I think every year since I started doing Anime Reviews, I have accurately predicted what my number one show of the year was going to be as soon as I finished it, and that is what happened with Rust-Eater Bisco. It took all of one episode to fall in love with it. What it's about is the world was ruined by Rusting, a disease that causes anyone and anything (Almost) to begin to rust. It's a disease with no known cure.
Bisco is a Mushroom Keeper, a group of people who grow and manipulate mushrooms, is wanted because people believe Mushrooms are the source of Rust, despite the show establishing in the first episode this isn't true. Bisco is trying to track down something known as the Rust-Eater, a mushroom whose ability to absorb rust is far beyond any other mushroom and may be able to cure the Rusting Disease. He is quickly joined by a local Doctor, Milo, who has been illegally obtaining mushrooms to try and find a cure for Rusting to save his sister. As with many anime doctors, Milo does a lot of his work for free and under the radar.
While the show does a fantastic job and showing a world in ruins, the action presented is definitely over the top and stylish. Bisco uses arrows coated in Mushroom based concoctions that cause a variety of mushrooms to sprout on impact. There are a variety of poisonous mushrooms, some that are used as bouncy launching pads, hard shielding mushrooms, glowing mushrooms, and so many more. He makes use of these weapons against giant hippos with mini-guns mounted on their backs while riding around on the back of a giant crab. There is a moment in this show were said out loud, “Did she just throw a fucking gorilla into an elephant?”. I can understand a person having a hard time reconciling these two different things, but frankly, I have no such issue. Even with everything being so over the top, the show still manages to make the impact of everything hit hard. There is a lot of tension, and every time the action ramps up it pull you in.
Furthermore the show never lets the comedy, which there is plenty of, undercut the serious moments. It knows to let scenes breathe when it needs to, something a lot of shows seem to struggle with. There are so many moments of the show that I was laughing my ass off and many more moments where it had me worried about characters and their fates. It does a great job at jumping between emotions, and it's pretty wild in that regard.
That said, there is a problem that starts to grow as the show goes on. It's a problem that is going to vary from person to person, but the best comparison for this I have is something like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. There is a point in a lot of Jojo where you, not intentionally, decide on if the insanity and emotion alone are enough to carry you through a lot of stupid. If you sit down and analyze a lot of things that happen in Jojo's, things can unravel and stop making much sense. That said, the emotion and passion behind everything are enough that it kind of stops mattering for a lot of people. There are a lot of points in the later bits of this show that can fall apart if you dissect them too much, and there are things that happen that feel incredibly 'convenient' as if they happened just so the plot could keep going. For me I loved these characters, I cared about what was happening, and there was so much energy it carried me through a lot of that without really hindering my experience at all. But it's something to know going in because some people will be put off by it.
A lot of things I don't want to get into without spoiling it, but Rust-Eater Bisco is fantastic. There wasn't a moment I wasn't invested, the visuals are wonderful, and the premise is inventive and fun. If this somehow isn't the best anime of the year, I am going to be shocked.
😍😘👍
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the person sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.
Seems interesting, I must watch this anime