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Friday, July 3, 2020

Manga Review: Natsume's Book of Friends, Volume 23, by Yuki Midorikawa


Rating (Out of 5): ~3.5
Publisher: Shojo Beat (VIZ Media)
Release Date: October 2019
Volumes: 25+
Spoilers?: No.
Volume: 1. 22. 24.

Goodreads Synopsis:

Takashi Natsume has always been aware of the supernatural world, but after he inherits a magical book from his grandmother, the supernatural world is aware of him!

Takashi Natsume can see the spirits and demons that hide from the rest of humanity. He has always been set apart from other people because of his gift, drifting from relative to relative, never fitting in. Now he's a troubled high school student who has come to live in the small town where his grandmother grew up. And there he discovers that he has inherited more than just the Sight from the mysterious Reiko.

Natsume and his friends stumble into a ghostly treasure hunt when they hear a rumor about a haunted painting that has hung in each of the three high schools in the area. Kitamoto and Nishimura are eager to track down the painting as a lark, but Natsume suspects it might involve a dangerous yokai. He joins the quest in case he needs to stage a yokai intervention, but the strain of keeping most of his friends in the dark about his abilities is starting to take a toll. Will Natsume ever be able to tell them the truth about what he sees?

Review:

We start the volume with a school boy yokai story. It's always nice to see Natsume getting along so well with his school friends, the ones who do and who don't know about yokai. It's a balance he's still living with, and doing pretty well at. The story lines are getting longer, too; there were only two plots in this volume. This one was rather fun, more of a high school ghost story that leads them down a hunt for answers.
The second half of the volume features Natori and Matoba, all three of which have differing opinions of yokai and have different balancing acts along with them. I honestly have a hard time remembering these characters very well, but I do know they're all coming from different sides of the yokai/human world.
This series is subdued and slow, but in an easy and thoughtful way. I still enjoy following along, though I'm never on the edge of my seat waiting for the next one. That's not the kind of series this is, though, so I think it's okay to pick them up when the mood strikes.

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