Release orderRecommended
0 / 6 watchedRelease order. The show is episodic, so this order mainly matters for the 2014 specials and film.
- 1 Mushishi 26 episodes, October 2005 to June 2006. Artland. Self-contained Ginko stories. Start here.
- 2 Mushishi: Hihamukage Hour-long special aired January 4, 2014. The Sun-Eating Shade two-parter that bridges the two series.
- 3 Mushishi: The Next Passage 10 episodes, April to June 2014. The Next Passage, first half.
- 4 Mushishi: Path of Thorns Hour-long special aired August 2014. Path of Thorns. Sits between the two halves of the second season.
- 5 Mushishi: The Next Passage 2nd Season 10 episodes, October to December 2014. The Next Passage, second half.
- 6 Mushishi: Bell Droplets 46-minute film, released May 16, 2015. Bell Droplets. Closes the anime run. Watch last.
About Mushishi
Ginko drifts through rural Japan studying mushi, primitive creatures that cause strange afflictions, and nearly every episode is a self-contained story. Artland's first series ran 26 episodes from October 2005 to June 2006.
The anime resumed in 2014 with the Hihamukage special, the 20-episode second season The Next Passage split across spring and autumn, the Path of Thorns special between the two halves, and the 2015 film Bell Droplets. Any episode works as a starting point, but release order preserves the few callbacks in the 2014 run.
Good to know
Strict order matters little outside the 2014 sequence, where Hihamukage leads into the second season and Bell Droplets closes it. Katsuhiro Otomo's 2006 live-action film is a separate retelling and is not in the list. No new Mushishi anime had been announced as of September 2026.
