These last two episode had a different way of opening the story than most Mushishi episodes do. Mostly, it Ginko meets up with person, person explains case, Ginko tries to solve. Or something in that direction. Last episode, however, Ginko was already aquainted with the main character, giving a nice twist. This episode, the creators carry this even further, by not letting Ginko and the main character meet until thee quarters of the episode have already been passed.
The first half of the episode tells the story of a man who moves from the countryside to the city in order to become a famous painter. He succeeds, but he becomes so engulfed in his work, that he starts to forget his old family, and finally ends up in stress. As ten years pass since he left his village, he becomes more and more nostalgic, however, wanting to meet his father and sister again. Finally, a combination of stress, doctors and homesickness manage to convince him to go back. The sighting of him returning, and seeing what happened to the place he grew up in, was just too sad to see, I loved it. And this was just the first half of the episode.
The second half features that man staying in the village. He’s lost all of his inspiration, as if all the life has been sucked out of him. When he gets to take care of his niece, he brightens up a bit. But still, he’s got no trace of liveliness inside of him. Then he has a rather “peculiar” meeting with Ginko and with the help of some mushi, he gets his energy back. It was very entertaining to see that this time, the mushi weren’t causing any problems, but were rather helpful to the cast. The effect of this is wonderful. I also loved Ginko in this episode, especially when he shows his “merchant”-side and his strange meeting with the mushi. That shows that even Mushishi work themselves into a lot of trouble.
I also love the way some of the episodes feature some variation of an epilogue. Like they show what happens after a few years passed. This way, the impact on what happened before becomes huge, with magnificent results. When normal anime does this, the main focus lies on the present, while a couple of flashbacks show what happens in the past. This is cute and nice and all, but it doesn’t really capture the impact created by these moments. When these anime do try to show aftermaths, they almost always show the direct aftermaths, in the range from a couple of hours to a couple of days at maximum. It really doesn’t give the characters the true opportunity to recover from it.
