No wonder that big-eyed youkai had chosen to make Natsume's life miserable.
Youkai didn't care about gender, and they didn't care about "appearance" the way humans did. If Nyanko-sensei had mistaken Natsume for Rei, it was only natural the others would do the same. And worse still, the youkai drawn in by the Book of Friends - every one of them desperate to get their name back - didn't exactly feel warm affection for the one who had defeated them and taken that name away.
Rei, though, had been terrifyingly strong - an existence that made even resentful monsters swallow their pride and back off. Natsume, on the other hand… was just a fragile boy who could see things he was never meant to see.
In other words: he was paying for an old sin, inherited from a grandmother who had already died.
"Poor guy…" Aimi murmured, shifting on the couch without taking her eyes off the screen.
By then, the story had already kidnapped her attention. Yumi Noriko, Maki, Sora Kamakawa, ratings, ego wars - everything had fallen away like dust.
And Nyanko-sensei?
That chubby, shameless cat - with the face of someone born to be spoiled - had won Aimi over in just a few minutes. He was a powerful youkai, but he insisted on living in "housecat mode." He got distracted by toys, chased his own pride for fun, and still understood the situation with a clarity that was almost unsettling. The moment he realized Natsume, simply for carrying the Book of Friends, would be hunted by a parade of youkai demanding the notebook, he offered the simplest solution in the world:
Become his bodyguard.
Not out of pure kindness, of course. There was self-interest. Natsume had broken the temple seal and freed him - so there was a debt. And there was also a prize: the book.
Up to that point, Aimi had filed the anime away quickly, the way the mind does when it wants something to feel safe.
Light and funny, with a pinch of action.
The pacing was good. The cast had charm. The concept was intriguing - solid as a premiere. But compared to what Voices of a Distant Star had done half a year earlier…
It still didn't reach that height.
In Voices, the mecha shine, the tension, the battle aesthetic - everything about it was vivid, unforgettable. Aimi let out a long breath, the kind that already carries a conclusion before it becomes a sentence.
If Natsume Yuujinchou was "only" this - a supernatural slice-of-life, a bit playful, with youkai popping in here and there - she couldn't picture it exploding in the same way.
Her expectations for ratings, for reception, for scores… collapsed by half.
And honestly, it made sense. What director could create a hit every single time like it was a rule?
The story continued. Youkai nearby began to notice Rei's "scent" on Natsume - an invisible mark that wasn't his, but clung to him like an inheritance. In the span of a single day, two different groups showed up to corner him.
And there, you could see a smart bit of care in the adaptation. Because there was an obvious question: if those youkai had been easily defeated by Rei, why, fifty years later, did they dare attack someone they believed was her?
The answer came simply - tucked into a single line, exactly the way the anime needed.
They mistook Natsume for Rei… but the presence he gave off was far too weak. His power was far too small. It didn't inspire fear. It didn't sustain the legend.
And without fear, courage rotted into audacity.
In one of those frantic getaways, Nyanko-sensei - shrunken into cat form and clinging to Natsume's back like a living backpack - made a new suggestion, wearing the kind of smile that thinks it's offering something irresistible.
"Hand the Book of Friends over to me. I'll take care of it. With the book, I can order all these youkai around. I can rule this whole bunch of greedy-eyed creeps."
He said it like it was the most natural fate in the world.
Natsume didn't hesitate.
"No. You're the one who wants to misuse it."
And just like that, the fight started. Boy and cat arguing in the middle of chaos, as if the world wasn't actively trying to swallow Natsume whole.
When Nyanko-sensei transformed into a massive form - silver, canine, imposing - and Natsume, fueled by panic and anger, landed a punch that felt more like "breaking his arrogance" than real violence, the silence afterward was strange.
Natsume sat down in the grass, breathing hard, and spoke the way someone speaks while holding something precious, terrified of cracking it.
"This Book of Friends… is my grandmother's most important legacy. Rei… she wasn't exactly easy to be around. Almost no one remembers her even now. She died young… and she was alone right to the end." His voice was low, but steady. "I'm the only blood tie she has left. I wanted… I wanted something that could connect me to her."
