Mushishi

Mushishi is a cool series.  It’s mostly laid back, not intense or fast moving or action-packed.  It doesn’t have cliff-hanger episodes, or leave you wondering if the main character is going to survive.  It’s just a nice series about the travels of a man named Ginko.

The background for this story is that the world that most people see and interact with is not the entire world.  Existing alongside the everyday world, and sometimes affecting it, is a world of “mushi”.  Mushi are generally small supernatural creatures who go about the business of their lives unknown to most humans and uncaring of human concerns.    Occasionally they interact with the human world, and sometimes normal people fall afoul of them.  The interactions between mushi and humans are almost always to the detriment of the humans.  In general very few people can see them or interact with them, but occasionally an action by specific mushi drags one or more humans into it and affects the “normal world”. 

Ginko is a mushishi, a man who can see and interact with mushi.  He travels from place to place, tracking down mushi stories and sightings, and helping people who have crossed paths with them.  Along the way, he collects stories and mushi for a collector friend of his.  Ginko also happens to be a person who attracts mushi himself, so he smokes a type of cigarette nearly constantly.  The smoke from this cigarette keeps the mushi away from him.   This series is the story of his travels.  Each episode is a case surrounding a different type of mushi that he deals with and solves for the people involved. 

This is really a wonderful series, especially if you like calm series with a mystery to them.  It's fun not knowing what type of mushi will come next and how Ginko will deal with it.    Ginko’s interactions with and solutions to the mushi in each episode are interesting and unique.  In addition, the music is awesome, with a new and different background piece for each episode.  I thoroughly enjoyed the series although occasionally I wished they could have spent some additional time on Ginko’s life.  They do go into his background and how he became a mushishi, as well as introducing a very few of his friends.  Mostly the series is the stories of the various mushi though.  

Even though I often like series with lots of action, Mushishi was more than worth spending the time watching.  The plot is definitely unique.  The feeling it gave me reminded me somewhat of Natsume Yuujinchou, in the pace of the plot and the sort of serene feeling it has, although of course it’s not as gorgeous as Natsume is.  Definitely worth the time.