History Anime / Mushishi

[[quoteright:225:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/13207.jpg]]

->''Neither good nor evil, they are life in its purest form. Vulgar and strange, they have inspired fear in humans since the dawn of time and have, over the ages, come to be known as ''"mushi"''.''

Ginko is a ''mushishi'' -- a person who can see the small pseudo-nature-spirit entities known as ''mushi'', which both mystify and plague mankind. With little more than his wits and experience to guide him, Ginko [[WalkingTheEarth walks the earth]] (or more specifically Japan) helping humans who have become unpleasantly entangled with the ''mushi''. The ''mushi'' themselves are rarely sentient and occupy a nebulous zone between things that can be identified as life forms and things that cannot, such as a swamp that travels from location to location, or tiny heat-absorbing microbes. Usually the motivation for the ''mushi'' is as simple as survival or reproduction, such as a sound-eating ''mushi'' infecting a human, causing deafness; but because of their mystical properties, they tend to cause a variety of troubles when they interact with humans.

The manga ran for nine years, ending in 2008. It was adapted into an anime that ran for 26 episodes, ending in mid-2006. Most of the episodes were stand-alone stories, though a few interconnected with other episodes in an oblique manner.

The series' general tone is extremely mellow and in some ways seemed toned after a PBS docudrama. Though many civilians take offense at whatever ''mushi''-related troubles they have, Ginko sees problems to be solved by understanding rather than pests to be exterminated (even if he does often wind up killing the mushi from necessity). Personal tragedy and triumph tends to blossom for many of the individuals Ginko encounters, yet the overall theme seems to be a reverence for the mundane as well as the fantastic; people learn to appreciate such simple joys as the sound of their own heartbeat, for example.

Also, a LiveActionAdaptation [[TheMovie Movie]] was made by KatsuhiroOtomo (''{{Akira}}''), which won many independent film awards.

The series is now available on [[http://www.netflix.com Netflix]], [[http://www.hulu.com/mushi-shi Hulu]] and [[http://www.youtube.com/show/mushishi Youtube]].

