Loneliness is reflected in a mirror.
What They Say:
“Mirror Lake”
They are creatures only known as ‘Mushi,’ whose abilities range well into the supernatural. While their existence and appearances are unknown to the humans around them, there are a few like Ginko who is a ‘Mushi-shi’ that travels around to investigate and find out more about the ‘Mushi.’ During the course of his discovery and understanding, he helps those who are troubled by the Mushi themselves…
The Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
What a lonely life Ginko does lead. He goes from town to town, meeting a countless number of people, and not once does he lay down his root.
I talk about the episode “A Sea of Writings” a lot and it’s because among all the gems in Mushishi, it’s one of my personal favorites. There’s a lot of parallels to be had between “A Sea of Writings” and “Mirror Lake.” They both feature girls in love, for example. But each of their loves—Tanyuu’s to Ginko and Masumi’s to the mirror polisher and then to Ginko—are completely different.
Tanyuu looks to Ginko like a child in love with her teacher. It’s an obsession I hear a lot of Japanese girls have, and something that’s not AS frowned on in Japan (though it’s still bad to do it). I’ve read lots of shojo manga (Fruits Basket, for example) where a young schoolgirl falls in love with an older man and Tanyuu is no exception here. She’s a mere teenager when she meets Ginko and from the moment he talks about Mushi that eat moles, she’s hooked.
Masumi’s obsession is different, like I said. Her love seems to be toward a man who gave her attention. She’s constantly getting in relationships that won’t be good for her. As the mirror polisher says, she’s a tomboy and not very feminine. But all she wants is to be loved by another human being. She mistakes kindness for love, it seems, and that’s a little tragic. And when she finally finds a nice guy, Ginko, he leaves her, with barely saying a word.
The ending scene is played off as comedy, but it’s sad. Not only is the girl left without the boy she loves, Ginko’s left without a hope for love. The love he could have had he willingly leaves behind. He never says it, but a love between him and anyone at this point in his life would be foolish. He’s a wanderer and she could never truly be happy, especially not someone like Masumi.
But the episode plays with more than just love. In the very first scene, we see Masumi looking at her reflection in the water. We don’t know why immediately, but we suspect she’s meeting a guy. She combs her hair and seems ready to tackle the world when she’s done and we suspect the meeting didn’t go well because the next scene is her depressed after the fact.
In fact, she met with the mirror polisher who says he’s going to take his trade elsewhere because there’s not much here. The mirror that he gave her, the mirror that he polishes every time they’re together, is a symbol of her clinging to that relationship. By the time we see her, the mirror is already cloudy again and those clouds not only are part of that relationship metaphor, but a part of her own tendency to cling to lost loves.
She’s infected by the Mizukagami (Water Mirror) by looking in the lake at the beginning of the episode. Ginko reveals that she can be cured by showing the Mizukagami its own reflection. And she has the hand mirror to use to that end. But it’s cloudy. She won’t let her father clean it because it’s important to her. She’s stubborn. She holds to something dearest to her, and that’s the relationship between her and the mirror polisher.
When she finally does polish the mirror, she’s wiping away every single affection she has for him. It’s a cleansing ritual for her and her alone so she can get past the guy who’s so nice but broke her heart. She’s hesitant though. She’s hesitant to polish the mirror because it’s not so easy to drop someone you loved so dearly out of your heart, and that’s what they’re asking her to do. It’s because of Ginko—which leads to her crush—that she’s able to do it.
Ginko equates the Mushi world to their own. The Mushi are vast and numerous, perhaps moreso than humans. But the Mushi have no souls, they have no corporeal bodies, and yet they climb to the surface of their own volition. They want to feel the warmth of a soul and a body. This is no more evident in that the Mushi that ails Masumi is one that steals form. It’ll become a clone of Masumi and then take her place if they let it happen. It’s literally taking her “soul” from this Earth and she becomes the one that’s left in the Mushi world. Masumi, if she let the Mushi take her, would be left in the loneliest possible prison she could be in.
I felt like this and polishing the mirror were her turning points in the episode. She wasn’t that naïve little girl anymore. She knew what she had to do to get better and often we have to feel like we hit rock bottom before we do. She hit rock bottom. She’s clearing her heart of the love that once filled it.
I’m a little frustrated at the ending because it seemingly cheapens her own growth. We don’t see her face when she polishes the mirror, we just see the tears falling from her eyes. I feel like this was the final straw for her and she would try to find her own happiness in life. But she turns right back around and falls head over heels with Ginko.
Despite this, it’s a great episode for Ginko. We see her, waving her hand as excitedly as she can, as Ginko just looks back. And that’s it. No goodbye’s (he says, “I better go now.”), no hand waving, no nothing. He just leaves. Because he knows he has to. And that’s tragic in its own right.
Especially considering the one being that might want him (or rather his form), the Mizukagami, he doesn’t even let in. He leads it to a safer place, away from people. It’s kindness that ails Ginko and Mushishi perhaps proves that it’ll never let him be happy in his own right.
In Summary:
I was a little disappointed by last week’s episode (and by disappointed, I mean A-), but this one blew me out of the park. We refocus the episode straight on into the characters of the day and I feel like the episode is much stronger because of it. Ginko, sometimes, is not a character that can carry an entire show, but can enhance every episode of an entire show. His sage-like wisdom and calm demeanor make him an enigma of a character, and thus very interesting to watch. But I feel like the characters of the day will always be the draw of Mushishi for me, and for most people. And the characters here, and the story they were working with, was fantastic.
Grade: A+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Equipment: Radeon 7850, 24” Dell UltraSharp U2410 set at 1920 x 1200, Creative GigaWorks T20 Series II
