I am grasping about one third of this series at any given moment, but it is beautiful and disturbing.

This was recommended by my sister and is a pretty interesting collection of short stories. I guess you'd call the main character a docotor of some sort. But, in treating the illnesses of others, we're finding out more about him. I think my favorite part was about the "silence eating mushi", the one where the host grew horns. My least favorite? The part about the mold disease, yuck. I will look foreward to reading the next book in this series. ( )

Mushishi is about mushi, bug-like-spirit-like-ghost-like creatures, one of the closest things to the original form of life. Unseen by most, they sometimes make their way into humans' bodies with some strange and for the human unwanted and mildly disturbing results. Mushishi follows Ginko, an wandering expert on mushi, as he goes from one place to another studying mushi and using his knowledge to help those who have come into trouble with the creatures.

Muhishi is a calm, contemplative, episodic (though the description 'short-story-like' gives more the right feel), mature, vaguely distant sort of read. It is fairly unarguably good at what it does. It's all about it's atmosphere, it's tone, it's stories and descriptions of mushi that are so precise, original, and haunting that if I didn't know better, I would think were real folklore.

In short, being the sometimes shallow reader that I am, I was expecting Mushishi to be an interesting, impressive, and slightly boring read, a nice experience but not one I would knowingly come back to.

So? ...Actually, I really do like Mushishi, as it turns out. This isn't hugely unexpected, as I'm a raving fan of Kino's Journey, which this is in those sorts of ways rather similar to. Kino had two things that took it from being merely respectable toward being a good time, though: 1. A female main character who was actually cool and independent without being some violent tsundere. 2. Despite her being serene and a tad detached, she had AWESOME GUNS which she could pull out every once in a while for self defense and kill us with her awesome gun cool (without giving the moe-girl-with-gun feel). These were really very minor aspects of the series, but these little differences do it for me ^_^; In short, I guess I like calm, contemplative stuff, but I need just a little bit of spice.

What does Mushishi have? The main thing is, as mentioned before, the stories/types of mushishi the author comes up with are impressively original. Usually I would put that in the 'makes it more respectable but not really more engaging' category, but it really is so overwhelmingly creative, it just spills over into the other. ...Feels like rather a lame excuse, but it's really all I can say.

The other thing is, like with Kino, the main character. Ginko may be a little overly serene for some, but honestly I adore this kind of personality in this sort of story. Serene does not, after all, equate to one-dimensional. He has kindness and helpfulness, but he is no bleeding heart. Mysterious and at times even a little snippish or unapologetically selfish. In his body language and expression I see the ghost of something sardonic that never quite pops out onto his surface.

On the other hand... Much as I sense these interesting things about Ginko... Most of the time he goes about being his serene helpful self, and really, it IS a bit dull in that respect. In addition, as I saw another put it, all the supporting characters come off as “calm, vaguely good-natured, and a little sad.” The manga really does want to distance itself from the reader a little too much. With no emotional attachment to Ginko and not much ability to make any with the supporting characters that pass through, how long can someone like me keep interested in this on the basis of creative ideas and the suggestion that Ginko might be an interesting person, without ever getting so much as a hint why?

Still, I wonder if my desire to learn more about Ginko, either his background or beliefs or personality or anything, is wrongly asking this manga to change it's nature? The story really isn't about Ginko. Even so, I do think the story would be better (if not outright needs) just a little bit of something else. For now I'll continue it and probably enjoy it, though. But if the manga doesn't make some small changes in some way, I'm not sure how much longer I will continue. ( )

I really enjoyed this manga, which was a belated Christmas gift from my younger brother. The basic idea is that there are creatures called Mushi, which are a bit like fairies, a bit like ghosts, and a bit like microscopic organisms. They are unspeakably ancient, and when they come into contact with humans, the results are often tragic. A young man named Ginko is a Mushishi, someone who studies and attempts to assist those who are afflicted by Mushi, and this episodic manga follows several of his "cases."

I liked that the Mushi are essentially fairly amoral, rather than particularly evil; in many cases, they are as conscious of the effect they have on their human hosts as we might be of the effect we have on a river we live near or a tree whose fruit we harvest carelessly. They can be malignant, but are only rarely malevolent -- they are simply alien. My favorite story in the collection was about a Mushi who was essentially the ancient spirit of a swamp. It was lovely and actually quite moving. I'm looking forward to reading more from this series. ( )