----
!!This series provides examples of:
* AmnesiaDanger: Sayo, the forgetful mother from one of the episodes, [[spoiler:has fallen victim to a ''mushi'' that slowly eats away ''all'' of her memories -- including her ability to recognize basic bodily functions. It is a permanent and irreversible process reminiscent of both the rarely explored anterograde amnesia ''and'' retrograde amnesia; should the memories run out, the host will probably be killed.]]
* AnachronicOrder: You can watch the episodes completely out of order and still not miss anything important to the overall story. Especially since the series jumps around in terms of which story from which manga volume it adapts.
* AnachronismStew: The exact setting and time period is kept deliberately vague, but it resembles feudal (or possibly mid-to-late 19th century) Japan, in mostly rural areas. There are some odd artifacts, though, such as Ginko using scientific equipment far in advance of what was generally available at the time (like a wooden microscope!), not to mention his very Western-style clothing.
** And no one seems to comment on his foreign clothing either, which is very odd considering how odd it should make him look to them. Then again, just like the scientific equipment it probably is the Mushishi equivalent of a wizards hat and robes.
** Word of God states that the series takes place in a fictional period between the Edo and Meiji eras, in which outside technology has arrived, but Japan remains a closed country.
* AndIMustScream: [[spoiler: A woman who was kept alive ''for several generations'' thanks to a combination of a mushi infection and male members of the same family falling in love with her and grafting her head onto different bodies.]]
** A lesser version is a woman who seems to be followed by rain [[spoiler: she's infected with a mushi that eats moisture and hasn't cried in years -- not when her little brother(?) died because the rain made him sick and not when a friend almost died of heat stroke because the rain isn't following as close as it used to.]]
* ArtInitiatesLife: The boy from Episode 1 has this power.
* [[AWizardDidIt A Mushi Did It]] with BizarreAlienBiology, complete with an explanation of what's known of its lifecycle.
* BadassBookworm: Ginko. While he may not be brawny or get in many fights, he is definitely the one you want to be standing there unflappably to tell you what to do when some immense Thing you can't even see is slithering overhead.
* {{Bittersweet Ending}}s: All over the place.
* BizarreAlienBiology: See above about being very similar to a documentary: the mushi and their strange powers and ecology are sort of the point of the show.
* BlessedWithSuck / CursedWithAwesome: Many ''mushi''-infected people are granted powers that prove useful--until the ''mushi'' grows in power and gets beyond the infected person's control. For example, there is a man whose dreams appear to be prophetic. Instead his dreams are infested with Mushi that [[RealityWarper make his dreams]] [[PowerIncontinence into reality]]. Ginko tries to give advice that lets people live with their condition, with varying success.
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: The cleverer ''mushi'' tend to possess this. Few are actively malicious, but several seem oblivious to the harm they can do humanity
* BodyHorror: Many of the ''mushi'' cause trouble by entering people's bodies and taking over one small part of it, although some of the less fortunate people have been transformed into ''mushi'' completely.
* BoozeBasedBuff: In the manga, a ''sake''-maker creates an artificial version of the river of life (his dad got to taste the real thing and has been trying to recreate it for years). The other ''mushi''-masters are amazed, but warn him not to sell the stuff as it causes muggles to see ''mushi'', which can lead to panic attacks.
* ButNotTooBlack: The illustrators for the anime had an extremely difficult time coloring the dark-skinned characters without making them look like Africans.
* CelibateHero: A strange case. Since Ginko can never settle down without drawing too many Mushi in, he doesn't exactly have the chance for romance. Not that it stops the ladies from hitting on him, but he stands firm.
* ChickMagnet: There's a reason (well, okay, ''[[StupidSexyFlanders two ]]'' [[StupidSexyFlanders reasons]]) Ginko is nicknamed "Pimp-ko" by the fandom.
* ColdFlames: One variety of mushi featured feeds off human body heat by appearing to its victims as an open flame. If a person huddles close to it for warmth, it slowly saps their heat from them until they freeze to death.
* CollectorOfTheStrange: Dr. Adashino, Ginko's be-monocled pal.
* CreditsJukebox: Every episode gets its own ending tune.
* CreepyChild: The Watahiko. Though [[spoiler: they're not so much children as they are a viral parasitic HiveMind...]]
* DangerousForbiddenTechnique: Aside from the myriad horrible uses a Mushishi could put his knowledge to should he be inspired, there are the techniques that manipulate the Lifestream itself. Anyone who can do so has the power to become immortal, or create a seed that will ensure a truly bountiful harvest...at the low, low cost of someone's life. Doing so risks disrupting the balance of nature, and The Heavy Seed revolves around Ginko dealing with the legacy of such an abuse.
