First of all, it’s incredibly nice to have Karasu wa Aruji o Erabanai back. But damn – this is our first episode in a month. And before that, there’d been none since June 22. When you’re talking about 7 out of 8 weeks being absent, that’s almost at the point of being a split cour. Which begs the question – why not just be a split cour at this point? Things work a little differently at NHK than most anime broadcast outlets, it’s true. But skipping so many weeks certainly didn’t do Yatagarasu any favors in terms of keeping its hard-won audience.
So, was the experience meaningfully impacted here? For me, not so much. I’ve been reading the manga adaptation, which helps. And I was already so totally engrossed in the story that I managed to lose myself in it almost immediately. The first couple of minutes felt a little strange, but after that – meh, it was no big deal. That said, given that the one lonely ep in that two-month stretch was the first of a new arc, it’s all the more reason to believe it would have better to just stop after the first cour and pick up now.
Indeed we pick up right where we left off – no recaps or anything. Yukiya and “Sumimaru” have come face to face with the horrifying creature which decimated the village (one of them anyway). Nazukihiko is no pampered noble, as we know – he can handle himself in a scrap, and beheads the creature with relative ease. It’s a scene of utter devastation – especially when the prince looks inside some of the barrels in the storehouses. There appears to be only one survivor, who Yukiya discovers. But this is no human – or if it ever was, it’s in the process of transforming into one of the man-eating monkeys. Yukiya would have preferred to have been saved a little faster, but Wakamiya does save him.
It’s still not clear just what we’re looking at here. Are these monkeys who can shapeshift into humans (a game-changing idea if you’re a yatagarasu), or humans somehow (Sagecap?) turning (or being turned) into monster monkeys? What’s also not clear is why Koume, the girl we met earlier, is left alive. Yukiya and the prince find her in a chest, without a scratch on her and out cold. She still is when the three arrive back at Taruhi, where she’s understandably restrained and locked in a cell to await her awakening.
Wakamiya heads back to the capital to wake them up to the threat – taking “smelling salts” with him – while Yukiya’s father leads an army into the countryside to search the decimated village and surrounding areas. This is an opportunity for Wakamiya, clearly. He can be decisive, commanding – prove his worth in a crisis the nobles have tried to pass off as fantasy. Once he shows off his spoils of war, even the skeptical (not least to him) leaders of the four great houses can deny that something strange and terrible is happening in the North.
That all leaves Yukiya back in Taruhi, where Koume finally wakes up. This is the most extended interaction we’ve seen between Yukiya and his family (there’s more in the manga), and indeed with his own people. And it’s entirely welcome – a different side of this fascinating boy than what we’ve seen up to now. Yukima is nominally in charge of Koume’s interrogation but it’s Yukiya who asks the pointed questions. Here, in this moment of crisis, he has no choice but to drop his facade of ineptitude and reveal himself to be the clever fellow he really is. Yukima was never fooled in the first place, of course, and defers to his younger brother willingly.
As I suspected, we’re seeing a fascinating dynamic develop between Yukiya and Koume. He himself admits he has no idea how to talk to girls his age, but he also has every reason to be suspicious of her claims of ignorance. Her story – she got drunk at a party with her father and remembers nothing after – could very well be true. But it stretches credulity to be sure, and Yukiya – hyper-protective of his own people and especially his family – is skeptical. To exacerbate things, his mother invites Koume to stay on in the household when it becomes pretty clear that her missing merchant father is very likely dead.
One of the things I love here is the authenticity in how Yukiya is rattled by being pushed out his comfort zone (Nazukihiko is an expert at this) – in the way very smart kids his age are. They’re smart enough to realize how much they don’t know, and that’s unnerving. I also love the bond between Yukiya and his mother Azusa. These two are not biologically related and she’d have every reason to resent his presence, but the two of them absolutely adore each other. And Mom – perhaps not wholly in error – sees something more in her boy’s fascination with Koume than suspicion and protectiveness. She uses this as another means of discomfiting him, forcing he and Koume together, with interesting results.
There’s much still to be explained in all this, that’s to be sure, though Koume’s role may prove to be the most important mystery from a character standpoint. Who is the mysterious priest (?) Tobi (Matsuda Kenichirou – Bond Forger!) so interested in what’s happening in the Capitol? What specific role does the drug Sagecap have in causing this crisis to happen? It’s certainly different from the style of the first cour, but Yatagarasu is so good at storytelling and these characters are so interesting that honestly, the series isn’t missing a beat. It truly is great to have it back.
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