We of course have more youkai of the week episodes, which even after all these seasons are still great. Natsume is found dealing not just with the consequences of his grandmother's actions, but the passage of time in general as he realizes how short human lives are when compared to youkai. We see some more of his grandmother's life and Natsume seems to want to learn more about her and why she did the things she did. There were a lot of flashback episodes in general showing us origin stories for various characters, but still nothing concrete on what happened with Reiko. It seems to be a mystery they are saving for the end of the story.
We get some more episodes where Natsume is bonding with his new friends that know his youkai secret. Taki and Tanuma have become integral parts of his happy life. The Fujiwara's continue to be the most adorable family and even get their own spotlight episode. We see more of how Natsume values his life with them and the lengths he will go to to protect it.
There is more lore with the Matoba clan of exorcists, not as much as I thought there would be but they did show up now and then. I think like the mysteries surrounding Reiko it's something that will drive the plot to being too serialized and they wanted to keep it going as long as possible. I'm fine with that because the youkai of the week episodes are still always really well done. Nothing seems stale even after this long.
Natsume seems to have gotten to a point where he is comfortable and happy and even the conflicts he still occasionally faces with youkai seem much less scary than they once did. He had a group of friends both human and supernatural that have created such a strong support system for him, you'd barely recognize the boy he once was. I love watching his journey and overall this is just a show that leaves you with warm fuzzies inside... when it's not making you cry at the melancholy of life being too short. 9/10
