Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

Holy god. This anime really messes with the rules of common anime. Whereas there normally are a good and an evil party, or sometimes a combination of those two, but still you can bring it down to those two concepts. In Mushishi, it is very difficult to see this mark. The mushi may be causing the problems, but they are also just trying to survive. The same goes in this episode. The mushi, although considered evil in the beginning, are just misused by the humans. And although they may be causing humans to experience those things by dying every day, again and again, they do give the humans a feeling of accomplishment and happiness. Is that evil, or is it good? I also loved the way this episode ended. I’m a big fan of endings that aren’t totally happy, but still not entirely full of despair. This episode covered it perfectly. At the beginning of the episode, I did have some doubts though, but they were all washed away once the end theme started.

Hmm, not as good as the previous episode, but still, this episode moved me again. We have a girl being sacrificed to stop the flooding of a village, but then she gets rescued by a large green mushi, in the form of a travelling swamp. Her hair turns green, and she doesn’t want anything other than to stay with the swamp, while the swamp is actually on its way to die at the sea.

I like the way this anime doesn’t try to impress us with fast pacing and lots of action to make the character keep watching. It just calmly tells the horrifying stories the characters have to tell, and that’s the power of this anime.

I’m also curious if the creators will introduce an overall storyline in one of the following episodes. If they don’t, well then that’s fine with me. I’m happy enough with all the individual stories. If they do, however, this can become just as interesting.

And a final note to self: get the soundtrack once it comes out!

Another very interesting, unique series. Rather then having a couple of protagonists and antagonists chasing after each other, or something like that, this anime follows some guy, who knows a lot about creatures called "mushi". Normally mushi and humans can live along with each other pretty well, but there are cases in which they clash. The humans in question then begin to develop strange, supernatural symptoms. This guy then comes as a kind of doctor, to solve this.

It doesn’t really sound impressive, but it works actually pretty well. I’m also happy that every episode doesn’t have the "ooh, everything is fine and solved now, we can happily live our lives again, nothing has changed" – ending. After each episode, the mushi leave their trace.

This time, the mushi make a random guy having his dreams turned into reality, and thus killing off his entire village. It can’t get any better than this, can it? >:)