For all the other things Karasu wa Aruji o Erabanai does well, it has a curious effect on me. I would almost describe it as “cleansing” – I feel refreshed and invigorated after watching an episode. There’s such a purity and timelessness to the storytelling here. It’s something anime can do extremely well, but does extremely rarely. There’s Seirei no Moribito, Dororo, maybe Akatsuki no Yona (also Pierrot of course) and not a whole lot else, really. I grew up loving fantasy high and otherwise, long before I ever knew anime was even a thing. When one comes along that captures the best of what fantasy is, it’s utterly uplifting.
So yeah, Yatagarasu is pretty great. But what’s truly remarkable is that it doesn’t skip a beat. Never mind a 7/8 week break that would trip up the momentum of most series, it’s taken a radical shift in this arc to boot. For a great series to morph stylistically into something almost unrecognizable and still be great is a true unicorn achievement. But that’s what Karasu wa Aruji no Erabanai has done. It’s much more of a conventional conflict-resolution story, but no less compelling for it. And that, surely, is because the characters are superb and the writing never stops being exceptionally smart.
What is Wakamiya doing, shooting a bow (something we’ve never seen him do, I don’t think) into a vast night lit by ghost fire? That answer will come later. For now we return to Koume and Yukiya, whose relationship seems to be progressing in much the way his mother hoped it would. He’s taking her to her old house in the lower city (think Lower Ougi) to collect her clothes and belongings. She’s enjoying the ride and probably the company too, though there’s a lot of petty bickering as accompaniment. But things get complicated when they arrive at her old house, both emotionally and practically.
One can never be sure (Yukiya certainly can’t) when Koume is being truthful. She lets bits of truth out in dribs and drabs but even then, Yukiya is surely right that she’s holding back. Her story about the well and its running dry is probably true, at least in part. Her grief at finding no trace of her dad at the house? Again, plausible – though it does somewhat fly in the face of her words about him later. The two ruffians who show up to abduct her are ample evidence that Jihei was mixed up with bad people, and Koume seems not at all surprised. Yukiya steps up to defend her and he can certainly handle himself in a fight. But there are more fighting men waiting outside, and he’s just one adolescent boy.
Eventually, Koume is forced to play the “Prince” card. She warns the men that if they hurt Yukiya they’ll have to answer to the new Golden Raven. And this does stay their hands, though not their aggression. Their leader tells Yukiya to pass along a message from “Tobi of the Underground” – “I’ll be in touch. And when I find you, you better have a good excuse for breaking our agreement.” Koume curses her father for his poor lifestyle choices, Yukiya scolds her for saying such things and general selfishness. The fact is, Koume’s assumptions about Yukiya are plenty wrong – but that’s not a conversation he can have with her at this point. And all that was about seven minutes worth of the episode.
Yukiya knows that even if he’s on leave, he has a responsibility to Nazukihiko. And he leaves Koume with the Yamauchi guards and heads off to the Sunrise Palace to loop him in, only to be snookered by Sumio into thinking Hamayu was the prince. She’s filling in, she says, while her betrothed is engaged in affairs crucial to the nation. When Yukiya passes along the message she knows plenty about its context (she’s basically a spy after all). Beyond the Ravine, there’s the Underground – the place where desperate men go when all other roads are blocked to them. What of the “agreement” in the message? A peace treaty, Hamayu says – a non-aggression pact between the first lord of the Underground, “King Saku”, and Nazukihiko’s grandfather.
Hamayu promptly sends the boy off to where she knows Wakamiya to be. Once more we see evidence that those two have met before – a fuzzy but powerful memory from Yukiya’s childhood that this path recalls to his mind. Wakamiya is still firing those arrows – in fact, he does a lot of it. He’s healing tears, he tells Yukiya – tears in the barrier between Yamauchi and the outside world. Tears through which if a yatagarasu passes they may never return. That just begs further exploration, but for now the salient point is that these tears were not large enough to allow the monkeys in, which was the Prince’s suspicion.
It doesn’t take Tobi long to get a message to Wakamiya once news of the Yukiya encounter reaches him. Wakamiya pledges to go to the Underground himself to meet with Tobi, reasoning that it’s very likely his interest in Koume suggests an Underground connection to the monkey business. Absolutely no one else is in favor of this – certainly not Sumio and Yukiya, nor Nazuka and Rokon (he’s just tsundere) who arrive to dissuade him of the notion. Nazuka asserts himself here – he will not allow the Golden Raven to take this gamble, Instead, he says, he’ll send Yukiya. And not heartless, he and Rokon will apparently accompany the lad – giving us the enticing prospect of another new set of character dynamics to explore.
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