I’m going to divide this review into 4 sections: Plot, Fanservice, episode impressions and final impressions.

Plot

So it looks like this fellow is ‘Important to the Plot’

Natsumes gay follower found out that Nyanko is a youkai and can talk. Also this fellow is important to the plot. And that is really about it.

Fanservice:

Basically the rest of the episode. All of our favorite and not so favorite are back!

YAY! Fox-boy is back!

and so is Nyankos best friend

You were only here an episode ago, did you really need to come back?

Yeah…I would have preferred Bullseye to come back

Sasada was basically bullied for the entire episode. Actually the entire series

13 episodes and they’ve only gotten dumber

While it was fun to see them all again, that was really their only purpose.

Episode Impressions:

My theory for this episode was that they weren’t sure if they were going to get a second season so they didn’t make the last episode until they got conformation. It would explain why the animation was slightly different and also explain the absense of plot. Not a great episode really.

Final Impressions:

I’m going to keep this relatively short since it’s hard to fully review a series when it’s only halfway through. So Natsume Yuujinchou was…very good. Not amazing but enjoyable and light-hearted yet surprisingly deep when it wanted to be. Where I felt the series was at it’s strongest was when it went into episodic format, where Natsume would meet some youkai and help them, such as Bullseye or the fox-boy. It was in these episodes when the show gave off the ‘Mushishi-lite’ vibes the strongest.

I’m now looking forward to next season, which I’ll probably blog as well. This is the first series I blogged and I actually quite enjoyed writing about it. So we say goodbye to Natsume, to Nyanko, to countless Cyclopes and wait, until January

And finally, a bunch of my favorite screencaps I took during the course of the show

I think Nyanko suggested something sexual at this point

One day I will learn how to make proper wallpapers and turn this into a masterpiece

*Explodes with cuteness*

And that’s the end of Natsume Yuujinchou — Sayonara!

But yeah, enough of that, onto the latest episode!

Youkai Cannibalism

The episode begins with Natsume meeting this indistinct blob. Yeah, they don’t put too much effort into certain youkai do they. Well anyway, it attacks Natsume and leaves him with a blood-red tattoo.

Pretty cool tatoo actually

Actually it’s some dangerous curse mark that Nyanko is worried about enough to get Natsume to call for help. Again he uses the ‘Book of Friends’ reason for wanting to help Natsume, but by now we know how much he cares for him. For one he has to take the ridicule from whatever youkai he summons for 1) not being able to protect Natsume  and 2) being this size

Yeah, Nyanko reacted badly to touching the curse mark. So Natsume finally uses the book of friends for the use all those nasty youkai’s want it for, to summon nasty creatures and make them do your bidding. So all mighty Natsume summons a certain powerful youkai who we have seen before…guess who?

Rejoice, because due to popular demand, the overgrown ass has returned!

Kudos for Natsume not flinching in these instances. Turns out this guy ain’t much use, so he sends them someone else who is good at these curse things. Well, by now I think there is only one character in the opening song who has yet to appear.

Now here is where the episode begins to get interesting. Natsume is starting to be loosely followed by this shadow thing, another simply animated youkai type thing. Except this time there is something sinister about this guy. It’s a play off the ghost story that everyone knows. Natsume calls it Merry, where you get a phone call and it says ‘It’s Merry here, I’m outside your house’. And then the next day he calls saying he’s outside your door etc.

One of the oddest groups of people you will ever get in a single screenshot

Merry is a much different problem from the type he usually has to face. Hinoe did her research and found out that the tattoo is a 5-day mark that means if Merry touches Natsume in the next 5 days, Natsume dies. This means Natsume can’t use him power punch he has used on oh so many occasions. Also, nobody other than him can touch it, so Nyanko can’t help him this time either. Hinoe is still a bit huffy with Natsume so she’s not much use either at this stage.

And that was when Natsume got the Hiroko and became Xam’d

Natsume decides he can’t stay at his house so he makes up some bogus excuse and leaves. Problem is the curse is getting fairly painful at this stage so finally Hinoe, seeing a bit of Reiko inside of him, shows him how to summon a light spirit.

Does he have to read all of that?

