Chi’s Sweet Home episode 123456: Chi, Sees Spirits.

Something about Natsume Yuujinchou (Translates to The Natsume Book of Friends… Yea, I think I’ll stick to the Japanese title) just made me want to post this on impulse. Perhaps it’s because it’s the first series this Summer on my “Well, I’ll give this a shot” list that actually exceeded my initial expectations of it (okay, it helped that I had no idea what to expect from it n the first place -_-”), the first that actually made me go “Yes, this is going in my curiously short watchlist” instead of “Err… If it’s just for the seiyuu, I dunno…”

The straightforward setup: Boy sees spirits, boy is chased by spirits because his late grandma made contracts with them once upon a time but she never bothered to utilize them (because spirits are just hanging about this world waiting to be enslaved), with the help of cat spirit he accidentally releases, boy takes it upon himself to free spirits from their contract with late granny. (Found it kinda cool that late granny went around bashing said spirits with a baseball bat. This when she still was still in school and not a granny, mind)

At any rate, it’ll probably be more interesting than Spice & Wolf?

Like Someday’s Dreamers 2, this show had that soothing village feel in its setting (oh, I can see a lot of you packing your bags and leaving for the city now…). From what it looks like, the show is going to be rather episodic (monster of the week much? Yea, yea) with Takashi and the fat cat from Sketchbook Nyanko dealing with a new bunch of contracted spirits. Its’ like the happier version of Tactics really (it’s not called the Book of Friends for nothing), though them spirits may have a nasty streak in them, the overal feel of the show isn’t too dark. It’ll be too much too hope for Natsume Yuujinchou to be the next Mushishi perhaps, but there’s enough of a good impression from the episode that’s booking it a spot on my watchlist at the moment.

(And I still don’t get why people thought it reminded them of Bleach -_-”)