Genre: Adventure

Age Rating: Older Teens

Price: $12.95

Ginko continues his role as mushishi in volume 4 of Yuki Urushibara’s “Mushishi.” This volume, which comes in at 230-plus pages, has another five self-contained stories about Japan and the mushi that inhabits it.

Although the art continues to be a spot-on complement to the moody stories, the insistence on self-contained stories is running thin. The first three stories are good, but the fourth is better. “In the Cage” is a story about a family and how mushi can have a big impact on their lives. It’s poignant and touching, but still a bit unsatisfying, since it’s a self-contained story.

The last story, “The Sound of Trodden Grass,” is the best in the volume. Although it’s a self-contained story, it uses a different character — probably not one who will play an occurring role in the series — as the main character of the story. Ginko does make an appearance in it, and it shines some light on his personal background.

But the best part of the story is telling it from the point of view of another character, which allows a little bit of life to breathe in the series.

Although the series as a whole has been excellent so far, it’s hard to stay interested if every volume is simply going to be a collection of a handful of short stories. Allowing other characters to take the lead in some stories or using some other literary device would certainly go about making this series not be too rigid.

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