* {{Dojikko}}: Sayo, as her son claims.
* DownerEnding: Many of the stories throughout the series have a sad (or at least not pleasant for all involved) ending.
* EmptyPilesOfClothing: More than once, this is all that's left after a person's body turns to ''mushi'' completely.
* EyeScream: Episode 2. The part where [[spoiler:Ginko takes out his fake eye]] even has this effect on another character. It gets worse in "Eye of Fortune, Eye of Misfortune". [[spoiler: A woman's ''mushi''-infected eyes ''jump out of their sockets and wriggle away!'']]. [[WordOfGod The author]] finds eye damage especially {{squick}}y.
** For those [[ShmuckBait curious]], [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJHp2kHux5M here's a link]]. Happens from 20 minutes onwards. [[SarcasmMode Have fun]].
* EyepatchOfPower: Ginko's haircut covers one eye.
* FlyingDutchman: Due to Ginko's power to attract ''mushi'', he can never have a permanent home.
* ForeignLanguageTheme: The opening song is sung in English.
-->''I walk ten thousand miles, ten thousand miles to see you...''
* GeniusLoci: Some ''mushi'' take the form of (very large) natural phenomena. One of the most prominent is the Traveling Swamp, which is generally harmless unless someone drinks of its waters for too long (causing them to eventually dissolve into water themselves). It saved the life of a young woman who would have been drowned (by being thrown in a river as a sacrifice).
* GenkiGirl: Sayo, the forgetful, restless infected mother.
* GreenAesop: A lot of the stories tell about living in harmony with the environment, as pollution can cause all ''mushi'' to leave - with possibly worse effects on the people than when the ''mushi'' were present.
* GreenEyes: Ginko has lovely, vivid blue-green eyes, as did Nui. [[spoiler:This, as well as their silvery heads of hair, are a result of being exposed to a ''mushi'' named Tokoyami.]]
* GroundhogDayLoop: A guy has been living in a "long, happy nightmare" since his encounter with a time-warping ''mushi''. Ginko warns him not to go through it again but then [[spoiler: his wife is mortally wounded and they can't get back to their village in time. He goes through with her and now she's the one experiencing deja-vu..]].
* GuiltFreeExterminationWar: Some Mushishi less enlightened than Ginko have this view about all ''mushi'', seeing them as pests or threats to be exterminated. In "Drowning in a Sea of Letters", Ginko comforts a girl binding a mushi trapped inside her with stories of harmless and/or beneficial ''mushi''.
* HalfHumanHybrid: Oniko, children of mushi and human, which are very rare and inherit traits from both parents. In episode 14 Ginko meets woman and her daughter, who are descended from Magaridake, ''mushi'' that look like white bamboo. Though they look completely normal, both were born inside bamboo shoots and need water from mushi to survive.
* HeroicSacrifice: Narrowly averted, though only through another character's not-quite-so-heroic sacrifice. In the final story, Ginko [[spoiler: risks his life to save a teenage girl who was chosen as a mountain-master but was rejected when she returned to her family and began to miss them even after returning to her mountain. He's about to be disintegrated into the lifestream (which he's fine with since his days were numbered anyway) when the girl takes his place because she couldn't stand being away from the mountain -- because she ''was'' the mountain.]]
* HumanSacrifice: The girl who travelled with the swamp.
* IdenticalGrandson: Played with. A particular island has a ''mushi'' called Uminaoshi that can seemingly reincarnate a person into a child form so they can be reborn to someone else, such as their daughter. [[spoiler:Turns out that the 'reincarnations' actually ''are'' that person, at least physically; the ''mushi'' reduces someone to an embryonic state and allows them to be reborn if the egg is ingested. But since they have no memories of their 'past' lives, are they ''really'' the same people? There's no way to prove the reborn even have the same soul.]]
* KillItWithFire: In Episode 21, [[spoiler: the Watahachi parasite does it to ''itself'' in order to force itself into hibernation rather than be killed by Ginko]].
** It doesn't really die though, seeing how the episode ends with Ginko carrying him off in a bottle.
** In Episode 23, Yahagi thinks doing this to the mushi will solve the problem. [[spoiler: It only happens to escalate into a problem that kills several villagers and threatens her own life.]]
* LaserGuidedAmnesia: [[spoiler:Ginko]] has the retrograde variant. It plays an important role in his backstory, and is irreversible.
* TheLifestream: Many references are made to a river of light that only Ginko and certain other special people can sense. This river is the primal life force that the ''mushi'' come from, and strengthens and bolsters nature when it is near the surface of the earth: normally it's deep underground..
