Mushibugyo is nothing you haven’t seen before, but still something you always want to watch.
What They Say:
The protagonist, Tsukishima Jinbei, strives to be a warrior who wins every battle until the day he dies. Jinbei has left his homeland in the Tsugara Domain to join the Mushibugyo in the great city of Edo. His job in the Mushibugyo is to exterminate giant bugs that run rampant in the city. Jinbei fights with the Mushibugyo, an office of brave men who risk their lives to protect the peace in Edo and the smiles of the people! Honesty does pay off!
Content: (please note that the content portion of a review may contain spoilers)
I’ve always been a big fan of shonen adventure stories, with the plucky hero struggling to prove himself. Of course, I wasn’t too far into my anime and manga collecting before I noticed the well-trod path that most of those stories take. After the first episode, Mushibugyo — despite dynamic characters and gross monsters — seems like it’s running along those same lines, though that’s not exactly the worst thing.
In this version of old Japan, the people are plagued by giant creatures called insects, and the only ones who can fight and defeat them are members of the Insect Magistrate’s office in Edo. Enter Jinbei, a familiarly energetic kid who is taking his father’s place in the Magistrate, and is striving to be the greatest samurai. Quickly lost in the big city, he runs into Oharu, a young woman whose parents were killed by insects when she was a child. She’s soon captured by a spider insect (Are we ignoring that spiders aren’t insects? We are? Okay.) and Jinbei rushes to save her before she’s devoured, despite having no experience fighting the creatures.
This show makes it exceedingly easy to tell who the main characters are: while background people are plain in their browns and faded blues, the important characters are excessively dressed in bright colors and complicated, sometimes ridiculous outfits (Mugai may be the strong-and-silent character, but I’ll never take him seriously as long as he keeps his poofy pants). Their hairstyles are also over the top, with their big, gravity-defying spikes while everyone else is sporting buns and topknots. Aside from the insane hairdos, it’s far too easy to tell which stereotype each character takes on just by looking at them — we’ve got angry girl, sweet girl, rival, etc. This is a little lazy, taking a shortcut to characterize all of them without actually taking the time to characterize all of them, but it’s to be expected, and at least we know from the get-go that all the usual parts are filled.
One issue off the bat is that people are already super overpowered; Jinbei struggles to fend off one spider, but when the other Magistrate members show up they’re picking them off a handful at a time without breaking a sweat. Still, the action is easy to follow, even when we zoom in on Jinbei. The big attacks from Jinbei are made more dynamic with big, brushstroke-like swaths across the screen. Jinbei taps into something towards the end and inevitably erupts with his own overpowered attack (you have to show off your hidden potential at some point), but the fight was still fun to watch.
In Summary
There’s a lot about Mushibugyo that I’ve seen before: an over-ambitious hero that might have hidden potential; the Awesome Guy that ignores the hero; and the slew of new teammates who aren’t too fond of him, but probably have a tragic past that, when revealed, will cause them to bond. Even the first big crisis, “I have to save the cute girl I just met,” is nothing new to the genre. Aside from the insect monsters, the show has noting to really make it stick out as something special, and from what I can tell this is going to be a predictable, mindless series. But that’s not necessarily bad. Despite the predictability there’s not much working against the series — even the fanservice is mostly a couple jiggling boobs with sound effects. I’m pretty confident at this point that I know what to expect out of this series, so it’s comfortable and easy to settle into, and while it’s not going to bust out anything new, Mushibugyo at least promises to be a lot of fun.
Grade: C+
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
13″ Apple Macbook set to 720p
