Mushi Uta #12 — Sweet Dreams are Made of This

October 4th, 2007

 

Who am I to disagree?

Impressions:

This episode was pretty intense and excellent all around. All three of the Mushi users struggled with their powers and even though Rina finally gave up on her thoughts of killing all of SEPB and Kakkou, I respect that they had the guts to kill her. Does it give me the sniffles? Yeah, but the scenes between her and Daisuke were very well done in that usual blending of reality and the surreal that Mushi Uta has excelled at throughout. Shiika’s struggle with the Winter Firefly was pretty tame by comparison to the other two, but I suppose it’s fine. The whole Winter Firefly thing with her never seemed particularly well fleshed out anyway. The episode doesn’t resolve almost any of the overall Mushi stuff, but did an excellent job of wrapping up all the character plots and letting Daisuke walk off into the sunset. Some more overall thoughts in the series wrapup at the bottom.

No OP or ED this week.

EVIL TEACHER and her giant eating moth hover over Garden.

Daisuke is being more and more engulfed by his Mushi.

Asami, Centi and the little girl Rina tried to save are all watching evil monster Nanahoshi with dead eyes. Daisuke fights to get Kakkou under control and points it up at Nanahoshi, yelling out to Rina.

The giant moth’s eyes flare red and EVIL TEACHER floats up into its mouth. Out of it flie hundreds of smaller (but still larger than mansized) moths that attack all the SEPB members and leave them as fallen. The Eater says how delicious everybody is.

Kakkou gets up to fight, but then Nanahoshi lets out a huge blast all around it. Some debris falls towards Haji. Daisuke leaps to save him, but is too slow.

In the blizzard, Shiika pulls the horn out of her body. Wait… wasn’t she collapsed on the ground? She stares at the hole in her abdomen as she thinks about Daisuke. Her eyes go dead for a moment, but then she screams out and a giant blast of snow erupts upward. An avalanche flows through the city.

Daisuke leaps up to Nanahoshi. It grins at him, revealing a naked Rina (oh ho!) inside its mouth. It knocks him back, and he lands next to a very heavily injured Haji. Nanahoshi attacks him, but Daisuke fires back. His shots don’t seem to have any effect and Nanahoshi shoots a huge energy wave. Daisuke blocks it with his demon arm, but Haji is blasted away. Bad day for Haji.

Rina is standing alone in a meadow with her eyes closed while the wind blows. She’s still in her birthday suit. She hears Daisuke’s voice.

In reality, Daisuke collapses.

Rina hears Daisuke’s voice again and opens her eyes to see him.

The two face eachother naked. She demands answers from him as to why he did these things to everybody. He doesn’t respond and she becomes angry. Nanahoshi slams her hands down as well. She raises her fist to crush the prone Daisuke as the Eater goes on about how delicious this is.

In the dream, Rina is strangling Daisuke. He doesn’t struggle at all. She blames everything on him, saying that they all had the same dream, but he ruined everything. He tries to stop her, but she tells him to shut up and squeezes harder. Nanahoshi brings her hand down.

Rina lets go of his throat.

Nanahoshi stops, just above Daisuke.

She asks him why he had to be Kakkou and do all these things. He apologizes to her, but says that he’ll save her too. He yells to her that their mutual enemy is right in front of them.

In Nanahoshi’s mouth, Rina waks up and thinks that she remembered her real dream, to find a place where nobody had to fight. Her eyes return from being dead and she gets up.

 

From the face in Nanahoshi’s eye, legs sprout and embed into the rest of the beast-thing. Dream Rina is suddenly in an immense amount of pain.

Daisuke wake up to see that he Mushi is firing on its own. He leaps up to save Rina, but the Eater says it’s useless. Haji lights a bloody cigarette and gives his final thoughts to them all. To find their world with Ladybird and the Winter Firefly before shutting his eyes.

The tendrils from the eye spread throughout the whole of Nanahoshi, forming a skeleton and organs, with Rina in its heart. Daisuke lowers his weapon, but then leaps towards Nanahoshi’s heart, directly at Rina, and carries her out of its body.

He collapses with Rina in his arms, yelling that it’s not over. She opens her eyes… which have already turned dead, saying that it’s impossible. Daisuke yells at her to not give up. She tells him to please save Shiika and find a place for them. She holds up her hand and strokes his face. Daisuke starts crying as she leaves her dream to him.

Rina tells him how happy she was to meet Kusuriya Daisuke as she shatters and blows away. Daisuke raises his (still human) hand in anger and then collapses in grief.

The Eater keeps going on about how delicious everything is. The Nanahoshi beast gets up and roars as it grins.

Shiika sits alone in the blizzard, covering her wound.

Daisuke gets up and says that he will respect Rina’s final wishes. His Mushi suddenly fires at Nanahoshi again. It blasts through her, but she just regenerates it. Daisuke laughs to himself that he’s losing control too.

Shiika’s voice says to never give up.

Daisuke’s Mushi has turned at him and is about to fire. He reminds the thing who’s in charge and slams it on the ground repeatedly, and then starts punching it, yelling that he won’t give up, nobody else will be hurt and he will find their place.

Nanahoshi turns to them. Daisuke raises his gun and shoots a giant blast that stuns it and then leaps upward and destroys the eye/core, wishing a Merry Christmas to its master as he does so.

As Nanahoshi falls and distintigrates, the Eater laughs maniacally. Daisuke’s Mushi has reverted and he falls. He picks himself up and moves towards the Eater even as it starts to retreat. Haji watches him go.

Shiika talks with the Winter Firefly. It wants everybody to disappear. She argues even while having dead eyes that this isn’t her dream. Her eyes revert and she reaches out to the Winter Firefly. She tells it that there are people that she doesn’t want to disappear and hugs it. Its eyes turn blue and it floats upwards. Shiika thinks how beautiful it is before the pain from her wound makes her flinch.

