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Concept: In a shiny, glossy, near-future hospital, five star medics fight for the lives of Tokyo’s citizens.

First episode: Dr. Kwak Aron spent the first years of his career as an esteemed plastic surgeon. When astronauts from the first mars-landing bring back unknown lifeforms, he turns into the world’s first expert on alien parasites. His new team includes the naive, but opinionated MD Kang Baekho, who never wavers in his conviction that patient wellbeing goes over scientific progress.

The two researchers are often at odds, even when they both want the same thing. When samples of their work show up outside the lab, all their strengths are needed to counteract the culprit’s malicious intentions.

Dr. Hwang Minhyun only just graduated university and is already plunged deep into the world of bio terrorism. Racing against the clock to find cures to carefully engineered diseases, he is lucky if only one crisis springs up at a time.

Despite his youth, Dr. Hwang believes nothing can shock him anymore. Then it turns out, his latest emergency may not be of terrestrial origin.

Therapist Choi Ren becomes the world’s first researcher in the field of psycho-hazards, when his therapy patients turn out to have had their neural implants manipulated by a force beyond human understanding.

The young psychologist dives deeper into the brain of the virus’ victims than anyone has dared before, only to realize it will take more than a single person to get behind the mystery. Before he can do further research on his own patents, new clinical cases with similar brain attacks arrive from all over Tokyo.

Director Kim JR has a tough time running a high tech facility of health and safety on a shoe string budget. Seeing several of his best experts concerned about similar circumstances, he puts two and two together.

Getting them all into one room, it quickly becomes clear that the big picture spells a far worse message than it seemed initially. Then news arrive, of half the government falling victim to a mind virus, of entire towns crumbling under a strange epidemic, and of unidentified lifeforms taking a hold inside people all over the country.

Director Kim won’t be able to retreat to his stack of paperwork. He has to head the crisis team personally. Together, the researchers begin the race for a cure.

And the search for the enemy.

Reception: The first season of 24 episodes follows the manga closely, but rushes through the story with much of the complications removed. In the second season, it focuses in the characters own arcs more strongly, taking liberties with the source material. The latter doesn’t go over well with fans of the manga.

It takes a long time for the third season to be greenlit and the budget reduction is noticeable, but fans swear the writing hasn’t suffered at all. Now largely decouples from its source material, the anime find new places to take the arcs.

Unfortunately the creator studio sees a franchise opportunity and crams more new characters into the show than any fan wants to care about.

Eventually, three OVAs are released, which stick closer to the original formula, in addition to a recut of the first season into a two part movie, which reinvigorates the fandom for a short while.

Everyone agrees, the first season was the best, but opinions on whether the second or third were the anime’s downfall and which creative decision sealed the deal diverge wildly enough to fill several hours’ worth of youtube videos and miles worth of forum pages.

Shipping is a mindboggling affair, with no clear favorites crystallizing at any point. The fans happily ship all possible pairings until “Director Kim / parasite” experiences a quick surge in popularity and the fandom splits off a small, increasingly weird segment, with the majority trying to pretend the former doesn’t exist.