So Merry appears and Natsume goes to summon a light spirit, which turns out to be…

But if Nyanko has taught us anything from this series it’s that don’t judge a youkai by it’s size and this little dude turns out to be more than enough. So now we find out why Natsume has gone through all of this. It’s simply because the overgrown ass wanted to see if he was worthy enough to hold his name.

And we finish the episode with Natsume getting a clip round the ear

Impressions:

Now that was a good episode. It was different from the last few episodic tales where Natsume affects the life of certain youkai’s, in a Mushishi style. It was more a story about Natsume himself. But what made the episode for me was Merry. Damn, that guy was freaky!

Another thing quite important here was Natsume’s relationship with his family. In the Manga Natsume is angsty and violent, solving a lot of his problems by just hitting things. They played down his angst a lot in the anime but remember, he was tossed around by different relations, not really wanted by any of them. So his relationship with his family is very important to him here. Just the act of being told off for running off was a sign to him that they cared.

Only one episode left, and then we have to wait till 2009 for the second season. Oh well, here’s a picture of Nyanko to make up for it

I suppose you could call this episode ‘Nyanko Fanservie’. Read on for some suggestive pictures of Nyanko

When you consider that Nyanko can take on practically any youkai he meets and then fails to catch a little bird you know theres something wrong with him

So Nyanko starts the episode drunk and falling down one of those sudden drops that usually appear in roadrunner and coyote but have also decided to show up in Natsume Yuujinchou several times. Down the cliff he meets this cute little girl, but then we change scene completely!

NO! My NyankoXNatsume Doujins are ruined!

Natsume can get angry on occasion and he finally has had enough of our oddly animated cat and kicks him out to join the many cyclopses on the youkai dole. Actually, do they call it the dole in other countries? I’ve never considered that before. For anyone else, the dole is that unemployment benefit thingy, which means my joke I started this paragraph with has been made un-funny with this explanation.

Obligatory Cyclops Shot!

Yup, its the fellows from episode 3! They weren’t quite as funny this time round though. They basically just sat around and bitched about Nyanko.

Apparently Nyanko can now summon lightning.

Nyanko is left wandering around the town so decides to give all the fans a favour by transforming back into his 3rd form…

YAY!!!! I swear I wish Nyanko stayed as her for the entire show. I’ve never been mad on talking animals anyway. Oh, and have you noticed how much she looks like Reiko? Do you think there’s a connection, hmmm? Either way here’s another picture of her

So Nyanko, disguised as Reiko…I should give her a name… Nyeiko? Yup, so I hereby dub the female form of Nyanko *drum roll* Nyeiko!

And one sentence later, Nyeiko has her first fanboys

So Nyeiko meets up with Natsumes two friends and spends a day torturing them. They haven’t even been given names, they are basically just Dumb and Dumber. They just flop around helplessly while never been given names. They probably have tumultuous back stories and are parent are dead/divorced/aliens/leader-of-Britannia but I guess we’ll never know

This was them before their day with Nyeiko…

…and this is them after

Nyanko is getting a bit bored by now, but suddenly he gets attacked by a flying koala who says that since Nyanko is divorced and stuff, he can take his wife the book of friends, which Nyanko gets a bit pissed off about, especially when he scoffs at him for liking humans

The animation budget in this episode wasn’t much because Nyanko is easy to animate so they used their money in dramatic wolf Nyanko poses!

So Nyanko heads back to Natsume only to discover he has been betrayed!!!

The Scandal of the Season

Poor old Nyanko goes off drinking, mumbles around with a bad hangover and then falls down a cliff and we are back to the start of the episode again with the cute little girl out on her picnic.

The little girl tries to protect the poor little neko from the rain and eventually falls asleep on him. Nyanko then goes into a little monologue about how humans ‘are weak yet they try protect others’. So he helps the little girl and plops her outside a police station and runs back to Natsume, who was out searching for him, for a rather corny but still very nice ending.

Impressions:

Don’t you just know he was a wife beater in another life

It felt a bit to me like the writers felt like if they took all the heavy stuff out of Natsume Yuujinchou it would turn out as a funny episode. While this is true to a certain extent, it wasn’t even the funniest episode yet, I’d say episode 3 was funnier. In most other shows this would simply considered as filler rubbish.

