Title: Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master
Episodes: 20
Streaming: Crunchyroll
I’m trying something a little different this year – right now I’m prepping for an upcoming convention, and part of that involves catching up on anime from the past year that I think I may want to include (either featured, or included on our more extensive recommendation list). I’m hoping writing about what I’ve been watching will help me collect my thoughts a little bit better, and treat the media as less disposable – even though I’m watching a lot of in a relatively short time.
The Kingdom of Yamauchi is led by the Kin’u, or golden raven, a singular emperor among a race of Yatagarasu, or three-legged ravens. Though the title is often bestowed down a heriditary line, when the kingdom finds itself in need a true golden raven may be born to help protect Yamauchi and its people.
Yukiya, the young son of a nobleman and a little bit of a blockhead (as many of his peers claim), is offered to the palace to serve as an aid the current crown prince, Wakamiya. The crown prince, a true Kin’u, is known as a difficult employer and has already driven off the majority of his servants, so Yukiya has his work cut out for him. As the prince navigates the politics and ambitions of various noble factions, some of whom question his legitimacy as the heir, Yukiya learns to appreciate his employer’s cunning personality.
The first episode or two of this series are a little bit deceiving in terms of the type of story actually being told. The opening of the story focuses on four young women from Yamauchi’s directionally-oriented provinces who have traveled to the capital in order to try to impress the prince and establish a marriage alliance for their particular faction. The focal character is Asebi, a naïve noble with seemingly little sense of the mannered intricacies and social requirements of palace life in the capital. Our assumption at this point is that the prince, who soon and very openly proves himself to be uninterested in most traditions and ideas surrounding propriety and comportment, will identify Asebi as a “diamond-in-the-rough” and choose her over her competitors. Our other assumption is that this is a romance story.
The latter of the two assumptions is quickly proven to be incorrect – the series rather efficiently reveals itself as a political story that’s colored by various elements of classism that exist within the Yatagarasu society. There’s casual discrimination by nobles against the lower-class “hill ravens” as they’re called, and both criminals and individuals who are indebted to others are turned – either temporarily or permanently – into livestock, their ability to transform from their three-legged-raven form to human form removed for the duration of the debt.
Having laid that groundwork, the first half of the series really revolves more around character-building and relationship exploration between the characters. The interplay between Wakamiya, the crown prince, and his older brother who would have been the heir but for Wakamiya’s status as the Kin-u, is interesting in-and-of itself. One would assume that there would be resentment between the two brothers, and the series plays off of that assumption early on when we aren’t privy to all the inner workings of the nobility and their scheming. However, if there’s something that this series does really well, it’s subverting expectations. That includes the marriage sub-plot, which resolves itself in a surprising way a little over halfway through the season.
The second half of the series takes on more of a murder-mystery plot, although since we’re dealing with mythological beings much of how the mystery unfolds is anything but ordinary. While the entire series itself is a real page-turner (I watched the entire series over a period of a couple of days), I found some of the more tantalizing aspects to be the brief little snippets of information we see in this half that relate the world of Yamauchi and the Yatagarasu to the human world.
Ultimately, though, the beating heart of this series is the relationship between Wakamiya, who has an unfathomable amount of responsibility to manage (and the stress that comes along with it), and Yukiya, who initially gives off the impression of being kind of a dumbass but who proves to be cunning, loyal, and smarter-than-advertised. Wakamiya requires those within his orbit to be able to keep up with his expectations of their performance; many find those expectations unreasonable, but considering the weight of his responsibilities to his country, they are more than warranted. Yukiya is smarter and more capable than he prefers to reveal, which is partly a self-defense mechanism. However, the respect that he establishes between himself and the prince allows him to provide the right kind of advice when that’s called for. The two of them are both made better from knowing one-another. There’s a good reason why my spouse and I referred to this series as the “raven boys” show.
Since my time is at a premium lately, part of my anime research is to poke around at other reviews and impressions to come up with a baseline list of anime to check out. Unfortunately I just don’t have the time right now to watch one or more episodes of every new seasonal show like I used to, so I need to practice what I preach and rely on other trusted review sources. I found very little chatter about this series at the outset, especially from the general anime-watching fandom. The second part of the series got some streaming reviews at ANN (definitely nothing to sneeze at, but it’s difficult to determine whether it raised its profile that much), but beyond that I get the feeling it was somewhat overlooked. This is me adding my voice to the list of people who really enjoyed it and I hope I can get even more people to check it out.
Some Other Anime You Might Also Enjoy: The Apothecary Diaries, The Twelve Kingdoms