Mushishi: The Next Chapter

Episode 13

This week, Mushi-Shi tries its hand at something it's never tried before: humor! Well, that's not entirely true. There have been lighthearted points in the series' storied run, mostly thanks to the uptight, bumbling mushi collector Adashino, but comedy is not usually a tone familiar to this show. Still, this episode finds Ginko carrying a spunky old lady through the woods to her slightly crabby old husband, in a village almost entirely composed of silly old people. Of course, they weren't always silly and old. All these people were once silly and young, which is where Mushi-Shi's trademark "thoughtful creepiness" comes back into the story to create a simple, bittersweet episode around the theme of "old age as a second childhood."

Old Husband is concerned about Old Wife because every night for the past few months, she's been wandering into the mountains, muttering to herself, "I have to go back home." Old Husband's knees aren't what they used to be, so he's having trouble going to fetch her every night and is beginning to worry that one night he'll lose her forever. "Maybe she's confused and trying to go back to her childhood home?" Ginko suggests. Old Wife takes offense at this and tells the men not to talk about her like she's going senile. To be fair, maybe she's not, and neither are any of her aging friends in the village. Comparing the lives of these people now with the flashbacks we see of them as children, it seems like their devil-may-care honesty and impulsive attitudes from youth are simply coming back to them now that the pretentions of adulthood are long behind them. (There's a revealing montage of scenes where Ginko heals the mushi-afflicted knees of the elderly, often dealing with their cluelessness like he would a child's.)

Of course this is Mushi-Shi, so there's a dark side to all of this old-people whimsy. Old Husband eventually comes clean about Old Wife's parentless childhood, and how the other children in the village initially feared her as some sort of amnesiac changeling who appeared just as another well-loved little girl in the village went missing. When the truth about the swap comes out, it is at first chilling, then heartwarming, then chilling again, and reinforces the episode's themes in a lovely way. With age comes not only a return to childhood, but the gift of experience that can be passed down to the next generation, and kindness that can translate across generations and even span the distance from highest mountains to lowest seas. It looks like no child will have to grow up alone in the world of Mushi-Shi, so long as other "old children" can be there to look out for them. (Well, except for Ginko, but we all know that story by now.)

Episode 13 isn't trying to be profound like the two vignettes before it. It's just kind of sweet and weird, but best of all, it ends on a hopeful note. I'm quickly finding the "hopeful" episodes of Mushi-Shi to be my favorite, especially when they have to grow out of sadness into triumph. Those twenty-minute journeys are the most meaningful in the long run, and this story, while simple, definitely filled that niche. The only bad thing I have to say about "Lingering Crimson" is that like the previous episode, it does away with the show's opening theme in favor of credits over a longer episode. It's nice that we're getting more animation per episode, but I'm really beginning to miss that song.

Rating: B+

Mushishi: The Next Chapter is currently streaming Crunchyroll.

Hope has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.