Review:
I can honestly say that of all the recurring characters in Natsume, Nishimura and Kitamoto were probably the two I gave the least amount of thought too. So here comes an episode that puts these generic classmate and normal human friends of Natsume in the spot light by flashing back to Natsume transferring into the class.
Normally this is a sequence you would see way back as a very first episode or at least a flash back in the first season. Anime loves the transfer student introduction scene and Natsume had never done it (although we had seen Natsume start at another school in a flashback if I remember correctly).
Anyway, while I’d never given these two characters much thought, I’d always kind of liked them, and now, in true Natsume fashion, I completely love them. Nishimura’s insight into Natsume’s fake smiles and Kitamoto’s stoic nature as he deals with his own problems but still manages to know what is going on around him were just kind of perfect. They fit with what we already knew about these two characters and made them feel incredibly real.
Great episode.
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Thanks,
Karandi James.
If you’d asked me before this episode whether I wanted to watch something centered around these two, my response would have been lukewarm. But now? Hell yes. This was a beautiful episode, really.
I agree. When I saw this week was focussed on these guys I was kind of ready to roll my eyes, but it just ended up working so well. I still want to know what Natori is going to do, but I kind of figured we weren’t getting an answer to that quickly.