Author: Yuki Midorikawa
Publisher: Viz Media
My take: A nice book for expanding Natsume’s human world a little
Spoiler-free synopsis: Natsume gets to know the man who’s taken him into his house a little better; meets Taki, who can draw circle that allow he to see yokai; visits an inn to study with friends but gets sidetracked by a mermaid and an old curse; and the book takes a brief break from Natsume’s POV to show what it’s like for his friend Tanuma, who knows of the yokai world and can see a little but isn’t beholden to it.
Titles: Chi’s Sweet Home 4
Author: Konami Kanata
Publisher: Vertical
My take: Cute overload
Spoiler-free synopsis: Chi and her family move to a new place that allows pets, giving the kitten a whole new world to explore
Titles: Library Wars 3
Author: Kiiro Yumi
Publisher: Viz Media
My take: Predictable – total brain candy
Spoiler-free synopsis: In the completely weird and nonsensical world of Library Wars, where libraries maintain standing defense forces against the censorship attempts of the government, our main characters help schoolkids explain the foolishness of censoring what books are available publically and then the library acquires a private collection including about 30 years of information chronicalling the good and bad of the Media Betterment Act. Also, our romantic leads still steadfastly refuse to admit to liking one another, despite it being more obvious than a lighthouse on a moonless night.
Titles: House of Five Leaves 2
Author: Natsume Ono
Publisher: Viz Media
My take: Not as good as volume 1
Spoiler-free synopsis: Thisa book gives us a bit of a look into the backgrounds of some of the characters who make up “The Five Leaves”.
Natsume’s book of friends
In the first story, Natsume and his friends go to an inn to study. This seems… odd to me, and I’ll admit it threw me off. But once I got over it, I guess I can see the appeal.
While he’s there, he meets a mermaid who (predictably) says she wants the book of friends. However, she’s not… well, she’s not very good at it.
She doesn’t want to talk to Natsume much, but the woman who keeps the inn is willing to talk, and it turns out the woman and the mermaid have an old but brief relationship, and that relationship caused both of them pain. In this world, mermaid blood can give eternal life, which has caused them to be hunted nearly to extinction. When the innkeeper was very young, she had a friend who was very sick. She’d spent a lot of time just hanging out by the water, playing with the mermaid, but when her human friend falls deathly ill, she runs to the mermaid in tears asking for a terrible favor – a vial of her blood.
The mermaid, who’d thought they were friends after a fashion, felt betrayed and used by the request, thinking she’d only befriended her because of her blood. She hands over a vial and never again visits with the woman.
Later in life, the woman begins to worry that, in giving the mermaid blood to her friend, she might have inadvertently condemned him to an eternal life he does not want. So both remember the relationship with sadness and pain. But as Natsume talks with both, it comes out that the vial contained not blood, but grape juice. The friend had managed to get better naturally. And the mermaid comes to understand that the woman would never have asked for her blood had the situation not been both dire, and for someone else, not herself.
The second chapter introduces Taki, a character I hope we see more of later in the series. She learned how to draw magic circles that allowed her to see Yokai. However, one day she sees one who curses her for seeing it. It gives her a year to find it again, and if she can’t, it will consume not only her, but ten people whose names she’d spoken in the meantime.
While Taki is an important part of this chapter and a fun character all around (she tries to be reserved so she won’t inadvertently say someone’s name and curse them, but once she DOES speak, she’s bubbly and excitable) the real emotional core of the chapter feels more like it’s between Natsume and his “Sensei,” a yokai who protects Natsume in exchange for getting the Book of Friends at his death. The yokai who cursed Taki finds them helping her and temporarily takes away Natsume’s ability to see yokai. This leaves both a little lonely, depicting nicely how they’ve come to treasure one another’s company.
In the end, it takes all three of them working together to put an end to the curse and seal the creature.
