Review of Natsume's Book of Friends: The Waking Rock and the Strange Visitor

I spent $13 watching this in the movies this evening (March 11 2021). Minor spoilers in this review. Anyone who has watched the main series Should know that the mc deals with yokais by returning them their names. This movie had none of that. This two episodes felt like the mc is a side character whose presence makes no difference. The first part was about a yokai whom was tasked to wake another yokai up from his slumber. Not much action or drama. Mc just ran around with the yokai looking for the other yokai’s location. This part was boring given that most of the main series alreadyhas a slow pace to each episode, this part of the movie (if you can call this a movie, I will come to that later) was extremely draggy even by this series’s standards.

The second part of the movie was about mc’s friend, the one whose father is the chief monk of a temple. This second part of the movie was slightly better as we get to see a little bit more action as the horse yokai had abit of a short battle with the yokai that possessed the mc’s friend. We don’t get to see this yokai as the creators were too lazy to come up with a new design. They just changed the mc’s friend’s eyes and show that to be the yokai that possessed the mc’s friend.
Oh there was this squiggly mess that appeared for a few seconds that you will miss if you blinked, when they showed the yokai that possessed the mc’s friend, left his body to battle the horse yokai. This part of the movie was slightly better than the first part.

This movie is only 52 mins long and for the price of movies ticket nowadays, it’s not worth watching on the big screen as it felt more like an ova than a “movie”. Pacing was very slow that a guy two rows in front of me, started snoring (yes he fell asleep during the first part of the movie).

This felt like a money grab by the creators as they used the name of this popular franchise (don’t get me wrong, I loved the series hence decided to watch this in the movies) to con people into watching this at the movies when it felt like an ova that comes when you purchase the series on dvd/blu ray.

Definitely does not live up to original series 3/10