Mushishi: Film Review

Title: Mushishi

Director: Katsuhiro Otomo

Author: Yuki Urushibara (comic) Sadayuki Murai (screenplay)

Year: 2006

There is a penchant in Japanese media (anime/manga/film particularly) to hang onto a successful story and milk it for absolutely every last drop of sustenance, and then continue sucking. A prime example of this would be the novel Battle Royale, which was then adapted for manga, then made into a film, which also spawned a sequel. The problem with this process is, often, aspects of the piece will go missing, stories will change and the artistic vision of the original piece will often be altered or watered down.

Mushishi began its life as a manga, which I have not read, but according to Wikipedia:

“The Mushishi manga won an Excellence Prize at the 2003 Japan Media Arts Festival and the 2006 Kodansha Manga Award.”

So its original incarnation won critical acclaim. I first encountered Mushishi in its anime form, and was blown away by its engrossing measured pace and, to my trusting young eyes at least, unique style. For reasons I cannot remember, I never got more than a few episodes into Mushishi, though its standout opening track (The Sore Feet Song – Ally Kerr) and unnerving brand of unusual visceral horror branded itself into my brain.

The series wasn’t linked, as far as I had seen, by any more than its main character, silver-haired Ginko, the titular mushishi (bug master), as he travelled around ancient Japan curing those suffering from mushi-related plague like a ancient-Japanese silver-haired Jesus. Each episode followed a standalone plot, and I was interested to discover how these unlinked tales would be strung together over the length of an entire film.

Answer: they aren’t. Apart from one introductory tale, which I recognised from what little I’d viewed from the series beforehand, which is used to contextualise and introduce the role of the mushishi to the audience, the mini-stories are dropped, focusing more on the past of Ginko, following that ark as it comes full circle to the story’s present time. The lack of the unattached stories in the film is dramatically a good thing, as the plot would likely seem fractured and stuttered without the presence of the narrative ark. Having the past of Ginko explored also enables the audience to care more about the character, where if Ginko was merely a device in order to explore a number of mini-stories, he would seem hollow and 2D. The downside of not being able to include many of the side-plots is that people who are already fans of Mushishi will inevitably pine the lack of their personal favourite tale. This was certainly the case with me, despite having seen few episodes. The defining moment of my relationship with Mushishi in its anime incarnation was a scene where a character blinded by mushi that live in eyes, stood in complete darkness with a river of undulating silver unguent gushing skyward from his/her eyeballs. Moments such as that are few and far between, said the silly young man, wiping a tear from his eye.

Having spent an unjustifiably long time pontificating on what is not in the film, its probably time to tell you what is, for there is plenty there to be pleased with.

The film opens with slow, atmospheric shots of foggy mountainous woodland, distant prolonged shots where the ominous and mysterious nature of a non-industrialised natural world is fully accentuated. The subtitles appear to inform us this is turn of the century Japan, although which century is either not made clear, or I was too engrossed in the misty forestscape to notice. Suffice to say, this is the pseudo-surreal landscape of the none-too-recent past, with characters clad in tabi and sandals, conical straw hats etc. I found the style utterly true to the anime adaptation, which is a fantastically good thing indeed, the world created by Mushishi is utterly engrossing despite the fantastical nature of the tales. It is certainly the style that is most notable of the series, with the eeriness of the landscapes together with the aged, graininess of the footage and the deliberate slow pace of the storytelling transporting you into the story with ease.

The fantastical nature of the stories, centring as they do around ephemeral magic bugs (mushi), means that at times the story may be difficult to follow, especially since there is no time in the film for the sort of explicit explanations that occur in the series, but I would argue that this is a good thing, as the mystery of not knowing the exact nature of the creature adds to the overall ambience of the piece, as it thrives on oddness.

Despite omitting many mini-stories, the film still goes on for a fair old length, which may seem a hollow gripe, but since it is my only real complaint, I will have to follow through with it. Now I am a fan of lengthy works, although sometimes an abundance of material is simply evidence that the writers were utilising a ‘throwing-shit-against-the-wall’ technique, and this certainly isn’t the case with Mushishi, the problem is simply that there is too much good material to comfortably fit in. On the other hand had I known it was going to be something of a monolith before I’d pressed play, I might not have become shifty and agitated in the middle, wondering whether it would come to an end soon.

Sitting there actively wanting a film to end is never a good thing, but it is certainly the length of it, rather than a discrepancy in quality of content that places the ants in my pants on this occasion.

The film is also guilty of being accidentally funny, though again I can’t be sure whether this is simply my highly tuned comedy eye or my rampant de-sensitivity when it comes to the odd, but there were a few incredibly strange scenes that were perhaps meant to be taken seriously, where I couldn’t help but laugh.

Mushishi is a good example of strange and slow creepy horror, the sort which makes you twitch and clench your jaw rather than make you jump, the storyline has been honed to a fine art over its several incarnations, meaning that the film is a fantastic rendition of the story, rather than a heavily watered down version. If you are planning on watching it, however, bed down comfortably, get your snacks and your drinks in at the start, and attach the catheter, it’s gonna be a long one.