Natsume's Book of Friends, Volume 1 by Yuki Midorikawa

I have to read further because this is interesting. But the thing is, the book is getting thinner, not all yokai are friendly, and there's this cat who stands as his guardian for now, but really wants to eat him. They were previously trapped by his grandmother Reiko in her collection, Book of Friends. The story is about a boy named Natsume who's being chased by supernatural beings or yokai and ended up freeing a lot of them. Although, yea, I expected that when I saw a misleading clip while scrolling on facebook. I was kind of hoping it would be like Hotarubi no Mori e, but as usual, I was wrong. I did not expect it to be this soft and tender.

I'd be interested to know if there is much story material additionally or beyond the anime in the manga, to make it worth plowing through. There is also a very interesting if uneasy acquaintance with a charming exorcist, Natori: part mentor, part older friend, part maybe with conflicting goals and certainly with conflicting methods. Episodic, as he solves different yokai problems each chapter or so, with a gradually developing story arc as he finally starts to makes friends both human and other. There he inherits from his grandmother something called 'The Book of Friends', which turns out to contain pages with the true names of a lot of yokai which she'd obtained in her youth, subjugating them. Natsume, an orphan boy who can see yokai (invisible traditional Japanese monsters that come in an enormous variety, for good or ill, tiny to large, from nasty ones that will eat you up to protective mountain gods), and has had a troubled childhood therefore, ends up with a better foster family in a small rural Japanese town.

(Though I suspect the manga artist's style may evolve with ensuing volumes - the series appears to be up to 21 or so of them.) If it does not, or if the manga doesn't have a lot of material not found in the anime, I'd say go with the anime, which is frequently visually lovely.

As is not-uncommon, the anime follows the manga closely in the beginning I don't know if it diverges later. My local library had the e-manga, so I've just read Volume One for compare-and-contrast. I began, as usual, with the anime, and have followed it through all six currently extant 13-episode seasons. A gentle sort of supernatural crossed with slice-of life tale.

Natsume's Book of Friends, Volume 1 by Yuki Midorikawa