishima, wife of geneticist Toshiaki Nagashima, as she's suddenly blinded while driving. When she regains her eyesight, her car is headed for collision with a telephone pole.
   At work, Toshiaki, who has been experimenting with liver cultures, finds out that his wife has had an accident and goes to the hospital. His wife is brain-dead. He agrees to donate her kidneys as she'd wished, but only if he receives a liver sample. A presence, identifying itself as "Her" or "She", has revealed itself to him and suggested this request.
   Meanwhile, Mariko Anzai, a young teenager who received a failed kidney transplant from her father, is told to prepare for surgery. Takashi Yoshizumi, the transplant surgeon, briefly meets Toshiaki, and experiences a hot flash. After removing Kiyomi's kidneys, he heads to the hospital where Anzai is awaiting a transplant. While replacing one of Anzai's kidneys, he experiences yet another hot flash. Toshiaki, experimenting with his wife's liver cells, is enthralled at the life he sees within them. The presence reflects on its long life, an eyeblink of which involved Kiyomi, and it wonders whether it's in love with Kiyomi's widower.
   Anzai becomes withdrawn the entire time she's in the hospital, and has frequent dreams involving the kidney's "true" owner entering her room to claim it. She distances herself from her father and Yoshizumi.
   Toshiaki continues his experiments on the liver culture, including additives that will speed up its already rapid growth. His assistant, a graduate student who has a presentation coming up, sacrifices time to the culture, the presence within being Mitochondrial Eve.
   Via flashbacks, Eve reveals (to the reader) that she's long influenced Kiyomi's life and used her powers to increase Kiyomi's attractiveness to Toshiaki. She had been able to possess Kiyomi, leading her to do things that she couldn't recall such as signing up to be a kidney donor.
   Late one night, Eve possesses Toshiaki's assistant, and at her presentation, reveals itself by saying that the mitochondria are done with humanity, who will make way for a new lifeform. She ignites the assistant who, although she isn't badly burned, then dissolves. A shaken Toshiaki goes back to the research facility, where the Eve culture has formed itself into a likeness of Kiyomi with the telltale smell of the cellular additives.
   Eve forces sex on Toshiaki and flees with his sperm. He realizes she wants the recipient of Kiyomi's kidney, so he goes to the hospital and luckily runs into Anzai's father. Meanwhile, Eve uses her powers to induce spontaneous combustion in all who oppose her, but she leaves Yoshizumi alive. Toshiaki theorizes that mitochondria vibrate at increased speed, and ignite, to explain the combustion ability.
   The disintegrating Eve takes the young Anzai to the morgue, and impregnates her with Toshiaki's sperm. The pregnancy cycle occurs in minutes due to the powers of the new lifeform, and Anzai gives birth as Toshiaki, Yoshizumi, and her father arrive. Eve plans for this new creation to herald the end of humanity and Earth's domination by a better suited lifeform. She rapidly deteriorates into only a head, as the baby is born, which she dubs Eve, like herself.
   The newborn Eve attacks the men using telekinesis to slam them into walls, but suddenly, agonizingly shifts into a male before it can kill any of the men or the younger Anzai. The mitochondrial Eve is confused by this, but she dies. Toshiaki realizes that the mother didn't account for the male chromosome, and the newborn Eve morphs between the two genders. He tells it to come to him, as he's its father, and no child should die alone. He has a feeling of greatness, of what mankind could become, and dies. Afterwards, the father asks for the medical team to let his carcass' hand touch his luckily surviving daughter's kidney, because it seemed he was reaching for it. He thinks he sees a smile on the ruined face.

Reality

In reality, most of the original mitochondrial genome has been lost or transferred to the host cell nucleus. As a result, the evolutionary potential of mitochondria is actually very limited, which is how it was possible to develop the molecular clock required to approximate when the “mitochondrial Eve” would have lived. The concept of a “mitochondrial Eve” is in itself misleading since it doesn't actually refer to a single woman. Instead, the “mitochondrial Eve” is the most-recent common ancestor of all humans alive on Earth today with respect to matrilineal descent. The genesis of the mitochondrion wasn't in humans but in a species thought to be similar to bacteria (see mitochondrion). Regardless, mitochondria can't survive without the constant supply of biomolecules and environment provided by the host cell. While mitochondria are linked to certain diseases and cell death, they can't “rebel”. Also, the concept of rebellion implies conscious action, and even under the most generous terms mitochondria wouldn't be attributed with the level of intelligence required for rebellion, much less the fantastic powers they've in Parasite Eve.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

The novel was adapted into a film, which was released 1997 in Japan, and on Region 1 DVD in 2001.

Video Game

A sequel to the novel appeared in the form of the Square Action RPG Parasite Eve, along with one sequel and a spinoff mobile game.

Further Information

Get more info on 'Parasite Eve'.

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