Slice-of-life anime, like Natsume’s Book of Friends, are not in short supply, being found everywhere nowadays. Every year seems to bring another anime in the genre, making it so that there’s often little difference between them.
Slice of life isn’t even in people’s top ten genres, meaning they’ll often waste away in the sea of them. How does Natsume’s Book of Friends stand out, if it even does at all, in the horde of slice of life?
How Natsume’s Book of Friends Shines
Natsume’s Book of Friends has a lot going for it, still getting updates while being over fifteen years old. Despite other anime falling into the forgotten pit, it still pushes on with its art style to help as well.
The biggest thing that helps is the use of yokais in the series, with each episode having a new yokai.
The use of yokai is strange, as it’s normally used in horror. With what the story is, however, it works well!
The main protagonist, Takashi Natsume, can see yokai, while every other person can’t unless the yokai show themselves to humans. This makes a good twist, as everyone but him can’t seem to see what is causing the problems.
How they use the yokai is also different, as the plot revolves around a book known as the Book of Friends. It holds a town’s worth of names in it, each belonging to a yokai, meaning they can’t disobey the book’s holder.
This allows the holder full control over each yokai, even some of the most powerful in the land. This puts a large target on Takashi’s back, as yokais want to rule over other yokais with the Book of Friends.
What Takashi does in the story is also different; instead of trying to kill them, he wants to give them freedom. He does this by giving their names back, removing them from the Book of Friends, and allowing them to roam freely.
Each episode feels different from the last, never using the same plot as the last, while still using new characters. It doesn’t stop there, as each looks and acts differently from the others, and sometimes uses different kinds of yokais.
While it’s hard to talk about Natsume’s Book of Friends without spoiling anything, it’s still an amazing anime. It’s worth watching if you like an anime that hits hard in the feels.
