Natsume realizes that he is lonely in life while Nyanko continues to rock the show.

This whole episode is a bit misleading at first. The title points that we are going to be seeing a Dew God of some sort, but then the episode starts off with Natsume actually being in the presence of his fellow classmates because he is stopped to sign a petition to have a fear contest (ghost hunt of sorts) in an abandoned building. My immediate thoughts are, “Hot dog! I get to see that expected ‘I can see ghosts and can’t let my classmates know’ awkwardness.” Sadly, that isn’t so. Natsume notices a bad ghost behind his friends, runs, and then we meet the Dew God shortly.

Summary:

Natsume explains that he only encounters two kinds of youkai, the type that want to steal the Yuujinchou (Book of Friends) and control the other youkai who’s names are written in it, and the type that just simply comes to have their name returned to them. This job of returning the names to those nice youkai that make friendly house visits seems simple enough, but the task really tires Natsume out, but who’d have thought with all this that his biggest challenge yet would be a grain of rice! That’s right! The Dew God’s page is stuck to another page by a grain of rice. Curse that adolescent Reiko!

Because forcing the pages apart could kill the two youkai, Natsume has to find the other off of a crudely drawn picture that resembles the shadow crawling youkai. The rest of the episode is either a find the other guy by going up to the most awkward and embarrassing looking youkai you can find and show him an equally embarrassing picture in hopes that he knows which shadows to search in (real efficient, let me just say, “That approach didn’t work.”) or learn about the touching story of how the Dew God and Natsume are alike in terms of heavy, painful loneliness; Natsume has no real friends and the Dew God shrinks in size year after year as people stop worshiping him.

Fortunately, the Dew God has one person who visits his tiny shrine: her name is Hana, and she’s a sickly, aged woman who is clinging to the hope that she might hear the Dew God speak to her once more like he did when she was a young girl, that or she’s hoping for a good crop, but she didn’t seem like the farming type to me.

They finally find the shadow youkai and are totally surprised that the Dew God’s 2 year old drawing doesn’t reassemble him, but seriously, they had to see that one coming. He is nothing like the youkai who’s name shares a sticky grain of rice with him, he hides in the shadows and after years of human neglect he has become touchy and rude. He attacks Natsume, but during this time Natsume sees the youkai’s memories of his grandmother and is finally about to free the Dew God and the newly named freak. He’d never done two names at the same time, so he passes out and has to wait for awhile before he can even walk again.

The next day, Natsume and Nyanko go to visit the Dew God only to find that he has shrunk even more because Hana has finally died. He is at peace as he disappears from this world because he know he will be with Hana once again. This gives Natsume a rude awakening that god’s have feelings too so on his way home he decides to pay his respects to a roadside shrine.

Thoughts:

This episode was a tad touching. It has some interesting parallels and contrasts within it to emphasize Natsume’s loneliness. I say that he doesn’t need friends when he has a talking cat that can transform into a giant wolf to protect him. Seriously Natsume? You don’t need anyone else.

I really hope that we can see Natsume participate in that class ghost hunt thing, but I don’t think it’ll happen.

(So there’s my first post in awhile and because I have a new computer I can finally watch some HD stuff like Soul Eater, so I am anticipating returning to my half and half blog on it with blissmo. Got episode 17 torrenting right now.)