29023


I don't recall the title of _Tokyo Ravens_ being explained over the course of
the anime (though it's possible I missed something). Other than the Raven
Coat, I don't remember any particular references to ravens. Where does the
term Tokyo Raven come from and what does it mean? Is there a historical basis
for it or is it something the author made up? Is it explained in the light
novels?


CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-17T03:09:20.140
29020
2016-01-17T04:20:54.953
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question
tokyo-ravens
What is a Tokyo Raven?


> Where does the term Tokyo Raven come from and what does it mean?

The correct parse is almost surely `Tokyo [Ravens]` rather than `[Tokyo
Raven]s`. As in "ravens in Tokyo"; not "more than one of a Tokyo Raven".

"But what ravens?" you might ask. "I sure didn't see any in the anime!"

> Is it explained in the light novels?

Yep. It turns out that the light novel adorns a number of phrases with the
furigana レイヴンズ "ravens". For example, from the back cover of the first volume
(to use the most obvious example, since I don't have this OCR'd and hence
can't Ctrl+F through it), there are already two distinct instances of this:

  * [陰陽師たち]【レイヴンズ】 ("shamans" or something, depending on your translation)
  * [闇に舞う鴉たち]【レイヴンズ】 ("crows who dart through the darkness"). 

There's not a one-to-one equivalent of this practice in English, but a
reasonable approach is to understand it as "ravens" being used as metonymy for
"shamans"/etc. And this is true in-universe, too: shamans are sometimes
referred to or described as "ravens" because of their tendency to don black,
raven-like cloaks, as Yakou did.

This furigana thing occurs multiple times in the actual body text of the LN
(in volume 1, at least), but it'd take me a while to hunt down the actual
quotes. There are also direct (non-furigana) uses of "ravens" (鴉) as metonymy
for shamans.

Of course, there are many shamans (i.e. ravens) in Tokyo; and many "crows who
dart through the darkness" (i.e. ravens), if by "crows" we mean "weird shadowy
supernatural things". Hence, _Tokyo Ravens_ \- ravens in Tokyo.

* * *

But your confusion is reasonable: this would probably be lost on people who
have only seen the anime, since the furigana double-meaning thing obviously
doesn't work with the spoken word.

> Is there a historical basis for it or is it something the author made up?

I know very little about real-world onmyoudou, but I'm not aware of the raven
being a motif or symbol there. (Of course, research is made difficult by the
fact that _Tokyo Ravens_ itself pollutes google results for this sort of
thing.)


CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-01-17T04:20:54.953
29023
2016-01-17T04:20:54.953
1908
29020
answer