Thoughts: Natori and Natsume go to the hot springs together.
Overall Rating: 9
I really enjoyed watching Natori and Natsume meet again in this episode. First, we see Natsume meet a bunch of little spirits carrying something and unable to continue due to water blocking their path. Natsume places a piece of wood over the water, and they are able to pass and continue to their destination. When he returns home he finds a paper charm in his door, which captures and drags him to Natori. What a way to start a reunion after so long. Anyways, Natori wants Natsume to come along with him to the hot springs. Nyanko-Sensei happyily agrees after he learns pets are allowed. It was quite entertaining.

At the hot springs a vase happens to be making noises within their room. Natsume ends up seeing catching a glimpse of a woman stuck in the floorboards on the first floor. One night, the vase opens all of a sudden and the woman comes out of the floor. Her name is written in the Book of Friends and she has Natsume return it. However, she wasn’t planning on letting them live. It seems that it was previously sealed by someone, and Natori came to purify it. He informs Natsume that he used him by having him come to the hot springs to help rid the inn of the spirit. I’m glad Natsume took it rather well, and works together with him to catch the spirit, rather than turning angry and making the mood worse.

Remember the spirts that were carrying the skull in the beginning? Their lord comes and saves Natsume from the evil spirit, and thanks Natsume again for helping him cross the water. Just goes to show how the favor can be returned if you help someone. I liked that aspect of this episode. Natori and Natsume head back after the spirit was taken care of. Glad they stayed on good terms in the end.

Thoughts: Nyanko-sensei can get pretty excited over a snowball fight!
Overall Rating: 9
This episode was probably one of my favorites so far in the whole series. Natsume and Nyanko-sensei head out and eventually have a snowball fight. The guardian statue near them housed a spirit that tries to posess Natsume, but it ends up going into a snowbunny instead. They learn the spirit’s name is Gen, and that he is trying to seal an evil spirit. Natsume let’s Gen stay at his house for the time being while they search for it.

When Natsume returns home, Gen is in his human form sweeping. Gen first tells Natsume that he’s searching for an evil tree, however Natsume researches that the tree has been cut down. They head to an abandoned house and end up finding the evil spirit Gen is looking for. However, the spirit is Sui, the other guardian statue that was destroyed long ago. Gen tells Natsume of the past and how Sui and himself were loved by the villagers. However, when they could not help the crops grow one year, they destroyed Sui’s statue. Sui then became an evil spirit out of her hatred for what the villagers had done.

Gen ends up finding Sui, but both of them lose what little energy they have left when Gen tries to save her. As Gen embraces her they both disappear. It was a pretty touching, and I was surprised they did so much in just one episode. The next episode will be about Natori and Natsume heading to the hot springs. I’m pretty interested in that.

Thoughts: Two Nyanko-senseis are double the trouble!
Overall Rating: 9
This series really turned out to be worth the wait. Many other series just do not make me laugh like this one does. The sequencing of the scenes in the opening song were well done. The music fit perfectly in with everything, and I asked myself if this was the same Natsume Yuujinchou I had watched before in the previous season.

We start off with Natsume getting hit in the head with a soccer ball while he’s laying on a wall. After falling over, a demon crawls out from the bushes and chases him. Natsume runs into a similar seal that unsealed Madara from his prison in season one. A black version of Nyanko-sensei pops out and follows Natsume home. Gotta love Nyanko-sensei laying right next to his counterpart. The black cat snatches the Book of Friends and Natsume and Nyanko-sensei chase after it. Natsume runs into a spirit named Beniya, and it turns out that she knew Madara. She helps disguise Natsume as a spirit to let him mingle with the demons in the festival in order to find out where the black cat went.

This episode stayed true to the first season, in that it had some comedy mixed in with the usual spirit and demon encounters. The pace of the episode went pretty fast considering it was just episode 1. It makes me wonder how much plot development we’ll see in the next couple episodes. I do hope that Natsume opens up about seeing spirits to a few of his classmates. It would make the story much more interesting.