| Title: | Mushi-Uta |
| Episode: | 04: Crumbling Dream |
| Synopsis | |
| In Kaihin Park, Centi wanders in a daze. Ladybird, furious at Kakkou for shooting a child's Mushi, summons her own Mushi, Nanahoshi, and attacks him. An army of SEPB Mushi respond and a wild battle ensues. Ladybird finds herself being overwhelmed until Centi comes to her rescue. Shiika and Mushibane member Snail are looking for a way out of the ring of SEPB personnel when they encounter a strange woman. Kakkou is confronted by fellow SEPB member "MinMin", who makes clear her hatred for him. Ladybird and Centi find themselves entangled in a web cast by spider-like Mushi. They are confronted by SEPB East Section Chief Haji Keigo, who taunts them and predicts that Kakkou will eventually eliminate the three original Mushi, the "Hajimari no Sanbiki", and all other Mushi will be eradicated as well. He then casually shoots Centi's Mushi--but instead of reducing Centi to a zombie, the shot has a quite unexpected effect... | |
| Comments | |
| Stretch: Mushi-Uta is such a neat show, and figuring out the answers is so much fun that the idea occured to me to keep track of the theories and conclusions I've reached in episode review form, so as not to spoil the story for those just getting started. So here goes... The revelation that the best SEPB agents are Mushitsuki themselves reminds me of s-CRY-ed and the HOLY organization. I'd suspected that this must be the case, but this makes it clear. I got a bit of a queesy feeling that this show wasn't so original afterall, but there is one major difference in that beeing a Mushitsuki is like a disease that will eventually prove fatal. It makes it a lot harder to judge Kakkou for killing Mushi when he is infected himself! Another thing made clear is that Mushitsuki are "living weapons with dreadful powers". When Centi's Mushi went into it's final phase, threatening to kill him, we see the fate that presumably awaits all Mushitsuki. I happened to rewatch a bit of episode one, and now I understand Kakkou's comment about "I wonder how long I've got" (or something like that). Kakkou seems to believe that having your Mushi killed and becoming a "Ketsurakusha" doesn't necessarily mean you'll be a zombie for the rest of your life. Perhaps he believes this because he has run into Shiika and assumes she has made a recovery and been released (when in fact she is an escapee from GARDEN). I think what happened at the very beginning of the series was that he executed Shiika's Mushi, and one result was that she lost her memory of their first "meeting"... except she still seems to have a Mushi! So much for that theory; maybe she's been reinfected, or her Mushi wasn't quite dead afterall, which would have enabled her to make her escape from GARDEN. SEPB leafer Haji mentions Kakkou's fervent wish to fulfill his "promise" to Shiika--something about finding a place she can belong to. As usual, rewatching this episode a second time was both fun and revealed a number of clues which I'd missed the first time around. Where do the fansubbers come up with their definitions of certain terms, like Ketsurakusha? Have they read a manga, or perhaps already watched some future episodes and added the definitions to earlier ones in order to make the story easier to follow? | |
