The river gives and the river takes away.
What They Say:
Episode #9: “What Flows”
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
A trip to a campus up on the mountain proves to be a fun retreat for the students of Natsume’s class. Billed as a study trip it serves as an opportunity not only for study but community service as well. The kids are expected to clean the grounds and riverbank around the school. For Natsume, it’s a chance to be away from home and away from Sensei, but things never work out quite as intended.
For one, Nyanko-sensei stowed-away in Natsume’s luggage without his knowledge. Secondly, nowhere, especially not an ancient mountain, is devoid of the presence of youkai. In this case, it’s one which happens to look like a mask, and it’s dwelling among a shrine of four masks. However, the human caretakers only see three masks residing in the tiny shrine.
Natsume quickly finds himself seeing things only he can see. Luckily Tanuma is around to keep him company and divert and cover for him when necessary. (Taki is there as well, but the girls spend most of the episode separated from the boys.) Sensei has to pull a fast favor so that the student body doesn’t think Natsume brought his pet cat with him once he’s found out and disguises himself as a baby boar, or so they say. (He still looks like a cat-thing, just a brown cat thing.)
Not only are the things that Natsume sees in this episode unnerving, they are unusual. We’re used to seeing the random rogue youkai, but Natsume sees a hallway in the school flooding and becoming a river. A boat washes downstream with an impossibly thin woman in it, with her head under the water as it passes. A mask keeps attaching itself to various students and faculty. We’re used to chatty or demanding youkai yet nothing in this scenario is communicating in an open way. It’s all very surreal and spooky, and Natsume freaks out more than once before learning what really happened from the local priest.
While the last episode looked very flat in composition and color, this episode pushes the look this show typically goes for to the limit. It’s mostly through subtle changes in lighting and many interesting transitions and images of flowing water. A little goes a long way to elevating this episode above the others visually. The imagery makes all of the events more impactful.
Storywise not much here is different than the usual Natsume episode. There’s a youkai problem which Natsume solves, a tale of loyalty and lost love. It just happens to follow on the heels of an episode where a love story between a youkai and a human begins. This shows the aftermath of such a relationship, and the sorrow left behind in its wake. With how episodic the series is this is probably just a happy coincidence, the show itself makes no direct callbacks to it.
In Summary:
This is the most visually arresting episode of Natsume’s Book of Friends this season. It evokes a feeling which many episodes strived to capture but didn’t quite get there. There’s a real sense of eerie otherworldliness, a strangeness that provides a great sense of unease. It follows up on what the logical result of a situation like the last episode would be, maybe without even trying to continue along with that theme. I can only hope the rest of the season continues to be this strong.
Episode Grade: B +
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
