Mushishi: The Next Chapter

Episode 12

Not all Mushi-Shi episodes are gradual, contemplative feats of character and theme like last week's effort. Sometimes Mushi-Shi's stories are just a slow buildup to a massive punchline, which makes the last five minutes of these vignettes the deciding factor in the entire episode's message and tone. Unfortunately, "Fragrant Darkness" provides us with one of the series' weaker punchlines, centered on one of anime's most tired visual metaphors: cherry blossoms.

The story revolves around the life of a self-proclaimed "very boring man." He's growing old now, having lived a simple but fulfilling life with his wife and recently sent his daughter away to be married. One day, while wandering through the forest at night, he spots a tunnel boring down into the hill. It emanates the scent of cherry blossoms, so he assumes it must lead back out the other side, and may be a shortcut through the steep and treacherous mountain woods. So he goes in, and travels deeper and deeper down as the scent goes stronger, but with no end in sight to the darkness.

Flash back a few decades to when he was a younger man and his daughter was still a little girl. A white-haired stranger, (our good friend Ginko,) asks to take shelter in his home during a rainstorm, tells the man he's a mushi master, and that he can help him if anything in his life is going awry. "Anything strange, any illnesses or troubles? Ring any bells?" The man says no, because he is a "very boring man..."

He's growing old now, having lived a simple but fulfilling life with his wife and recently sent his daughter away to be married. One day, while wandering through the forest at night, he spots a tunnel boring down into the hill. It emanates the scent of cherry blossoms, so he--

Wait, what's going on here?

Apparently, this poor soul has stumbled upon what can only be described as a "deja vu" mushi, which first lures its victims with a sweet scent of cherry blossoms (a symbol of the temporal) and then leeches off their life force by artificially throwing their consciousness back in time. (I feel like multiple mushi operate this way, but I can't remember what episodes its relatives appear in.) Because of the numbing effect this has on the person's mind, combined with the illness not really being time travel exactly, victims cannot change their own pasts, only relive them, becoming filled more and more with ennui and dread even during what should be the happiest milestones of their lives as they feel these events are "nothing new." After seeing Ginko for what he feels is the millionth time, the man asks him for his help at last. Ginko tells him now that he's aware the time loop is happening, he can escape it, and warns him never to go back into the tunnel again. The man assures Ginko that because his life was very simple and he feels fulfilled in living it out, he'll avoid the tunnel at all costs. Really! He promises...

It takes a very long time to get to this point, and frankly, the way the story ends should be obvious based on prior description alone. That isn't really a good thing, no matter how crafty and engrossing the execution is. Every episode of Mushi-Shi is crafty and engrossing, and with so many episodes to choose from at this point, the standard is usually a little higher than what "Fragrant Darkness" gives us.

Episode 12 isn't a bad mushi story, and there is some intellectual and emotional weight to its ideas, delivered more strongly by a few brilliant shots and character expressions than the actual written content. Still, compared to the number of outstanding tales in season 2's run, this one is middling. It doesn't really deliver enough on its 23-minute shaggy dog narrative, as even the show's theme song is removed from this episode for some reason. (It definitely didn't need the extra 90 seconds of runtime to communicate its ideas.) This is not the kind of episode that would, say, draw someone into the show if it was the first one they ever saw. It's an eerie little what-if that adds a small straw onto the pile of "tragic endings" in season 2 versus "happy endings," but even then its tragic ending is a little more "huh?" than "wow," and the same could be said of the build-up to it. Here's hoping for a little stronger material next week.

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.