Mushishi's greatest strengths carry on into the second installment, beautiful artwork of natural landscapes and pre-industrial Japanese rural locations. It feels very authentic at every turn. The stories of what Ginko gets into during his travels are very easy to relate to, and I found myself caring about the characters involved even though most of the characters only appear in one episode given the nature of Ginko's travels.
While each episode of Mushishi is a great piece of work in and of itself, beautiful and engaging as it is, there is criticism to be handed out to the series as a whole. Ultimately, almost every episode of Mushishi is based on a simple plot formula with little to no carry over or progression in an overall plot.
Here's an episode in a nutshell. Ginko enters some beautiful majestic rural setting...the mountains, the forest, a small farming or fishing village. Ginko discovers Mushi causing some disturbance in people and/or the environment. Through a combination of paranormal knowledge, moral superiority, and his box of trinkets Ginko saves the day, or at least mitigates the problem, gets out alive, etc. The people are happier and better off for his coming, and Ginko wanders off into the wilderness to some other pristine local, never to meet any of the people he just helped again.
Almost every episode of Mushishi follows this formula, and it creates really the only serious criticism I have of the series, if you've watched one episode of Mushishi you've basically watched all the episodes of Mushishi. Out of this latest set of new episodes, only 1 or 2 carried over to characters I recognized before and contributed to an overarching plot line. Technically, that episode (or two parter) is a special and listed under a different heading on Animelist so I could say none at all if I wanted to.
Now none of this is to say you shouldn't watch Mushishi, you should. It's a great piece of anime. It just doesn't offer much in terms of plot development for this reason. For the most part, Mushishi is simply great single serving anime, which probably explains it's broad appeal, you don't have to marathon the entire series to enjoy it. I'm just left with the feeling that I'll have to read the manga if I want any closure when it comes to this story.
