This week, Natsume’s Book of Friends brings us a stand-alone plot like a snow globe, complete with white flake (i.e. paper) confetti. Set in the cozy setting of a used bookstore, “Inside the Pages” tells the show’s quintessential monster story, laced with one of my favorite tragic tropes: a monster-human relationship that is doomed to never come true. It also provides the smallest scraps of new world-building details about literacy and writing in the world of monsters. Still, the episode felt awkwardly paced from the beginning and ended in a rush.
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Natsume’s two most ordinary school friends, Kitamoto and Nishimura, that they can’t see yokai. I think it would be harder to integrate them into the series than Tanuma and Saki, both of whom know Natsume’s secret. In fact, in order to make a Kitamoto-centric episode, this week’s episode had to bend the rules a bit and feature the rare situation where Kitamoto was able to see this week’s youkai without any knowledge of her inhuman status But nothing. Because the bookstore is filled with old, second-hand items that bend the boundaries between human and youkai space, Kitamoto believes that Mapleda, the young woman who wears an apron over her school uniform, is just an employee. He apparently doesn’t notice that she only mysteriously appears when the elderly human shopkeeper is sleeping. However, the episode’s central conflict takes a while to emerge. Natsume and Kitamoto came to this bookstore for the first time, but they felt nothing except a bad atmosphere. Things take a while to get going, and even Mapleda isn’t much help, using her screen time to tell the boys to leave instead of solving the mystery. During the last five minutes of the episode, I nervously checked the time stamps to make sure there was still enough time for everything to wrap up. It felt like everything was coming to an end, which shattered the initial cold atmosphere of the bookstore.
In the process of constant trips to and from the store, Natsume left behind some precious knowledge about monster writing. We knew early on that Natsume could read yōkai writing (otherwise Book of Friends would be completely impossible!), but I don’t think we knew that yōkai writing could even affect the illiterate. I’d like to see Kitamoto’s affected body parts actually become transparent, like what Nyanko-sensei claims he saw. I rewatched the scene, and Kitamoto’s right wrist and left shoulder didn’t look abnormal. In addition, he wears a thick coat over his uniform. Usually the show gives us an idea of what Natsume is seeing, and it’s disappointing when it doesn’t. Still, this ambiguity proves unimportant to the illiterate nature of Schrödinger, played by Mapleta. Kaede claims that she has never read a book in her life, and these dramatic stories are believable because, as Natsume reminds us, yokai are not necessarily able to understand human writing. What do you think of the last-minute discovery that Kitamoto’s bookmark was in a different location? To me, this shows that even if Mapleda couldn’t read the book, she at least tried.
Aside from the cute scene of Natsume bathing the furry Nyako teacher, Kitamoto and Kaeda’s interaction is the heartwarming part of the episode. Interactions between yokai and humans are always bittersweet because they’re not meant to be, especially for someone as completely ordinary as Kitamoto. The encounter occurred while Kitamoto was struggling with family issues at home. (Kitamoto’s sister and ailing father have appeared in the anime before, but honestly, I had to check the fan wiki to remind myself of that. Kitamoto and Nishimura merged together in my mind during the season break.) OUT Because of their relationship (or maybe because of it?) it’s great to see Kitamoto draw some interesting faces out of the uptight bookstore monsters. I’m wrapping up my review without even mentioning Dei – this week’s bland, malevolent bogeyman – so it’s obvious which parts of this episode impressed me and which parts fell flat.
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Natsume’s Book of Friends Season seven is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
Lauren writes about model kits at Gunpla 101.
