Why are the episodes named after literary works?


I noticed every episode of Parasyte, with the exception of the last one (which
shares the title of the anime, Parasyte), is named after a literary work:

  1. [The Metamorphosis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis), Franz Kafka

  2. [The Devil in the Flesh](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Diable_au_corps_%28novel%29), Raymond Radiguet

  3. [Symposium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symposium_%28Plato%29), Plato

  4. [Tangled Hair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midaregami), Akiko Yosano

  5. [The Stranger](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Stranger_%28novel%29), Albert Camus

  6. [The Sun Also Rises](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun_Also_Rises), Ernest Hemingway

  7. [A Dark Night's Passing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dark_Night%27s_Passing), Shiga Naoya

  8. [Freezing Point](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayako_Miura), Ayako Miura

  9. [Beyond Good and Evil](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyond_Good_and_Evil), Friedrich Nietzsche

  10. [What Mad Universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Mad_Universe), Fredric Brown

  11. [The Blue Bird](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Blue_Bird_%28play%29), Maurice Maeterlinck

  12. [Heart](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokoro), Natsume Souseki

  13. [Hello Sadness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_Tristesse), Françoise Sagan

  14. [The Selfish Gene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene), Richard Dawkins

  15. [Something Wicked This Way Comes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Wicked_This_Way_Comes_%28novel%29), Ray Bradbury

  16. [Happy Family](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selected_Stories_of_Lu_Hsun#Happy_Family), Lu Xun

  17. [The Adventure of the Dying Detective](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Dying_Detective), Arthur Conan Doyle

  18. [More Than Human](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Than_Human), Theodore Sturgeon

  19. [In Cold Blood](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Cold_Blood), Truman Capote

  20. [Crime and Punishment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_and_Punishment), Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  21. [Sex and Spirit](http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%80%A7%E3%81%A8%E8%81%96%E2%80%95%E6%80%A7%E3%81%AE%E7%B2%BE%E7%A5%9E%E6%96%87%E5%8C%96%E5%8F%B2-%E3%82%AF%E3%83%AA%E3%83%95%E3%82%A9%E3%83%BC%E3%83%89-%E3%83%93%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A7%E3%83%83%E3%83%97/dp/4309230601), Clifford Bishop (this is the only one I am unsure of, since no link is available yet on the [wikipedia page on the anime](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasyte#Episode_list), so I had to do some research)

  22. Quiescence and Awakening

  23. Life and Oath

Why do the episode have these works' titles as their own? Were these
significant pieces of literature for Parasyte's creator?  
Or are the titles somehow related to what happens on each episode? I can see
the relation in the first two episodes, the 5th, the 15th and the 20th. But I
don't recall precisely what events happened in other episodes, so I can't
compare them to the titles (also because I hadn't noticed they were references
before).  
Also related, and may help to answer the other questions: were these titles
chosen solely for the anime or do the chapters (or at least some of them) use
them too?

* * *

**EDIT**

I found a post on
[reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/2tzkye/spoilers_kiseijuu_sei_no_kakuritsu_episode_16/coaclya)
that says:

> And the name of the first episode, Metamorphosis, is writer Hitoshi Iwaaki's
> inspiration for the whole series.

There is no source or reference backing that up, though.  
Just edited that in so that there's at least somewhere to start looking, _if_
the claim in the post is correct.

* * *

**EDIT 2**

The latest two episodes still aren't referenced in Wikipedia, and I have no
idea what work they could be alluding to. If anyone knows what piece of
literature they are a reference to, please edit my post accordingly.




Here's a partial answer pertaining to episodes 21-24.

Recall that the Japanese title of the anime is "Kiseijuu - Sei no Kakuritsu",
or loosely, "Parasyte - the probability of _sei_ ". The title is written in
Japanese with _sei_ in katakana, which is a non-semantic syllabary, rather
than in kanji. This makes it unclear what the intended meaning of the word
_sei_ is, because there are at least 30 different kanji (based on [a quick
look
here](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Index:Japanese_kanji_by_reading/%E3%82%B5))
that can be read _sei_ (and hence around the same number of distinct meanings
for the word), and it is not possible to infer from context which one is
intended.

This ties into the titles of episodes 21-23, which are all pronounced "Sei to
Sei" in Japanese, but using different characters for each distinct _sei_.
Specifically, episode 21 has 性 "sex" and 聖 "holy"; episode 22 has 静
"quietness" and 醒 "wakefulness"; and episode 23 has 生 "life" and 誓 "vowing" (生
"life" is the same _sei_ as in "kiseijuu", incidentally).

These three titles constitute a sort of wordplay, in my opinion. This sort of
homophone-based wordplay is fairly common in Japanese, since Japanese is a
very homophone-rich language, owing mostly to heavy borrowing from Chinese.

I strongly suspect that it is only coincidental that the Japanese translation
of the English book "Sex and Spirit" by Clifford Bishop has the same title as
episode 21 of the anime (judging from the synopses of the book available,
anyway). Given that the book is [only a penny on
Amazon](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0316096067), the interested
reader might like to pick up a copy of it and see if there is, in fact, any
thematic relationship with Parasyte.

This being the case, I do not believe that the titles of episodes 21-23
reference literary works, other than coincidentally. And, of course, there's
no literary reference in the episode 24 title 寄生獣 _kiseijuu_ "Parasyte" -
unless you count a title drop as a literary reference, I guess.

