The 10th anniversary theatrical version of the popular Japanese fantasy anime Natsume's Friend's Account, Natsume's Friend's Account: The Empty Cicada of the Fate Knot, was released in mainland theaters in 2018. After 3 years, this year's "Natsume Friends' Account: Ishiki and Suspicious Visitors" once again released new works, in the form of a short story collection, launched two popular stories "Summoning Stones" and "Suspicious Visitors". Let this longevity anime series continue to continue.
Natsume's Friend's Account: Ishiki and suspicious visitors
"Natsume's Friend's Account" still maintained a considerable attendance rate five days after the opening of the painting that year, and the box office was about to break 100 million. This achievement is not easy for a theatrical animation based on TV animation, and it also reflects the excellent quality of the work itself, as well as the compatibility of the theatrical version for the fan group and the general audience.
Since July 2008, when Yuki Midorikawa's manga series of the same name was officially adapted to the television screen, Natsume Friends' Account has accompanied countless viewers for a decade. This work has a popular audience both in Japan and overseas.
In China, "Natsume's Friend's Account" is highly regarded by fans, and its popularity is not inferior to that of the hot-blooded fighting fans with a higher audience, which is undoubtedly the most popular healing TV animation for Chinese audiences.
At present, the six seasons of "Natsume's Friend's Account" have maintained a high score of 9.3 points and above on Douban, and the number of marks in the first quarter has already exceeded the number of marks of 10W people, and there is a discussion volume of healing animation on various social networking sites.
Throughout Natsume's Friend's Account, it tells the story of a series of adventures in which the protagonist, Natsume Takashi, who can see the yokai, accidentally obtains a "friend's account" full of yokai names and returns these names to the yokai who come to ask for names.
Natsume Takashi, whose parents unfortunately died twice, lived among relatives and guardians from an early age, and because he could see foreign objects such as yokai that ordinary people could not see, Natsume would often make behaviors that ordinary people could not understand, which also directly caused incomprehension between classmates and relatives, and even rejection and disgust.
In the eyes of ordinary people, Natsume Takashi is undoubtedly a boy with strange behavior and a withdrawn personality, who has a poor life but is not welcomed by those around him.
Fujiwara Shigeru and Fujiwara Tatsuko are a happy and harmonious middle-aged couple living in the countryside, they are no different from ordinary Japanese families, but the fact that they do not have children can occasionally make them feel lonely.
At a funeral of a relative or friend, Shigeto stumbled upon a lonely Natsume, and heard about the situation that the guardians who raised Natsume did not want to see Natsume. Out of pity and empathy for loneliness, the Fujiwara couple decided, after much deliberation, to adopt the unlovable boy.
Although Natsume Takashi, who lived in the Fujiwara couple's home, was grateful, he kept his distance from the Fujiwara couple because he was "able to communicate with the yokai", fearing that his specialness would bring disaster to them and that he would be abandoned by his adopters again.
Being chased by a yokai is the daily life of Takashi Natsume, who can see yokai, and in the process of being chased by a yokai, Natsume accidentally breaks into the shrine that seals the high-level yokai "Spot", and unlocks the boundary of the shrine, releasing this spot with powerful power. Bane and Natsume's late lonely grandmother, who can also see the youkai, have a lot of friendship.
Natsume finds a roster called "Friend's Tent" in Reiko's relics, which is filled with the names of the youkai. This booklet is an agreement signed by Reiko with the yokai she has defeated, and the person who owns the book can make the yokai sign on the friend's account. In order to get Natsume's friend's account, Ban and Natsume reach an agreement and disguise themselves as cats to protect Natsume's personal safety.
The news that Natsume holds a friend's account also attracts yokai to come one after another, including both yokai who ask for names and yokai who want to take the friend's account as their own, and the whole core story has come to a prelude.
From the perspective of setting, Midorikawa's "Natsume Friend's Account" is very close to Imaichiko's famous manga "Hundred Ghosts Nocturnal Copy" that was serialized in the late 1990s, so some people call "Natsume's Friend's Account" an animated version of "Hundred Ghosts Nocturnal Copy". The deep cultural foundation of the ghosts and gods in Japanese folklore has contributed to a batch of excellent literary and artistic works on the theme of Zhiwei.
