Mushi-shi: Volume 6

Introduction

They say all good things come to those who wait. They never said anything about the better a thing, the longer the wait, although that probably explains the nine months between volumes 5 and 6 of Mushi-shi. It's one of the few advantages of an episodic anthology show over a serial, that there's no ongoing story or cliffhangers to put up with. But, when a show is as good as Mushi-shi, you really do want to get your hands on them all. The wait has been agonising, and not even Katsuhiro Otomo's live action adaptation could do anything to sate my need. But now I face a bleaker prospect. This is the final volume; there is no more Mushi-shi to follow. I face a gaping hole in my anime viewing with nothing to fill it.

Spooks and spectres figure strongly in Japanese folklore, there is a strong sense of spirituality and communion with nature that resonates all the way to modern entertainment, and it's no surprise that Hollywood is now aping many Eastern horror films in order to breathe life into the putrid corpse of their entertainment industry. Naturally this fascination with the supernatural is a strong source of inspiration for manga and anime, and scarcely a year goes by that there aren't ten or so such spooky series debuting in the UK market alone. You would think that with the abundance of vampires, ghosts, demons and spirits that there would come a point when the average anime fan would have seen it all, and would have nothing left to gain from yet another such series. But then Mushi-shi turns up for review, unlike anything I have seen before, and offering a new perspective on the supernatural.


Mushi are the most primitive of life forms. Elusive and ethereal, and existing since time immemorial, they have come to be the cause of many superstitions and supernatural legends. Ginko is a Mushi-shi, a Mushi Master. He travels the country investigating these odd creatures, and helping those people who, for good or ill wind up interacting with them. The final four episodes are presented in this concluding sixth volume, released by Revelation.

23. The Sound of Rust
Walking through a winter landscape, Ginko hears an odd distorted cry for help, and it leads him to a village afflicted by rust. Wherever he looks, there are red patches of decay, and it's even on the villagers, slowly crippling them all. He learns that it has been that way for 14 years, and most of the villagers blame a mute girl named Shige, who was born at the time the disease started. But the villagers don't see the rust; they only feel the effects of the disease. The only people who see the red corrosion are Ginko, and as it turns out, Shige. Shige's has been silent all this time for a simple reason; it's her voice that draws the rust. Now Ginko must find a way to solve the problem before the villagers turn against her.


24. The Journey to the Field of Fire
A village on a mountain is in dire straits. A weed has sprung up, born of an unknown type of mushi that is infesting the mountain, killing all other vegetation and slowly destroying the hard work of the local farmers. The village has a mushi-shi though, a woman named Yahagi, who has come up with a drastic slash and burn solution. When Ginko arrives, curious about the mention of a new type of mushi, he counsels her against such a decision, but Yahagi realises it's too late for her village and she's run out of options. She has no idea that the fire she is about to light will burn her in an unexpected way.

25. Eye of Fortune, Eye of Misfortune
Ginko's found his way back to civilisation in his wanderings, and immediately encounters an oddity, a street minstrel earning her keep by singing stories of mushi. She recognises that he's a mushi-shi, grabs him by the arm and steers him to a local inn, where despite his resistance, he's made welcome. When he learns that Amane's father was a mushi-shi as well, he asks to hear more stories. But her conditions are startling. In exchange for her tale, he must take the eyes from her head and bury them in the mountains. He begins to understand when she tells him that his visit has been foretold.


26. The Sound of Footsteps on the Grass
A young boy named Taku is heir to the lands on and around a mountain, and he complains to his father about the people of the mist. They come during the rainy season and stay at the mountain for some arcane reason, and then leave with the rains. His father scolds him for his stinginess. Then one day he meets one of the nomads, a boy named Isaza, and a curious friendship develops between the two boys. They're from opposite sides of the tracks. Taku is heir to land and trusteeship of the mountain, while Isaza's clan follows the river of light and makes a living by selling information about mushi. But they learn they have more in common than they first realised.

Picture

Mushi-shi gets a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer that aside from the odd artefact in the re-edited title sequence is free of any significant blemish. The transfer is as clear and sharp as NTSC-PAL gets, and the colours are lush and striking. This is an anime that takes the breath away in terms of the design and the animation. Mushi are a phenomenon strongly associated with nature, and Ginko's travels take him to rural idylls and isolated communities in forests full of lavish natural colours. The character designs are simple but effective, but the thought gone into the animation takes it to theatrical quality. The limited palette of colours makes for an atmospheric piece, and the realisation of the ethereal mushi is stunningly accomplished. This was perhaps the most beautiful animation that I saw last year. It's still breathtakingly beautiful in 2009 as well.

Sound

You get sound in DD 2.0 stereo in English and Japanese flavours, along with translated subtitles and signs. The audio options are robust and surprisingly effective stereo tracks, with subtle sound design coming through the speakers. The effects reflect the gentle tone of the stories, and the music is atmospheric yet understated. This is a story where the sound of a footstep in snow, or the whisper of a breeze makes more impact than anything strident and obvious. It's certainly one of the better stereo discs, but I wonder how much more effective a 5.1 soundtrack would have been.

Extras

The usual suspects here include a jacket picture, trailers for Girls, both Peach and Hell, and the textless songs, although only one of the end themes is here (Mushi-shi's episodes all get different end themes that suit their particular stories).

