I haven’t been blogging Mushishi even though I’m one of the few people keeping up with it each week because it’s one of those shows I’d much rather soak up then write about. But after the latest episode caused my mind to wander one too many times, I think it’s time I put my foot down regarding how it’s been going.
Suffice to say, I’m not very impressed with this second half of Mushishi Zoku. There’s been three episodes that I’ve legitimately enjoyed (the time-travel tunnel, the shadow one, and the sea of stars) and I sorta remember the one that focuses on Ginko’s past, but otherwise everything else has been completely forgettable. Why is that? Well in order to answer that, let’s look at the basic criteria I set for my usual enjoyment of anime, movies, books, life, etc. that I discussed with the latest Bahamut episode.
Now obviously Mushishi has never been one for laughs beyond the occasional “Ginko is hot” joke, nor the so seriously stupid it’s laughable humor that the latest Psycho-Pass has been partaking in, but the first season and the first half of the second season have really coasted by on being insightful as well as being a visual feast. Is the second half of Zoku not fulfilling that itch? Well…no it’s not. Mushishi still has all the right elements that made its best episodes so fun to watch, but it’s coming off more like TM8.0 than it is Haibane Renmei.
What I mean by that is that despite the fact that every visual is shot with purpose in order to convey a message through horror means and every individual story is conflict-driven, the messages/themes are starting to become too simplistic for my taste and thus my brain isn’t getting challenged. To dig even further, it’s become too much of a generic “problem of the week” show, focusing too much on the characters’ problems and not enough on why I should care about said problems with the only difference being that it’s set in the Mushishi world. Some people have different criteria for how a character should be interesting or why we should care about said problems. My criteria is that the problem has to be related to something I find fun to analyze, and usually what I find fun to analyze is something that’s big in scope as long as it’s not Star Trek-related.
Take for example, the latest episode. It consists of Ginko meeting a family that consists of a single mother and a kid with webbed features. We see the kid get bullied, we see the kid go through some acceptance, we learn about the kid’s troubled history regarding his birth, and then (spoilers) he dies and becomes part of nature itself. Sounds pretty cool as Mushishi is wont to be, right? I’m going to go against what I assume to be the majority and say no, because on the surface, that’s kind of typical for Mushishi’s formula. What makes something like the episode where the woman always made it rain wherever she went isn’t just her suffering, but that it tells me something unique about humanity and nature’s cruel unrelenting behavior. And don’t get me wrong, the symbolism is present in the latest episode as well, but considering I’m one of those people who thinks you can find symbolism in anything, even utterly dull crap like Fortune Arterial, that’s not saying much. It’s all down to the symbolism’s strength, and this iteration has been getting pretty weak in regards to something it used to hold so strongly.
The kid’s issue basically boiled down to his body has been a part of a water mushi since birth and he’s destined to become a part of nature as a result without much else to it. It’s just a typical tragedy story with a mushi (and Ginko himself) attached to it rather than a typical tragedy story that really gets into the heart of the mushi world or even get Ginko to do more than lay out exposition. Everything that’s meant to give flavor is being pushed too far into the background for it to be effective. And just to hammer the nail in, the show hasn’t been instilling fear into me either, which is pretty damning considering this is a show where a kid dies through his body evaporating into thin air. Like I’ve hinted, this isn’t just related to the latest episode either. These core issues have been plaguing Mushishi Zoku ever since that double-episode aired a few months ago and it hasn’t recovered from it at a consistent rate.
- And of course, the visuals are nice. But after watching that for over 40 episodes, it gets stale to look at if you don’t change the style every now and then, so that’s not much of a positive anymore.
- Plus, I miss the English dub. I don’t care what you guys say, Roy Mustang as Ginko is hilarious.
Basically, Mushishi is starting to run into that classic “overstaying its welcome” problem that plagues many shows – particularly if they’re light novel adaptations. The conflicts are still there, but the reason why I should care about them is starting to disappear, and I probably would have dropped the show if it wasn’t close to ending because it’s not even being bad in a way that’s refreshing. It’s just kind of lacking, and I can’t summon any energy for lacking. Overall, the anime is still good, but it’s just not as fresh as it once was and I pray to god nobody tries to milk out more of this after the season is over the same way those Adult Swim bumblef*cks tried to milk out another season of The Boondocks without McGruder’s output.