- For the original human, see Nobuko Izumi.
| Nobuko Izumi | |
|---|---|
|
| |
| Personal statistics | |
| Name | Unknown |
| Gender | Female (host), briefly one male host |
| Status | Deceased |
| Species | Parasite |
| Characteristics | |
| Eye | Brown |
| Hair | Brown |
| Series statistics | |
| Anime debut | Episode 5 |
| Manga debut | Chapter 11 |
| Image Gallery | |
The unnamed female parasite who killed and took over the headless body of Nobuko Izumi (Shinichi Izumi's mother) and impersonates her. Due to a car accident, her original host body was fatally damaged and she swaps host twice to try to survive. She stabs Shinichi in the heart while looking for Nobuko's husband and witness to her death, Kazuyuki Izumi, and is killed later on by a tag team of Shinichi and Mamoru Uda.
Appearance[]
Her original host (right) and the man who becomes her second host (left).
Her initial appearance is a woman with brown hair.
Her second appearance is a man she had been riding with, has black hair.
As Nobuko Izumi, she is a fair-skinned woman with short brown hair, brown eyes, and a distinctive burn scar on her arm. Notably in the anime, due to her attack which cut part of Nobuko's hair in the process, her mimicry of Nobuko also has the uneven trim.
Personality[]
She appears determined to kill any witnesses, traveling from one city to another and back simply to find Kazuyuki Izumi so she can eliminate him. However, she is also predictable and straightforward, attacking both Shinichi Izumi and Mamoru Uda by aiming only for their hearts and assuming that they would be dead after one strike without waiting to see them die or finishing them off.
She has some poor understanding of basic human information; she assumed that male and female bodies were similar, and had no familiarity with seat belts. Otherwise, she is a fairly generic parasite.
Plot[]
The parasite realizes that her host body's vital organs are damaged
The parasite is first seen in a car with a human man who had picked her up in hopes of a one-night stand where the man plans to mate with her, though she plans to eat him. She displays unfamiliarity with the function and usage of a seat belt, which distracts the man and causes them to drive off a mountainside road.
The parasite is about to cut off the man's head.
The parasite relocating to the man.
Her host body's vital organs were badly damaged, but the man had been wearing his seat belt, so he was mostly unhurt, she decides to decapitate him and transfer to his body.
The parasite being rejected by its male host.
However, she is unable to control his body's reproductive organs and wets herself, which in the manga gets her kicked out of a truck. She walks further along the road until the male host body starts rejecting her, and that she must find a woman to transfer, assuming a female host body would accept her.
The parasite attacking Nobuko.
At a cliffside, Nobuko and Kazuyuki discuss the vacation as well as how Shinichi might be doing without them. The parasite spots Nobuko and decided to come up behind them. Kazuyuki tries to warn her to no avail as she is swiftly decapitated as the parasite relocates herself and transfers onto her headless body, imitating Nobuko's face.
Kazuyuki falls over a cliff out of the parasite's reach which prompts her to hunt him down.
The female parasite controlling Nobuko's body.
She visits the hotel they stayed at, pretending to be Nobuko, then heads to their home and finds Shinichi.
Shinichi stabbed by the parasite that took over his mother's body as a host.
She stabs him while he is conflicted with Migi about defending himself from her. Later, after she had made her way back to the original city she came from, she detects Uda and Jaw (still named Parasite), and follows them to a cliff. She is surprised at having to find two and calling them "failures" as she plans to attack them.
Later, after she had made her way back to the original city she came from, she detects Uda and Jaw (still named Parasite), and follows them to a cliff. She is surprised at having to find two very similar to Shinichi and Migi as she called them both "failures" while planning to attack and kill them.
Jaw defends him, but due to his position Uda is unable to breathe through his mouth, which leaves him and Jaw at a disadvantage from lack of oxygen. Shinichi arrives in time to see the parasite stab Uda in the chest, and Uda topples over the cliff.
Shinchi battles against the parasite whose host body is his own mother.
Despite Migi's dormancy, Shinichi manages to overpower the parasite due to his rage and his new superhuman abilities and prepares to kill her. She brings up her hand in defense, showing Nobuko's burn scar and causing Shinichi to bring down his guard enough for her to recover.
Nobuko's headless body falls in the ocean.
She prepares to kill him, but Jaw sneak attacks her from behind and successfully decapitates her as Nobuko's headless body fell into the ocean, explaining that because she had been conspicuously aiming at Uda's heart Jaw was able to shift his internal organs out of the way before she stabbed him. Uda tells Shinichi that no child should have to kill their own mother.
The Parasite dying.
Impact[]
It cannot be overstated the impact this parasite has on Shinichi in two sudden acts. By killing his own mother, she gives additional motivation to one of the men most in a position to do direct damage to her kind. His grief and trauma and how he deals with them at any given moment shapes the Shinichi's life from then on.
It colors all of his interactions with Hideo Shimada, causing Shinichi to be more suspicious and aggressive. It causes him to become more proactive in fighting parasites in order to protect his loved ones. It colors his reunions with Ryoko, filling him with disgust and rage at her apathy towards her own child until she too sacrifices herself.
By fatally stabbing him, she forces Migi to act creatively in a way that ends up making him stronger to the point he can go toe to toe with most parasites without any assistance from Migi who went dormant.
Shinichi furthermore develops the ability to calm very quickly from extremely high levels of stress, though he temporarily loses the capacity to cry from grief.
Abilities & Powers[]
Being a parasite, she can shapeshift from the head up and and harden her cells for offensive or defensive purposes,as well as detect other parasite signals and automatically emit her own. She can also maximize the host body's physical potential and disregard pain.
In the anime, she is the only parasite seen to imitate an inorganic object (Nobuko's heart shaped hair clip).
The scar on her host's hand causes Shinichi to hesitate and refuses to kill her.
Since her previous host's body and Nobuko's body are female, she can mate with male humans or parasites to conceive, get pregnant, and give birth to a human child.
Weaknesses[]
Like all parasites, she requires a host body with functioning organs to survive, and would die if she were separated from the body or it was fatally damaged. Fire can cause her parasite cells to "freak out", making her lose control. She is also susceptible to poisons or caustic chemicals, which would either kill parasite cells on contact or make her host body fail.
Her lack of imagination and predictability made it possible for Jaw to prevent her from fatally wounding Uda and sneak attack her in turn.
Trivia[]
- In the movie Parasyte: Part 1, the parasite that takes over Nobuko Izumi's body is A .