The Mushi-shi Production Site Tour lasts 38 minutes, but is perhaps the most ephemeral of the extras that have come with the series. Director Hiroshi Nagahama, armed with a video camera, goes on a tour of all the production studios behind Mushi-shi, and gets quick soundbites from all the staff involved. That's a lot of staff, and a lot of 'it was hard work and great fun' from the respondents. Still, it's nice to put faces to all those names that fly by in the credit reels.


We get our first, and last commentary on the final episode, conducted by ADR director Mike McFarland, and English voice of Ginko, Travis Willingham. It's really more a commentary on the series as a whole than it is a scene specific track. They talk about the feel of the show, the main character and the more notable episodes.

Finally, there are five pages of Mushi-shi manga to look at. I say look at, as reading is impossible with the text so small.

Conclusion

"More of the same" sounds so desultory and average, it's as if a reviewer doesn't have the time, inclination, and simply can't be inspired to write something pertinent about a show he has just watched. If you've read my reviews for the first five volumes though, you will know how much I have fallen in love with this series. The animation is simply beautiful, the soundtrack simple and ethereal, and the storytelling measured and sublime. It's as if each episode is a perfectly constructed tale, unfolding in a leisurely pace, languorously twisting and turning, developing its characters, and then at the end of the twenty-odd minutes, you find yourself affected in subtle ways, entertained, uplifted, moved, and thrilled. Mushi-shi is perhaps the most evocative experience I have ever had with anime. So you can understand that when I say Mushi-shi: Volume 6 offers you more of the same, that's the highest compliment I can pay it.


There's no final narrative surge to the end, no sudden change of pace, no serial story coda. Mushi-shi ends in just the same way as it started and carried on, with four, stand-alone episodes that tell diverse stories based around mushi and the strange effect that they have on the people that come into contact with them. But this is an episodic anthology show, with Ginko the sole character linking them all. Each episode is meant to stand alone, and to expect otherwise would be like expecting The Twilight Zone to have an ongoing arc. Even still, there are moments in these episodes that offer you a little more than the rest of the series, there is something of a crescendo building here, and the series leaves us on a high, hoping for more but supremely satisfied with what we do get.


The Sound of Rust is the most conventional of the episodes in that it follows the established formula somewhat. Ginko finds a community afflicted with an odd form of mushi, and tries to help. The difference here is one on a more emotive level, concerning the villagers' irrational prejudice against the girl Shige, who was born at the same time their affliction began. The irony of course is that she is indirectly responsible for their woes, but having realised that, and through a sense of guilt, has been remaining silent ever since. This time, it isn't the mushi that Ginko has to deal with, rather than the villagers' fears as well as Shige's guilt, which gives this episode a much more human emphasis. Irrational villagers return in the next episode, with a village intent on slashing and burning a mushi-weed from their lands to save their crops, but this episode is more a look at the contrast between two very different mushi-shi. Yahagi is the one who is advocating the drastic action, while Ginko advises caution. It's another example of the examination of mankind's co-existence with nature, and that when man interferes chaos invariably ensues. It also reiterates what the previous stories have indicated, that Ginko is an atypical mushi-shi, one who values life and is consumed by curiosity, whereas most other mushi-shi serve their communities, and regard mushi as some sort of pest. There is the other angle in that with his nomadic existence, never settling down, Ginko has no comprehension of the ties that form between people and the land that they choose to call home.


The penultimate episode brings that touch of melancholic tragedy that this series does so well. Ginko is more of an observer in this story, and he serves as our eyes and ears as Amane relates her tale of woe. It's a classic tale of a blessing turning into a curse, as Amane was blind as a child, and her mushi-shi father heard tell of an elusive mushi called Ganpaku, which reputedly restored sight. Of course mushi are neither benefit nor hazard, they simply are nature, and what at first seemed to be such a gift to Amane turned into something quite sinister. It's a story with an unhappy ending, and Ginko is left uncharacteristically impotent in the face of destiny, but there's something curiously hopeful and uplifting about this episode as well. Ginko is hardly in the final episode, but The Sound of Footsteps on the Grass manages to encapsulate in its short runtime exactly what this series has been about. The story is about the unconventional friendship that forms between two boys, both in their own ways heirs to the stewardship of the mountain where they meet. One is the son of the man who owns the land around and on the mountain, while another is a nomad that follows the river of light as it winds its way through the land, visiting the mountain once each year. The story is all about the part that the mountain plays in the life of the community, again emblematic of the need for mankind to exist with and within nature rather than arrogantly try to tame it. It also reminds us that if we act as careful stewards of the land, then the land will return that favour. As I said, Ginko is hardly in this final episode, but it is a quintessential Mushi-shi episode, and as such ends this series on the perfect note.


Mushi-shi has spoilt me for anime. It's one of those rare television events that come along and simply escape the bounds of its medium. I doubt that it will be excelled, equalled or emulated any time soon, and there is literally nothing else like it out there. I'll have to train myself now to not keep looking for the 'next' Mushi-shi otherwise every such show will be a disappointment. It is the most beautiful, evocative, gentle, and moving anime series that I have ever seen. I'll be rewatching these discs for years, if not decades to come. If you have been as patient as I have, then this final volume will be lapped up. But if you haven't yet sampled the otherworldly delights of Mushi-shi, then be of good cheer as Revelation release a nice shiny boxset on the same day as this final volume. You'll kick yourself if you miss out on this series.