Review of Natsume's Book of Friends
Behold! The cure for insomnia has been found! After weeks of sleepless nights a Kappa arrived in a Cat-bus and handed me a copy of Natsume Yuujinchou. The first two episodes I sort of enjoyed. But from the 3rd episode the series bored me so much that I was fighting to keep my eyes open. Finally, the beautiful ED lulled me into a brilliant sound sleep and I slept like a baby all through the night. I couldn't believe my insomnia could be cured! The only problem was that I was sleeping face down on my keyboard with my PC and headphones on, so I endedup with severe neck pain and high electricity bills. Be warned that you will have the same effect even if you are not an insomniac or were chock full of energy just seconds ago.
Natsume Yuujinchou is a one-dimensional monotonous series that really has nothing to show except for "look how lonely everybody is and all they want is for someone to acknowledge them". This is literally what happens in every episode with Natsume almost never meeting any Yokai who has any other motivation or intention. We know exactly how the "mystery" will unfold, how the episode will end, what the moral of the story would be, what the thoughts and speeches of the characters would be and how Natsume would get out of any trouble that comes his way.
The nature of Natsume's or his grandmother's power, or how the Yokai world operates is never explored and remains a blur, though that maybe due to the ambiguous nature of Japanese folklore itself. Even then it fails to even minimally capture the diversity and richness of Yokai folklore and reduces every character except Natsume and Madara into a crying child. Natsume himself has no real motivation or interests and just wades through life half-awake. Not once does he try exploring the possibilities that come with his powers, nor does he try figuring out what exactly is going on. Remember, he can command the Yokai-s to do whatever he wishes them to- guy can build roads and hospitals in seconds, can till acres of farmland, plant forests and make medicines, possibly even clean up radiation or replete the ozone layer- but no, he's too "kind" for all that. Madara is a sorry excuse for comic relief who just eats and cribs while supposedly waiting for Natsume to die, only to rescue him from any situation where he could actually die. The only interesting character is Misuzu who gets too little screen time.
The cringe factor, however, is low and the show does maintain a coherent narrative without unnecessarily cluttering it with pretentious, over the top or plain illogical story elements, which is why I gave such a tiring series a 3 rather than a 1 or 2.