Mushishi Volume 3

“I have a tendency to attract mushi…the wandering life suits me.” But how did Ginko become a Mushi-master? And is he happy to spend his life constantly on the road? This volume provides some answers to these questions.

The tales of a wandering Mushi-master will inevitably offer a different experience to the viewer than that of an ongoing series where the plot develops and moves forward from episode to episode. But in Volume 3, we begin to piece together who Ginko the Mushi-shi really is and the circumstances which forced him to adopt a travelling life are gradually revealed. And there is one brief moment of genuine horror, glimpsed through a boy’s eyes, which somehow encapsulates for me the underlying theme of Urushibara’s work: the unseen forces at work in nature of which we are unaware until the safe patterns of our own lives are disturbed.

In Episode 11 ‘The Sleeping Mountain’, Ginko goes in search of an elderly missing Mushi-master, Mujika. Hearing Mujika’s tale, Ginko realizes that they have so much in common – and yet, Mujika has managed to stay on the mountain for many years. The love of a woman has made it possible for Mujika to stop his wandering life – but it has also resulted in tragic consequences. A sound, like a deep bell tolling, can be heard slowly coming nearer. When Ginko realizes what it is, he risks his life to go back up the mountain to try to save Mujika.

Up until now, we’ve seen the stories unfold through Ginko’s eyes, yet we’ve learned very little about the Mushi-master himself. With Episode 12 ,‘One-Eyed Fish’, comes the most compelling and revealing story so far. A young boy, Yoki, is injured in a landslide which kills his mother. He is rescued and nursed back to health by Nui, a one-eyed, reclusive woman with silver-white hair. Yoki is no ordinary child; he can see mushi. So, it turns out, can Nui, who warns him to stay away from the pond near her house which contains white fish which have only one green eye. Nui teaches Yoki about the forest and also warns him about the Tokoyami, or eternal darkness, and Ginko, a silver light that comes from the pond. The light that these Ginko put out, Nui tells him, changes living things into Tokoyami. It is dangerous for Yoki to stay with her; he must leave, even though he has nowhere to go.

In ‘One Night Bridge’ Ginko finds himself stuck on one side of a ravine when a rickety rope bridge threatens to collapse. He has been invited there by a woman in the local village to see her daughter Hana. Hana has not been herself since she tried to run away from the village with her lover Zen and fell from the bridge. Ginko hears of local legends about another bridge that appears only for one night – a mushi bridge, of course. It could be his way out across the ravine – but will Hana and Zen be able to escape too?

Wandering through a bamboo forest, Ginko meets a man called Kisuke who asks, casually, if he can accompany him. After walking around in circles, getting nowhere for a while, Kisuke tells Ginko that as long as he tags along, Ginko will be unable to leave the forest. They part company and, sure enough, Ginko soon finds his way to the nearby village. Why are Kisuke, his wife and daughter trapped? What unseen power binds them to the forest? And what connection does a fabled white bamboo have with their plight? ‘Inside the Cage’ has some surprising and unexpected answers.
The watercolour backgrounds depicting bamboo forests and lonely mountains are delicately painted, utterly faithful to the covers of Urushibara’s manga tankoubons – only the delight here in the anime, is that everything is in colour throughout: an added bonus! The atmospheric views of rural Japan, the sounds of running water, or birdsong, or falling bamboo leaves, all combine to evoke a world where hidden, inexplicable forces are at work.

Both voice casts, Japanese and US, catch exactly the right tone for these tales; particularly good in the US dub are Travis Willingham as Ginko, Jennifer Seman as Nui, and Vic Mignogna as Kisuke.

In Summary
More delicately nuanced tales of rural Japan, underpinned by a subtle tinge of horror, brought faithfully and lovingly to the screen by a talented team of animators.