Natsume Yuujinchou Shi – 03

All our NNNGGGHHHH

	Thanks to my irregular sleeping schedule, I was able to get episode three as soon as it was released. It’s really hard to get the episodes as soon as it’s released when one is in Southeast Asia and has a lousy internet connection. I guess I should start getting up at 4 AM more often… All for Natsume!
	After a cool 2-episode arc to start Shi, looks like we’ll be in for a nice 1-ep story about a furball.

A youkai named Amana visits and Natsume returns its name to them. Later on, Natsume and Nyanko-sensei are walking when they spot what looks like a kitten being attacked by crows. Natsume shoos them away and picks up the little furball. Slowly, piece by piece, he realizes that its not a cat but a youkai.

Sparkles…In a good way

Not only Natsume talks to strangers, he picks up suspicious objects. He will never learn

The two run home and talk about the furball, not knowing that it has been sticking to Nyanko’s butt the whole time. It jumps off into a corner and opens its eyes. Natsume, ever the fan of cute and fluffy things, tries to approach it, but it goes crazy and bounces all around his room, leaving blood at each area he bounces off of.  He eventually catches it and it starts to settle down. Natsume then bandages it up with plans to take him back the next day. Before they fall asleep, Nyanko-sensei tells Natsume that the pain is from youkai’s bite.

Natsume: “HNNNGG I want to sleep with it!”

Natsume wakes up a little late, like me, Jrow, and takes the furball back to where they found him. At school, Natsume is drawing the youkai saying, “he was cute”, which draws the concern of his half-awake classmate. Natsume looks out the window and sees the youkai and reacts loudly when a second one pops up. When the period ends, Natsume goes looking for them, only to find Nyanko-sensei in a bush. Walking home from school, the furball youkais fly in front of the two and they chase them into the forest, where there are countless more furballs sitting on a withered tree.

From fluffy moe stalkers…

…To a fluffy moe harem!

Natsume comes home and notices that his room has been rummaged through; he worries that a youkai might’ve been looking for the Book of Friends. Amana, the youkai he had just given its name back to, is behind him asking where its ring is. Thinking he stole it, Amana says that he has 3 days to find it and return it, or that it’ll burn his house down and look for it in the ashes. During this, Amana throws a seal at Nyanko-sensei that stays stuck over his right eye and forehead where his light power emerges from.

Nyanko-sensei fails at trying to be a fluffy moe

Nyanko-sensei correctly assumes that the hairball might’ve accidentally taken it as it bounced around the room earlier, so they go looking for that particular furball. The buddy youkai duo just laugh at his drawing, but Hinoe swoops in and tells him that those are Karu and tells him what they’re like. He admits that he’ll need help with Madara in his current state, so they go looking around for the Karu. It gets a little late, so Natsume checks in at home for the evening.

“Have you seen NNGGHHH?”

After a bath with the fat cat, Natsume gets ready for sleep, but notices his hand is all red. He thinks it’s blood, but looking into the covers (oh heavens, that looks awkward to read), they see Akasaza berries which are an antidote to the poison from the youkai. What a nice youkai to bring that for him. We shall name him… Fluffball! Later in the night, Natsume wakes up and is surprised to see the Karu hanging out in the corner of his room. He slowly convinces it to come to him, but Natsume’s youkai pals open the window and the Karu goes crazy again and flies out of the window. As they give chase, they explain the reason for which they came, which was to tell them that some of the youkai have bought into the rumors of the Karu eating other youkai and plan to chase them out of Yatsuhara.

Eureka! It’s a berry!

“We want our own NGGGHH too!”

They stop once they encounter a huge group of Karu. Fluffball drops the ring to Natsume and Karu take his advice to leave the forest from opposite direction. Amana arrives on great timing, but still wants to be mad and accuses Natsume of stealing its ring and grabs Natsume. Nyanko-sensei slowly burns away his seal, and also a dragon-like youkai comes from behind and steals Natsume away from Amana, while Nyanko uses his light power to defeat Amana. The youkai drops Natsume safely and fly away, which was actually a whole group of Karu combining into one. After talking with Hinoe, the youkai buddies come back with a bunch of Akasaza berries, dumping them in the palms of Natsume.

