Season aired: Summer 2024

Number of episodes: 20

Watched on: Crunchyroll

Translated by: ?

Genres: Supernatural, Drama, Mystery

Thoughts: After years of begging Studio Pierrot to make a second season of Yona of the Dawn, the studio rewarded us beggars with Yatagarasu. The most surprising thing? I’m not complaining.

Yatagarasu is an adaptation of a novel series about a supernatural society of “yatagarasu” – creatures who can transform between their human and giant crow forms. After centuries of peaceful rule, a golden yatagarasu is born and destined to bring change and save their society from an unknown threat. The problem is he’s the second-born prince, setting off a succession crisis. Amongst all the political chaos, Yukiya, a rebellious and protective second-son of a small village leader, gets forced into serving the enigmatic golden yatagarasu prince, and his small, peaceful village life is drastically changed.

Yatagarsu gives me everything I love in stories: historical societies, a tie to mythology, and intense political intrigue. To make me dislike this kind of anime would mean its production values are trash, its stories nonsensical, or its characters incapable of rooting for. Of these three, the production values are most at risk due to the general downgrade in quality because of industry problems. However, Yatagarasu successfully avoids all three.

The two-cour series has two separate stories, with two separate mysteries for each cour. I don’t wish to spoil the plot for either cour, so I won’t dive too deeply into details for this review. What I will say is that the pacing and the atmosphere is immaculate. We learn something new in every episode without giving too much of the mystery away, and this quickly became a series where I could easily discuss with other viewers each week to theorize about the culprits, their motives, and their end goal. Every character in the series is complex, and by extension, suspicious, making the reveal of both series’ main antagonists extremely satisfying.

I adore the way Yukiya and the heir prince’s, usually addressed as Young Master (“Wakamiya”) rather than his personal first name, relationship grew. Admittedly, I was first fearful that this was going to be a series with romantic undertones between the very young teen Yukiya and the very adult prince as stories like this often do. However, their friendship and eventually bromance develops in a completely platonic and believable way. Their personalities are quite opposite – Wakamiya is calm and often hard to read, while Yukiya is brash and honest – but their shared similarities in their wiliness, their positions as second sons, and the political strife caused by their births quickly cement their unspoken understanding of each other.

The supporting characters are just as fascinating with their own quirks, motives, and secrets. This is especially important since much of the mysteries hinge on the supporting characters, so without their nuances, the mysteries wouldn’t hit the same. I also love that the two mysteries are decidedly different from one another. The first takes place in the royal court, while the second takes place in the context of the wider yatagarasu world.

When it comes to the yatagarasu society, while a supernatural world, it harkens back to the Heian era, and this is where I must gush about the character designs. The character costumes are simultaneously historically accurate to the period of Japanese history that the society is based on while also fantastical enough to make sense in the world. My favorite element is how all the yatagarasu have a specific black kimono they wear if they want to shapeshift into their crow forms. In fact, the clothes play an important role in the plot, and it’s that attention to detail I love to see in a story.

Because the story is more grounded, mind boggling animation isn’t necessary, but scenic shots and visual direction are. Yatagarasu supplies that in plenty through its lighting, its sceneries, and its color. My favorite scene comes during the penultimate episode of the first cour, where the culprit is exposed. As the protagonists slowly reveal evidence against the perpetrator, the colors grow dimmer and redder. By the time the culprit starts making excuses, the entire world is washed in red like blood, and the shadows elongated like monsters. This is the type of storytelling that the visual medium brings and which the written medium cannot, and it’s proof that when translating this story from books to anime, the team was deliberate in finding a way to best milk the characters’ dialogue using the visual medium.

From both an objective and a subjective perspective, Yatagarasu is one of the best anime I’ve seen this year. Best of all, it still has so much more to give. The second cour heightens the stakes of the characters’ world and widens it in a way I never saw coming. The ending does close out the arc, but because of all the new questions I have about its worldbuilding, the last episode left me screaming for more. Studio Pierrot left me hanging already with Yona of the Dawn. I beg of them, please, to not leave me hanging again for Yatagarasu.

Rating

Plot: 8 (Multiplier 3)

Characters: 8 (Multiplier 3)

Art/Animation: 7.5 (Multiplier 2)

Voice acting: 8

Soundtrack: 7

FINAL SCORE: 78