![]() Through a one-eyed youkai who sees Natsume as a potential “pet” we learn that things have sometimes been even worse – parents beating Natsume, or “forgetting” to feed him. But like all the others before they grow frightened by the boy’s odd outbursts and strange terrors, and the fact that he’s not their son doesn’t help matters. They seem like decent enough folk, especially their biological son (played by Sakurai Takahiro unless my ears deceive me) who seems genuinely sympathetic towards Natsume. Mostly he dreams of the last family he lived with before the Fujiwaras took him in. A run-in with an old youkai nemesis has left Natsume laid up in bed with a fever, dreaming of old days. We’ve certainly had glimpses of Natsume’s painful childhood before, but never this long or this detailed. Given that Natsume’s guardians are easily my favorite of his human companions and that the episode also featured a compelling youkai story, it was an overall winner for me. Given the focus on Natsume’s developing ties with the human world this season, it was only natural that the anime reach into the manga for an origin story – in this case the tale of how Natsume came to live with the Fujiwaras. But whether I was supposed to or not, I felt a little conflicted about events at the end of the episode. Natsume Yuujinchou gives us its strongest episode since 08 with its penultimate effort, a nice hybrid of the themes of the third season with the emotional tug of the first two.
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