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To get slightly spoilery, Eve’s goal is to make babies. It’s a little difficult to review Parasite Eve and not mention the other elephant in the room those rape scenes.

#MITOCHONDRIAL EVE PARASITE EVE HOW TO#

From the moment Kiyomi is pronounced dead, until long after Mariko has received her new kidney and is in aftercare, you will know exactly how a kidney transplant is performed, how to look after it, potential complications and how to avoid them, and even how people are matched for compatible kidneys. There are a lot of big names for body parts you never knew existed, and the story breaks it down, step by step, describing every single part of the process for you. At times it’s like you’re reading a medical textbook. The book comes with an appendix of medical papers and sources that Sena drew his research from. Right down to the things you never knew you needed to know. You will know how to perform a kidney transplant by the time you are done here.

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The novel proceeds to spend the first third, that’s 30%, talking about this kidney transplant in full detail. The hospital gets her kidneys, Toshiaki gets her liver. Something is telling him to culture her cells, and while it’s not ethical, kidneys for transplants are few and far between, so an agreement is reached. After Kiyomi is pronounced brain-dead and revealed to have signed up as an organ donor while she was alive, Toshiaki agrees to having her kidneys removed under the condition that he receives her liver. I don’t think there’s a single review of Parasite Eve out there that doesn’t touch on the kidney transplant. It’s an effective way of storytelling, keeping the tension high and allowing the mystery of how all these characters tie together deepen. The story jumps regularly between all of these characters and occasionally time as well, taking us back to various episodes of Kiyomi’s past where Eve made herself known and laid the groundwork that would allow her to achieve her Final Form. Then there’s Sachiko Asakura, Toshiaki’s student who is working on her graduation thesis. Her doctor, Dr Yoshizumi, who still laments the fact Mariko’s first kidney transplant failed for some unknown reason.

There’s Mariko, the junior high student who needs a new kidney. The story is told from the POV of several unwitting players in Eve’s game. Toshiaki is a biological science researcher who works with mitochondria, and it is through him that Eve plans to achieve her goals. The accident leaves Kiyomi brain-dead, much to her husband Toshiaki’s distress. Eve has a plan, you see, and the first and most important part of it involves getting Kiyomi out of the way. The novel opens on Eve, living in a symbiotic relationship within Kiyomi’s cells, causing her to crash her car. Their masters being us, and their potential being the annihilation of the human race. Inside Kiyomi’s cells lives Eve, mitochondria that have evolved over billions of years to become sentient and are now ready to break away from their masters and achieve their full potential. The novel tells the story of a young woman named Kiyomi. Sena knows what he’s talking about, because this stuff is literally what he gets paid for, day in, day out. This is important to keep in mind, because although this is a horror novel at heart, it’s also incredibly well researched and comes at you from a sound scientific basis. Before that, however, it was a novel written by Hideaki Sena, Ph.D., a pharmacologist whose day job consisted of working with mitochondria and conducting various tests on them.

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Parasite Eve is probably best known to western audiences for the video game series released by Square back in the 90s. There are two things you’re going to understand very well by the time you finish Parasite Eve how to do a kidney transplant, and how mitochondria work.

Parasite Eve, by Hideaki Sena (translated by Tyran Grillo)

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