Another brilliant story. This time it focused even mre about the delicate relationship between humans and Mushi. In most episodes, the Mushi-incidents are just coincidental meetings between humans and mushi, which sortof go wrong. This time, however, we have an accident happening between people who knew very well what they were getting themselves into, and they were aware of the huge risks.

Two girls, who can see mushi, move in with an old man, to help him maintain an ingenious mail-system which makes use of certain mushi. This one lives in a silk-cocoon made by two caterpillars, instead of one. That means that these cocoons are made out of two wires, intead of one. The mushi living inside these cocoons can teleport itself from one location through another. In this case, these locations are marked with the two wires. So, that means, if you seal them, put them in nice packages and make a small opening for the messages to go in and out, you have an alternative to e-mail.

Of course, a lot can go wrong, and if you’re not careful, even humans can get teleported. At least, they they vanish and get stuck in the “timespace” between the two locations the mushi is traveling. That’s what happens in this episode. I like the way she vanished. In normal anime, there would be some kind of slow-motion scene, with lots of action, close-ups, yelling and heavy music. Mushishi, however, brings it far more naturally than I could’ve imagined.

Anyway, that person’s twin-sister carried over the old man’s business when he died, hoping to find her sister one day. Five years pass, and during that time she meets Ginko (we don’t get to see that moment, by the way). After those five years, she still hasn’t been able to forget, and she’s still hoping for a safe return. Ginko tries to talk her out of it and to give up. At this point, I thought that the “just give up”-bit might’ve been used a bit too much in Mushishi. The ending totally changed my mind.

The ending of this episode was, like almost every other Mushishi episode, brilliant. Probably even one of the best. It was so extremely adorable, accompanied by some very fitting background music. Not to mention the fact that the ending was open, though everything felt resolved.

I am a total sucker with stories featuring people forgetting precious memories with a reason. Needless to say that I absolutely LOVED this episode of Mushishi.

The episode already starts out awesome when we get told about a potential Mushi-victim, who we later learn, just appears to be an ordinary loud-snoring and clumsy woman. Then, the real main character of this story introduces himself and the real goodness begins. At the first half, there were numerous of times when I found myself pleasantly enjoyed by all of the trivial subtle things that the lady seemed to forget, and the boy’s reactions to this.

I also loved the way that there was no real way to cure this, except for living your life to the fullest and making lots of memories. The reaction the woman had after this kinda reminded me of Ueki. Anyway, then we skip one year, and we learn what happened Ginko’s visit. It was just too sad, but it couldn’t have been a better ending for this episode.

There’s also a thing that I’m wondering about, concerning the OP. It describes a man, travelling and searching for his loved one. Would it possibly have something to do with the anime? Okay, it’s clear that Ginko’s not searching at the time of the anime, but what about his past? Did he ever love someone? (If that were true, that would make for an awesome episode, by the way).

And the awesomeness continues. This time we have a little bloy doing something with some mushi out of his own free will, making his big sister extremely worried. This was also probably the fist time in which the main charater took a nap such a time, only to wake up as if nothing happened. That’s another awesome thing about Mushishi: every single story is unique, and some of the most subtle subjects that hardly gets talked about in anime get featured in almost every episode.

The more I watch this, the more I begin to love Ginko’s subtle, but cynical side. It fits perfectly in a peaceful show like this. Anyway, this time we have another beauty of an episode. We see another half-woman-half-mushi, and her behavior towards other people, including another moral dilemma which Mushishi delivers as good as usual. I just love the way Mushishi encourages you to think about an episode, instead of just to enjoy it.

I’ve noticed this for a few episodes now, but Mushishi is virtually the only anime in which the transition from show to ED goes perfectly smooth. Other series cue the music just a couple of seconds before the ED starts, in order to try and create this effect. Other just don’t bother at all and see the show and the ED as two different entities. So far, Mushishi is the only anime I’ve seen that manages to combine these two as one, with the result of giving you the feeling that you’re still enjoying the episodes when the credit list rolls.

Another beauty of a story. This will probably entertain a huge load of romance-fans. We have this guy. The girl he loved died about three years ago, but because of some mushi, she remained in a pseudo-living state. But the guy just couldn’t convince himself that she was dead.

Again, the story is told as calmly as ever, but the atmosphere was so amazing. This really was another outstanding Mushishi episode. I also loved Ginko’s cynical side.

When I saw a pre-OP-intro, and noticed a shortened OP, I immediately knew this was going to be a special episode. And HOW I was right, but I don’t think I can explain this without using some spoilers. I’ll be continuing in the comments, just in case someone sees something he probably didn’t want to see.

This was an important episode, as we get some more character informagion about Ginko himself. We learn why he chose to be a traveling mushishi, even though it’s only briefly mentioned, and for the first time in the series, we meet up with another mushishi (Majiko). In his younger years, this guy resembled Ginko somehow, before something very tragic happens to him. This episode featured him finally solving this problem he created years ago. We also see Ginko getting nervous for the first time in the series.

Anyway, this was another brilliant episode, typical of mushishi. It was worth every second of seeing it.

I may be wrong, but this is the first time i’ve actually seen hail in anime. Perhaps the first time I’ve seen hail on television as well… Why are the movie makers and such so afraid to add hail into the show? It happens pretty often, doesn’t it?

Anyway, this episode was another masterpiece. We see a certain character return in this episode. This time, his hobby has caused hhim some problems, and it’s up to Gin to solve it. The woman’s story was also amazingly told. I could really feel along with her. And it was so beautiful to see the kids get healed.

I’m only wondering why it was so convienient fr Gin to be in the neighbourhood, and the woman also lived relatively close by. I wonder what would have happened when they were a fair distance removed from each other.

This episode was again full of ingenious plot twists. The borders of good and bad get thrown aside, even more than what happened in the previous episodes. Furthermore, we get some nice moral issues put in front of us.

Overall, I liked this episode. It is by no means the best Mushishi has ever delivered, but I still enjoyed this while watching. The view of immortality was also nicely executed, without making it seem too powerful. I was also really surprised at the desicion the guy made at the end. Any other character from any other anime would have made the other choice.

The story in this episode was a hopeless case: a man lost his wife on a boat trip through an unfortunate encounter with mushi, and he’s been waiting for her for over 2,5 years. Of course she’s dead afterwards, but the creators still manage to give the viewer some hope about it. And they also manage to turn this into a great story to tell. I once again loved the semi-sad ending of it. I had some doubts when the episode started, because nothing seemed to happen. It may have been because my computer wasn’t listening again, but it also may have been the intention of the creators to tell this story as calmly as possible. And well, they succeeded, because all those doubts were vanished once the ending theme came in. I really felt that this episode couldn’t have been more complete.

There’s one thing that irks me about mushishi though, and that is the fact that Jinko manages to turn up at exactly the right time to interfere. Okay, in fifty percent of the cases it is because of his intuition and research, but in the other fifty it’s just a good dose of luck that he runs into these people.