Natsume Yuujin-Chou - 24
Short Synopsis: Natori returns and needs Natsume’s powers once again.
Episode Rating: 7,5/10 (Good)
Okay, so while this series hasn’t been my favourite of the past season, I’d love to see a third season introduced one of these days. The second season was also announced around this time in the first season, so let’s hope that the creators aren’t planning to end this just yet with only 26 episodes. There’s lots of potential left in this one, although on the other hand, it’s also going to be interesting to see what Brains Base can do when they start working on a completely new and different series. It’s a shame that these small yet very good companies as Brains Base, Manglobe and Bee-Train (well, at least I consider them very good) can only release one or two series every year, because it’s always interesting to see what they can come up with next.
One thing I didn’t like in this episode was how Natsume turns out to have huge mysterious powers. I’d hoped that this series would avoid this cliche, but I guess that it’s going to be important for later story arcs, if they ever get to be animated. The subject of this episode was an interesting one, though. Natsume finally gets the chance to attend a sort-of “people who can see youkai”-convention. In this, he hopes to see other people who are the same as him, but that really was the wrong kind of place he should have tried to look for.
Most of the people in the convention were simply looking for business, and came from close-knit families in which it was normal to see and use youkai. It really seems that seeing Youkai runs down your family. These families have mostly strong values of traditions, and so their values are easily passed down from generation to generation, without much influence from outsiders who can’t see them. It actually turns out that Natsume is a minority in his suffering because he grew up alone, thanks to Reiko who most likely never wanted to have to do anything with those pesky family values, despite having huge powers. My guess would be that she was the daughter of a powerful and influential family of people who can see youkai, which fell apart at some point.
The final two episodes seem to belong to a big arc, which finally does resemble a real climax, rather than the unconventional yet anticlimactic ending of the first season. Let’s hope that the creators do succeed in combining three chapters in only two episodes, but a bit of a clever cut-job should be able to do it.