With volume six of Mushi-Shi the tale of traveling Mushi Master Ginko comes to a close.  This soft-spoken and thoughtful show is not only a nice change of pace from battling robots, but it's also a well crafted and immensely enjoyable show.

Series background:

Mushi are the most pure creatures that exist.  Not base and vulgar like humans or animals, Mushi are beings that are in touch with the essence of life.  Invisible to normal people, these creatures are all around us, though humans rarely interact with them.  One person who is able to see these creatures is Ginko, a Mushi-Shi or Mushi Master.  He travels the countryside carrying only a mysterious wooden box on his back and collects Mushi artifacts (items that are created in our world through interactions with Mushi) and helps people who have been infected with malicious or unwanted Mushi.  Though his travels he encounters many odd and bizarre situations things that only a Mushi-Shi would be able to understand.

This volume:

This disc has another four calm but pleasant episodes.   Another year has passed and it's winter again.  While traveling through the mountains Ginko comes across a village that seems to be rusting.  There's rust not only on the metal objects, but on the trees, the buildings, and even the people.  It's a type of Mushi, but what caused it to infest this town, and why do all the people suspect a girl who doesn't talk of causing their troubles?

In the next story, Ginko meets another Mushi-Shi, Yahagi, one who is young but famous for her work cataloging and studying Mushi.  There's a problem with her village though.  While tilling a field to get ready for planting, the villagers unearthed a large volcanic rock.  Moving it to a corner of the field, they were surprised to see a strange weed growing on it the next morning.  After a heavy rain, the weeds totally took over the field and much of the mountain-side and were starting to encroach on the village itself.  Yahagi is afraid that the weed, obviously growing due to a type of Mushi, will eat the village and orders the people to burn the whole mountain side.  Ginko wants to study the plant first, afraid that the rash reaction will only make things worse, but no one will listen to him.

Continuing his travels, Ginko is walking through a town when he hears a street musician sing a song about a Mushi.  Intrigued, he talks to the girl, the daughter of a Mushi-Shi.  She was born blind, but her father traveled far and wide searching for a cure and finally discovered a very rare Mushi, the Ganpuku.  When her eyes were exposed to the Ganpuku, the young girl could see again, but she soon started seeing more than she wanted.

The final episode in the series is told from a young man's point of view.  He's always seen colors in the mists around the mountain where he lives while no one else has.   Every spring a group of people journey up the mountain, and though the boy is the son of the master of the mountain, he's strangely attracted to these wanderers, including a young boy named Ginko.
As I mentioned in my reviews of the earlier volumes, this show is very different from most of the anime out there.  If I had to pick one word to describe it, that word would be serene.  It is a quite and gentle show.  It's like a walk in the forest on a cool day; enjoyable, refreshing, and oddly tranquil.  That's not to say that there's no action or that the series plods along, because that's not the case.  Every episode has a mystery that Ginko has to unravel, but the mysteries themselves are often just as fascinating as the solutions.

One of the aspects that make this show such a breath of fresh air is that it isn't about Ginko hunting Mushi.  He doesn't try to kill or destroy the Mushi since, even when they are hurting a person or village, they aren't malicious.  The Mushi are just following their nature, like a cat that chases a mouse.  Ginko is just trying to arrange things so that two sets of beings (Mushi and Humans) can live together in a non-confrontational or hurtful manner.  This is quiet different from most anime where non-human entities are routinely killed on sight.

This disc comes in a clear keepcase with a reversible cover and a nicely illustrated slip cover.

Audio:

Viewers have the choice of watching the show with either the original Japanese soundtrack or an English dub, both in stereo.  As I often do, I alternated tracks and found them both to be very satisfactory.  Neither track shows any trace of distortion or background noise.  The English actors do a very good job of matching both the lip movements and the feeling of the scenes in the dub track too.  A nice sounding set of episodes.

Video:

The 1.78:1 anamorphically enhanced video looks pretty good with only minor problems.  The show takes place mainly outdoors and there are a lot of greens and blues in the color palate that they use.  These colors are reproduced wonderfully.  They are vibrant and strong and really make the show a joy to watch.  The blacks are solid and the lines are tight.  On the digital side there is a touch of aliasing here and there, but it is a small amount especially when compared to most anime.  There are a couple of scenes where banding is a slight problem, but again this isn't major.  The only other defect that's worth noting is some mosquito noise in a few of the dark scenes.  Overall this disc looks really nice.

Extras:

The series continues to have some nice bonus material.  There's a commentary track to one episode, a studio tour, and a clean opening and closing.

Included with the disc itself are a beautifully illustrated postcard and a nice 8-page booklet that has character sketches as well as quotes from the people in the show.  It's a very nice booklet and I'm glad they included it.

Final Thoughts:

This show, while being low keyed and sedate, is actually one of the more interesting shows to be released of late.  It paints an interesting world that is very much like ours, but with an added sense of mystery and wonder.  It's a story driven show, but the tight story telling and unique plots make it a joy to watch.  Highly Recommended.