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EP. REVIEW: Mushishi: The Next Chapter

Stylistically, it's the same old Mushi-Shi, (that's a high compliment,) but the stories are just so much better than they ever were before

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Stylistically, it's the same old Mushi-Shi, (that's a high compliment,) but the stories are just so much better than they ever were before

Am I really the only one who think the stories in the first season were a lot better ?

I feel like you missed the entire point of the Kairou and consequently the episode. It wasn't that it "sapped his life force": Ginko tells him not to go back again because it will cause him to fuse with the mushi. The result is one of the most subtly terrifying and insidious episodes in the series: it ends with spoiler[the Kairou basically imitating the husband and luring the wife back into it as well.]

The subplot with the boy in Kaoru's past adds a kind of equally terrifying moral element to it as well.

Yeah, his life becomes one with the mushi, as in the mushi eats him up completely, but it wasn't the Kairou possessing him at the end: that was all his decision to take his wife in there. That was 100% him. The idea was that he chose to remember the good things about forever living in the past (not having to face his own mortality or the death of his wife) and chose to forget the dread and ennui of reliving everything over and over and not knowing why. Of course, that dread and confusion is what the audience is left with, implying that his decision was not ultimately worth it.

I agree with you about the message of the episode and why it's supposed to be a horror story (although I thought it was tepid by Mushi-Shi horror episode standards,) but the climax is not the Kairou possessing him and making him take his wife down there. He's very clearly himself and that choice is based on not wanting to face her inevitable death.



I actually thought this was totally squandered. The entire point of that scene was to show this otherwise boring guy with a really chill life's first encounter with the concept of regret and "if only," and show that it impacted him strongly, foreshadowing that he would give into it in the end. But that was literally all it was, when I was thinking they were going to do more with that detail since so much time was spent on it. So yeah...it's still good Mushi Shi stuff! But by Mushi Shi standards, most episodes are better than this one was. I feel like I've seen its ideas and even its brand of time loop narrative many times before. Competent. Some amazing and memorable shots and imagery...but the narrative underneath is a little "ten minutes of story in a 23-minute sack."