Mu shi shi.

Looking back, again, from a few volumes on I do have to agree with a lot of other reviews on here that this volume did drag a little bit. That said, this is a very transitional volume, and finally learning more about Ginko's origins is certainly more than enough of a payoff in the end.

This volume also seems to slowly be ratcheting up its body horror quotient. It's certainly no blood and guts slasher film, or anything close, but it's getting creepier. It may be only slightly, but it does feel like there are some stakes now, and characters pushing the edges at the boundaries of prosperity, happiness or at least calm living.

Flipping back through the volume to review the art, it strikes me that the framing is (or rather, I suspect, continues to be) is part of what makes this series feel so deliciously melancholic. Hanging onto the small details, lingering.

Honestly, how long I have been able to put off actually reading this series is really a testament to my powers of procrastination. I first saw a few episodes of the anime maybe 7 years ago, at this point, and it's really haunted me ever since.

While I don't feel like this first volume fits very neatly into the slice of life genre, I do think that people who have a knowledge and appreciation of this genre are the most likely to actually enjoy reading this volume. This first volume at least is divided into several loosely related short stories that follow our main character Ginko (a Mushishi) as he deals with various kinds of Mushi. The last story in this volume does, however, make reference to a few of the previous stories, so I can't predict if stories will be more or less connected moving forward.

The time period in which these stories are set is pretty ambiguous. Practically speaking, the author has said that they originally thought the story would be modern, but after it was picked up decided to go with a more traditional isolationist look for their Japan. These means that while the main character Ginko is dressed in a modern trench coat, he is going through a lof of villages where people do not have anything modern to speak of. Personally, this adds to the timeless folklore quality of the volume overall.

The Mushi are also somewhat of an ambiguous character, especially to start with. While Ginko is wandering around this timeless landscape running into all different kinds of Mushi, the concept of Mushi is one of the few things in the story that really feels like it is progressing or developing. Not even that the Mushi as a conscious thing are coalescing in some way, but more just that our understanding of them is developing. Rather then plot driven, or character driven (as far as Ginko is concerned) the series is driven by our growing knowledge of what is generally seen as Magic insects or rodents.

I did read in the introduction that the characters for Mushi were previously used in XXX Holic, but otherwise, these creatures are mostly made up of Urushibara's imagination. Apparently, she has always been a big fan of her local folklore and these stories are sort of sideways interpretations of these old stories. Certainly not modernized versions, but also not exactly the same either.

The main word I would use to describe this series is QUITE. Even when the mushi are doing things that might have been portrayed by someone else as dramatic, Urushibara leans everything towards magical calmness. Especially if you have snippets of the anime soundtrack playing in your head while reading...

The art in this volume felt like it was very well paced. Not every page or panel was super detailed or intricate, but these details are deliberately left in or taken out and not just the result of inattention. The ways in which details were laid out made it very clear to me what I was supposed to be paying attention to and what speed things should be read out. The page layouts were a little bit second or third level (rather then super newbie friendly) but there too it didn't feel like they were overly complicated due to inexperience but rather continued to build the whimsical feeling of the volume.

See this review as a video and follow all my other video reviews on youtube here: youtu.be/5TkDRNOtPHg