natsume's book of friends: still waters run deep

Natsume's Book of Friends is probably the last thing I watched because I heard it was a good anime from online people. By my nature, I am a thirst machine. I usually only watch a thing if I'm horny for it in some capacity. Given that anime character designs are, in general, a font of sex appeal, and that I am bisexual, this has resulted in my accidentally seeing several good series. Although I can't remember it clearly, Natsume was sold to me as a good series, without any qualifiers of Appeal. And like. It's not incorrect! Unless you're the type of person who gets bored by slice of life, there's really no reason for you not to enjoy this series. Finding moe here was a pleasant surprise, like a nude scene in an otherwise dull Oscar-bait historical drama. I'm starting here because Natsume is a good mix of both simple and complex moe feelings; of very nice things and very terrible things. It's a really good thing to use to explain moe as an emotion, pulling it away from the self-referential trappings of otaku culture and getting down to its essence. Think of this as Moe 101: Boys Crying, Mostly.

 

This very episodic series follows Takashi Natsume (CV: Hiroshi Kamiya, typecast as a twink who would like to appear more masculine), an orphan teenager who can see and interact with yokai. This, understandably, causes some problems. His problems only get more complex when he inherits his grandmother’s mysterious Book of Friends, which holds the names of all the yokai she beat in a fight. Other beasties want this book for a variety of reasons, including a maneki neko/inugami who decides to just become his sensei and wait for him to kick it. Together they make friends, eat manju, and narrowly avoid being consumed by larger predators.

 

Many reviews of the series emphasize its calm, warm mood, the peaceful feeling it fosters in you. It's bittersweet but kind, never leaving the viewer on a sour note, whatever depths of unpleasantness have been hinted at. And there are. Depths. Natsume has been abused for most of his life for something he cannot change or control, and the transformation that comes when he's finally in a safe, loving place is one of the most rewarding and heartbreaking things to watch. The balance struck between the sweet and the cruel aspects of this series is something I could talk about probably forever, but that's not why you're here.

 

Let's talk about peril.

 

Peril is probably the most ancient and ingrained moe theme, so much so that it’s pretty often missed when moe comes up. It’s easy to focus on tsundere types and delicate crying types; those are things that are obviously designed to elicit an emotional response. The appeal of danger, pain, and comfort is a little more hidden, but think of your childhood for a moment. Think of the princesses rescued from deathtraps and wild animals. Think of the alarming amount of thwarted forced marriages. Think of the heteronormative matter of course of a woman becoming closer with the man who saved her. We (as in society, not my fellow nerds) don’t like to examine these things too closely, as they tend to bring to light uncomfortable truths about fiction and gender relations. They also come entirely too close to things that are inexplicably still considered sexually deviant, like BDSM, and the crossed wires of fear and arousal. People who hate fun tell us that the association of violence and sex will lead to sexual violence, instead of the truth, which is that most people have this association in one form or another, and also fiction is not the same as real life. 

 

Anime is very good at giving one boys in a variety of perilous contexts; it’s part of why shounen series have so many horny fans. There’s something to be said, though, about the importance of peril’s presentation. A key component of moe is the target’s perceived weakness. One supposed origin of the term is Sailor Moon’s Hotaru Tomoe, a sickly girl confined to her room and frequently in terrible pain for a variety of reasons. She’s meant to evoke feelings of pity and protectiveness in the viewer. Compare that to say, Attack on Titan. When Eren Jaeger gets his wholeass arm bitten off (and also his wholeass body eaten,) it’s not presented as a pitiable state. Eren is the protagonist; you’re meant to feel the same rage and bleak hope that he does, in the moment he raises his stump of an arm to the sky. It’s narrative 101, he’s your audience surrogate. 

 

Natsume is a little different. While he is the protagonist, and his eyes are the windows into the world of the show, you’re not always mean to feel what he feels, or even entirely understand what he’s feeling. When he’s hurt, afraid, or even humiliated, there’s a sense, sometimes, of being on the outside of these experiences. It never feels voyeuristic. Rather, you feel the impotence of wanting to pull him away from danger, and maybe wrap him in a nice blanket. It’s hard to explain. The feeling of moe is so subjective to begin with; like obscenity, you know it when you see it. 

