Season aired: Fall 2024
Number of episodes: 12
Watched on: Crunchyroll
Translated by: ?
Genres: Slice of Life, Drama, Supernatural
Thoughts: Natsume’s Book of Friends has gone on for seven seasons and one would think there isn’t much to write about in a review for such a long-running series. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The series still has so much to offer in terms of story, characters, and emotions, proving that the seventh season deserves to now be extended for an eighth.
Natsume is a boy who can see yokai. For years, that ability has haunted and cursed his life. Things drastically change when he meets Nyanko-sensei, a powerful pet yokai who knows his grandmother, Reiko, from whom he inherited his powers and a “Book of Friends”. Under the protective eye of a grumpy yet powerful yokai, Natsume’s world expands to friends, allies, and enemies in both the human and yokai worlds.
By this point in the series, Natsume has undergone significant growth. The once-ostracized boy, who felt alone and misunderstood, has grown his self-confidence in knowing his place amongst the two worlds. He has found loving adoptive parents who would support him no matter his eccentricities, made friends at school — including two who have their own toe in the yokai world — and accepted guidance from experienced sorcerers and wise yokai. As I began the seventh season, I found myself wondering what was next. I personally wouldn’t have minded if the slice-of-life episodic series continued with singular stories about yokai that tell a greater story about human nature, but the series had something better in store.
In the seventh season, Natsume’s human friends take front and center. Two of Natsume’s classmates, Kitamoto and Nishimura, have been present since the first season, but outside of being Natsume’s only friends without any ties to the yokai world, they barely contributed to the plot. This season, however, they are pulled into the yokai world due to their close proximity to Natsume while still remaining completely unaware of the supernatural. Through their accidental involvement with the yokai, the viewers finally understand how these two managed to befriend Natsume when he was still withdrawn and relatively alone.
While their personalities are distinct, both Kitamoto and Nishimura are some of the kindest, most patient, and empathic characters in the whole series. Throughout the anime, while they are vaguely aware that some of the people they interact with are abnormal, they never hesitate to communicate and find joy in helping strangers. Suddenly, these two characters aren’t just minor recurring characters, but are likely the characters who first helped Natsume out of his loneliness. Their importance in Natsume’s life, a mystery to viewers, finally comes to complete clarity this season, and I find myself loving them in ways I never expected.
What’s most impressive about this series is its continuity. Stories that happened in prior seasons that viewers believed to be a one-time thing make appearances and impact later seasons. In one of the prior seasons, an episode was centered on the story of stone washers, a type of yokai who paint flowers on rocks to purify them. While it was never outright stated that the grandfather was looking for that particular yokai, the seventh season features an episode dedicated to Taki’s yokai-obsessed grandfather and her wayward older brother who, prior to her birth, went down to the river to look for flower-painted rocks. The way these seemingly separate stories still ultimately connect to the bigger world continues to delight me, and it’s one of the biggest reasons I continue watching.
However, nothing could prepare me for two plot twists. Seven seasons in, Natsume’s Book of Friends still surprised me. One twist involved a supporting character that I had seen since the first season, but the second was arguably the most important: how Reiko, Natsume’s grandmother, started her Book of Friends.
That episode, revealing how this entire series started, is undeniably the best episode of the seventh season, so I will not give anything away. All I will note is that I was left sobbing, and even just remembering the episode leaves me in tears. Natsume’s Book of Friends has always been a story about the fleeting relationships we hold with others, and there’s never been a sharper reminder than the story of how the Book of Friends truly began.
The anime’s greatest weakness has always been its less-than-stellar production, but the seventh season of Natsume’s Book of Friends can strangely be considered quite good compared to the quality of many new anime releases these days. Flowers remain a powerful motif to the story, and the series’ direction continues to make scenes with flowers exceptionally beautiful, accompanied with a pitch-perfect soundtrack.
The best part of watching the seventh season is hearing the voice cast. Hiroshi Kamiya, Kazuhiko Inoue, Ryohei Kimura, Akira Ishida, and Junichi Suwabe are now all legends in the anime voice acting industry, yet they still return to this series and have remained passionate about the characters. In later seasons, it’s common to hear the voice cast no longer as dedicated to the anime or their characters, and understandably so. Yet, I would argue they sound even better this season and continue to improve in this long-running anime.
Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s unusual for an anime to continue into its seventh season with no sign of the momentum stopping, which means this series clearly continues to resonate with its viewers, even across generations. Its theme is universal. Our relationships with our loved ones are not eternal. It takes time, effort, and heart to maintain the love we have for our friends, parents, pets, and partners, and it also comes with a lot of grief. Natsume’s Book of Friends reminds us time and time again to cherish these relationships and celebrate them for the future they can create for us while mourning them when they inevitably move on.
Rating
Plot: 9 (Multiplier 3)
Characters: 8 (Multiplier 3)
Art/Animation: 7 (Multiplier 2)
Voice acting: 8
Soundtrack: 7
FINAL SCORE: 80
