The return of Karasu wa Aruji o Erabanai is certainly a lot like welcoming back an old friend. With a 20-episode run this series was always going to have an odd release schedule, but it’s a shame that it had to hiatus for three weeks. Nevertheless it did pick a good time to do it. The first “half” of the series was a lot more than half, but it definitely had a distinct conclusion. We’re in new territory here story-wise (in every sense). Though happily that doesn’t extend to the OP and ED – I love them both and I’m glad to have them stick around.
The new territory is physically Taruhi, the home village of Yukiya, and the Northern region. We pick up where we left off, with a weird ape-like creature doing really nasty things. Meanwhile, back in Taruhi, Yukiya is back to his old routine – pretending to be a sluggard not much capable of being useful. The novels (and manga) flesh this out in more detail, but Yukiya has meticulously crafted a fictional persona for use at home. This is fundamental to understanding who he is – both that this persona is a lie, and that he chose to live this way. It now strikes me that Nazukihiko saw something of a kindred spirit in Yukiya, as they both intentionally project a public face that’s starkly different from their true one.
Sleeping in and missing the plum harvest fits the character perfectly, but then it’s also pretty normal for a 14 year-old boy. I think Yukiya enjoys that element of his performance – he can take it easy and slack off – but it’s all for the purpose of easing things for his family and especially his elder brother the heir. He has almost everyone in Taruhi fooled, including his father. His younger brother idolizes him and thinks he’s fun so doesn’t really care either way. But Yukima and Yukiya’s mother seem to see through the act.
The hinted strange phenomenon soon breaks the idyll of Yukiya’s life in Taruhi, though. As he’s flying off to the harvest (too late) Yukiya spots another yatagarasu seemingly foundering, and the creature – foaming at the mouth – attacks him mid-flight. Eventually Yukiya crash lands and stays behind to protect an old man as the others are headed for shelter. He’s saved by a stranger on a raven “horse”. Except this is no stranger at all, even if he introduces himself as “Sumimaru”, aide to the Crown Prince.
Wakamiya’s purpose in being in the North is to investigate stories of a strange drug supposedly being peddled in the Ravine, some sort of ecstasy-inducer which eventually debilitates the addict so badly they eventually lose the ability to return to human form.He asks specifically for Yukiya’s help, and Yukiya unsurprisingly tries to refuse. He’s carefully cultivated the fiction that he was utterly useless to the Crown Prince in the Center and they were thrilled to see the back of him, and his father seems only too keen to believe it. But then, why is this man who worked with the lad for a year so keen to enlist his help know? Again, Mom and Ani-ue see the truth of it.
The drug, which the Prince refers to as “Sagecap” (senningai) seems to be the MacGuffin for this arc. But there is a new character (we saw her briefly at the end of the first cour) who seems important. Koume (Miyamoto Yume) is shown with a man who might be her father – later, it appears she may have been the only survivor of a village that’s attacked by the monster from the cold open. Who she is and why she matters is not immediately clear, but she does seem to be not that much older than Yukiya (just throwing that out there).
Structurally this seems to be a pretty big change from the first arc, which was actually a blend of two arcs from the novels which occurred simultaneously. At first glance it seems a more traditional conflict/resolution-driven storyline, but with Yatagarasu I’m inclined to believe the essential nature of the series will assert itself before long. Indeed, once Yukiya and Wakamiya are reunited things feel much more familiar. It’s a reminder to me of just how much I’ve come to love these characters and the dynamic between them. I’m more than happy to watch the pair of them solve mysteries and battle monsters for a while.
animealex
July 21, 2024 at 3:33 pmAnd because of the Olympics, it’s on hiatus until August 17. This is just cruel (and I don’t mean the monster in the opening scene…)
I love Yukija’s family life; compared to everything going on at the center, it’s just so wholesome. And there’s a lot of love in that family. Here we have a mother who truly loves her stepson. Compare and contrast the empress. We have brothers who can show their affection openly and a father who isn’t useless.
Random thought: Our Crown prince sees it as his duty, to right the wrongs at the court, but I get the distinct feeling, that he would be much happier living a simple life in the north.
