Mushi-Uta

Before I start naming the 'buts', let me tell you what really intrigued me with Mushi Uta; the things that really had this series going for me. For one, the animation. It's a 12 episodes long show, which is really short considering the amount of storytelling needing to be done. However, unlike many 12 episodes having Anime's, the animation quality wasn't bad and in fact one of this Anime's strong points. Action scenes were worked out nicely, coloring was nice and fitting, the animation was smooth and the backgrounds and effects looked particularly interesting enough. Besides animation, the sounds are well done (though not exceptional) and thewhole concept lurking behind this Anime is extremely good. To be honest, without knowing anything about this Anime I had a peek into the first episode. I ended up finishing it and a curious mini me inside me was triggered into watching more and more. The idea itself was great, the characters seemed perfect and the concept seemed worth it. Worth time that is. More about the characters before I start ranting on and on about the concept. The visuals (designs) are, just like the animation, pretty good. It's not exceptional or really interesting; but it fits in with the story that's being told and therefore is pretty likeable. Especially likeable is the main character who seems like the perfect 'badass'. He wears goggles, is an assassin and besides that, is the strongest guy around! I mean, no more wimps as lead characters, finally a strong guy! At least, so I thought. However, let me get back to the concepts. The concept was great, the characters had potential. Then where did it go wrong? Wrong you say? Yes, because somewhere in time Mushi Uta lost my interest -and besides that- wrongfully used the potential I saw in it that much earlier. Let me clarify. For starters, the 'badass' main character was put into 'development', a forced development by that. The creators figured it was his time to develop; thus they made him develop. It was so wrong! All of a sudden Mr. Perfect Assassin turned into a wimp! It's cool and all if he starts getting emotions, but why did he turn weak again? Why did he get ill? And I'm not trying to spoil things here, but he really did turn weaker towards the middle/end. Which is a shame. Besides that, there is a love triangle going on which -in my honest opinion- isn't adding anything to the story. It's like making a mixture of coke light and coke. I mean, what's the point really? Of course the concept isn't consisting of just one character. But it's consisting of it's story and how the story develops (alongside it's characters). Things seemed rushed towards the middle/end. Even an unneeded addition of a love story was added. What the f, this is an action packed fantasy story, and you are adding a love triangle. Wake up call please? Besides that the story gained an uninteresting plot twist. The idea of bugs (where the story is about) turned chaotic and plain weird as the story progressed. Unnecessary scenes were inserted and more than once have I been tempted to just 'STOP' the player and start doing something that I do like. For that reason, just the feeling of wanting to 'STOP' something -despite being well animated- is more than enough reason for me to tell you to warn you. It's not that bad an Anime really, heck you might even like it. But for me, it's a 12 episodes long Anime that needed more episodes, a renewal of it's complete story and it seems like I wasted time watching 51 episodes of something unenjoyable while it's only 12 episodes long. To me, it's not worth more than a 6. But seeing how crappy some Anime I rated a 6 are, and seeing how it did have loads of potential (especially earlier episodes)... I'm giving it a 7. The genres are mostly action/drama, in a fantasy world setting. It's 12 episodes long. Most enjoyment I had with this was from it's first episode; after learning about it's concept. Least enjoyment I had with this Anime was probably in one of the middle episodes or ending episode.

This anime is a prime example of bad storytelling. There are people called "hosts" who can summon powerful insects to fight battles for them. If you kill a host's insect, the host goes into an incurable comatose-like state called "fallen". News of a host who was able to recover from the "fallen" spreads, and two groups race to capture her to learn her secrets. It had the makings of an action-packed drama; unfortunately, it was presented quite poorly. Most of the anime was focused on a love triangle that was only borderline interesting. One of the characters that had the most screen timewas also the least interesting character in the whole show. The love story didn't fit well with the action scenes. The plot progression was confusing. If only they had explained the general basis for mushi in a more straightforward manner it would've been more enjoyable. Instead, almost every important detail was left a mystery to be revealed in a future episode, which left me asking, "huh?" during most of the episodes. Almost every 24-minute episode felt like an hour. This series could've been so good had it been done right. Not recommended.

