I’m not going to say that this was the best ending of the season for two reasons. The first is that this show hasn’t actually ended yet (the Winter season can’t come soon enough). The second is that this ending was completely different from any other ending this season.
But still: if this would have been the ending of Natsume Yuujinchou, I would not have complained at all.
This episode was so different from your usual ending, and yet it was the perfect way to end the third season. This was by far the episode with the most positive outlook of the entire third season. There was no evil youkai to take care of, and instead the creators chose this to just show a bunch of youkai having fun (playing hide and seek, or Kakurenbou with Youkai; ah, the irony). It was a wonderfully fun and heart-warming episode that showed the cast just having fun, while at the end it also had a powerful message when Natsume’s friends arrived: he’s not alone. Neither in the world of youkai, and the world of humans.
I also want to yet again applaud Brains Base for understanding the importance of an ending. Here is the interesting thing: final episodes often have a lot of budget, meaning a lot of animators are put on them. That’s nice, but also constraining: because of that you hardly ever see final episodes with interesting direction, animation, or plot progression, like what you sometimes see when a particularly talented team is behind just one episode. This episode instead brought together a bunch of excellent animators, who really got to do as they pleased during the hide and seek game. This brought the characters even more to life than they already were.
I would love to say that Brains Base’s endings this season are awesome, however Kamisama Dolls doesn’t seem to fit in that picture. Instead though, I do have to praise Sadayuki Murai for adapting this story, and getting the best out of it. This wasn’t just animating a bunch of random chapters. Every single episode was dedicated to Natsume’s development, and the final two episodes were just the perfect ending. He also seems to be doing the fourth season, which is yet another reason to look forward to it.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
The story was really simple, and yet all the small things in it really touched me! It was so heart warming and concluded the season 3 really well. Now, let’s wait 3 months!!
The whole episode felt rather average for me, based on Natsume standards of course, except for the last few seconds when Natsume’s friends found him at the old shrine. The scene where Natsume wanted to join his friends, yet also felt guilty to leave the other youkai who had invited him to their party really stood in my mind as a very powerful scene. It really symbolizes this seasons theme of Natsume spending more time with his human friends while spending less time with the youkai world. I really felt glad when Madara told Natsume it was okay for him to go with them. I feel Madara understood a bit from how Natsume told the youkais that he never really played shadow tag because he only watched others play, that deep down he wanted to play with the other kids. Now that he has human friends he is close with, it is understandable that he may want to spend more time with his friends even if it means cutting short a bit the time he interacts with the youkai world. I may be wrong in thinking this, but somehow I have a feeling that maybe one day Natsume will lose his spiritual powers and thus his connection to the youkai world, but I think he will still forever cherish the experiences and memories he had with them. Oh well, I guess we’ll just have to wait for another 3 months for more Natsume then.