This is the Mushi which devours the sight of those who have spent too long gazing at Luminosity; it has blinded a little girl named Sui. Ginko lures it out of Sui
by exposing it to moonlight (it's the purple one you see him holding), and then restores her sight by giving her his own artificial eye, showing that he, too, has sacrificed part of his vision.
Episode 3: "Tender Horns"
The Mushi: Un and Ah
These two snail-shaped Mushi live in a symbiotic relationship; the Un devour sound, and the Ah live on the silence the Un create. In a remote, snowbound mountain area, starving Un
have settled in the ears of villagers, absorbing every sound that comes to them before they can hear it. Only one little boy, Miho, has been deafened in both ears--he has both an Un and an Ah--
and he becomes Ginko's case. Ginko pieces together clues from Miho's mother's last words to discover that what will banish the Ah is a sound made by vibration: the rumble of tendons and muscles when you cover your ears tightly with both hands.
Episode 4: "Pillow Lane"
The Mushi: Fleeting Dream
This flying Mushi uses dreams as a channel to enter the human world. Its host, Jin, believes he's gained the power of prophetic dreaming, but in reality his dreams are only
advance notice of the Mushi's actions. Ginko warns him of the danger to such a host--becoming unable to ever wake up--but it takes a catastrophe to convince Jin
he must destroy the gate that admits the Mushi. That gate, stuffed with years of dreams, is his pillow...
Episode 5: "The Traveling Swamp"
The Mushi: Water Worm
An elusive Mushi, Water Worm is never clearly seen in the episode, but takes the form of a migrating swamp, repeatedly surfacing and submerging as it uses underground waterways to travel across a mountain range to the sea.
The person who inadventently drinks water containing this Mushi will develop an unbearable thirst and consume more and more water until his or her flesh liquifies and dissolves.
The traveling Worm is accompanied by a girl offered as a sacrifice to the water god; her goal is to attain this liquid state and become one with the Mushi.
This episode introduces the series' only other recurring character, Adashino-sensei: village doctor, friend to Ginko, insatiable collector of books and oddities, and passionate Mushi buff. This eccentric scholar's fascination with the Mushi
will lead him into some unwise purchases and earn him some stern words from Ginko; however, Ginko does offer him souvenirs of his Mushi cases, and they consult with each other as colleagues on more than one occasion.
Episode 6: "The Flock that Inhales Dew"
The Mushi: no name given
This nameless Mushi, appearing as a fragrant, cave-dwelling flower which lives only one day, implants its spores in the nasal cavity of any creature drawn to its perfume. The human host is drawn into the Mushi's time frame,
every day suddenly and dramatically aging, and exhaling a cloud of new spores before returning to normal with no memory of the day before--a daily re-creation and rebirth which the host, rather than fearing, may come to treasure.
Episode 7: "The Rain Comes, The Rainbow Comes"
The Mushi: Rainbow Snake
This capricious and beautiful Mushi exerts an unbreakable fascination on anyone who comes in contact with it. Apparently one of the simpler forms of Mushi--
Ginko says that it is alive but not really conscious--it is made like any rainbow of light and water, but its water contains Luminosity. As a result it apparently forms a
connection with anyone who touches it, and plays with them for a time, appearing near them in fantastic shapes unexpectedly (why? --no one knows.)
before deserting them. The abandoned host experiences a painful longing to see the rainbow again and will leave home and family behind to seek it.
Episode 8: "From the Coast"
The Mushi: Umisen Yamasen ("Thousand Sea, Thousand Mountain")
Ginko describes this Mushi thus: "A snake that lives a thousand years in the sea and a thousand years in the mountains becomes a dragon.
They meet in the open sea and, a thousand days later, they come back to the same coast and become one Mushi." It manifests as a mass of swimming serpentine forms and then as a gigantic
centipede-like creature, always inside a dense fog. Any boat unlucky enough to be trapped in the mass will be lost for the full thousand days, though time will barely pass for the passengers;
if they return at all, they will no longer be human...
Episode 9: "Heavy Fruit"
The Mushi: Wilting Fruit
This Mushi manifests itself as an odd toothlike seed in the mouth of one person, falling out naturally on its own when ripe. If it is planted, it will bring a single season's
abundant harvest--it is sealed in a light vein and brings the overwhelming life-energy of the Luminosity to the place where it grows--
but the person who produced the seed will die. The decision whether or not to plant the seed is agonizing for the priest entrusted with it.
Episode 10: "The White That Lives in the Inkstone"
The Mushi: Cloud-Eater
This weather-oriented Mushi lives by drawing the water and ice crystals from clouds. When snow or hail falls from a clear sky one can be sure this Mushi is responsible.
