Mushi-shi, Black Cat, Jigoku Shoujo and the Return of Hellsing.

Ξ March 5th, 2006 | → | ∇ |

Mushi-shi is an example of pure anime genius. The quality of the ideas behind it, the imagination is sheer mind blowing. When you get fed up of the same old mecha/love/loli/school stories that the Japanese continually crank out to please the masses, you can suddenly find a gem amongst the crap. Whilst after a few episodes you do tend to see a theme of “remote mountain villages”, the logic and theories to solve Mushi “problems” is in a dimension of it’s own. I keep finding myself applying (pseudo)real medical logic to the questions Ginko-san poses, but I’m always wrong. Designing a whole level of life that, could theoretically exist and provide alternative answers to problems that vary all the way from rarely heard about, poorly understood and hard to explain through current medical science, to potentially influencing everyday common things has been well concieved. Although, the concept of life outside those experienced by humans is not really a new idea and has been proposed in various forms by many different people over the years, it’s just brought well together, thought out, and integrated into a series.
What’s more, it’s an ANBU sub! and they seem to have solved their group problems and are bringing out episodes thick and fast.

Not only that, but it’s being turned into a Live Action series by the legendary Katsuhiro Otomo! You know, Akira, Metropolis, Perfect Blue, Steamboy to name but a few. I hope to god someone subs that when it airs.

Black Cat however, doesn’t inspire the same enthusiasm. After a few episodes it seems to be quite unoriginal and I fail to see why so many on the internet are holding it in such high regard. I’m still going to watch it mind, in hope that there will be something yet to come in a cataclysmic form that evolves the series into an epic that everyone seems to imply it is.

On a continual negative trend, there’s Jigoku Shoujo. What was a potentially refreshing and interesting concept and story has turned into a dozen episodes of completely repetitive, monotonous TV. Yet, again, people love it to bits. WHY? I watch merely to see if in fact they do do something else with the series, to provide some other underlying story rather than what effectively is the same episode again and again. Indeed, they hint at something, but it’s the weakest and passively progressing whiff of a hint I’ve seen in a long time.

Hellsing is back in OVA form, with better animation but the same story as the original anime. Regardless, it’s still very well done and a pleasure to the senses to watch again. I’ve been told the manga is even better providing a depth far in excess of the anime, so I intend to get hold of that as soon as possible. It’s not unheard of since most anime series are cut to fit the 13/26 episode series lengths. Indeed, the Gunslinger Girl manga, Gunsmith Cats, Ghost in the Shell (original) and Akira mangas (to name an attometer of a fraction of all the manga published) all provide better, more indepth stories to their respective animated versions.