Natsume Yuujinchou episode 10

A wee bit behind with this post of Nat­sume, but I’m usu­ally hyper punc­tual so I’m sure nobody else will mind. Besides, Bok­uta­chi no BLOG is cur­rently doing it’s 2008 fall/Autumn anime pre­view! This will be out when Brian and Loba have col­lec­ted their thoughts, so keep a book­mark on here because I’m sure you’ll learn some­thing new about the new series from us.

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