If asked to identify the most enjoyable character I read about in the past year, I may not settle on Ginko, but he’d at least put up a hell of a fight.

Let’s talk about the D&D alignment system for a minute — not the oversimplified gradient of fourth edition (what the hell is “unaligned,” anyway?), but the 3×3 grid that came into being with AD&D. Or, because a lot of you are aware of the D&D alignment system already, let’s talk about my relationship with it. As a teenager I fancied myself a rebel — this was no more true of me than it is of any suburban American teenager, but that’s what I wanted to be, and so I liked to think I was chaotic good, champion of the people in spite of the law. But as I grew older, I grew more moderate, or at least I realized I was more lawful than I had admitted to myself. Chaos was overrated anyway. Thenceforth I was neutral good, an opponent of villainy above all else. Neutral good seemed a reasonable place to be, for a while.

I’ve changed quite a bit in the past few years, however, and though I still tend to get neutral good on the alignment test, I’ve developed a healthy respect for true neutrality. Perhaps this is my way of acknowledging that the world wouldn’t be what it is without good things and bad, that balance is paramount, or perhaps it indicates my awareness that such a thing as an alignment “system” could never adequately describe human inclinations (though I like to think I knew as much all along). Whatever the case may be, I’ve come to enjoy characters who are equal parts order and chaos, good and evil, characters who seek to understand things as they are. Kino of Kino’s Journey is one such character. Mushishi’s Ginko is another.

Yes, I know Ginko makes his living as a traveling healer, of sorts. I don’t think he’s unconcerned with the lives of people; that isn’t really what true neutrality is all about. But he values equally the lives of Mushi, it seems, or he simply doesn’t judge life in terms of worth at all.

When I think of Ginko’s approach to things, I think firstly of the manga’s tenth chapter, Ginko’s encounter with the Watahaki. What we have here is a bad situation all around: a woman who desperately wants a child is infected by a mushi that gestates in her womb, emerges, secrets itself away under the house, and produces “limbs,” of sorts, which take the form of the child the woman would have borne. (Again, I have to scan my own manga here, so the quality won’t be great.)

Ginko is called in when the false children begin to die. They have short lifespans, he explains, and, upon death, they will disseminate countless Watahaki seeds; it’s best to do away with them before that happens, or else more families could suffer the same fate. But Aki has come to identify the things as her children.

At the behest of Aki and her husband, Ginko leaves the situation alone for the time being, urging the couple not to neglect to kill the children before they release their seeds. But before that becomes necessary, things take a strange turn, one Ginko could not have predicted — the Watahaki becomes self-aware, or it learns enough language to demonstrate that it has been self-aware all along. It’s clearly too dangerous to leave alive. But Ginko holds no malice against it; he does away with it because that’s the only thing he can do.

The mushi want to live; humanity wants to live; when the two end up at odds with one another, one side will live and the other will die. That’s nature.

But, again, Ginko doesn’t especially want to kill the Watahaki, and in the end he allows it to live as long as it can in a diminished form.

I suppose I respect Ginko for his ability to do what needs to be done. And I have to give him credit for not reveling in it, even if his victory is a victory for the human race. He’s about as impartial and logical as he can be while upholding his responsibility to his species and his general respect for life of all kinds. I doubt I could ever manage such a balance; perhaps that’s why I’m fascinated by Ginko’s having done so.