Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Mushishi – episode 22

July 20, 2006 on 1:10 am | In Mushishi | 6 Comments

“The offshore shrine”

Another excellent episode of the show that justifies all anime love.

Ginko comes to an island like Heaven and discovers a case of nature versus nurture, and of mushishi versus the natural order of life. This is one of the more morally ambiguous episodes of Mushishi.

Spoilers within

Ginko comes to an island that he has heard bears the Uminaoshi, or reborn. The islanders are unwilling to discuss the issue with him except for one: Mio, who was forced by her father to give birth to her mother.

It’s difficult to discuss a series’ relativity when the episodes are as uniformly excellent as those presented by Mushishi. With this story we are presented a society where nobody ever dies because they can be reborn.

Mio agreed to give birth to her mother, Isana, on the condition that she not go by her previous name, Mana. To Mio, as it might seem to others, this was an unnatural request. Her husband had died and she either chose not to resurrect him or did not have the opportunity to do so. To have Isana, she wanted to have a child, not her mother.
As the years went on, the likeness of Isana to Mana became greater, as did the similarity of their personalities. This would be an incredibly difficult thing for Mio to confront, because naturally the relationship of a parent and child is different to that of a husband and wife. In the case of this island, Isana is the only provided instance of a mother being reborn to her daughter.
Ginko explains in the narration, then, that the issue of wanting to come back is not just at the discretion of the loved ones of the party in question, but also at that of the party in particular. The idea that they can come back is of great comfort to the people who let themselves drown at the dragon shrine. The reborn people have to be reborn at the normal human rate, so naturally Mio’s father could not have his wife back as his wife and Mushishi isn’t a title to bother itself with Lolicon: uminaoshi simply a bizarre way of comforting oneself in life and in death, to the point that this is a society that takes absolutely no risks and has no sense of natural progression.

Watching Mio having to deal with the fact that Isana is not just her daughter but also her mother is quite distressing, with many subtle animation cues helping us along the way. When Isana tells Mio the method of getting to sleep that Mana had told Mio, but had never seeped down to Mana, the tension was palpable.
It’s a relief, then, to see the way that the story turns out, and the decision that Ginko makes for the fate of the island.

When mother and daughter understand each other, when a mother can be certain beyond all doubt that her daughter is her daughter: that’s beautiful. One must never underestimate the value of time spent, and must forego comfortable facsimiles in favour of the truth.