Natsume and Tanuma help clean Taki’s house and deal with an unsealed youkai.

Opinions:

There’s no doubt that a Taki episode is just a good episode by definition. It’s good to see her again in the series. Pretty fitting that her appearance was with Nyanko-Sensei after she grabbed him. Her definition of cute is questionable, but when she finds something cute she can’t let it go :). It really took a lot of courage for her to use that circle again. When she first started to use it that terrible youkai showed up and cursed her so I can understand not wanting to do it. In the end everything worked out well and one of the youkai went into the circle at the end to talk to her. It’s a pretty limited means to communicate with youkai, but it does have its uses sometimes. This episode shows just how close she was to her grandfather and it makes sense that she made that circle for fun before it lead to trouble. The strong loyalty to her friends and feelings for her grandfather was nice to see.

Goes to show cleaning can lead to trouble :). But of course Natsume has to release a seal and cause an episode full of havoc. I’m glad that he didn’t try to make his friends stay out of things and resolve it all himself. To be fair he did run around earlier on his own, but after a while he worked together with them. He has lived a life where he couldn’t talk about youkai to others without getting ridiculed so openly talking to his friends is still difficult. But glad that Natsume is starting to get that he doesn’t have to go it alone and that his friends will stick by him. Tanuma was helpful in finding some of the body parts and it was just a good save by Taki when that youkai started charging at them.

This episode had another bittersweet feeling at times to it. A case where a person (Taki’s grandfather) wanted to reach out to the youkai, but never could see them. He never got to know how much the youkai around him actually grew to care for him and also grieved at his passing in their own way. At least his granddaughter got to see them in his place (well one of them) and knows how they felt.

It was a bit surprising that Natsume thought being able to see youkai only leads to trouble. After all he’s been through would have thought he’d respond differently to the efforts of Taki’s grandfather. But I suppose he did have quite a painful childhood and has run into some dangerous situations. Glad at the end he was willing to talk about some of the youkai he’s met to his friends.

Rough episode for Nyanko-Sensei. I mean he gets snagged and cuddled by Taki (though personally think that’d be a good thing….) and then has to fight while avoiding numerous barriers set up by Taki’s grandfather.

A nice episode overall. Got to see Taki again which makes it great, but also got some bonding between Taki, Natsume, and Tanuma.

Score: A