Mushi-shi is a conceptually fantastic and elegant story that challenges traditional tropes and patterns while still using a common medium that anyone could understand. While fighting the paradigm can be an open door to critical acclaim and widespread popularity, the actual enjoyability of the show can suffer for it.
The beginning starts out very strong, with the main character Ginko traveling around this strange medieval-technology land littered with the natural, meddling spirits called Mushi, that very few people can see and even fewer still can deal with. Concepts are creative, execution is relaxing but occasionally unsettling, visuals are, at times, alien and heavy-handed, but they still combine to form a strange, beautiful work that blends in with the natural scenes. It’s easy to be wrapped up in Ginko’s world, because it’s believable and wonderful, like a painting of a forest.
However, when the illusion of realism leaves your dulled eyes and you come out of your Mush-shi induced coma, you may start to realize that despite the show’s ability to steal your time away from you, half of the show is boring drivel that you fail to notice due to distractions.
Flashbacks for context begin to take up a third, or an entire half of certain episodes. Ginko, the titular Mushi-shi, loses relevance and becomes his own deus ex machina. Mushi problems boil down to a set of specific commands that always happen. Here is a formula if you ever want to watch it and see:
That’s the entire show. That’s it. Throw in perhaps 3 flashback episodes of Ginko as a child, and there you have all 49 episodes of Mushi-shi. There is no recurring plot. Every episode is an episodic vignette into some villager or tradesman or Ginko’s life. Even Ginko does not always appear, and often he is not even the solution to the problem.
This brings my main point: Mushi-shi’s focus was, after watching all of it, never on Ginko, never on just humans. It was all about nature, the entire time. Every episode is a metaphor for living with nature, appreciating nature, fearing it, respecting it, maintaining relationships with it. This is not a bad thing, by any means! This is a beautiful point to focus on, and one that needs more attention. It is not sensationalist nor pretentious. It is thoughtful and considerate, kind and profound. But as a relatively long-form show, counting to 46 episodes and 3 special, longer episodes? It becomes very dull at times, and loses some merit as a show. As a novel or comic, it’s understandable that one reading such a contemplative series would want to take his time and seriously consider concepts such as respect of nature. As a show, as something enjoyable, Mushi-shi fails.
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