Mushishi

Note: This review is for both Mushishi and Mushishi Zoku Shou 2nd Season.

This anime got introduced to me by one of my friends who participated in a hackathon with me; and man, it was quite enjoyable.

“Mushishi” is great not because of its relatability, or visuals, or soundtrack, or anything like that. It follows a man, known as a “Mushishi”, investigating and fixing supernatural phenomenon that occur due to an equally supernatural existance known as “mushi”, something that co-exists with humanity (albiet invisible to the human eye) that sometimes causes problems to humans due to their nature.

It’s the most fundamental unit of existance, so who can blame them for eventually causing problems to humans, a complex result of existance?

When these problems occur, the person to find would be a “Mushishi”. Every episode is like a new story, unfolding supernatural events that may or may not have a good conclusion. To me, this method of storying-telling would only work in specific scenarios, and one of these scenarios is when the world told by the anime starts of as a complete unknown; nothing is said about how the world works, and the user is just left to feel it.

Characters are introduced only when necessary, keeping the pool of characters as small as possible, and most of them are ephermeral, meaning that they are only relevant for that particular episode’s story. The only characters that make it across multiple epiodes have significant impact on subsequent stories, which reduces the possibility of the viewers getting confused between characters, ruining the anime.

The visuals and sound effects are quite on-point; meaning that they aren’t the best, but they get the job done well.

If you haven’t watched Mushishi yet, do add it to your watchlist; and watch it as soon as possible!

Happy Coding,

CodingIndex