Anime of the decade: #2

Mushishi

Like the creatures them­selves, Mushishi came more or less out of nowhere. A crit­ic­ally acclaimed manga by Yuki Urushibara mostly unheard of out­side of Japan, and Stu­dio Art­land for which this would be one of their first fully pro­duced series out­side of some rel­at­ively obscure OVAs. For it to be so unspeak­ably bril­liant is at odds with com­mon wis­dom; story and sound fuse together to cre­ate an aston­ish­ingly beau­ti­ful vis­ion of Japan. Blos­som­ing with won­der, it is a world that is delight­ful to be lost within: enrap­tured by the crafts­man­ship applied to the smal­lest detail and ensconced within the gentle aud­it­ory landscapes.

“the loss of a child, the desire for the well­being of a com­munity, the sac­ri­fice of one for many — these are the heart and soul of the series”

Com­pris­ing twenty six mostly epis­odic stor­ies, the series fol­lows Ginko: a sil­ver haired nomad and a self-proclaimed Mushishi. Pick­ing up where phys­i­cians may fail, he con­cerns him­self with mushi, a primal and fugacious life force that suf­fuses the world but is often only known through their effects on its inhab­it­ants. Some­times these can be as innoc­u­ous as a liv­ing paint­ing within a kimono, other times caus­ing afflic­tions such as memory or hear­ing loss, but sporad­ic­ally, they can affect entire com­munit­ies whether inad­vert­ently or through the mis­guided aus­pices of humans them­selves. Regard­less, Ginko travels list­lessly from case to case, some­times stum­bling across one and other times cajoled by let­ters which travel through the mys­ter­i­ous mushi roads.

From the mel­an­choly drawls of the open­ing track by Ally Kerr, it is bound­lessly clear that the bois­ter­ous tumult that often char­ac­ter­ises anime is wholly absent here, replaced by abstract pic­tures of sun­light through trees and a woman’s voice fore­tell­ing the upcom­ing story. Col­ours are muted but nat­ur­al­istic, hair col­our rarely devi­ates from nat­ive blacks and browns with instead a keen eye for flesh tones and sea­sonal vari­ations in cloth­ing and scenery. Nature is every­where, whether a tattered fish­ing vil­lage by the sea or a vil­lage tucked away in the nape of a moun­tain; hues and tones reflect this with mar­vel­lous acu­ity, imbuing an earthy and groun­ded aes­thetic to the nat­ive envir­on­ment. Jux­ta­pos­ing this is Ginko, clad in mod­ern cloth­ing and with sil­ver hair and jade eyes he stands out no mat­ter the situ­ation, though he can be con­sidered nor­mal in com­par­ison with the mushi: trans­lu­cent bod­ies and sweep­ing curves are their usual forms but this can vary from a leviathan of the sea to quick­sil­ver sludge. Their prox­im­ity to the root of all things gifts them with a form­less eph­em­er­al­ity that is ini­tially alien but always imaginative.

Sep­ar­at­ing the Mushi from com­mon explan­a­tions such as spir­its or Mother Nature is one the wisest choices made by the series, allow­ing them to oper­ate within their own mythos rather than giv­ing them an over­arch­ing pur­pose — they simply exist, noth­ing more. Ginko’s under­stand­ing of this and his meth­od­o­logy for inter­act­ing with them forms the core ten­ant of his out­look and lets him step out­side the mushi-buster paradigm that he could oth­er­wise eas­ily fall into. As each epis­ode cov­ers a dif­fer­ent set of char­ac­ters and cir­cum­stances, one would expect repe­ti­tion or at least a weak­ness or lack of empathy with the prin­ciple play­ers. This is far from the case and every story builds a rapid and strong rap­port with the char­ac­ters, allow­ing the audi­ence to effort­lessly slip inside their lives and how they have been afflic­ted by the mushi. It is stag­ger­ingly bril­liant writ­ing: each plot is a self con­tained vign­ette of human­ity with all its beauty and ugli­ness, bereft of pre­ju­dice and at the centre is Ginko who brushes against this diverse group with his astute, some­times play­ful, always laid-back attitude.

Mushishi is at its best though when it explores the tit­u­lar mushishi them­selves. Far from being the only one of his kind, a unique sup­port struc­ture upholds the itin­er­ant life­style of a mushishi, whether it is the logist­ical prob­lem of get­ting let­ters to a per­son with no fixed address, to the way mushi research is stored and organ­ised. These stor­ies are rare within the series, num­ber­ing less than five in total, but rep­res­ent the most potent and vivid stor­ies in a col­lec­tion of already stel­lar qual­ity. These insights into the world itself are poignant but fre­quently tra­gic and range from the broken bond between twins to the actions of a pre­de­cessor crip­pling their des­cend­ants. Even rarer still are the dips into Ginko’s past, how he came to lose his eye and the pig­ment in his hair and how someone who preter­nat­ur­ally attracts mushi sur­vived into adult­hood; they are fas­cin­at­ing for their scarcity and judi­ciously used, leav­ing him ample mys­tery but sat­ing the desire to learn more about him.

Des­pite the pos­sib­il­ity, none of the stor­ies are mor­als or cau­tion­ary tales: they preach not of the wicked­ness of man­kind against nature or the hubris of the intel­li­gent and only tell a story without judge­ment. Ginko is as flawed as any of the other prot­ag­on­ists, often mak­ing mis­takes or break­ing sup­posedly car­dinal rules — his some­times cheeky sense of humour is the source of much of the light­hearted­ness the series has to offer. His modus operandi how­ever is the puzzle; his drive for know­ledge second only to his desire to aid people, whether it is look­ing over the lore of mushishis past or stead­ily dedu­cing the best pos­sible course of action, his fer­vour for under­stand­ing is what moves him for­ward, some­times to the excep­tion of per­sonal rela­tion­ships by those that would rather him settle. What the stor­ies do achieve how­ever is an acute sense of time, whether it is the months between a fol­low up or simply hear­ing the out­come of one of his cases, coupled with the chan­ging sea­sons the sense of pro­gres­sion is palp­able. Odd then that almost each story is, in its purest form, time­less; des­pite the kimonos and the rural set­ting, most stor­ies are human in ori­gin and the mushi are simply a cata­lyst — the loss of a child, the desire for the well­being of a com­munity, the sac­ri­fice of one for many — these are the heart and soul of the series, not the mushi themselves.

In the dec­ade past, there has not been a series quite like Mushishi. It owes much to its source mater­ial, but while there are bet­ter anim­ated shows, there is not one with such an exquis­ite sound­scape. Gentle rhythms and quickened beats, it never over­powers and always enhances, coax­ing one into the sub­lime sen­sorial rev­erie the series deftly cre­ates. The paint­erly back­grounds are evoc­at­ive and unique to each story, just as the end­ing tune is. Without a doubt Mushishi is one of the premier series of past ten years and will be a con­sidered a mas­ter­piece of the highest form long after­wards. Poignant, emotive and under­stated, to have exper­i­enced it is to have sampled heaven.

Vitals

First aired: 23 Octo­ber 2005
Fin­ished air­ing: 19 June 2006
Epis­odes: 26
Avail­ab­il­ity: DVD — Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, United Pub­lic­a­tions (UK)
Ref­er­ences: MyAnimeL­ist, Wiki­pe­dia, AniDB, Anime News Network

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