Natsume's Book of Friends Season 5 Specials

When reviewing specials like this with only a couple episodes it gives a rare opportunity to do specific reviews about the individual stories rather than a show as a whole. Natsume Yuujinchou is a very episodic series, so you almost have to look at each story in isolation anyway. So here we go. The first episode it a story of Natsume meeting an elderly yokai couple who loves making ceramic cups. These magical cups make sake taste especially delicious, which Nyanko-sensei loves of course, but they only last until the end of the night. The couple met Reiko once when she was still young, and toldher to come drink sake with them when she was "grown up." In classic tragic Natsume fashion, she never gets the chance as they find out she died long ago and this is her grandson. The longevity of yokai and the short lives of humans is an ever-present theme of the series. But when faced with the losses of time, this episode seems to say its okay for things to come to an end. When the ceramic cups that make delicious sake start to fade sooner and sooner in the day, the yokai ouji-san seems to take it in stride that it's a part of getting old and that someday it will have to come to and end. It's one of the rare cases in the show where a yokai is shown to succumb to the wheel of time and not just a human. They live incredibly long lives, but still they eventually fade away, and that's okay. It's part of nature and it's okay to be sad, but there's no point in fighting the inevitable. Despite this Natsume does help them stave off the effects of time for just a bit longer by helping them get some special mcguffin at the end. It's just another way the show tries to end everything on a positive note, even when faced with tragedy. The second episode is a fun adventure with a game of hide-and-seek. Natsume, completely by accident, stumbles into a game that at first seems like it might be another sinister evil yokai trying to mess up his life. But in a rare turn, this game is actually pretty harmless, and just a game of regular old hide-and-seek. The winner gets to control that yokai's domain after he's gone, another yokai that seems to be aware that even he won't be around forever. Yokai are an extension of nature, as the Shinto religion is basically the worship of nature. The series seems to say that while nature tends to have much longer life than humans, it can eventually die. This ghost that just wants to play hide-and-seek realizes the fragility of humans, and notes that even though it's just a harmless game, it's still too much for a child of man to handle, as Natsume hasn't been able to sleep properly while "playing." The game kept pulling him into the same yokai mansion every time he shut his eyes to go to bed, like "you're not allowed to leave until we're done here." So the yokai lets him go when he realizes Natsume probably wouldn't be having a good time. It's a fun story with surprisingly little actual conflict and the stakes were never more than a little loss of sleep. Nothing crazy like Exorcist clans plotting or dangerous yokai trying to kill Natsume and all his friends. Just a cozy story about a dying ghost and his final wish to play a game. Overall these are both solid entries to the Natsume Yuujinchou series as a whole, so they get a decent 8/10