This was just me having some fun with photo shop. 4 Natsumes!

Actually it wasn’t bad, it was fun to see Nyeiko again and it showed that Natsume and Nyanko have developed a very strong bond between them now. What this really was was the calm before the last episodes, as the next episode preview included the words ‘Natsume will die’! So yup, simply look forward to the last few episodes

But that is for later and this is Natsume Yuujinchou episode 10, and I have to say that this was my favorite so far.

Natsumes nameless and completely hopeless friends. Watch and be amused as they search the sky for invisible umbrellas

Natsume is just idling about when a youkai umbrella appears from the sky, as they occasionally do. So he takes a look inside and what does he see?

Obligatory cyclops shot! Ok, he’s not a true cyclops but he’s the closest thing we get to one in this episode

This chap doesn’t seem too happy with Natsume for some reason, but this time it has nothing to do with the book of friends. In fact, there has been very little to do with the book of friends recently. It’s gotten more into youkai stories but, funnily enough, these past few episodes have been better.

Nyanko saves the day…again

What he wanted to do was put the spirit of some women into Natsumes body. Natsume hasn’t exactly had the greatest experiences with being possessed so he not-so-politely declines. But our dear cyclops friend won’t take no for an answer so he waits till Natsume is asleep and then puts her in. Which resulted in…well just look at the pictures

Yeah…the last one made me LOL a lot. Anywho, Natsume obviously cops on as to whats going on and asks the cyclops friend (who he dubs bullseye, not to bullseye’s apparent delight) what is going on. Bullseye tells him that he wants Asagi, the girl who possessed Natsume, to play the koto again. But no ordinary koto. It has all these specific ingredients that they have to hunt for.

So off they search; Bullseye with much enthusiasm and Natsume with very little.

As they search we gradually learn more about Asagi and Bullseye. How Asagi couldn’t play due to a rather creepy illness and how Bullseyes only job is a protector and an umbrella holder but stays by her when she has been left unable to play.

Quite an obvious movie reference I can make here.…who you gona call?

So one slightly dramatic fight later they manage to get the koto finished and Asagi gets to play it for Bullseye, albeit through Natsume. It was a rather touching end as Natsume parted ways with Asagi and Bullseye as off they left, leaving Natsume alone with Nyanko again.

Impressions:

Can’t you just hear the yaoi fangirls screaming from here.……

Maybe it’s just because I’m a sap for little love stories, but I absolutely loved this episode. It was great to see Bullseye change throughout the episode as he gradually became less confronting and we learned about his relationship with Asagi. It is quite a standard story of how a guard falls in love with the princess, but with a nice twist on it. And of course, there was the line ‘I’m just an umbrella holder’ which the old romantic side in me just went ‘awwww’.

Best episode yet. Bullseye was great,LOL’s were abundant and the story twanged at your heartstrings. Well done Natsume Yuujinchou, my impression of you has improved quite a bit since the first 5 or so episodes.

Nyanko must be an animators dream. I mean, have you ever seen an easier to animate character

But no, instead I will write about Natsume Yuujinchou episode 9, because that’s what you all really want to hear about.

No Natsume!!! What did I tell you about wearing that hat!

Natsume took Nyanko for a walk. If the episode had ended there it would have made my day. But nah, we had to have a story, a fight, a cyclops and someone who was feeling a bit lonely. So cue a certain member of the Ouran Host Club.

I wish everytime I smiled that roses appeared behind me

So this guy is a movie star. I thought he was Natsume’s older brother originally, but unlike Natsume he probably could pull off that hat.

Out of all the baddies in this show, a flying sheet of paper was one of the least scary

Natsume was then visited in the night by a flying piece of paper. Yeah, not so scary but Natsume decides he doesn’t want any paper cuts and jumps out of the window. It turned out that it was sent by that bishie from earlier to check if he could see youkai. Which seemed a bit silly to me, he could have just showed him his cool tattoo…

Now I really want one of these. It’s a tattoo that crawls around, which is like the coolest thing ever! What it actually is is a youkai that feeds a bit of his life force or something. Either way, I want one

Natori, the bishie movie star, picks Natsume up from school and asks him to tea. This was all kinda funny since Natsume was embarrassed to be seen with him. Natori explains how he could see youkai as well and how he has done a fair amount of research on them. He asks Natsume to accompany him as a sidekick/apprentice but Natsume declines, with a bit of help from Nyanko (as usual).

