A girl becomes a mountain's god without choosing it. Her brother spends years looking for her in the wrong place. Ginko watches them orbit each other across a divide that can't be crossed, not because it's impossible, but because she's already transformed into something that needs to stay still. The show builds its entire weight from the distance between what you want and what you've already become. Animation dissolves into landscape until you forget you're watching screens. By the end, you understand that some people don't get rescued, they get witnessed.
Ginko's wandering brings him to a mountain where he comes across a strange young girl with branches and leaves growing from her body. He comes to understand that she is the lord of the mountain, yet it puzzles him that a human was ever chosen for such a role. Soon he meets her older brother, who has never stopped looking for her since she went missing on a stormy day while out with him. With the help of Yoshiro, who as a boy heard bells ringing on that same mountain, Ginko works to learn who the girl, Kaya, really is and what befell her. Kaya is torn between keeping her duty as a lord of the mushi and going back to the human family that loves her. This supernatural mystery film adapts the final arc of the Mushishi manga.