Guardian Enzo
July 21, 2024 at 3:54 pmCould well be. He’s a man of action, clearly. But he does have a gift for the Machiavellian twists and turns of the court, too.
The only fly in the ointment of Yukiya’s home life is that I see little evidence the father has any affection for him. And yes, the Olympics thing totally sucks.
Scampi
July 21, 2024 at 10:40 pmI found it weird that the whole village was wiped out except for one girl. Unless everyone was drugged out, the commotion should have alerted some of the other yatagarasu to flee to the sky. Also I thought the Prince was going to take the throne as soon as he got married? The sagecap is a serious matter but it still feels abrupt for him to run to Taruhi after how hard he tried to maintain his place in Center.
Guardian Enzo
July 21, 2024 at 11:30 pmHe didn’t get married, he got engaged.
Also, maybe he missed Yukiya, ROFL. Or he was looking at least for a good reason to speak with him and try to sell him again on being his advisor.
Panino Manino
July 22, 2024 at 6:13 amI’m concerned.
The OP didn’t changed and this makes no sense. The OP is irrelevant for this new arc, isn’t it?
The production is taking advantage of the 3 week pause to work on a new OP?
But the ED did change, the characters that appear in it changed, but Hamayu is not present, what? This means taht we won’t see her anymore? I hope not.
Raikou
July 22, 2024 at 11:56 am“It now strikes me that Nazukihiko saw something of a kindred spirit in Yukiya, as they both intentionally project a public face that’s starkly different from their true one.”
Damn, now that I think about it, you’re right.
Looks like we will be introduced to a new set of characters. Hoping some old faces would make a recurring role.
Nicc
July 23, 2024 at 6:31 amGood news, the show is back! Bad news, it’s on hiatus again until the end of the Summer Olympics. It’s one of a handful of shows that will be delayed by the Olympics, but I’ll enjoy watching the world’s greatest sports smorgasbord in the meantime. I’ll have to check out the schedule for the handball events. The sailing events are oddly compelling to me for some reason.
I do expect that the OP and EP will change once the show returns from the hiatus, but we’re getting started on a new arc now. It starts out with a scene that’s straight out of a horror movie with a monster eating people. We’ll get back to that later… So, it’s been two months since Yukiya left Central and he is back to his old digs and his old habits. Wakamiya worked him to the bone during that one year of service and I’m sure he’s happy to be sleeping in again. Right, that means he’s also back to his old persona that he crafted to support is brother, going as far as to tell his family that Central couldn’t wait to toss him out of there. In this, that’s something that he has in common with Wakamiya.
However, the normalcy is broken as he’s late for some plum-picking and he sees another raven who flying oddly. He tries to go help, but is attacked by that raven, who we can see is foaming at the beak. They have a brief scuffle as Yukiya lands and warns everybody to find cover. That raven is about to make another attack when somebody riding another raven swoops in. That rider manages to take down that wild raven and to save the day. Yep, that rider is Wakamiya in another disguise as “Sumimaru”. Right, he’s there to investigate this new drug that has been going around. It gives a huge high, but the user ends up not being able to turn back to human. Or, that we saw in the beginning of the episode, possibly turn into something else altogether.
Wakamiya insists that he’s not trying to bring Yukiya back and instead wants to rely on his local expertise. It’s not something that Yukiya can refuse as he doesn’t want to see this drug get a foothold in his homeland, either. Just when he thought he was out, Wakamiya pulls him back in! So, they start going on the road to check out the towns in the area. We see that Taruhi is full of paddy fields and they’re likely the chief rice producer for the country. They pick up some clues, like how an area in the mountains seem to be full of ghost lights. And that area was right behind where we see Koume, who does seem to be an important character in this new arc. I expect to see a new OP and ED because of that and for other new characters that may show up. Wakamiya and Yukiya now end up at the hut from the beginning of the episode where the monster is busy gorging itself.
And, we’ll get back to this after all of the medals have been counted. Once again, I’m also interested in what we didn’t get to see in this episode. What has Wakamiya been up to during these two months? I’m sure he talked about it with Yukiya, but we didn’t get to listen in.