* LockedIntoStrangeness: One of the possible effects of ''mushi''. See the girl in episode 5 (green hair) and [[spoiler:Ginko and Nui (white hair)]].
* MagicalUnderpinningsOfReality
* MagneticMedium: Ginko's reason for being on the move all the time.
* MamaBear: One VictimOfTheWeek invokes this against Ginko [[spoiler:by stabbing him]]. Too bad [[spoiler: she was protecting a parasitic ''mushi'' who was responsible for the death of her actual child...]]
* MarriageToAGod: The girl who travelled with the swamp. She was sacrified as a bride for the river god, due to massive floods in her village.
* MindScrew: Not a very severe case, but there is some -- as to be expected of a series that blends psychological, fantasy and slice-of-life themes together.
* MonsterProtectionRacket: [[spoiler:It turns out that Ginko was dragged into a couple of these as a child -- some mushi masters would take him in (knowing that ''mushi'' tend to gather around him and cause trouble) so they could increase their business.]]
* MrFanservice: Guess who.
* MundaneUtility: Nui uses weak Mushi in place of lamps. Also there is Mushi that inhabits enclosed spaces in areas close to the lifestream, mostly silkworm cocoons, linking them together through a [[TeleportersAndTransporters labyrinthine networtwork of extra dimensional silk tunnels.]] If you open their container you are sucked in and lost, probably forever. Mushishi use them as pre-modern email. And then there's the girl who uses the illumination from the lifestream to see her bouncing ball in the dark, and...yeah. And yet it averts Mons.
* MysteryOfTheWeek: ''Mushi''-based.
* TheObiWan: Nui, to Ginko.
* OneMythToRuleThemAll: Ginko says that most supernatural phenomena, like ghosts, are actually ''mushi.''
* OnlySixFaces: Despite Ginko's unique appearance, the series (especially the manga) suffers heavily from this. It's even more apparent with the darker-skinned characters, who will always have one person, male or female, with the same facial features and short haircut.
** All the younger male characters bear a ''striking'' resemblance to each other, to say the least.
* OurSoulsAreDifferent: A boy from a ''Mushishi'' family couldn't see ''mushi'' and underwent a process that replaced his soul with one, making him [[SealedGoodInACan "the can"]] in order to help the girl who's SealedEvilInACan. As an adult he's usually TheStoic, but occasionally the ''mushi''-soul leaves and he becomes TheSpock.
** A woman who can pull the life-force from living things eventually becomes overwhelmed by it and her soul essentially separates from her body, becoming an angel-like being only her son can see.
** OurZombiesAreDifferent: They're harmless, used as a way for a physically weak species of Mushi to migrate, and mostly sit in the sun all day photosynthesizing.
* PeekABangs: Ginko
* PowerPerversionPotential: Episode 22. [[spoiler: The ''ushinoume'' produces not just one, but hundreds of embryos from the person whose lifetime it eats. Couldn't a dying person make dozens of clones of his/herself?]]
* RealityWarper: Certain dream Mushi can make people dreams come true, making them Reality Warpers with power incontinence. Medication can usually let the person live a normal life just thinking they have prophetic dreams. In a bad case, though, a man guilty and off his meds over his daughters death because he didn't predict the Tsunami she died in his visions accidentally wipes out his entire village by imagining a plague that turns them to dust.
* SceneryPorn: OnlySixFaces notwithstanding, the backgrounds are ''breathtakingly'' beautiful.
* SealedEvilInACan: One girl actually has a dangerous Mushi locked away [[spoiler: in her leg which prevents her from walking on it.]]
* SecretOtherFamily: One VictimOfTheWeek's husband did this to her and her son. [[spoiler:Good thing she can't remember it.]]
* ShootTheDog: Ginko does this a few times.
* SmokingIsCool: Subverted. Though the smoke from Ginko's pipe has the effect of warding off the ''mushi'' that are attracted to him, it does not contain normal tobacco (or any type of narcotic, for that matter); and he couldn't stop even if he wanted to, lest he be swallowed up by a swarm of ''mushi''.
* StarfishAliens: This is what pretty much all of the ''mushi'' are.
* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic: The study of Mushi is more or less treated as a science. A science that just happens to analyze things that can live in your dreams or eat silence.
* TakenForGranite: Or wood, anyway: A carpenter eats a mushi that lived in an ancient tree, giving him access to the tree's long memory. When he finds the tree again he narrowly escapes being assimilated back into the wood, but it's implied he will eventually become a statue.
* TimeDissonance: Anyone who takes on the time-POV of a ''mushi'' (see "Those who Inhale the Dew" and "Sea Meets Man").
* TheVirus: One of the ''mushi'' Ginko encounters has the ability to [[spoiler: enter soon-to-be-pregnant women and replace their unborn fetus with a copy of itself, which spawns clones that the fetus' unwitting parents raise to maturity.]]
