Mu Shi Shi, Volume 5 by Yuki Urushibara

Ginko is a Mushishi, a man who tries to understand Mushi and travels around encountering various kinds of Mushi, which are tiny organisms with almost mystical powers. Magical vermin, if you will. The mushishi attempts to help humans who are plagued by Mushi, and to understand them and their powers.

In the first story in this volume, "Sea Palace", Ginko finds a village where dying people are cast down into a sea trench to be devoured. However, a month later, small pearls are released on the water, that if consumed by a woman, will result in a pregnancy where the child being born looks exactly like the person who was cast into the waters. Can Ginko discover the secret of the magical rebirth?

In "Eye's Fortune, Eye's Misfortune", Ginko encounters a female musician who can see perfectly, even with her eyes closed. As the daughter of a Mushishi, she was once blind and regained the ability to see from a Mushi. But as the time passed, her vision became stranger and stranger, and she began to see the future and things even with her eyes closed. Now, she knows that the Mushi in her eyes will soon break free to return to the ground. But can Ginko save her eyes, or will he fail, as she predicts?

In "The Coat That Holds A Mountain", Ginko buys a Haori that has a picture of a mountain painted into the lining, and finds the story of a reclusive artist who lost his ability to make art when his mountain village was destroyed in a sudden landslide. Can Ginko find a way to help this man who is shunned by his fellow villagers, and put back the Mushi that he unwittingly unleashed?

In "The Flames of the Fields", a village is slowly starving due to the growth of a certain type of grass that may also be a Mushi. To save the villagers from hunger, the Mushishi of the village advocates burning the plant, which seemed to grow out of a volcanic rock discovered in one of the fields. Can Ginko save the village from making a horrible mistake that could doom them all?

And in "The Snake of Dawn", Ginko encounters a woman who has a troubling case of Amnesia. She remembers some things, but others are just gone, with no explanation for why she cannot remember. And she cannot sleep at night, just works at her loom over and over and over again. Can Ginko find a cure for her problem, or is there no hope? And will a stunning betrayal rob her of even more of her memory?

This is an interesting series of tales, many drawn from japanese folklore, only recast to use the Mushi as a protagonist/antagonist. Ginko attempts to catalogue and understand the Mushi both to protect humans, and the Mushi themselves. Most humans, however, don't understand, and that puts them at risk from things they don't know.

Reading these stories is like taking a peek into Japanese ghost stories, since many of the Mushi act unseen by humans, with only the effects being felt when it is too late to do anything about it. Many of the stories are vaguely disturbing, in the sense that they cause bodily or mind changes and cannot be prevented, which many people find disturbing in and of itself. But since the Mushi can be studied, it ends up being something like a science as well, which reassures a bit and makes the stories merely fascinating.

I find this series interesting. The stories are told more like vignettes rather than a single long coherent story, but the episodic nature of the story makes it just as interesting as long-form manga and something of a welcome break, as you can read just one story or a few, go away to take a rest, then come back and read more. I'll continue to read this series as long as it is published, as it is dark, fascinating and highly readable. Another one you should try, and quite different from most manga being published today.