This week, Natsume’s Book of Friends gave us an episode as self-contained as a snow globe, complete with a confetti of white flakes (of p...
This week, Natsume’s Book of Friends gave us an episode as self-contained as a snow globe, complete with a confetti of white flakes (of paper, that is). Nestled against the cozy backdrop of a used bookstore, “The Depths of the Page,” is an episodic yokai tale typical of the show complete with one of my favorite tragic tropes: a doomed ayakashi-human relationship that can never be. It also provides the smallest crumb of new world-building details about literacy and writing in the yokai world. Still, the episode’s pacing, which begins glacially only to hurry into a hasty resolution, felt awkward to me.
It’s been a while since we heard from Natsume’s two most ordinary school friends who can’t see yokai, Kitamoto and Nishimura. I imagine it’s harder to fit them into episodes than Tanuma and Saki, who both know Natsume’s secret. Indeed, to make a Kitamoto-centric episode, this week’s plot had to slightly bend the rules and present a rare situation in which Kitamoto was able to see the yokai of the week, none the wiser of her inhuman status. Since the bookstore is full of old, pre-owned items, it bends the boundary between human and yokai space, and this Kitamoto thinks Kaeda, the young lady with an apron tied over her school uniform is merely an employee. He apparently hasn’t noticed that she mysteriously appears only while the elderly human shopkeep is asleep. However, it takes a while for the central conflict of the episode to appear. Natsume and Kitamoto make an initial trip to this bookshop in which they pick up nothing but bad vibes. It takes a while to get the ball rolling and even Kaeda isn’t much help, using her screentime to tell the boys to leave rather than solve the mystery. By the last five minutes of the episode, I was nervously checking the timestamp to make sure there was still enough time to wrap everything up. It felt like everything came down to the wire, which made the initial chill bookshop vibe fall apart.
Amidst the constant trips to and from the store, Natsume dropped a few precious tidbits of lore about yokai writing. We’ve known for a long time that Natsume is able to read yokai writing (or else the book of friends would be quite the nonstarter!) but I don’t think we knew that yokai writing can affect even the illiterate. I would have liked to see Kitamoto’s affected body parts actually turn see-through, like Nyanko-sensei claimed he saw. I rewatched the scene and nothing looked amiss about Kitamoto’s right wrist and left shoulder. Plus, he was wearing a heavy coat over his uniform anyway. Usually the show lets us in on what Natsume sees, which makes it disappointing when it doesn’t. Still, that vagueness turned out to be inconsequential against Kaeda’s Schrödinger’s illiteracy. Kaeda claims she’s never read a book in her life, and these dramatics are believable because, as Natsume reminds us, it’s not a given that ayakashi are able to comprehend human writing. What do you think of the last-minute revelation that Kitamoto’s bookmark is in a different spot? To me, it suggests that even if Kaeda wasn’t able to read the book, she must have at least tried.
Aside from the cute early scene with Natsume giving an extra-fluffy Nyanko-sensei a bath, Kitamoto and Kaeda’s interactions are the warmest part of the episode. There’s always a bittersweet tinge to ayakashi-human interactions since they are never meant to be, especially when it comes to a completely ordinary guy like Kitamoto. This encounter happens at a time when Kitamoto is struggling with family issues at home. (Kitamoto’s younger sister and sick dad have shown up in the anime before, but I honestly had to check the fan wiki to remind myself of that. Kitamoto and Nishimura have blended together in my mind during this break between seasons.) Despite the liminal nature of their relationship (or perhaps because of it?) it was sweet to see Kitamoto draw out some funny faces from the straitlaced bookstore yokai. I’m wrapping up my review and haven’t even mentioned Dei—the bland, malicious yokai of the week—once, so it’s obvious which part of the episode left an impression on me and which part fell flat.
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Natsume’s Book of Friends Season 7 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
Lauren writes about model kits at Gunpla 101. She spends her days teaching her two small Newtypes to bring peace to the space colonies.
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