* TheUnfavorite: The boy in "The Seat Of The Lightning", whose mother refused to love (or acknowledge) him even after [[spoiler: he allows himself to get struck by lightning so their house won't get burned down and later saves her from being struck despite her declarations of being willing to die with him]]. His mother once ''tied him to a tree during a thunderstorm'' to keep the lightning away from her house.
** The stepmother of the ferryman who can summon bird/wind ''mushi'' is more concerned that he can't make money than the fact that he survived his ship sinking.
* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: Ginko has silver-blond hair and is walking around in Western-style clothes in something that can be described as a feudal Japanese rural area. And no one ever questions this.
** Not to mention his odd eye colour, odd skin tone (he's not impossibly pale, but more so than any of the other men in the show) and his [[spoiler:one missing eye (he has a glass one, which did exist, but glass eyes still tend to be fairly noticeable.)]] Might have something to do with the fact that he usually introduces himself as a Mushishi; people EXPECT him to be a bit odd. Some of the ''mushi'' might qualify too, with people surprisingly blasé about, say, an island with people who demonstrably reincarnate every time they die. It's implied that there's far more mythology up and walking around in this world than in a normal Japanese setting -- even people who can't see the phenomena first-hand seem to have little trouble believing in it.
** There was ''one'' boy (the little EyeScream girl's friend) who had Western clothes in the manga (he even had a toy airplane!), but he got Japanese clothes in the anime after the artist {{retcon}}ned the setting away from modern times as it was in the original one shot chapter.
*** WordofGod has it that the story is set in an imaginary time between the Edo and Meiji eras in which isolationism continued. There are western influences but far fewer than occurred in real life.
* VictimOfTheWeek[=/=]WoobieOfTheWeek: Almost every episode has one or two in the form of Ginko's 'client(s)'.
* WalkingTheEarth: Ginko is forced to do this due to the amount of ''mushi'' he attracts. There are other mushishi who do the same, though not all.
** The Isaza, a wandering tribe who study ''mushi'' and aid the mushishi, are also eternal wanderers. Ginko tagged along with them for a while when he was younger, and still meets up with them briefly from time to time.
** The woman who's followed by the rain. If she stays in one place it'll cause floods and sickness [[spoiler: fortunately it's starting to weaken]].
* WeAreAsMayflies
* WeirdnessMagnet: It's not too uncommon for people, such as Ginko and Nui, to be born with the tendency to attract ''mushi'', which naturally brings a lot of oddity to their lives - if not outright danger. The best way to keep it under control is to [[FlyingDutchman keep moving]] and smoke a lot of ''mushi''-tobacco.
* WhiteHairedPrettyBoy: Subverted. Ginko is the hero of the show (can't be considered an AntiHero, despite being [[ShootTheDog forced to make hard choices on occasion]]) and has a normal level of masculinity.
* WhiteHairedPrettyGirl: Nui.
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: Certain ''mushi'' can make you immortal -- at a price.
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Apart from Ginko, most other ''mushishi'' are shown to prefer killing ''mushi''. Even Ginko will kill a ''mushi'' if it is endangering someone's life, but he prefers not to.
* YearOutsideHourInside: The ''mushi'' in "Where Sea Meets Man" has the opposite effect; a woman lost within it for three years thinks only three days have passed, and when Ginko and the woman's husband spend an hour or two under the ''mushi'''s influence, they're missing from the real world for a month.
** Played with in "The Pickers of Empty Cocoons". [[spoiler: The missing sister has been gone for about ten years, but hasn't aged at all; however it's not known how long the time she perceived was.]]
** Similarly, victims of a shadow-''mushi'' can trade places if they're touched by another person's shadow. [[spoiler: No-one knows how long Mikage was trapped, and Akane returned unaged after many decades.]]
* YouKillItYouBoughtIt: It's possible for something or someone to become a NatureSpirit by killing one and eating its flesh. [[spoiler: After hearing that this is the only way that Mujika can get rid of his FlyingDutchman status and stay with her, his lover Saku goes out to kill the resident mountain boar god to do just that - getting killed in the process.]]
** [[spoiler: Ginko ''almost'' did this as a kid when he found an egg which was the new mountain-master. He briefly considered taking that power for himself, then accidentally dropped it. Fortunately the ''mushi'' took it back and found a new master.]]
* YourDaysAreNumbered: Nui. [[spoiler: It's also very, very likely that Ginko doesn't have much longer before he's gone as well.]]
----