Although I generally try to stay away from using internet slang, this moment is too good to pass up: PWNED!

Natori has all these female youkai at his beck and call to do his bidding, so he assumed Nyanko was the same. Obviously Nyanko was annoyed and attacked Natori, which angered his youkai fangirls which resulted in this..

Unfortunately, we never got to see who won

Natori and Natsume still weren’t getting along so well even after all that. In fact, the whole thing took a turn for the worst when a angry youkai attacked them. Natsume was all ready to do his stander ‘punch ‘em inna face then connect with them’but Natori instead stabbed it in the head.

Far scarier than a sheet of paper

The anime has yet to have a cyclops or a lonely person (Natori isn’t lonely, he has his fangirls). So cue our obligatory cyclops shot.

Natsume had talked to her earlier but she had been a bit rude to him. This time though he was able to chat away to her. She had been tied to a house in order to protect a cellar, which funnily enough was the place where Natori had his little job he had to do. Actually her story was quite sad. She had tried to escape but only succeeded in injuring her hands. So of course, she just sits around feeling very lonely until one day a certain boy shows up…

Cute, but not as cute as little Natsume

Yup, Natori was that little kid who bandaged up her hand. However he doesn’t recognise that she is the one he’s exorcising. So in hops Natsume to try stop him. Natsume was a wee bit unsuccessful so in hops Nyanko to save him…as usual. So how does it end? The youkai is saved, Natori remembers who she is and she becomes one of his fangirls.

Impressions (this is meant to be underlined but my underlining button has gone awol for some reason. So can you just pretend that it’s underlined, thanks!)

So apparantly there are now two ways to get an army of youkai. 1: You could get them to write their name into a book of friends or 2: Be unbelievably sexy

What was interesting about this episode was the fact that Natori was able to get info on the youkai, which suggests that there are a fair few people who have been able to see youkai. They probably have their own internet site. Also, if he had done so much research, you would think he might have heard of the book of friends, but apparently not. Or he might have and that’s why he came to Natsume in the first place. Maybe the book of friends isn’t all that well known.

Or, the one I think is most likely, is that Reiko was the first one to test the idea of getting their name and being friends, up until then it had been unheard of. It would explain why youkai are always kinda confused when Natsume starts talking to them.

This guy has been tossed aside a bit. I thought he would feature more but oh well, it means we get more Nyanko

I feel I should say what I think of Natsume Yuujinchou as a whole right about now. It is a good show, it’s relaxing and intelligent. You can’t really fault it on anything it does and so far it’s only had one poor episode. But it doesn’t do a whole lot. It’s enjoyable but only to a certain extent. Meh, its a good foil to the madness of Geass I guess.

This episode of Natsume Yuujinchou involves fireflies and curly noodles

You got a little something on your shoulder..

Natsume went down to the lake to see some fireflies but finds some chap sitting there with a youkai on his shoulder. The youkai realises that Natsume can see her so she goes off to talk to him.

You might want to watch out. It may look like a sweet little kitty but it’s actually a giant wolf!

Natsume decides to run away, which seemed rather out of character for him. I mean, two episodes ago he was naive enough to be lead to a festival where he would have been eaten if it wasn’t for Nyanko. This time it’s just one little youkai he could easily beat with that power punch of his yet he decides to run away. Serves him right to fall off a cliff.

Oh no, we’ve gone into a loony toons show where bottomless cliffs appear regularly at humorous intervals

Luckily, the youkai saves Natsume or else the show would have ended rather prematurely. So Natsume invites her back to his house to for a few drinking games, including trying to decide what her name is. Nyanko, being the wise old hat that he is, decides upon that her name is curly noodles.

Doesn’t this look suspicious to you?

She claims to be friends with the chap from earlier so Natsume heads down to the lake to see if the guy can see youkai as well. But when he gets down there he spots a badly drawn monster!