Unable to move on its own, it depends on the wind; when an extended calm or clear season comes, it freezes itself, sinks into the ground and hibernates, reviving only if contacted by water.
Ordinarily, they are harmless to humankind. This particular Cloud-Eater had been buried for so long--Ginko guesses "tens of thousands of years"--that it had fused with the rock.
Quarried and carved into a beautiful inkstone, it takes several lives by expelling a cloud of icy mist when filled with water, slowly freezing to death anyone unlucky enough to inhale the mist.
It leaves its human hosts when they are carried to a very high altitude and it senses the presence of its preferred food.
[The deadly inkstone, until reactivated by curious children, had been in the collection of Ginko's Mushi-buff friend Adashino, who is chided sternly by Ginko for seeking to own a
supernatural being. Adashino admits his guilt but is still most sulkily unhappy at being forced to give up his treasure.]
Episode 11: "Mountain Sleeping"
The Mushi: Bedstraw
Bedstraw (named after a subterranean Japanese weed) is an underground Mushi which "acts as the nerves and veins of the mountain".
A skilled Mushishi can call it up and, by sending his consciousness into it, race through the roots of plants and trees to detect what the Mushishi cannot alone,
however far away in the root system it may be. Ginko does this (using saucers of Luminosity as bait) to search for an old Mushishi who is lost somewhere on the mountain, and is able to locate him in moments.
Ginko also notes that this mountain is centered on a light vein, making its vitality--and its Mushi--unusually powerful.
(In this unusual episode, the Mushi is rather peripheral to the story; the primary supernatural beings are the Lords of the Mountain, who manifest in great animal forms.)
Episode 12: "One-Eyed Fish"
The Mushi: Eternal Darkness and Ginko
So many Mushi appear in this "origin story" episode (mostly unnamed) that I don't have room to show them all, but the primary ones are a light-and-dark symbiotic pair.
Eternal Darkness is a predator which rests by day in shaded places and emerges by night to feed on smaller Mushi; its physical appearance is of an inky black mist.
Its partner--which has no known name but has been dubbed "Ginko" ("little silver")--is "a blind fish living at the bottom of the darkness" and appears as a huge, glowing eel-lke creature.
The Ginko's function is to release the excess energy of the Darkness' feeding, which it does in a blast of white light so powerful that--as if thermonuclear--it converts living things into Darkness as well.
A human unknowingly wandering into the Darkness when it travels as a hungry mist will become disoriented and lost; if you can hold to at least the memory of your own name you will escape, but otherwise
you must let it eat at least part of yourself--typically one eye--and you will survive, though without any of your past memories. Ultimately, however, even with this sacrifice, continual exposure to this light
will convert any creature into darkness, as it eventually does young Yoki/Ginko's mentor, a doomed Mushishi named Nui.
[Note: though we originally thought that Ginko had lost his eye by looking too long at the Luminosity, we now learn that he gave it up--along with his memories--
to escape the Darkness and the creature whose name he took when he'd lost his own. Since the Luminosity is a river of pure life-energy while the Ginko's light is one of death, they may not have the same effect,
but it is notable that in episode one we saw him sitting by the river of Luminosity--with his back to it.]
Episode 13: "The One Night Bridge"
The Mushi: False Hair
There's a legend that "those who come back from the valley"--who amazingly survive a fall from the rope bridge that crosses the ravine--are never quite right afterward, and in twenty-years time, on the night the One Night Bridge
appears over the valley, they will die. Both the strange returnees and the One Night Bridge are the work of a threadlike Mushi called False Hair. It craves light and typically lives in the tops of trees. Migrated by mischance into this location--
a deep mountain valley where even the treetops don't reach enough sunlight--this band of False Hair has devised a plan to leave the valley by possessing the bodies of the dead. Any animal or human who dies at the bottom of the valley will become host to one of these Mushi,
and is used to bear the False Hair out of the dark valley. The embodied Mushi gain strength from the sunlight they crave, and when there are enough of them (which takes about 20 years) they desert their hosts and weave themselves into a phantom bridge that spans the valley, migrating away en masse. The hosts--who
have been little more than sunbathing zombies--lose their animating force and instantly revert to their true,long-dead state.
Episode 14: "Inside the Cage"
The Mushi: Lodger Bamboo
This parasitic Mushi takes advantage of the natural structure of a bamboo grove, in which all the plants grow from one root and exist together like communal generations of a single family.
The Lodger taps into the root and takes the shape of a white bamboo, leeching water and minerals from the others but in return releasing a nutrient that causes the grove to grow thick and dense--
more food for itself. In a strange folkloric twist, it also has the power to impregnate human women: they give birth to an infant contained in a huge bamboo shoot, which grows into a human-appearing but strange, quiet child.