The series is now available on [[http://www.netflix.com]], [[http://www.hulu.com/mushi-shi Hulu]] and [[http://www.youtube.com/show/mushishi Youtube]].

The series is now available on [[http://www.hulu.com/mushi-shi Hulu]] and [[http://www.youtube.com/show/mushishi Youtube]].

The show ran for 26 episodes ending in mid-2006. Most of the episodes were stand-alone stories, though a few interconnected with other episodes in an oblique manner.

The show's general tone is extremely mellow and in some ways seemed toned after a PBS docudrama. Though many civilians take offense at whatever ''mushi''-related troubles they have, Ginko sees problems to be solved by understanding rather than pests to be exterminated (even if he does often wind up killing the mushi from necessity). Personal tragedy and triumph tends to blossom for many of the individuals Ginko encounters, yet the overall theme seems to be a reverence for the mundane as well as the fantastic; people learn to appreciate such simple joys as the sound of their own heartbeat, for example.

!!This show provides examples of:

The series is now available on [[http://www.hulu.com/mushi-shi Hulu]]

* TheUnfavorite: The boy in "The Seat Of The Lightening", whose mother refused to love (or acknowledge) him even after [[spoiler: he allows himself to get struck by lightening so their house won't get burned down and later saves her from being struck despite her declarations of being willing to die with him]]. His mother once ''tied him to a tree during a thunderstorm'' to keep the lightening away from her house.

[[caption-width-right:225: Ginko, the ''mushi'' master]]

Ginko is a ''Mushishi'' -- a person who can see the small pseudo-nature-spirit entities known as ''mushi'', which both mystify and plague mankind. With little more than his wits and experience to guide him, Ginko [[WalkingTheEarth walks the earth]] (or more specifically Japan) helping humans who have become unpleasantly entangled with the ''mushi''. The ''mushi'' themselves are rarely sentient and occupy a nebulous zone between things that can be identified as life forms and things that cannot, such as a swamp that travels from location to location, or tiny heat-absorbing microbes. Usually the motivation for the ''mushi'' is as simple as survival or reproduction, such as a sound-eating ''mushi'' infecting a human, causing deafness; but because of their mystical properties, they tend to cause a variety of troubles when they interact with humans.

* MrFanservice: Guess who.

* EstrogenBrigadeBait: Guess who.

* YearInsideHourOutside: Usually inverted. The ''mushi'' in "Where Sea Meets Man" has the opposite effect; a woman lost within it for three years thinks only three days have passed, and when Ginko and the woman's husband spend an hour or two under the ''mushi'''s influence, they're missing from the real world for a month.

* AnachronicOrder: You can watch the episodes completely out of order (excluding the occasional two-parter) and still not miss anything important to the overall story.

* AnachronicOrder: You can actually watch the episodes completely out of order and still not miss anything important to the overall story.

* FridgeBrilliance: Ginko's remarks in Episode 20 about being unsure how much longer he'll survive seem reasonable enough given his line of work, but take on a whole new level of meaning when you remember that [[spoiler: he is most likely fated to turn into a Tokoyami one day like Nui.]]

* MarriageToAGod: The girl who travelled with the swamp. She was sacrified as a bride of river god, due to flood in her village.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: The cleverer ''mushi'' tend to possess this.