I wasn’t paying much attention to what the characters were saying

I mean, how could I with that weird thing in the background

Trying to focus on subtitles with that in the picture is too hard

One thing Natsume Yuujinchou manages very well is put in these little cute things on occasion, like here when she hides her blushing with her mask was such an ‘Awww’ moment

  But then one day the guy couldn’t see youkai anymore so he couldn’t see the firefly girl, which was very sad and stuff since they had fallen in love. This made our poor firefly very lonely indeed. But he was getting married in a few days and the firefly just wanted to see him before he got married.

So what would you do if a girl hopped on top of you in the middle of the night like this but she was glowing in a suspiciously radioactive way?

Seriously, this was a bit much for me. A giant monster opens it’s huge mouth to eat this itty bitty firefly

Next Episode Preview:

I normally don’t do one of these but I haven’t done my obligatory cyclops shot yet so here he/she is!

In this episode Natsume goes on a dangerous journey in order to obtain some teacups.

Ok here we have mind-blowingly cute fox eared boy. He is what this episode is centered around so we get to see a lot of him. And by god, he really is the cutest thing since Chiyo-chan. The makers really did everything in their power to make him cute, from his cute little hat to his cute little determined attitude, everything was explosions of ‘awww’. And I’m a man! A women would be a shivering wreck of nonsensical baby talk after this episode. Ok, that will be the last I mention of his cuteness. I swear.

Have you ever seen a more bored looking class

Natsume and co. have gone to some hot springs place. But Natsume has no time to be doing fan-service scenes, he has to go buy some tea cups.

This must be the most confusing map ever

So he and Nyankoare walking along when they find the fox-eared boy being beaten up some nasty spirit guys. Natsume charges in and delivers his punch of fate and saves the little boy. Of course the kid is frightened of Natsume too so he runs off.

I should be able to think of some hilarious movie reference here, but I’m afraid my minds gone blank

The fox-eared boy decides that Natsume is his friend and wants to be helpful to him. So the next day when Natsume is on his way to the tea cup place, it starts to rain. The fox eared boy appears with a big leaf for Natsume to use as an umbrella.

First time I think I’ve seen Nyanko looked really shocked

So now the fox eared boy is Useful, and not useless like to two bad people who beat him up claim he is. So the next day the two bad spirits find him again saying he’s useless and beat him up, he fights back saying he isn’t and he helped Natsume.

Course, he isn’t a very good fighter so Natsume has to save him again

Then they find out that Natsume is that ferocious being with the book o’ pals so they run off in fear, except the fox eared boy who instead tries to give Natsume his name, which Natsume doesn’t want. This makes the boy think he’s useless but Natsume says that’s not the case and walks off, which seems a lot in the style Reiko used to do things.

Here is our obligitory cyclops shot! Not a very nice cyclops though…

The fox-eared boy decides Natsume must be lonely and therefore he must go visit him, but that’s quite difficult when you are small and nobody can see you. So then a rather freaky youkai that if you get me some fish I promise I’ll help you, no really I will help I’m not just tricking you to feed me I really will help you

No comment

Yeah, the people in Natsume Yuujinchou are a bit gullible. But instead of running off he at least gives the fox-eared boy some sweet that turns him human for a day. So our little fox boy gets the train to go visit Natsume.

Again, I should be able to think of some movie reference, but yet again I fail miserably

He does find Natsume but Natsume is happily eating dinner with his family. The fox eared boy only then realises that it’s not Natsume who’s lonely, it’s himself.But as he runs off Natsume comes out to meet him and escorts him home again

Impressions

Natsume Yuujinchou is back to being good again! But the thing that made this so much more enjoyable than episode 5 was that this episode had a cute little fox-eared boy rather then some big stupid furry. A bit shallow on my behalf but meh. Another interesting fact is how the fox boy said that Natsume doesn’t act naturally around his classmates. The only people he acts normally around is spirits and Nyanko. Also, he is gradually becoming more like Reiko with every episode. Either way, definitely one of the best episodes so far.

And now, since I couldn’t hold out any longer, here are some pics of the fox-eared boy

Exploded with cuteness yet?