More such shoots will sprout when the hybrids die and are buried. These crossbreeds live primarily on the white bamboo's sap and are thus kept subject to its will; the sap can even control a completely
human being who drinks it, as that person is carrying an organic link to the Lodger. (Ginko has heard of such Mushi/human hybrids before, though he calls them "very rare".) Although it passes for a tree, if chopped down
the Lodger drops that guise, lifts itself on its branches and crawls away like a huge centipede.
Episode 15: "The False Spring"
The Mushi: False Breath
A subtle predator, this Mushi lives through the winter by manifesting as a flower bud or an insect cocoon and emitting a special, sweet fragrance (pheromones?) that arouses hibernating animals and even plants from their sleep,
creatinng an oasis of springtime in the snow. It then feeds on the life-energy of creatures lured by the warmth and vegetation, causing them to fall into a deep sleep which lasts the rest of the winter. It seems to cause no ill-effects
in humans, who wake unharmed from their long nap, but it does make them sensitive to the presence of Mushi (Ginko becomes temporary mentor to a boy who was thus sensitized).
Episode 16: "The Daybreak Snake"
The Mushi: Kagedama
Kagedama, a Mushi that eats human memories, takes the form of a shadowy serpent. Its preferred lair is the shadow of old trees, where it enters the ear of anyone unwary enough to nap there and settles in the brain.
Ths host rarely needs any sleep, but gradually loses his or her memories--though the Mushi does not take those vital to daily life or those that are constantly recalled. When it has eaten a certain amount of memories, the Mushi divides itself,
amd releases the offspring the next time the host momentarily dozes off, thus propagating its kind. Kagedama is very hard to drive out, as its only weakness is sunlight, and, as Ginko grimly observes, "there's no way to shine it into your brain".
In the end, the host will forget every day with the coming of the next, but that's not an impossible way to live, and can even be quite cheerful...
Episode 17: "The Empty Cocoon Collector"
The Mushi: Uro-san
The Uro, or "Uro-san" as it's politely addressed, is something unusual--a Mushi that actually serves the Mushishi. It can only live in an enclosure, and to avoid ever being exposed to open space it has developed the ability to "teleport" instantaneously
from point to point through a kind of subspace ("making holes in our universe" says an old Mushishi disapprovingly). Uro-san usually makes its home inside tamamayu--large silkworm cocoons
that were spun by two silkworms, and thus are made from two threads instead of the usual one. When one of these is found empty of silkworm pupae, it's a sure sign that it houses an Uro. If the cocoon is carefully unspun into its two
component threads, Uro-san will regard both resulting cocoons as its home, and when nudged out of one will instantly move to the other, no matter how much distance separates them. In this way they have been recruited to carry messages for the Mushishi.
(You did wonder how Ginko keeps getting letters telling him where he's needed when he lives out of his backpack and can't stay anywhere for more than a month, right?) One cocoon is kept in the warehouse which serves as Mushishi Central Post Office, and the other
is carried by the traveler. When a folded note is pushed into the cocoon at the warehouse, the crowded Uro-san heads for its other cocoon, and takes the message with it: the rattle of the second cocoon as its inhabitant arrives is the Mushishi's "you've got mail".
However, as a Uro ages its accuracy fades, and it may deliver damaged mail, or detour into some other closed space. This is the only time they pose a threat to humans: anyone who is in the closed space with the Uro will, the moment it's released, be pulled into the same
subspace they travel in--and unlike Uro-san, humans can't get back out. They wander through the endless caverns until they lose all memory.
Episode 18: "The Robe that Embraces a Mountain"
The Mushi: Ubusuna
This simple Mushi --resembling plain mud when it is earthborne and smoke or mist when in the air--embodies the essence of the place where it lives and cannot travel far from home.
Anything which has grown in an area, and any person or animal which has eaten produce raised there, contains a little of this harmless being. Though having little power, it will
do its best to protect such a person or creature from other Mushi. In this episode, Ubusuna left homeless when their village is washed away in a landslide take up residence in a
coat which was handmade by a village woman from local silk and plant dyes--the only remaining trace of their home.
Episode 19: "String from the Heavens"
The Mushi: Tenpengusa (or Wandering Star); also, Kouki
Tenpengusa (its name literally means "grass of heaven") resembles a comet but does not behave like one, darting and hovering around in the sky above a particular area of land--
a Kyoumyaku Suji or "source of life" (the river of Luminosity we have seen before). There it hunts and feeds upon smaller aerial Mushi. Ordinarily it has no contact with earthly life forms,
but at times when prey is scarce it will lower its long tail toward the ground to act as a "fishing line" and troll for Mushi there. Should it accidentally snare a person or animal,
it casts them back to earth and has thus inadvertantly caused humans to die. Any captured human who is not killed by the fall to earth, however, remains connected to the Mushi and is left in a strange state,
a half-aerial creature, invisible to humans and unable to stay on the ground.
