Madara (Natsume Yuujinchou)

Madara, also known as Nyanko-sensei is one of the main protagonists of Natsume's Book of Friends anime and manga.

He is a powerful beast youkai and commonly takes the form of a maneki-neko ("beckoning cat"). He acts as Natsume's bodyguard on the condition that when Natsume dies, he will inherit the Book of Friends, thus giving him control over a vast number of youkai.

Despite his continuous complaints about Natsume being too kind for his own good, Madara has grown fond of him and helps Natsume return names to youkai throughout the series even though it will diminish the power of the book by the time it is in his hands.

Appearance
He takes the form of a maneki neko (lucky cat) that is round and cute (at least, according to him, however, this is also confirmed by Taki). Other characters such as Tanuma, have noted that his head in this form is unusually large.

His maneki neko form is white, with an orange and grey marking on the top of his head and back, black eyes and wears a red cat collar with a gold bell on his neck and has small red markings on his face.

In his original form, he is a colossal wolf-like youkai with white fur, with red markings on his face, and gold eyes. He is extremely large that he can cover Takashi underneath a single paw and a single eye is larger than Takashi's head. Also, in his original form, Madara's voice becomes a lot deeper.

Like most youkai, his original form cannot be seen by people with little or no spiritual energy.

Personality
He has a somewhat condescending personality. At first, he only protects Takashi for the book of friends (yuujinchou) but as the series progresses, he becomes friendlier with not only Takashi, but Natori, Tanuma, and Taki.

His attitude throughout the series can be described as selfish, prideful, and comedic, the way he acts and his attitude becomes the usual "gag" of the series.

He does have an immature and playful side; Madara often drinks himself silly by consuming a lot of sake and loves to eat dango (a Japanese snack) and other sweets, making him heavier and rounder. He enjoys eating in general, often eating fish in the river or stealing Natsume's food at times. When he smells something delicious or hears of a place with good food, he insists that Natsume goes with him so they can eat there. In addition, he is particularly fond of Touko's home cooking.

Despite his protests that he is not a cat, he acts exactly like one, for example, getting excited about cat toys and chasing small animals. He also likes to bully dogs and throws the occasional tantrum.

He has a more caring side to him, which he tries to deny or explain away, but as the series progresses, it becomes obvious that he is attached to Takashi and is extremely protective of him.

Evidence of this is when he went into a rage when Takashi was wounded by trying to protect him in Chapter 26 but Takashi managed to calm him down.

He has also shown to care for Shigeru and Touko as well but yet again tries to explain it away. This is evident is when an angered Kayatsubo began charging towards their home to steal something Takashi treasures, as punishment for failure of returning her doll, Madara immediately transformed into his youkai form and quickly charged back home to stop her, knowing that the Fujiwaras would be home. He remained stationed atop of their home, protectively guarding it until Takashi returned.

He is shown to be acquainted with several youkai, like Tsuyukami, Hinoe, and Benio. His strength and rank as a youkai are evident in his interaction with other youkai who are obviously afraid of him, even in his cat form which was seen in Episode 11 of the anime where he overheard the Dog's Circle talk about him and complain about how he was a fat, tone-deaf, drunk and old cat. Madara got his revenge by summoning lighting which left them stunned and the entire forest around them destroyed.

Abilities
Despite his cute and harmless appearance as a cat, Madara is a very high-leveled youkai in his beast form, and is equally respected and feared by many lower-level ayakashi. Demonstrating his power throughout the series, Madara claims to be the most powerful youkai of them all, and this may very well be true.
 * Strength: Already packing quite a punch in his pint-sized cat form, Madara's strength is tens of times greater when he is in his beast form.


 * Blinding Light: Madara can shine a bright light from his forehead that destroys and scares away most youkai. In the later episodes, this light was shown to come from the forehead marking usually seen in his beast form. In the OVA, Madara could project an image and presence of his beast form to scare away the surrounding youkai using his forehead marking, which glowed and hovered above his head.
 * Flight: Though this does not apply to all the powerful Youkai, Madara has the ability to fly, even though he does not have any features that would seem to be used for flight. This shows that he has immense Youkai power that can make him fly.


 * Shapeshifting: Madara is able to transform between his cat form and his wolf-like form. He can also take human forms, but only as Takashi or Reiko Natsume, stating that they are the only two humans that he has observed carefully. When disguised as either Takashi or Reiko, Madara shows bad table manners and a bullying nature, much like the latter. Madara has also stated that he has an old man form, though it has yet to be shown.

Trivia

 * Kazuhiko Inoue changed his voice for Madara's cat form in order to fit his form. However, when Madara is in his true form, Inoue reverts back to his original deep voice.
 * In Madara's cat form, he gets fatter as the story progresses.
 * Madara has the knowledge of knowing how to return names (instructing Natsume during the first episode), however, the source of this knowledge is unknown.
 * Madara gets several different nicknames from other characters over the course of the series.
 * He is called Nyankichi-kun by Touko, Nyangoro by Shigeru, Ponta by Tanuma, and Nyan-Nyan-Senseiby Nishimoto, Shiny-Fluffy Sensei by Taki.
 * Yuki Midorikawa wanted Natsume Yuujinchou to centre around a boy and his non-human teacher, choosing between a bird or a cat. She eventually settled on a maneki-neko, which became Madara.
 * Yuki Midorikawa based Madara off of a ceramic maneki-neko statue that was given to her when she was young by an elderly couple who took care of her a lot. She loved it due to its charming face, but accidentally broke it one day. Sobbing, she glued it back together with modelling clay, and it is still sitting at her parents' house today. Midorikawa first drew Madara while trying to remember her maneki-neko's face.