 

My own moe experience with this anime is complicated by the ways in which Natsume’s emotional problems destroy me in particular. When is one outside or inside of a character’s pain? What gets you horny and what gives you emotional catharsis? It’s not always as easy to tell as you might think!

 

With peril’s evergreen appeal comes its optional second component, the romantic rescuer/threat. Natsume is rich with queer coding and subtext, presented in a way that’s neither trying to appeal or to joke. The close and complex relationships Takashi Natsume has with other men are given to you as they are; like many things, the show’s not gonna walk you straight to a conclusion. You and Natsume both have to figure out what you feel for yourselves. 

 

The first of these men is Kaname Tanuma (CV: Kazuma Horie, mostly known for this), a monk’s son who becomes the first human Natsume shares his secret with. He’s warm and awkward, and just as bad at having friends as poor Natsume is. Together they make slow progress toward being honest about their thoughts and feelings, each while anxiously trying to put the other first. But Tanuma can only sense yokai via shadows and headaches. He can never see the world Natsume does, and Natsume doesn't entirely want him to. As much as he wants someone to understand how he's feeling, the danger he lives with every day is something he never wants to subject his friends to. Even so, they're good for each other, and I want to see them grow together as friends.  I’m not very into them as a couple. As you’ll see from the rest of this entire review blog, I tend to like couples who have tried to kill each other at least once. 

 

Shuuichi Natori (CV: Akira Ishida, prolific, plays a lot of megane characters specifically) is an ambiguous, weird man, well-suited to this ambiguous, weird show. It was when he showed up that I started thinking that this show might be just a tad... something. He gets a classic shoujo meet-cute, catching Natsume when he trips over him napping in the tall grass. Natori is handsome and charming in a way that made me distrust him immediately, but I admit to being primed before by anime that has nothing good to say about men like that. Natsume is similarly put off when he tries to turn that charm on him, and I admit I have a thing for couples like that, okay. But that's not the dynamic that made me rewatch all of Natori's episodes a whole bunch. He's the first person Natsume encounters that can see the same things he can; what's more, he's an adult person, with an adult's reasoning, and adult morals. He’s been lying for a lot longer than Natsume has, and unlike him, he got good at it. So much that he’s an actor now, along with being an exorcist. These lies shape him. Natori uses his insincerity like a weapon, drawing a stark line between himself and the people who are put off by it. Which is most people. Natsume counters it with his own blinding, unmistakable sincerity, and you can almost see the exact moment Natori becomes charmed enough to be honest himself. He never stays honest, though, and his lies of omission drive a more effective wedge between them than even his insistence that Natsume choose between the human and supernatural worlds he’s been forced to live with. That’s the kind of conflict I live for. 

 

Seiji Matoba (CV: Junichi Suwabe, also prolific, no uniting theme, he's just here) is a dick and I love him. This is going to be a theme. His appearance ups the stakes of a show where the lead's life is threatened daily, widening his world into a place where boy-eating monsters aren't half as scary as other people can be. He gets. Whatever the opposite of a meet-cute is. Meet-kill? Anyway, he tries to murder Natsume, mostly on accident. He then kidnaps him completely on purpose, acts like a weirdo, and tries to show him his fucked-up eye. Like you do. Unlike most other things here, I cannot explain why this sequence of events made him appealing to me. The moe science is unconfirmed. Two kidnappings and one blackmail later, we kind of get a sense of what he's about.  He's the leader of a sort of exorcist yakuza family, with a Meiji Era feel to him that makes his veiled threats and unpleasant smiles seem quite natural. He says very blunt and honest things like he's bullshitting you. You get the sense that people don't tell him no, and that Natsume does might be why he likes him. He has a weird Something with Natori as well (they're about the same age), but this post is long enough as it is. 

 

Again, this is actually a good series that pretty much any anime fan could get into. It serves as a good pick-me-up when one needs a dose of boys talking about their feelings or running for their lives. And if one does desire more danger and/or sadness, the episodes that feature the exorcists are easily identifiable by their highly foreboding titles. Thank you for reading this wall of unregulated emotional thirst, and join me next time, when I'll cover something that's mostly just regular thirst.