This week’s episode opens with Natsume enjoying his peaceful life. He sees Nishimura talking about girls again, Nyanko sensei, he takes walks next to the river and does everything that he enjoys doing. This is why Natsume wants to keep the fact he sees yokais a secret, in order to protect his peaceful daily life but like always, he somehow ends up getting involved with them. In this episode he receives a letter from a certain Matoba, a member of a powerful clan of exorcists, but that, is just the element that triggers this week’s short yokai story since this episode’s goal is to set up the “exorcist mystery” that’ll be develop in next week’s episode.
While looking for the guy who sent him the letter, Natsume sees a man sealing yokai with some old looking pot. The man abandons the pot after sealing the yokai and apparently the exorcism of that guy was really bad sothe pot is now dangerous and the yokai inside even more. Natsume and Nyanko-sensei now need to find a way to re-seal the yokai inside. That’s why Natsume goes on a trip to see everyone’s favorite exorcist : NATORI-SAN!
According to him there’s been an increase of so-called exorcists trying to test their skills and sealing yokais. However since they suck, they only do half of the job and endanger everyone. Natori then accepts to seal the yokai again.
While he’s preparing for the exorcism, Natori’s phone rings and some sort of strange voice recites some weird sentences which breaks the seal and let the yokai escapes. Thankfully Natsume and the whole gang manage to seal the yokai again and then Natori explains a lot of things about what has been going on these days. There’s actually some conflicts between exorcists: aside from the new ones using dangerous techniques, there’s some rival families that try to evince each other and even more, some people jealous of the Natori family, trying to curse Natori and maybe to force him to quit.
BUT ANYWAYS! What I think is the most important element in Natori’s monologue is the thing about forbidden techniques. Not only one of Natsume’s closest friends has been using them but also Reiko, Natsume’s grandmother. Well, she wasn’t really using forbidden techniques but because she collected the real names of the yokais in the yuujinchou, now, if the book falls into the wrong hands, it could be really dangerous. So she did not use those techniques, but she might have been.
Finally, at the end of the day, Natsume meets with Matoba, the guy who send him the letter, who I could describe as probably bad for your health but still hot as hell. Matoba tells that on the next there will be some sort of meeting between exorcists. According to him, powerful exorcists have been attacked by someone, probably a guy controlled by a yokai and finding who the hell he is, is the aim of the meeting. Therefore, he asks Natsume his help and if the latter refuses, he’ll go and tell his family everything about yokais and shit. So this frightens Natsume a bit and moreover, since he thinks Natori might be targeted by those attacks he’s really thinking about joining the meeting. Finally the last argument that helped him making up his mind is what was brought at the beginning: the peaceful days, this peaceful life Natsume wants to protect.Thus, the next morning, Natsume goes meeting with Matoba, and says he will help, but only because he’s forced to.
I like that were’re getting a little story that goes on for more than one episode this time. It could be nice if this “mysterious exorcist” story would continue for more episodes but I doubt it. It’s more likely that we’ll get like in the previous seasons, some little arcs of 2 or 3 episodes each which is always a nice thing. Now I really want to see a bit more of Reiko because I like her, but not only. It could be interesting for her character development but also for Natsume’s one to learn why she wanted to collect yokais’ names in the first place. Was it to gain power with those forbidden techniques like everyone seem to think, or did she just wanted to “make friends”? I WANT TO KNOW!
Ps: Is it just me or was the animation not so great in this episode? Ugn… I’m not sure.