(We also see a Mushi manifestation in this episode called Kouki, which Ginko describes as "when things that have yet to be born as Mushi form a herd and swim together". As he also advises a woman
not to look at it for long, saying "that light is poison to the eyes", it's presumably a form of Luminosity.)
Episode 20: "A Sea of Brushes"
The Mushi: Shimi; also the Forbidden Mushi
Shimi are Mushi which are sealed inside documents. As long as the seal holds they do no harm, but if released they literally unravel the lines of text from the
paper, causing them to swarm in a tangle all over the walls and ceiling. Only a gifted person--a Recorder--can maintain the seals on the archive where they are kept, and compel them to return to their scrolls
when they escape.
This episode also contains the story of an entity called only "a forbidden Mushi", which appeared at a time of terrible drought generations ago "attempting to erase all life".
A Mushishi sealed it into the body of a pregnant woman of the Karibusa family, whose skin turned charcoal black as a result. Since then several Karibusa women have been born with
the gift of Recording--and one useless, charcoal-black leg; the proof that the nameless Mushi has been passed on and is sealed inside them. Despite this Mushi's apparently inimical nature,
hosting it inside the body does not seem to affect the host's personality, though the leg is gripped by pain whenever the Recorder hears stories of Mushishis' victories over Mushi.
Indeed, Tanyu, the current Recorder (the family's fourth) bears her resident no ill-will and hopes for a time of "humans, animals, and Mushi all living together".
(The other gift of a Recorder is the ability to generate text for the stories she hears, literally pouring the words onto paper from her skin. It's not explicitly stated, but it seems likely that
this too is a result of her physical link with the Mushi.)
Episode 21: "The Cotton Spore"
The Mushi: Watahaki
No other Mushi has developed as sophisticated and complex --even psychological--a form of human predation as the Watahaki. Appearing as an inconspicuous green puff, it travels through the air looking for a host body, preferring those of pregnant women. Once inside such a host it destroys and replaces the human fetus, grows to term in its stead,
and is "born" as a shapeless green blob that leaves the mother immediately. Typically it takes up residence under the house in which it was born, saturating the earth with a fungal-looking growth (visible only to a Mushishi). After about a year, it forms part of itself into the likeness of a human infant and waits for the
pseudo-child to be discovered by the house's residents. If it is accepted--as here--it will send another and another. All these are simply parts of the Watahaki, used to forage and send back nutrients to --and defend--the sedentary main body. Left unchecked, the "children" will grow with unusual speed but live only about three years, at which
time they fall ill and die, releasing upon death a "massive amount of seeds". Thus the Watahaki propagates itself at human expense. The "children" can communicate telepathically amongst themselves and will stop at nothing to protect the next generation.
Episode 22: "The Offshore Shrine"
The Mushi: no name given
This sea-dwelling Mushi eats lifetimes. Luring in prey with its phosphorescent glow, it drains away the time they have lived, reducing them to their embryonic state, and releases the embryos into the sea as pink pearl-like beads. A woman who consumes a bead will conceive and give birth to a child who is genetically identical to the Mushi's victim.
In the story, islanders have made a ritual of drowning their gravely ill near the undersea cave where the Mushi lives so as have them returned to the village as children (called Uminaoshi, "reborn")("sea-born"?)
Episode 23: "The Voice of Rust"
The Mushi: Yasabi
Ordinarily harmless to humans, this Mushi appears in motion as a moving stain and when settled as a hard, rust-like crust. It usually gathers on animal carrion, emitting a distinctive sound as it does so. A Yasabi that hears this sound from elsewhere is naturally attracted to it and gravitates to it, thinking its fellows have located a meal. They dislike salt. In the story, a woman's unusual voice, by chance resembling
the Yasabi's, has drawn many of them to her village; finding no food there, they have gathered on every surface and even on living people, causing an arthritic state but no permanent damage. They are easily dispersed when the woman, advised by Ginko, calls them into the mountains--and them moves to a seaside village where the salt air keeps them at bay.
Episode 24: "Bound for Bonfire Field"
The Mushi: Hidane/Kagebi
This Mushi is born as a spore inside volcanic rock. It originally manifests as an invasive, quick-spreading grass--Hidane--which sprouts from the rock
with the Mushi concentrated at its root. It can remain in this form a full lifespan and reproduce by sporing, but if the Hidane is burned the mature form, Kagebi,
a cold, blue fire ("kagebi" means "shadow fire"), will emerge from the ashes. Anyone eating food cooked by this fire will slowly freeze, as
will the person unlucky enough to inhale a Kagebi. Ginko cures the victims with a potion consumed very hot, which burns the growing Hidane to black ash.
