This was a very atypical episode of Koukyuu no Karasu – in  the same way final arc eps of atypical series often are.  That is to say, it was atypically typical.  It stuck with one storyline from start to finish.  It had three acts, more or less.  It still packed a lot in (episodes that reshape the mythology pretty much have to), but it was perhaps the first time an ep of Raven in the Inner Palace actually felt like a self-contained piece of work.  Again, we often see shows like this revert to convention a bit at their tail end, so it’s not entirely surprising.

Xiao Yue (if that’s how he self-refers in this body, we may as well follow along) is of course the key to all this.  It appears that he didn’t actually cause the death of the Magpie Consort’s brother, merely exploited it, but he’s been pulling pretty much all the strings since then.  He “resurrected” the brother in the form of a golem, animated through a lock of the dead man’s hair.  Unfortunately this golem has a taste for blood, and not animal blood either.  The Magpie Consort is happy enough to turn on the taps for it, but that’s not enough, and there’s already been one fatal incident.

Obviously the Magpie Consort is a tragic figure, driven to delusion by the intensity (probably too much of it) of her love for her brother.  But she’s a pawn in a larger game, caught up in the affairs of Gods.  Both Shouxue and Gaojun have reason to blame themselves for what will happen to her, and because of who they are, they certainly will.  But it’s really only Xiao Yue who bears real responsibility – they too are pawns in his game.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Shouxue isn’t going to heed the Emperor’s admonishment to stay in the Raven Palace until the intruder is apprehended.  Knowing Xiao Yue is here for her she naturally tries to head off any more collateral damage.  But while he does intend to kill her, the situation is rather more complicated than it initially appears.  He tells her that he’s come from the Palace of Seclusion, in the land of the Gods.  This form too is a golem – necessary because Gods are forbidden to enter this mortal plane.  Except for the Raven, who was exiled to it because she returned a soul there and revived it (surely a story in its own right).

The big twist here is that the Owl isn’t really the villain per se, and neither even is Niao Lian.  They’re siblings as it turns out – twin deities born from the same bubble of creation.  And it isn’t really Niao Lian that’s responsible for the curse of the Raven Consort’s existence – it’s the first Raven Consort herself, who tricked the Raven into this relationship (I’m not sure exactly how that worked).  And the flowers are actually poison to her, driving her insane across the centuries.  As for the Owl, he has no malice for any of the humans he’s killed or intends to – they’re just in the way of his plan to end his sister’s suffering – but at the same time, their existence obviously means very little to him.

Basically, I can see two ways the finale could go.  Maybe Shouxue did actually manage to destroy Xiao Yue and end him as a threat, and the finale will be a coda where she and Gaojun reflect on the larger tragedy of her existence.  Or the Owl strikes back, and that confrontation provides the backbone of the anime’s conclusion.  I rather hope it’s the former if I had to choose blind, but Koukyuu no Karasu has proven itself to be pretty savvy thematically, so I suspect whatever path it follows will provide a satisfying (in the context of an unfinished story) conclusion.