Welp, when I first started watching this show, I was like, "Oh cool! Bugs! That's awesome and original," but then, after watching past the second episode, I couldn't shake the impression that the bug aspect was really all this show had going for it. After finishing the show, I was sadly proven correct. But, let's break it down, shall we? **WARNING! There are some slight SPOILERS from this point onwards. I'll try not to reveal anything hugely important, but to express my viewpoint on some issues, giving away tiny details is necessary.** ~Story~ Okay, as has been pointed out by two of the other reviewers, the story isincredibly confusing and convoluted. There are so many plot holes in it and unanswered questions that it's like falling down a trapdoor, hitting twenty some odd tree branches, and then proceeding into a large, black abyss of death and despair... Okay, so that might be a bit of an overreaction, but seriously, the story almost seems more like an afterthought than the purpose. Here's an example of one of the many problems: Right from the get go we know that the main character Kakkou has destroyed the Mushi of one of the other main characters, Shiika. We see this within the first five minutes of the first episode. This acts as an interesting lead into the series, and does get the viewers hooked as the setting is uncertain and the context is unclear. Who are Shiika and Kakkou? And why did Kakkou destroy Shiika's Mushi? Unfortunately, the entire story is revealed in its entirety to the viewer... in, I believe, episode three. So all the mystery surrounding the story setup is gone very early on. Also, we see that the two know each other, yet, when Kakkou and Shiika meet later in episode one or two, they somehow have no idea who the other person is. What? How does that make sense? We know that Kakkou remembers the girl from the opening, who looks EXACTLY the same as Shiika, yet, he has no clue the two are one and the same? Yes, Kakkou suffers from what I like to refer to as "Sailor Moon Syndrome." Oh, no! She's wearing a different outfit! I can't tell who this strange person I've surely never met before is! Even though she's the only person in the whole anime and probably all of Japan who has that hair color and style! At least Shiika has an excuse as she suffers largely from amnesia... which is something we aren't told until practically the end of the series. Would have been nice to have know that sooner. Also, her amnesia seems to be highly selective as she can still remember her family and goes home in an attempt to find them. Sadly, they are gone. Where? No one knows and the subject is never revisited. Maybe they all moved to Tahiti. It just gets worse from there. Kakkou goes to school under the name Daisuke Kusuriya, allegedly to track down the head of the resistance, Ladybird. I could have sworn with the way that this was presented that they already knew who Ladybird was, otherwise, why else have Kakkou enroll in a specific school in a specific class? Yet, later on, it seems like they had no idea who Ladybird was.. or they just decided not to attack her. Why? Who the heck knows? Maybe they just knew that she was high school age and pulled the name of a high school out of a hat in the hopes that it would be the one she attends and happened to get lucky. Or they asked their magic eight ball for guidance. Yeah. That must be it. Also, the resistance in and of itself doesn't make sense. It's only made up of four people, two of which are small children. Now, they imply that it was marginally bigger at some point, but I'm left thinking, "If this is the biggest threat to the SEPB (Kakkou's organization), how sad are they?" Further, Shiika manages to rescue everyone from a very dramatic situation, but we never actually get to see how. They're all stuck, with seemingly no hope, then bam! Next episode. Everyone's safe and happy thanks to Shiika. But do they show us how or even explain it? Nooooo. Really, it's just a huge tangle of a bunch of very vague ideas that are presented poorly and hastily. To be fair, the series starts off with interesting story elements, like the Mushi, but its lack of proper explanation overshadows any enjoyment to be had from them. I personally wanted to know more about Keji's past and situation, as its briefly touched upon (oddly inappropriately as he just starts blathering on about his past to Kakkou at one point for no apparent reason), but that is never fully explored either. ~Art~ The art was fine. Some shots during the action were a bit shoddy and they make Keji's chin oddly elongated at points, but it was pretty nice for the most part. ~Sound~ Eh, the opening theme was okay. It was a bit slower and dreamy with the stereotypical "hope and love conquers all" theme. I watched it once or twice, then skipped it for the rest of the series. The ending I suffered through once. It was also slow and meh. Better than the opening but without the intriguing animation to warrant me watching it. The sound effects were okay and the voice acting was pretty good. The screaming was especially well done, I'll grant that. ~Conclusion~ So, overall, I really didn't much care for the series. It really bored the heck outta me, to be honest, which is why I rated it so low. Even with all the story issues, it would have gotten a 5 out of me had the pacing not been so terrible. Even the action scenes were aggravating because they were constantly broken up with dramatic introspections and overly dramatic dialogue. I will give the ending some credit as it did some things that were unexpected, but for a series that placed so much emphasis on the ending, it failed to deliver. I found myself not caring about any of the characters aside from Keji and his assistant, and even then, I didn't grow too attached as they remained largely underdeveloped. If the show had been limited to 6 episodes and they'd focused more on the plot and ironing out the story, it would have been decent, possibly even really good. Alas, it was not so. With how many great anime there are out there, I recommend not wasting your life and time on this one.