The plot structure of "Natsume's Friend's Account" is actually very simple, it is a unit drama with a sense of the main line, and almost every episode is about the story of Natsume and the yokai who came to ask for their names. The main drawback of the form of unit drama is that the routine programmed story is easy to cause the audience's aesthetic fatigue, and the freshness comes and goes quickly.
However, "Natsume's Friend's Account", which has persisted for thirteen years, has not escaped into such a predicament, which precisely reflects the screenwriter's accurate grasp of the scale of the play, each episode of the story variation has its own unique place, the themes expounded are not the same, the details and emotional setting are in place.
The term "healing system" originated from the mass aesthetic culture at the end of the last century that was mainly feminine and related to the Japanese national character, and it is widely seen that before the birth of the term "healing system", there were already healing works in Japanese literary and artistic creation. Healing animation can be considered to originate from the wave of girl comics that were popular in Japan in the last century, but after decades of development, the scope of healing animation is beyond the reach of girl comics.
Japan's annual production of healing animation is staggering, but there are only a few works that can really approach the popularity of Natsume's Friend's Account. "Insect Master", "Honey and Clover", "Fruit Basket", "Unheard Flower Name"... It is not difficult to find that the common feature of these works is that they are extremely short. The reason why "Natsume's Friend's Account", which is continuously updated to the sixth season, can maintain its strong vitality is inseparable from the story of the heart and the excellent production team.
The Bugger
"Unheard Flower Name"
Director Takahiro Omori is one of the most famous Japanese animation supervisors at the moment, and in addition to "Natsume's Friend's Account", he also supervises "Mori of Fireworks", "Headless Horseman Tales", "Eternal Wine", "Hell Girl" and "Alice Gakuen". His early experience in supervising teenage manga made Takahiro Omori extremely sensitive to character portrayal and emotions.
Forest of Fireflies
Hell Girl
As the animation work that Takahiro Omori has devoted the most effort and time to, the rich three-dimensional and delicate degree of "Natsume's Friend's Account" in the character group portraits is unmatched by many TV animations.
Voice actor dubbing is equally luxurious, with The character of Takashi Natsume being voiced by voice actor star Hiroshi Kamiya and Mr. Cat being voiced by veteran supporting actor Kazuhiko Inoue. The work of the two voice actors goes without saying.
In addition to the aestheticistic zhiwei stories, fresh and pleasant rural life pictures and three-dimensional rich character modeling, the opening and ending tracks of each season of "Natsume's Friend's Account" are also outstanding in TV animation, which is very beautiful. Friends who go to the cinema to watch the theatrical version may wish to listen to the remember at the end of the film and then leave the theater before it is too late.
In line with another Japanese fantasy animated film, "Asahi Sunset Oath", the theatrical version of "Natsume's Friend's Account" also tells a sentimental story about "guardianship and parting".
However, compared with "Oath of The Night" that has been criticized for being too intense and has more slots, the theatrical version of "Natsume's Friend's Account" does not flatter the adjustment to the broadcast method and commercial adaptation of the big screen, but adheres to the original style and narrative tone of the TV version, and the storyline is slowly advancing, without dramatic conflicts and contradictions, nor excessive sensationalism.
In the thirteen years since its broadcast, Natsume's Friend's Account has contributed so many unforgettable and precious memories to the audience that we can't predict how this anime will end next.
Maybe ten years later, the audience will still see the second theatrical version, twenty years later Natsume will be a middle school student who looks up to Conan Edogawa, and Yoshizo will wander around the Seven Houses every three to five years; or maybe there will be no more episodes of Natsume's Friends, and we will have to say goodbye to all the cute characters forever.
But as explained in the theatrical version, sometimes guarding each other, parting sometimes, sometimes feeling the happiness in the process is the most important. Healing doesn't solve real-life troubles, but it teaches the audience the optimism that life should hold.