Is Mushishi Veeky Forums approved?

Is Mushishi Veeky Forums approved?

Pastoral detective folk tales with a nomadic philosopher protagonist seems like an understandable niche Veeky Forums anime.

well i can't speak for /lit, but it's my personal favorite chinese cartoon

I've never read it.

>understandable niche Veeky Forums anime
>anime
>Veeky Forums

Manga is a superior art-form to anime you ass.

As snobbish as Veeky Forums is, it will hardly accept any manga, save anime. That said, Mushishi is great.

>Manga is a superior art-form to anime

I see no reason to believe this.

Manga is usually written by a single person, so it is more often a work of art than anime.

boring, not as deep as it thinks it is

It doesn't think it is deep, and neither should you think so.

No it isn't? Art isn't created individually.

My favourite mango

At it's best it's almost Borgesian which is more than I could have ever asked for

Why the fuck would I watch a manga

mushishi is highly overrated by fedoras who want desperately to win approval for watching "le artistic philosophical" anime

it's not bad but it's quite bland overall. it gets props cause it's slightly better than the generic sea of shit that is anime but it's a low bar.

You're projecting pretensions of intellectualism that aren't there.

It's a comfy magical realism cartoon with pretty animation, nobody is claiming it's Kafka.

>le quiet man wanders through the woods xD
If I want to be comfy I'll read or go outside, I don't need to watch Chinese cartoons

Veeky Forums is a garbage board.
>I don't need to watch Chinese cartoons
Get off of this anime imageboard then.

Half-right. Anime is the superior medium, even if it is more susceptible to commercial interests, even if there are more great works within manga.

20th century boys has a manga but no anime, therefore you're wrong

20th Century Boys is Stephen King tier

You're watching anime wrong if you watch it for its literary value.

Film studies has gradually shied from anything that smacks of apparatus theory, and by extension, from theories based on the specificity of cinema—what is usually called the specificity thesis. Historically, as filmmakers strived to establish film as art, and as critics strove to convince the world of the importance of studying cinema, they insisted on its specificity. Their bid to establish the
distinctiveness of cinema inevitably called on the distinctiveness of its technologies, claiming that such technologies made for forms of expression distinctive from those of other arts, especially from theatre.The specificity thesis proved crucial not only in establishing and enforcing filmic conventions (whence the
classical Hollywood style, for instance) but also in establishing the seriousness
of cinema and thus its worthiness as an object of critical commentary. As Noel Carrol, in his critique of the specificity thesis, sums it up, “The assumption is that what a medium does best will coincide with what differentiates it.” Carroll objects above all to the implication of exclusivity, by which “each art form should
explore only those avenues of development in which it exclusively excels above all other arts.” Underlying Carroll’s objections to the specificity for cinema is a sense of technological determinism. He writes that the specificity thesis “appears to envision each art form on the model of a highly specialized tool with a range of determinate functions. A film, play, poem, or painting is thought of, it seems,
analogous to something like a Phillips screwdriver.”

keep dreaming, stephen

Anime's strengths lie in flow and motion, manga's strengths lie in the impact of individual panels. Ranking one over the other is like comparing film and literature, at a certain point it's just asinine.

Most anime comes from manga.

Anime is usually a studio quickly rendering an artist's manga work into a for-TV cash cow. It rarely measures up to the artwork of the original, and is often crammed with filler episodes, extras, and other contributions that are the equivalent of studio-backed fan art.

That being said, Mushi-shi is great.

It depends on the work. Sometimes manga is a post-production rendering of an anime into book form.

Although, it is usually opposite.

In the case of 風の谷のナウシカ (Nausicaa), a manga was produced first only to convince backers to make a film, so film was always meant to be the artistic medium.

There are other similar cases.

The nausicaa manga is far superior to the film though.

That is an opinion.

I agree with it, but still, an opinion.

Are you kidding?

Are you even engaged while watching?

Mushi-shi is heavily focused on traditional Japanese cultural themes and perspectives.

All art is colored by the cultural backdrop on which it is created, but Mushi-shi is not only aware of its place in time and culture - it takes that as a central part of it's themes.

"Mushi" are a creative play on a common topic in anime - the yokai and kami of Shinto folk mythology. Originality is no mean feat in this sphere, as these myths are a common subject of anime, and perspectives which attempt to fuse them with modern taxonomy or microbiology are exceedingly rare.

Aside from that, in Japanese culture, the frailty and transitory nature of life and beauty are extremely important. The high place these ideas hold is apparent in everything from Japanese philosophy to poetry, art, film, and even the importance cherry blossoms hold in Japanese culture.

At the same time, the idea of man simply being a part of nature - of a much larger universe, and ultimately unimportant - is completely ingrained in the way the Japanese see themselves and everything else.

Among other things, these views give many of the great works of Japanese art a sense of poignancy.

Mushi-shi takes the sorrow and awe born of the awareness of your impermanence and smallness as it's baseline.

Not only that, but the Buddhist revelation that "life is suffering," plays a key role.

Just as in our lives, it is from their place in nature that the suffering of Mushi-shi's characters arises. As it states early on in the show, for Urushibara, humans are just one form of life on the spectrum of nature.

Another one of Mushi-shi's strong points, is the way it deals with a different theme in almost every episode. Each story deals with a concept - fear v. desire, memory, time, societal duty v. individuality, private self v. public self, perception v. reality, fate, etc.

Many of these are the themes of well-known Japanese folk tales in re-imagined states.

Mushi-shi is a revolt and an ode. It is about old clashing with new, and finding oneself in the context of history and ancestry.

This is even visible through the clothing Ginko wears, which are far more modern, than anything worn by any other character in the show.

Like the modern Japanese, Ginko is wandering through history - he has no place and yet he has every place. Urushibara is eluding to the task of modern Japan to find itself in the context of it's history.

The point is, Mushi-shi is not a "comfy magical realism cartoon with pretty animation," or a "quite bland" attempt to make a philosophic anime.

It is Urushibara's artistic attempt to create a set of modern Japanese folktales which juxtapose modernity with antiquity while examining concepts culturally relevant to modern Japan and preserving the historic and philosophic roots of Japanese storytelling.

>Are you kidding?
>Are you even engaged while watching?

Forgive me, please, for starting like this. That was rude, and uncalled for.

>taking children's cartoons this seriously

tell me more about how Homer signifies the fall of Western man LMAO

I don't think you understand how anime and manga are perceived in Japan.

>Urushibara is eluding to the task of modern Japan to find itself in the context of it's history.

What would this entail (practically speaking)?

Enjoyed this a lot

I had always read/watched (both were done well in their own respect) Mushishi through the lense of the anti-pastoral, the beautiful landscapes serving as a backdrop to the harsh reality of the often bleak stories.

I've been rewatching it for the first time and slowly come to realize that it's much closer to a sincere pastoral. The beauty of what it's depicting isn't diminished by the spiritual framing or frequent grimness of the tales, instead the undertones of Shintoism actually root it firmly in an ideological world that Urushibura makes beautifully real and the stark austerity of the work grants it an earnest sincerity that a lot of anime is lacking (and which relegated the majority of the genre to empty escapism).

It feels closer to Homer or Hesiod in spirit than the hyper-manic escapism that I picture when I think of anime.