Mushi-Uta is a series that mostly thrives on the power of its ingenuity in designs. Otherwise, the story is convoluted and rushed; and the characterization is harried, if not completely superficial. I, for one, actually really liked the way this series looks: the protagonist (Kakkō) resembles Ken in his Digimon Emperor garb from Digimon 02 and the mushi (“Originals”) designs in the finale are VERY reminiscent of Go Nagai’s Devilman. I tend to gravitate towards fringe or “cult” series, because I think that watching everything that’s acclaimed, all the time, is boring―but, there are many times in series like this, where, potential for something out-of-the-ordinaryis flushed, like a spider down a drain. See Sci-Fi Harry for a prime example of this. •The characters are practically cardboard cutouts, save for Rina, who is only a one-note character, herself, but still manages to have more of a personality. The main female character (Shīka) seems like she might be interesting, at first, but her characteristics don’t get fleshed out, so you’re just left with “shy” and “submissive.” Her voice actress is Kana Hanazawa, but it’s hard to tell because her vocal work in this series sounds amateurish―I don’t know if this is the fault of it being one of Hanazawa’s first roles or bad sound directing; either way, for a Japanese dub, all of the voices sound pretty horrendous. The romance between all of the characters is uncomfortably forced; there is no chemistry between any of the characters―it just happens. The main couple start hanging out because the male protagonist keeps following her around and asking her out, like a creep! And all of the other characters fall in love for no reason at all, there’s not a build-up, it’s just there… like most of the things that happen in this series. •The focus of the story is these people, practically have the equivalent to bug (無視) stands (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure reference), because the characters contractually merge souls with the insects (in the anime it is translated to souls, but the light novel translation translates their spirit binding into the form of dreams) with, or so the story leads you to believe; so much of the plot consistency is hard to follow. I was confused about the explanation of the “Fallen,” they briefly explain that it’s what happens when a human’s mushi is destroyed; they become “Fallen,” but it’s very convoluted. Many of the plot points seem skimmed through, or they just expect you to understand without explanation? The series is based off a light novel series, and the length of the entire novel series is crunched into only twelve episodes, that’s probably where they went wrong? The GARDEN plot seems incredibly important, but is only referenced through expositional chats. The story focuses more on the friendship between Rina and Shīka, and scenes with Shīka wearing sexy outfits, more than it ever bothers to bring up what the hell is happening in the storyline! •The “emotional” scenes aren’t given time to blossom, every time something happens―the scene transition so quickly that it’s hard to grasp anything, emotionally or mentally (it’s like: well, I guess that happened… ), or the story layers on more plot twists into an intense scene, making the episode more of a head-scratch than an epiphany; all of this happened because the studio obviously didn’t have the foresight to fit all of the required narrative dialogues into the anime. The directorial vision is interesting, but the plot is all over the place; I mean, I thought that this was supposed to be a story about battling bug monsters (?) and there’s a filler episode about a group of mushi-using thugs trapping a girl in a video camera… that was probably one of the worst episodes ever; it even mirrors the Omnimon arc in Digimon: The Movie. This series has already ripped the Digimon Emperor’s design, did we really need an entire episode homaging the cyber-space battle in its spiritual predecessor? •Overall, this series is a giant flop. Which is disappointing because I was drawn into the atmosphere of the first episode; I expected it to be an unpolished gem like Shigofumi. The character designs look like an edgy version of Uta~Kata, which I would have been down for, although Uta~Kata itself was a flop. Withering away in the annals of time, Mushi-Uta is a forgettable relic from 2007 that I rate a 3/10; I would only recommend if you like the designs, otherwise, it’s skippable!

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