NNGGGHHH:

It’s the eating-bread-while-running scenario!

Youkai Modern Warfare 3

FANSERVICE

Men In Black

Thank god my internet was fast, this episode was definitely worth the two hours wait. I was NNGGHHH-ing and KYAAAA-ing a lot in this episode. I actually repeated the fluffy youkai scenes and the bathing scenes more than two times, seriously. So many adorable moments and fanservices this week! Not to mention the humors and the hilarious BGMs too. Natsume can be entertaining and encouraging at the same time, and that’s why I still love it until now.

It always amazes me how the youkai somehow can always understand what Natsume is talking about. Look at Fluffball, all he say is “kyuuu,” and yet he understands what Natsume is saying.  Though I suppose that it’s nothing new because youkai are known for their long lives, but it is obviously something rare since the youkai don’t trust the humans nowadays, especially with the existence of exorcists like Matoba. Not to mention the bull youkai that actually offered his place for Natsume to live. It seems that Natsume is getting more and more youkai friends, and I’m happy for him. Thinking that he will have to choose between youkai and human makes me sad. Sooner or later, he has to choose.

Well, not all youkai are nice to Natsume anyway. That youkai who Natsume just gave her name was really ungrateful. Natsume gave her name back, and she actually suspected Natsume for stealing her ring? And she was the one who told him to look for it! Nyanko-sensei said that she was being too emotional over her momentary loss, but I don’t see it that way. I think she was just trying to find an excuse to attack Natsume, now that her name was given back. Maybe it was her pride? Obviously she’s a powerful youkai, yet a mere human had her name. It sure sounds humiliating to me, and maybe she was feeling humiliated. Either way, she was harming Natsume, and that automatically puts her in my black list. It sucks how that kind of youkai still exist. I hope Natsume meets better youkai later on in the future, such as Fluffball NNNGGGHHHHHHH.

anaaga and the other girls must love those little bits of bath scenes, but I have two points to address. One, seeing him in the bath made me thought of taking one myself, but then I cut to me sitting in my own water and it doesn’t really sound all that fun or clean. Not that I’m a filth, but a shower just seems like a cleaner and more effective solution. Two, wouldn’t girls wanna see Natsume shower anyway? Wow, I really want to distance myself from this in a hurry… Since she’s going kyaa~ for Natsume, I’ll say that I’ve really liked Hinoe being more involved this season. She makes a great second-in-command to the Natsume Dogs group and I really like her voice. I’m actually just now noticing she is voiced by Akemi Okamura, who plays Nami in One Piece. I like her a whole lot more now! The characters sound very different, though I wonder if I listen back to Hinoe hugging Natsume that I might hear a bit of Nami roll off her tongue. This paragraph is where Jrow fell in love with a youkai… 😛

As I reflect on this episode in comparison to any other ep of Natsume, there’s really no way to point out a single episode of the series as not good, but it does take a lot to stay memorable, especially for these 1-and-done arcs. I go back to 1-10 with Noto Mamiko as the koto player where my interest really took shape for the series, or 2-9 with the cherry tree photo enveloping Natsume’s bedroom. Those are just a couple examples, but NY manages to always come up with a story that has a unique feel and is always enjoyable to watch, even if the plot progression is similar. Creating characters like Fluffball makes those episode all the more memorable, even if Natsume’s friends aren’t around or if Reiko isn’t mentioned at all.

Amada was ugly in all regards. The show had been on a nice streak with youkai recently, even including the girl youkai from season 3’s mirror arc w/ Tanuma who shaped up by the end. This brought us back to the unfortunate truth that not all youkai are delightful, and Amada might take the cake as the ugliest of them all, what with even wanting to kill him after he spent all that time finding her ring. On the flipside, the Karu were adorable little fluffballs that formed together into a really cool dragon to save Natsume. The effects of them leaving the forest and splitting off of each other were really great-looking scenes; same for Nyanko-sensei slowly burning away the seal over his eye.

Preview: It seems that next week will be an original anime episode because I (anaaga) can’t recall such chapter from the manga. Either way, we’ll be seeing some romance in Natsume Yuujinchou! A rare treat!

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.