Anime: Mushiuta

Mushi-Uta, more than anything else, succeeds at creating an atmosphere. More to the point, a depressing, hallucinogenic atmosphere. If that's not your sort of thing, I don't really suggest watching it.

Animation:
The animation quality is high enough to avoid using stock animation or speed lines, but not much higher. This is made up for what they decided to animate, though. The colour schemes, camera angles, set, and all of that sort of thing do an excellent job of setting the tone. The Mushi themselves are all properly monstrous, and quite impressive in their matured forms.

Sound:
The music and voice acting did a good enough job of carrying the mood, but nothing really stood out.

Story:
The story suffers, like many anime, from being adapted from a series of light novels. The plot is only getting started when the series ends and certain characters are very important for a few episodes and then never appear again. That said, the pacing isn't nearly as bad as most light novel adaptions.

Lest it seem that I don't have anything good to say about the plot, I would like to note that I actually find it quite interesting, and just wish it had made the transition better.

Character:
Mushi-Uta is as much about the characters as it is about the story. The characters are fairly interesting seperately, but are primarily defined by their relations to each other. This helps make it all the more dramatic. Which is good, as Mushi-Uta's bleak tone and the character's relative realism isn't the natural habitat for drama.