Oh my freaking goodness! This was one hell of an episode here! This series continues to get better and better every week! This episode just emphasized why this series stands above all the rest and is the best anime series in years! Storytelling, pacing, characters,  and the music all of it came together here so wonderfully and this is how it should be in an anime series! This and episode 4 have been my favorite episodes of the 2nd season so far.

This is one of the best series to utilize the concepts of kami-no-michi and push it in a very creative way! When the first season began I originally classified this series as strictly a supernatural drama series. This is not the case here. This show knows how to push the envelope in being a thriller without being too flashy. Shiki had its own style of being gory, Mouryou no Hako was pure mystery through its dialogue, and Monster was a plot-thickening suspenseful series that you had to watch just about every episode of. While Mushishi is a therapeutical thriller series, it has a unique aura interwoven into each story that can only be done in episodic anime series.

This new season started us off with a sake brewer story to stories where people would lose senses, get frostbitten, people’s arms getting eaten off, people vanishing while still being alive, chopping off heads and swapping them. The plots here are all quite varied. The execution in how these tales unfold are different as well. The one aspect they use here is how the Mushi are used. It is the only time CG is used in this series and rightfully should be! One of the great things about this show is there really isn’t a big villain only that everyone is trying to live out their lives even the Mushi. This was perfectly explained to us by Ginko in Episode 5 when he told Masumi how the Mushi were trying to escape the darkness and find light. The CG especially in this episode here, gives the feel that Mushi are indeed a part of the natural world doing just that. Living.

They don’t mess around with the voice acting either. Using real kids to voice children allows this show to be even stronger in authenticity. The music could almost speak for these tales by themselves, with such powerful direction in the scoring gives this show such life. The animation isn’t the best industry but it is vibrant and is perfect to illustrate the manga’s feel. I love how lively it is! This is some of my favorite in the industry right now! This show does a fantastic job of showing without telling, just as when the the fire drew out the Mushi in the tree here! None of it was explained yet it all made perfect sense and ended with such beautiful imagery. This is how to develop an anime series!

OVERALL IMPRESSION: 10/10

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