He lifted his eyes toward the silver youkai beside him.
"Nyanko-sensei… I want to return these names. I want to give back what she took. How do I do it?"
The story moved on, slowly building. Nyanko-sensei resisted, grumbled, tried to shove the idea of "dominating everything" back into place - but in the end… he gave in. Not out of purity - out of a deal.
He would protect Natsume from being killed by youkai. But if Natsume died in the process of returning a name - if he died because he chose to keep walking that path - then the Book of Friends would belong to Nyanko-sensei.
Fair. Cold. And yet, somehow, strangely human.
By the time it reached that point, more than half the episode had passed. And the audience on Tokushima TV, very likely, felt almost exactly what Aimi did: interesting, likable… but that was all.
Because there was an uncomfortable problem for anyone watching.
Natsume was gentle. It was easy to like him. But the central mission was to return names to youkai who, in many cases, hated Rei - and by extension, hated him. Natsume didn't gain anything from it. He didn't "level up," didn't collect allies, didn't rack up victories.
He only put himself in danger.
So inevitably, the viewer thought: okay, but what's the fun in this? If I put myself in the protagonist's place… all I feel is frustration.
Aimi frowned.
"At this pace… it feels like people will drop it by episode two," she said quietly, more to herself than anyone else. "It could fall apart fast."
If the focus were Natsume using the book and Nyanko-sensei to "tame" youkai, build an army, turn it into a hot-blooded battle-and-conquest shounen… maybe it would blow up. Maybe it would become a craze.
But Natsume Yuujinchou wasn't going there.
And it was exactly when that first tiny seed of disappointment formed - when Aimi thought she'd finally understood what kind of anime this was…
…that the story yanked the floor out from under her.
The one-eyed youkai - the same one that had chased Natsume at the beginning - appeared again.
Nyanko-sensei was busy fighting another youkai, one of those long-haired things that looked like it was made of shadow and resentment. And Natsume, alone, held the Book of Friends in both hands and faced the creature.
The pages fluttered with a breath. One sheet rose upright - firm, as if it had a will of its own.
And then it happened.
The scene that would leave Aimi more shaken than Akane no Sora had managed two hours earlier.
Natsume tore out the lifted page, folded it carefully, brought it to his lips. He bit down lightly to hold it in place, pressed his hands together as if in prayer… and blew.
The ink - the black strokes that formed a name - came alive.
Lines of calligraphy peeled away from the paper and flew, fast and precise, toward the center of the one-eyed youkai's forehead as it lunged, furious, ready to tear Natsume apart.
Aimi braced for impact. For an explosion. A strike. A fight.
But the anime turned.
The screen opened into a retreating memory.
"I'm hungry…" the voice came weak. "I'm so lonely…"
It was fifty years earlier.
In front of a human gravestone, the one-eyed youkai watched the offerings, aching to steal anything that might ease the emptiness that never went away. And when it stretched out its arm -
A girl snatched an anko manju and ate it first.
"Hey! That's my manju!" the youkai snarled, offended.
The girl licked her finger, far too calm for someone standing before a monster.
"Hm… it's not even that good."
And then, like it was the most natural thing in the world, she lifted her gaze and smiled.
"Want to make a bet with me? Fight me. If you win… I'll buy you a real manju."
That was the first meeting between the one-eyed youkai and Rei.
Because of a sweet, it fought. Lost. And had its name taken.
From that day on, it became her "subordinate" - not out of loyalty, but because the bond forced it.
The soundtrack shifted. A soft, sorrowful BGM slipped in without knocking, as if the music already understood what that silence meant.
"Your name… is pretty," the girl said, looking at the youkai with a smile that didn't fear it.
The youkai froze, thrown off balance.
No one saw it. No one called it. No one needed it.
Its life was too long to fit into any home, and too lonely to hurt all at once. It hurt in small doses. Every day. Like hunger.
"Since you're my 'subordinate' now… when I call your name, you have to come running, okay?"
It sounded like a joke. Light. Casual.
