Mushi-uta grabs you with a visual language that's instantly unsettling, those insect designs sit wrong, move wrong, exist in a space between beautiful and grotesque that most shows won't touch. The concept is merciless: trade your dreams for power, and the show means it, watching you actually lose pieces of yourself to get stronger. Twelve episodes is not enough time for what it's trying to do, and the love triangle collapses under its own weight, but by then you're already invested in watching Kakkou and Shiika destroy each other for reasons neither of them fully understands.

In the near future, insect-like beings called Mushi first appeared ten years ago. They feed on people's dreams and thoughts and grant supernatural powers in exchange. Those they possess, the Mushitsuki, are held in a secret prison known as GARDEN. Daisuke Kusuriya, called Kakkou, meets a young girl named Shiika Anmoto, and over time the two grow close. What Kakkou does not know is that Shiika has escaped from GARDEN. The prison's armed branch, the Special Environmental Conservation Executive Office, sends its best killer after her, but it runs into opposition from the Mushibane, a resistance group led by the secretive Ladybird. The result is a sci-fi action fantasy.