I’m going to use more pictures and less writing in this one, because then you get to look at lots of lovely pictures and I get to write less. It’s a win-win situation. I this episode, Natsume decides to help a pretty women, much to the annoyance of Nyanko

Natsume, you just can’t pull off risque clothes. You couldn’t pull off the pink shirt and you can’t pull off that hat either

Natsume has made some friends! Anywho, he was cycling with them in the extreme heat until they came to a dried up lake, then Natsume spotted something strange

You would have thought Natsume would know that wasn’t a real person. The fact that he’s transparent should have given it away

Of course, the others can’t see it, so Natsume decides to draw attention away from his mistake by fainting, as you would.

I’ve never gotten the whole ‘wet towel on forehead’ thing in Japan. Does it actually work?

As usual, Natsume gets waken up by spirits knocking on his window in the middle of the night. I’d be pissed off by this, since it seems to happen to him every night, but I guess he brought it on himself. He could have tried taking over the world with the book o’ pals instead, but I guess that would have taken more effort.

The lead guy informs Natsume that he’s being possessed so, with some help from Nyanko as usual, they get it out of him.

KO — Natsume Wins!

BTW, Natsume packs some power punch doesn’t he. Either way, it turns out to be some girl who starts stalking him. Natsumes original plan was to ignore her, but it didn’t work with the last spirit so obviously it wouldn’t work with this one either.

LOL, I loved this bit. First Natsume spat juice all over her…

…and then completely ignored her!

It turns out the girl used to be a baby swallow who had been picked up as a human when it had fell out of its nest, but the smell of the human stayed there so the parents never came back and all the birds starved.

Yes, all these cute little birds starved and shriveled up

Then the girl/swallow starts to flirt with Natsume, which means Natsume Yuujinchou has become a harem. Is there no anime that isn’t safe!!!

Caught in the act by Nyanko!!!

What the girl really wanted was to get in Natsumes pantsto talk to the human who had fed her when she had originally became a youkai. They did find him, but of course he couldn’t see her, which was actually a really sad moment.

Really, this was a heart rending moment.

Then the youkai who had come to him earlier informed him that the youkai were going to Beijing to compete in capture the flag, except the flag was a yukata that meant humans could enter. Natsume had to go to this since he used to hold the world record for capture the flag until the horrible accident involving a mango which ended his career early.

Yes, even the youkai started to flirt with Natsume. This truly has become a harem

But we forgot about Nyanko, who said that he must take him to the jousting tournament, like the one in the movie ‘A Knights Tale’.

Caught in the act by Nyanko again!

The problem was both competitions were on at the same time so they decided to combine the two races in the hopes that they would win both gold medals

There must be somewhere in the rulebook that says this is illegal

They won both competitions, but it turned out Nyanko was on steroids (did you ever wonder how he turned into that giant wolf) so they were kicked out, but not before getting the yukata and giving it to the girl from earlier

Impressions

Well, I got a bit carried away with that episode summery. I guess its the combination of Olympic fever and the fact that the Premiership is about to start again.

But being serious again, that was a fairly good episode of Natsume Yuujinchou, but nothing special. No Reiko yet again, but at least it was a huge improvement from the last episode with stupid Santo

Wooo!!! It’s our obligatory cyclops appearance!

In this episode we have a giant furry. But far more shocking is the fact that there was not a single cyclops!*gasp*

Some men can pull off pink. Natsume is not one of them

The episode begins with Natsume rooting through Reikos old stuff. He finds an old train ticket to somewhere and a bunch of library books that Reiko never returned (which sums up Reiko quite well). He keeps the ticket with hopes to find out why she never took it, only to be confronted by oh-so-obviously-flirtatious boring girl from the last episode who wants to meet more of these invisible friends Natsume keeps talking to. Or that’s what she tells Natsume as she holds on to him and gives him the come ‘ere hot stuff eyes. Luckily Natsumes new friend tricks her so her can jump on a bus to get away from her.

You have to admit, its a rather nicely animated place to be abandoned

When Natsume reaches the abandoned train station he finds a giant, rather annoying furry called Santo. Santo tells him his story about how he got into an argument with his friend, ‘cept he couldn’t remember because he’s too fick to remember properly (seriously). So Natsume uses his book o’ pals so we could have our first Reiko flashback in 3 episodes!