In the third story, Natsume talks with his uncle, who relates the story of an unusual young woman he befriended years before. He’s reminded of her when he sees some graffiti in front of the house that he also saw shortly before he stopped seeing her around. Natsume rightly deduces that it was Reiko, the original creator of the Book, and his relative and mentor in a way. Natsume’s uncle was confused by her but Natsume realizes that Reiko really thought of him as a friend which is why she did what she did.
Again, the best part of this section for me was in exploring another of Natsume’s relationships to the people in his life. In this case, its he and his uncle coming to a bit better understanding of one another.
The final story is a bonus chapter from the POV of Natsume’s somewhat reclusive friend Tanuma. He can see shadows of the yokai, but not the way Natsume can. He knows that Natsume really is seeing something though, and in the end it means he’s someone who can really offer honest communication – and help Natsume remember not to just let the yokai walk all over him.
The book’s still hashing through stories told in the anime (which came second but I saw first), but I’m hoping it’ll get to some fresh material soon!
Chi’s Sweet Home
At the end of book 3, the family got found out for keeping a cat against the apartment rules, so they’re moving to a new place allowing her to be out instead of hidden. The book shows Chi enjoying playing in packing boxes, her very realistic confusion and fear at moving to an unfamiliar place, her curiosity about or fear of the other animals in the building and finally her accepting the place as her new home.
Her anxiety when she first gets to the new place is so familiar to anyone who’s ever moved with a cat.
As with Axe Cop, the book is less fun to read because of the story and more just because Chi is so darn adorable and the mannerisms are so identifiably cat-like. Anyone who has cats would probably get a kick out of at least flipping through this book.
Library Wars
This book is so silly and nonsense-laden, but it’s a guilty pleasure for me. In the world of the books, the Japanese Government passed the Media Betterment Act which regulates what material is available in public places (it cannot regulate private collections). And in the Library Defense Force we have our main characters, Dojo, who trains and leads defenders and Iku, a new recruit who wants to protect the books for the public because someone from the LDF did so for her years before.
In this book, the PTA holds a rally against some of the “objectionable” material the libraries carry. Some kids, angry at the attempt to remove books, set off firecrackers to disrupt the meeting.
The LDF apprehends them, and after they apologize to the PTA, the library workers help them write up a statement about it and perform a survey at school about the removal of materials, so they can oppose the PTA’s stance more logically and with backup. As you might expect this leads to the PTA being shown up. Hooray for freedom of speech.
This is followed closely by the death of a man who maintained a private museum on the MBA. The materials were left to the library, but the MBA wants to prevent this, and the moving of the material is expected to come to military action (see what I mean about ridiculous?). However, while a majority of the group is protecting the shipment, Iku is with their director at the deceased man’s funeral – and they both get kidnapped to end the book! Oh no!
This book, much as I enjoy reading its nonsense, continues to strain my credulity with its premise. And the relationship between the romantic leads is rather beat-you-over-the-head-ish. The thing that really saves it for me is that Iku, despite being like a lot of other characters in manga, is fun to read about. Its largely just inoffensive fluff with a ridiculous premise. I wouldn’t recommend it to most people, honestly.
House of Five Leaves
First, I find it odd how this book and Natsume’s Book of Friends remind me of one another artistically, with their sketchy, indistinct style. But the stories they’re telling are very different.
Masanosuke is losing strength to what people call the “Edo Disease” and is convalescing at a house outside the city – a house owned by who turns out to be a former gang boss. And unfortunately, his past (and his connection with another man, Ume) are coming back to haunt them as a lockpicker from the old gang is seeking help in escaping not only from the old gang, but from a new one seeking to use threats against his family to impress him back into service.
This book was a lot less cohesive than the first one, though I think it might benefit from reading both issues back-to-back. The first part especially seemed a bit rehashy and frenetic, not smooth and settled the way most of the writing is.
All in all, this book did nothing for me, but I’m reserving final judgement until I read the next book, since I liked the first one so m
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