“Sabikui Bisco” is one of the most underrated anime I have ever seen and this is why.
It sets place in a post-apocalyptic Japan after a mysterious bomb hits Tokyo creating a phenomenon called “the rust wind.” When exposed to the rust wind for too long your internal organs and limbs start to rust off your body. The rust has consumed most of Japan due to the air currents carrying the rust across the country. The first episode shows a doctor called “Doctor Panda” working out of a local brothel helping anyone who comes in regardless of if they can pay or not. When I was watching the show for the first time, there was a lot that went unnoticed. I feel when an anime can make me go back and watch it again and make me see new things the second time tells me the writer spent countless hours making sure you sit on the edge of your seat. The new government in Japan has completely outlawed any and all kinds of mushrooms thinking that mushrooms are helping spread the rust through Japan. Mushroom keepers on the other hand think mushrooms are the only thing that will cure the rust. Mushroom keepers are the rebels of the anime and they spend their lives mastering mushroom manipulation. They are able to coat their arrowins in spores from different mushrooms. They can make explosives, gliders, medicine and more. This anime’s main theme is showing how a government will do anything to make money. The government in this anime knows for a fact that mushrooms are the only true cure for the rust that plagues their land. They keep them from their citizens because making a treatment that someone has to come in once a month for is more lucrative than a one-time cure.
Action, a strong plot, animation, character development, character relationships, creature design, landscape and world building are elements I think are important for an anime to be a 10/10. This one has it all. The fight scenes have well animated intricate combat and motion. The combat and fighting scenes actually make sense as in physics and actual fighting techniques. The overall plot is extremely expansive. The writers put in plenty of foreshadowing that makes the watcher feel a sense of suspense and anxiety while watching. The misunderstood rebel of the mushroom keepers makes the story and conflict something the watcher can connect to and compare what’s going on in their own lives.
At the beginning of the anime, the main character Doctor Panda or Milo seems to be a law abiding doctor who wants what’s best for his community, but he is secretly using mushrooms to make a medicine to make the cure to the rust. The second main character is Bisco. He is pegged as a terrorist who wants to kill people. They even gave him the nickname “Bisco, the maneater” because of a rumor that he likes to eat people after he kills them. The same way a mushroom consumes dead or decaying corpses. They meet after Bisco and his mentor go to the city to find medicine to help his master’s rust sickness. Bisco is being chased by the “watch” and comes across Milo’s clinic after being injured and Milo dresses his wounds and goes with Bisco on his journey. From terrorist to a friend, they become close on their journey to find the rusteater mushroom.
The creatures in this anime are crazy cool. They use animals like they would use mechanical parts. There are hippos that have Gatling guns on their back, escargo-planes, giant crabs that people ride on, huge hermit crabs that are the size of mountains that they build whole castles on.
Overall, it is in my top 10 anime of all time. It is especially good if you are a newcomer to anime as a whole. It has everything you need.
Any additional information that you could ever need about this anime or any other anime can be found at myanimelist.net.
