YATAGARASU: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master

Episode 15

Monsters don't salt their meat. Or at least, not their leftovers with the intent to preserve them to eat later; that's the sort of higher thinking that we don't associate with unthinking monsters. So what does it say about the giant bloodthirsty apes that they not only do that but can take human form? At first, it seems like they might be the primate version of yatagarasu, but as the prince observes, they don't appear to understand spoken language—or at least not the ravens' language. They honestly seem more like were-apes than anything else, but since they've never been seen before—the prince-turned-priest says as much during his research at his temple—that doesn't just beg the question of where they came from, it demands it.

Right now, there's only one answer that I can think of that aligns with the other plotline introduced nearly a month ago in episode fourteen. That episode brought us the illicit drug sagecap—which I hypothesized might have something to do with the way sages and mints can work on animals, catnip being a member of that family. But the word “sage” can also mean “intelligent” or “wise,” so what if there's a dual meaning to the name sagecap? We know what the drug does to intelligent beings like the yatagarasu but what if it had a different effect on beings without a human intellect? Could monkeys have ingested sagecap and gained a false intelligence and yatagarasu-like ability to shapeshift into human form? Their intellect seems fairly patchy from what we've seen—one knew to hide his primate form when the kin'u and Yukiya came looking for him, but he grossly underestimated what the yatagarasu could do to him. They know to salt and store meat to preserve it for later but they have no real sense of restraint since they consume all of the women and children on-site. (Or at least I hope they did. The other possibility is much more horrific.) And of course, we also have the burning question of why Koume was spared the slaughter.

When we first met Koume in the previous episode, there was something…off about what she and her father were discussing. The two were traveling merchants and we now know that the town they were visiting was the one targeted by the were-apes. Yukiya and the prince found Koume sleeping in a chest, the sole survivor, but we really ought to question how she ended up there—and why her father is missing. Did he place her in the chest before he was killed? Did he put her there because he knew the attack was coming? Was he somehow involved in delivering the sagecap and hiding his daughter was the only way he could think of to get her out of the business? We don't know but Yukiya is suspicious of her and I think that's fair. There are too many unanswered questions about how she managed to stay alive, and the length of time it took her to wake up also raises the possibility that she was drugged beyond mere drunkenness. And if she was, that increases the potential for her father to be alive and trying to distance himself from her, possibly for her safety.

This entire situation feels like a much more dangerous situation than the opening storyline about the potential brides. That stood to have an indirect influence on the country, but this could destroy it altogether. It goes beyond questions of what happened and lands firmly in the “why did it happen” camp because the only thing more dangerous than not understanding the slaughter is neglecting to ask who benefits from it.

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YATAGARASU: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.