Daisuke walks out of the blizzard. Shiika thanks him for protecting her dream and says that she still hasn’t given up. She falls into his arms. His goggles come off and she sees that it’s Daisuke. Shiika thinks to herself that she’s found it.

The Winter Firefly flares… and then the blizzard disappears. They’re back in the real world with a light snow starting to fall.

Shiika remembers a dream, the same as the others. She sees Rina and Daisuke waiting for her on the other side of the train tracks.

She wakes up, but the pain doubles her over. Daisuke tells her to not move from the other side of the curtains. Shiika asks him (as Kakkou) what happened to Rina. He tells her that at the end she never gave up on her dream. She says that she’ll never forget the dream Rina left with her and will protect it.

Shiika says that she knows he’s not really Kakkou, but he says that he has something from Daisuke for her. He tells her to wait for him at the Planetarium next Christmas. She thanks Kakkou for everything, but there’s no answer. She gets up to find him gone… but he left Rina’s sunset paintings for her.

The full ED playes as Daisuke walks away from the town with his goggles on his forehead and we see all the other cast (Kasuo, C, the secretary, Haji in intensive care, etc). He looks back and lowers his goggles. Shiika summons the Winter Firefly and hugs it close.

Final Thoughts:

Screw final thoughts, there’s another season coming. There’s only one major problem I have with Mushi Uta, and that’s the time skip after episode 4. It still leaves some huge questions unanswered about how all the Mushi Resistance kids managed to escape, and how Rina knew that Shiika was a Mushi User without actually seeing that Shiika used the Winter Firefly. Still though, Mushi Uta was excellent not because of the premise of bugs fighting other bugs, but for how strong all the characters were. Daisuke and Rina are some of the most real and sympathetic characters that I’ve seen in a show in a long time. Shiika could have been a lot more fully developed, especially compared to those two, but she still wasn’t a weakness at all.

A lot of props also have to be given to the direction and scoring of the series, which was simply fantastic. From the very start, the blending of dreams and reality and the shifting perspectives between the two was handled masterfully. Use of colors, imagery, and sounds made the visions that the characters had as real and as disconcerting as they were meant to be, instead of just some cheesy gateway to flashbacks. Conversations would flow through one to the other without being confusing or feeling forced while still retaining that mystique that the audience, like the characters, is getting pulled into both.

I really pity the people who saw the opera masks and the rolling bugs and wrote this off as garbage after 5 minutes into the first episode. Instead of focusing on and selling the premise, Mushi Uta brought the characters and the world to life. Every single character had their own hopes and dreams, and showing them all reach for them… and having the guts to not just throw in a happy ending… really does nothing but heighten my anticipation for the second season. I’ll miss Rina. *sniff* I’ll miss Rina quite a bit actually, but Beat Frog did a great job with their virgin production and I look forward to seeing how they’ll continue this story.

Posted in Mushi Uta | 14 Comments »

14 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • Dangan says:

    this is the ending for season 1?
    I wonder what is going to happen for season 2? and how come Daisuke left Shika? and he said he can not be Daisuke anymore. I want them to be together. I want to see season 2 right now.

  • Demon Eyes says:

    Rina…NOOOOOOO

    Oh well, there like goes the second season!

    how come she is the only one that like…really died!!

    Not fair!!!

  • AxHunter says:

    Oh well, somebody knows when the second season starts? I like this series.

  • Syaoran Li says:

    Suffer… like Code geass 24-25 did it to us

  • Aroduc says:

    Pfft. This is nothing like Geass. This really was, for all intents and purposes, a valid ending. They left the overall Mushi stuff in the air, but they could start the next season with a completely different set of characters… or 50 years down the road… and it’d flow just fine.

  • Nai says:

    Damn, after finish the episode I want to smash director’s head for introducing Senri in the last episode but anyway, that was impressive ending for the first season. The arrange version of ending is nice too. Hope they announce the second season soon.

  • Hinano says:

    I haven’t gotten the raw yet (kicks tokyo tosho*) D:!
    HOwever I few weeks ago I did do a fanart ;D
    http://hinan0.deviantart.com/art/Fuyu-Hotaru-65501896

  • Aroduc says:

    Hrm? The raw was up on Tosho. It was even a good 3-4 hours earlier than usual… in the middle of the Shana/Clannad craziness.

  • Karura says:

    I didn’t think much of this series at first but it gradually grew on me- not perfect by any means but oddlt addictive. Roll on season 2.

  • Totali says:

    Oh, I definitely agree. So many people missed out on this great show for no reason. It had great production value, an awesome cast (Yukari Tamura as Min Min? That’s like a psycho moe Nanoha….and Nonaka Ai is always win for me), and a very good plot. I didn’t watch for the buggies though…I thought this show was good because of the character development and drama. This episode was intense and sad…but I guess there’s plenty left for the second season. That’s going to be a nice ride. Sigh…the tears won’t stop!

  • Totali says:

    oh and…

    I travel the world and the seven seas, everybody’s looking for something.

    etc etc…

  • mei says:

    love the background music. but can’t find from nipponsei when the ost is coming out. anyone have any ideas?

  • X says:

    Ya your right most blogs thinks that the show was garbage just for one episode. as for me i usually judge the animation quality of a show in 1 episode and the story itself for 3 episodes, this show really caught my attention the very first episode when he met shiika, its background music and animation was awesome!

  • Fang-tan says:

    I really hope the second season focuses on Shiina and Daisuke and not some other characters from the novel. I’ll be so depressed if I don’t get a follow up between them.