Review of Natsume's Book of Friends

The Natsume Yuujinchou anime took an amazing manga and elevated it to be the magnum opus of audio-visual storytelling. You won't find a work of fiction so moving, so engaging as this one. The stories and the characters are full of love, they suck in the viewer and envelop them with a warm, often tear-soaked blanket. Every episode is a testament to the beauty of the ephemeral and frail human existence, and to what it means to be human: Kindness, love, hate, fear and courage, friendship, loneliness, life and death - these aspects of our being shine through every single episode.