Natsume's Book of Friends Season 7

Episode 8

Being Natsume's friend must be a supremely weird experience. You're worried about regular problems like midterms and cram school, meanwhile your pal is busy communing with crows—and unbeknownst to you, creatures you can't even see. “Natsume on a Moonlit Night” was an intriguing glimpse of our protagonist's life from his normie friend Nishimura's perspective. Affable, clueless Nishimura is the perfect avatar for all of us viewers who wish we could be Natsume's friend. This episode veers distinctly from the standard formula: Natsume himself only appears at the beginning and end of the story. Without Natsume or Nyanko-sensei's spiritual knowledge to fill in the gaps, the viewer is left to make her own deductions about what sort of yokai mischief is afoot. This risk pays off and delivers a remarkable outsider perspective that reminds us not to take Natsume's gift for granted.

Season 7 of Natsume's Book of Friends continues to be the season of man-made ayakashi. Like the sculpture and the scarecrows and the doll at the mansion with Matoba, the yokai of the week is once again a human-made object: yet another doll. And an extremely powerful doll at that; this yokai is not only able to mimic Natsume's form, but also make itself visible to those without spiritual gifts. Nishimura is the perfect target for this yokai because he's clearly not the brightest tool in the shed and doesn't ask too many questions when “Natsume” begins making nightly visits to his second story window. Nishimura's just happy to get some extra time with his normally aloof friend. It's hard to imagine I'd behave like Nishimura did if my friend was acting strangely. However, this behavior is perfectly in line with Nishimura's already-established chill. The way he reacted to Natsume speaking to an oversized crow in the schoolyard made me think it wasn't even the first time he'd seen Natsume being so weird. He probably assumes this is more of the same.

How long did it take for you to realize that “Natsume” was not Natsume? For me, it was as soon as he opened his eyes. In the first minute of “Natsume's” interaction with Nishimura, he has a closed-eye fox-like smile. Then he opens his eyes and they're noticeably lighter than we just saw during the daytime scene. Gemlike, and exactly the same color as the too-realistic eyes of the doll shown at the end of the episode. What I'm saying here is that it's not too difficult to tell the difference, unless, of course, you're Nishimura. In his defense, he doesn't have any reason to believe in the supernatural—he just sees something at his window that is friend-shaped. And it's Nishimura's easy trust that saves him in the end. Though his fear causes him to trip down the stairs in the mansion, a tiny doll hand reaches out to bring him to safety. It's apparent that as the days turned into weeks, their nightly chats meant a lot to the doll as well as Nishimura. Once again, the yokai featured in this show prove to be just as human as we are.

All is revealed in the end, during a rapid back-and-forth between Natsume and Nyanko-sensei. You can see Nyanko looking on knowingly from his perch outside the window at Natsume and Nishimura's classroom conversation, and from there it's clear that our usual duo has it all under control, despite the horror-movie feel of the mansion scenes. I was so confident in their watchfulness that I didn't really need the full rundown of why the doll yokai acted the way it did. If I hadn't known it conserved its energy until the full moon, I would have assumed that the doll delayed because it was having so much fun with Nishimura. That was the truth, in a way.

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Natsume's Book of Friends Season 7 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Lauren writes about model kits at Gunpla 101. She spends her days teaching her two small Newtypes to bring peace to the space colonies.