I’ve been slack on writing about Mushi-Shi and highlighting the stories I thought played with human concepts in interesting ways. Maybe if I get the motivation to write an end of series post for it I will, but most people don’t come here for the text, so there’s less motivation there. Anyway, I think the episodes in volume 5 has the strongest collection of stories from the series so far.

A Sea of Writings, episode 20, might even be my favorite episode so far. This one is the story of Tanyu, a scribe born with a black and useless leg, who records the knowledge of the Mushi-Shi. It’s a beautiful episode in so many ways. There’s this one part where that knowledge tries to escape and Tanyu goes about the task of recreating the record of it. The visuals there are gorgeous as well as just watching someone move with a grace that only comes from a rare devotion. What I particularly enjoyed about this story is how it shows Tanyu’s commitment to the task and the sacrifice she makes in order to further the knowledge of the world. The thing that made it beautiful was how her selfish motive and selfless dedication were one. She’s like an artist. Ginko also seemed to warm up a little this episode and I was surprised that he didn’t refuse her request.

Cotton Changeling, episode 21, is pretty wicked. It plays with the arbitrary line between disinfection and murder, aggression vs. self-preservation, which is the more obvious and less important idea in here and really that’s just boring to think about. That arbitrary line between the two in this story is just there for tension and drama. To me, the stronger idea in the story is how easily people lose conviction when what is clearly wrong twists itself into a compelling argument. It’s really not that hard to believe in something screwed up when packaged appropriately, that’s the human drama here.

Shrine in the Sea, episode 22, seems like an okay story until you think about it and realize on that island there’s a bunch of middle aged men waiting for what amounts to their grand-daughters to be old enough to get romantically involved with them. Gross. I didn’t pick up on that until my sister brought it up as being uber-creepy and I agree. But, that’s not what made this a memorable episode. I don’t know if the story means for me to be creeped out by the fact grandpa looks at his grand-daughter as if she were his wife. I feel like I’m supposed to be picking up on the theme that it is time that makes you who you are, but you never know.