But to someone who had never been needed by anyone, it hit like a blow.
Rei walked away, waving and laughing, as if she'd left behind nothing but another whim.
"Alright then… see you."
And that was the last time it ever saw her.
When the melody turned - just a small bend in the music - Aimi's chest tightened in a way she hadn't expected. Everything the episode had planted in the previous eighteen minutes - the loneliness of youkai, the loneliness of Natsume, the loneliness of Rei - rose all at once, like a tide.
Rei was lonely too.
She was too strong. Too different. Rejected by the "normal" people of the human world. Did she really need to "recruit" youkai as subordinates?
Or maybe…
Maybe she just wanted someone to talk to. Anyone. Even if it was a starving youkai at someone else's grave.
Aimi understood it on the first watch. Felt it in her body, without the anime ever having to spell it out.
That was why the immersion hit so hard.
Time passed inside the memory like it was both racing and standing still.
After Rei left, the youkai began to wait.
Wait for her to return. Wait for her to call its name. Wait for one moment - just one - where it could exist for someone again.
"Rei…"
"Rei…"
"Rei…"
It wandered the same area.
Sakura fell. Red maple leaves spun in the wind. Snow covered the world and melted away. For humans, decades. For it, a wait both long and short at once - long because it hurt, short because hope always restarted the next day.
"Ah… she didn't call me again today?"
Its voice trembled, almost childlike.
"I miss her…" and then, lower, more broken: "I'm lonelier than I was before."
In production, that voice had come at a cost.
The youkai's seiyuu - Rika Hayashi - must have failed dozens of times on those few lines before she finally found the exact blend of anger, sorrow, and shame that Sora Kamakawa demanded. It wasn't enough to "cry." It had to sound like someone trying not to cry.
And when Aimi heard that sob trapped in the throat, paired with the flute rising at exactly the right point in the music… goosebumps ran up her arms.
Then the demand finally came - every ounce of pain in the world compressed into a single order.
"Give it back… give me my name back. If I waited this long and she still never called me… then give it back. Give it back to me."
The memory ended.
The timeline returned to the present.
Natsume blinked, as if waking from a heavy dream. The ink strokes - the name - slipped into the center of the youkai's forehead.
And, strangely, Aimi no longer saw that creature as "ugly."
That enormous single eye, once threatening, now looked like… an eye that had seen too much time.
Inside it, Natsume's face reflected - and in that reflection, the resemblance to Rei was cruel. The same expression. The same way of existing alone.
Rei had never called its name.
But Natsume… fifty years after Rei's death… did.
"Hishigaki!"
For the first time, the anime finally let a youkai's name be spoken aloud - with all the weight it had been hammering in since the beginning: names mattered. They were identity. They were bond. They were proof that someone had been seen.
Tears filled Aimi's eyes in seconds. Her nose burned without warning, as if her body had decided before she did.
"Rei… is it okay now? Even if it's lonely… you're not afraid anymore?"
The screen turned green, vivid, as if the world had finally breathed after holding its air for decades.
With its name returned, Hishigaki softened. Before disappearing, its voice - clean now, almost gentle - reached Natsume like a touch.
"Your grandmother… she certainly wasn't lonely."
Natsume lowered his gaze and answered with a tenderness that felt almost absurd for someone who had nearly been devoured.
"Thank you, Hishigaki. You… who were her friend. You, with a kind heart."
And under that voice, Hishigaki's existence began to fade, little by little, like mist under sunlight.
A single tear slipped from the corner of Aimi's eye and trailed down to her forearm.
She felt the urge to cry - an urge that wasn't only sadness. It was a kind of good pain, a sense of healing that comes when an old emptiness is finally given a name.
Rei's loneliness and Hishigaki's loneliness crossed the screen and struck her hard, as if they'd found a place to echo.
That was it.
Natsume Yuujinchou was that kind of anime.
Nineteen minutes stitching emotion together with calm. One final minute ripping everything loose at once.
And that single minute was enough to shatter, mercilessly, every assumption Aimi had made about the story.
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