🚬 蟲師 Mushishi Home Thread (IMC) 🕸

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1

Welcome to the :smoking: 蟲師 Mushishi Bookk Club! :spider_web:

Start date: TBD, likely late May or early June

Join the Intermediate Manga Club Here!
View this book on Natively!

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The point of this book club is to enjoy reading together and pool our resources and questions so that we can more easily enjoy the book. That said, if you have to start late or you are reading this after the club has finished, you are still welcome to read and post with us. And if you’ve already read Mushishi, but want to help, discuss, or even just hang out, you’re welcome as well.

Story Summary

日本語

この世はヒト知れぬ生命に溢れている―。動物でも植物でもない、生命の原生体―「蟲」。それらが招く不可思議な現象に触れたとき、ヒトは初めてその幽玄なる存在を知る。蟲とヒトとをつなぐ存在―それが「蟲師」たる者。

English

THEY HAVE EXISTED SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME. Some live in the deep darkness behind your eyelids. Some eat silence. Some thoughtlessly kill. Some simply drive men mad. They are known as mushi-creatures that came into being shortly after life emerged from the primordial ooze. They still exist parallel to our own lives and can only be seen by a select few. As a mushishi, Ginko is one of the few who are aware of their existense, and this young man with a sardonic smile roams from place to place with the knowledge and skill to aid those unwittingly affected by mushi.

Vocab

Google Sheets
Renshuu.org

For Sale on…

eBook Japan
BookWalker
CD Japan
Honto
Amazon JP
Amazon Kindle JP
Amazon US
Kinokuniya JP

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

  1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
  2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
  3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.
  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

Schedule and Important Links

tbd, please see following post

Week Start Date Chapter Start Page Page Count

Will you be reading with us?

  • Yeah!
  • Yeah, but I’ll start late
  • I’m not sure yet
  • I’m skipping this one
  • I’ve read this before, but will join in the discussion
0 voters

How will you be reading?

  • Physical
  • Digital
  • Through my bangs, with my special eye
  • I’m not sure yet
0 voters

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to be notified when weekly threads get posted!

12 Likes
2

Pacing

Mushishi vol 1 has 5 chapters and they’re on the longer side. However, Mushishi also isn’t very text heavy.

Chapter Start Page Page Count
緑の座 3 57
柔らかい角 61 39
枕小路 101 45
瞼の光 147 33
旅をする沼 181 40

What would you all like to do?

  • Read a chapter a week, absolutely no splits
  • Read a chapter a week, but split the first chapter in 2
  • Read a chapter over two weeks (split all chapters in half)
  • Split the first chapter and then reassess the speed
  • Other
0 voters
8 Likes
3

Well, this is a style of poll I haven’t seen in these parts before.

10 Likes
4

We got time, so I figured why not

7 Likes
5

Yay super happy that we’ll be reading Mushishi!

How did you know? :eye:

Wow never knew you could do that with polls, pretty cool

5 Likes
6

Wait how short are those rounds?

EDIT: Oh or are the rounds recalculated after reach new vote? This UI is a bit confusing.

5 Likes
7

It seems so. I don’t think I’ve used it before. Hopefully as more people vote, we’ll have a better idea

3 Likes
8

I see what you’re saying about the rounds being short… Hopefully instead of rounds what it really means is round 1= most popular and least popular and round 2 is second most popular and second least popular? :thinking:

2 Likes
9

No I understand now, based on the ranked votes it simulates a series of rounds where one choice gets eliminated every time until a majority is reached.

2 Likes
10

Yah, this. Basically what happens is that everyone’s first choices are counted. Whichever choice comes last gets eliminated, and everyone who voted first for that, now their second votes get counted instead. And so forth until something has a majority.

Though surely it should hold off the simulation until the vote is actually closed.

5 Likes
11

Based on the discussion in the home thread, people like to know who’s ahead while the poll is running though. I think the UI should look more similar to the usual polls though, where you get the winner on top and then the 2nd more popular etc…

Showing the rounds by default is going to confuse most people not familiar with the process of ranked voting tallies.

4 Likes
12

There’s the “Votes” button at the top, but when you’ve got preferential voting, it’s not really so simple as “yeah, this one’s in the lead”.

1 Like
13

But it literally says that already tho

Screenshot_2025-01-23-11-19-57-09_3aea4af51f236e4932235fdada7d1643
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If they’re willing to jump the gun like this they might as well clean up the UI.

2 Likes
14

Only after the simulation.

Reckon the past tense is the most confusing part. If things remain as they are, the winner would be…

Also, today I learnt that Australia, Ireland and Malta are the only countries in the world which use this style of voting for federal elections, though NZ, the UK, and specific locations in the US also use it for local government elections.

5 Likes
15

Agreed with the confusing UI, I hadn’t spotted that and after my vote it looked to me like it was final, so definitely room for improvement.
But I guess even with the flaws can be a nice tool if we get used to using it!

5 Likes
16

Yes I would be interested to see what a book poll with this system would look like, it’s too bad that the UI is so jank.

4 Likes
17

At least they’ve already improved it from their first iteration which didn’t have “Abstain” (so you had to give every single item a unique position) and was missing “(highest/lowest priority)” (so you had no idea if 1 or 5 is higher, or what the numbers are supposed to signify in the first place). It was a mess. This actually seems barely usable now!

I’m still hoping that at some point they’ll add drag & drop sorting though.

5 Likes
18

This is also so confusing. I keep reading it as " Read a chapter a week, but split the first chapter in 2 after 3 rounds" :sweat_smile: . It would have been nice if there was a difference of font, or quotes, between “Winner was XXX after X rounds”

4 Likes
19

Yeah. It seems like this style of poll could really really use improvements. Hopefully they fix it soon

1 Like