We never get to see Reiko in full colour unfortunatly. Flashbacks are always drained of colour for some reason. Either that or they fade around the edges. Or sometimes both.

We find out that Reiko decided to help Santo to get to the place where his friend was, but then she conveniently forgot. So Natsume decided to bring him there himself. So with the trio of a giant furry, a funny looking cat and Natsume, they walk down the train tracks to the next town. However, on the way they get attacked by trees, so Nyanko turns into his super wolf form and runs the rest of the way there, which begs the question as to why they didn’t do that in the first place.

When they get there they meet that thing in the picture. A giant Catfish with full control over his tentacles, which it must be said that Japanese have an unusual fascination with. So Nyanko gets involved in a huge fight in which Natsume is absolutely no use whatsoever in. But the fight breaks down and the giant catfish turns into a little fish and he is back to being friends with Santo and everyone goes home happy.

Impressions:

Nyanko hits the nail right on the head there. Santo was just annoying and this was a very poor episode of Natsume Yuujinchou. Every other episode managed to balance lightheartedness with their little message of loneliness quite well. This just struck me as a childish episode in which we learn about the importance of friendship. As usual, the bright spots were Nyanko and Reiko. Reiko manages to have a huge effect on the anime even though she rarely appears. I just hope we don’t meet any more spirits like Santo.

Note:There is really something weird with this spellchecker. It wanted me to change ‘Natsume’ to ‘Nazism’.

So anyway, on towards episode 4 of Natsumes book o’ pals where Natsume has to go into an old school building on one of those scary missions schoolgirls in animes seem to make up a lot.

Instead of youkai coming to his window in the middle of the night, Natsume now finds them sprawled out in the middle of the road, this time he finds a kappa (ok, at least its not another cyclops). Natsume pours his water over to the kappa which looks like he’s pauring it onto nothing if you are watching him, as this rather boring girl called Jun Sasada was(I had to look her name up, I didn’t find her that interesting).

Psst, Nyanko. When is the obligatory cyclops scene?

So this girl had earlier roped Natsume into going to this test of courage (remember, it happened in episode 2). Natsume goes, only to be followed by Nyanko. But Natsume doesn’t mind so long as the funny looking cat keeps his big gob shut. Natsume gets paired off with some random bloke to do this test of courage, only to get scared out of their lives by a certain type of creature. Of course, its a cyclops!

Can’t go an episode without having a cyclops

So Natsumes comrade disappears mysteriously, only to be replaced by the boring girl who then goes on some long winded story about a spirit living here who had found her charm for her when she had lost it here. Then she starts to make Natsume feel VERY uncomfortable by making some accusations that he can see ‘them’. Luckily for us Nyanko shuts her up.

Nyanko then decides he doesn’t feel like being a cat anymore and turns into his other form. No, not the giant wolf, he does that later. For now he decides to turn into a surprisingly hot girl! At least, hot compared to any other girl your going to get in this show. She reminds me a lot of Natsumes Granny, Reiko. On that note, we still haven’t had any Reiko for the past two episodes, I’m beginning to miss her

Anyone whos watched Bleach should know what happens when a cat turns into a woman

So while Natsume and the boring girl do some bonding, Reiko goes around and finds out that this spirit guy who has been abducting all the students is rather powerful, but that his name is also in the Book o’ pals.  Natsumecould use the book to control him at his will, but that’s far too easy so decides to confront the guy himself. However, the youkai isn’t really the bet listener and just threatens to keep all the students there for the rest of eternity. So, with a bit of help from Nyanko, Natsume just gives him his name back.

Of course, the problem was the guy was lonely and didn’t trust humans since he was badly treated in the past. All he needed to do was give them a chance, similar to Natsumes problem.

Impressions

Oh crap, someones coming!

*whistles*

It’s pretty much ‘as you were’ with Natsume. The show continues with its message of loneliness and how to overcome it. Hmm… not much more to say than that. I’m enjoying it so far, but its far from being a classic. All I can say is I hope Reiko comes back into the story a bit more, although I’d take schoolgirl Nyanko as a reasonable substitute.

Note:The spell checker still seems to have a problem with ‘book’, which is quite annoying in this particular show. Thank god I didn’t blog ‘Library Wars’.