秋の夜宴 | Aki no Yaen | Manga Special 4
Tanuma learns that Nyanko is a youkai and he and Natsume attend a fall festival where they run into Sasada, Kitamoto, Nishimura and the little kitsune while Hinoe watches from the trees.
Tropes associated with the episode:
- Asian Fox Spirit: The young kitsune from episode seven comes to the festival in hopes of meeting Natsume again.
- Bond Creatures: Natori’s shiki are with him.
- Cool Mask: Hiiragi is wearing her horned one with a sing eye painted on it.
- Conveniently Timed Distraction: Natsume and Tanuma flee from Sasada when she is distracted by one of the other people helping to set up the festival.
- Festival Episode: Natsume goes to a fall festival.
- Funny Background Event: While Natsume and Tanuma have a serious discussion about their friendship and how Natsume hid things about his interactions with youkai from him but only because he wanted to be able to have a friendship without making Tanuma feel uneasy Nyanko is flopping around in a stream behind them trying and failing to catch fish.
- Girlish Pigtails: Tamiko is wearing her hair in twin tails for the festival.
- Goldfish Scooping Game: Natsume and Tanuma show the kitsune how to play this game at the fall festival after he takes the elixir which turns him temporarily human.
- Got Volunteered: Sasada orders Tanuma to help set up the festival when he and Natsume get there early, when she tells him to stop talking back to the class president his exasperated response is that he’s not in her class.
- Kimono Is Traditional: Hinoe wears a her floral print purple kimono.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Natori, a popular actor, shows up to the festival in glasses and a hat to avoid being recognized.
- Running Gag: Nyanko is recognized as “Natsume’s ugly cat” by Tanuma and later Sasada and Tanuma decides to start calling him Ponta.Tanuma: Hey… Isn’t this Natsume’s ugly cat? Nyan-Nyan-sensei, I think. Hey, Nyan-Nyan-sensei, you all right? Nyan-Nyan? What a humiliating name. Ponta might be better. Hey Ponta.
- Shrines and Temples: The fall festival is at a shrine.
- Torment by Annoyance: Tanuma repeatedly pokes Nyanko with a stick to get him up after the cat get knocked dizzy while getting his name wrong and renaming him, it annoys Nyanko so much that he forgets to act like a normal cat and starts yelling at him.
- Wingding Eyes: Nyanko’s become spinning spirals after he smacks head-first into Tanuma and lays dazed on the ground.
- You Can See Me?: When the two oni that were bullying the kitsune realize that the glare Natori directs at them means he can see them they declare him a monster and run away. The little kitsune is just super excited to meet another human that can understand him and see him as something more than a fox without him having to use any outside help to make himself visible to humans.
