Yatagarasu

Not to be confused with The Yatagarasu or Yatagarasu AgaiN.

“	There is an old legend which tells about a three-legged crow with godlike powers. It is called the Yatagarasu.	”
―TrusTa

Yatagarasu (八咫烏) (also known as Yata for short) is a 2.0 Extreme Demon mega-collaboration hosted by Riot and Viprin and originally verified and published by TrusTa.^[1] Yatagarasu is a hell-themed level depicting a three-legged crow from Japanese mythology called Yatagarasu. The level was verified and released on 13 January 2017, becoming the final Demon rated and featured during Update 2.0, and placed at #1 on the Demonlist immediately after, surpassing Artificial Ascent. Many had suggested that RobTop should add a new difficulty to the game for Demons of this tier, which would arrive three days later in Update 2.1 when the Extreme Demon rating was introduced.

An update was later verified by Dragoon on 23 April 2023, fixing numerous transitions and bugs.^[2]

History[]

The idea to create Yatagarasu was first proposed by GeoStorm members in November 2015.

It was intended to be a new Bloodbath and inspired by The Hell Factory's song and the fact that three coins are present at the end as an award for completion. Because Bloodbath was the sequel to Cataclysm (although Ggb0y's original sequel was going to be Infernal Abyss), GeoStorm members hoped that Yatagarasu would be a fitting mega-collaboration sequel to The Hell Factory, which in turn was an intended sequel to Cataclysm.

Rek3dge and Riot first proposed the idea of Yatagarasu, and Viprin hosted the mega-collaboration from then on.

Sandstorm and ASonicMen were originally part of the mega-collaboration project; however, Riot disliked ASonicMen's part, thus getting kicked. Sandstorm was having trouble with creating, so he was kicked as well.

The hype for Yatagarasu started when the name of the level, song and length were leaked through Riot's Extreme Demon videos on YouTube. When Riot showed copyables for the Demons he beat, many different parts of Yatagarasu were shown in the editor.

Yatagarasu was officially announced in mid-December 2015 when Riot let the builders upload their parts to YouTube. Michigun and FunnyGame's parts were the first to surface. More parts were revealed quickly, but some people had not yet uploaded their parts, so the level was shrouded in mystery.

More light was shed on Yatagarasu when the well-known hacker Cyrillic leaked a work-in-progress version of Yatagarasu in early 2016. This version had up to Zelda's part, except that part was longer (people thought Cyrillic built it until Riot stated that Zelda accidentally built into Michigun's supposed part thus creating this). People were surprised by how Michigun's part was seemingly replaced by another part. This leak revealed several parts that were not revealed yet and gave people a summary of what the level would look like.

In February 2016, Yatagarasu was fully built. However, Cyclic's hacking scandal over The Hell Zone and Sonic Wave had his part severely nerfed and then discarded completely. In March 2016, Cyrillic leaked a work-in-progress version of Yatagarasu of an account pretending to be Cyclic's. This version was presumably the same as that shown on a 'preview' video released days before, as it finishes with Zelda's extended part and features Cyclic's nerfed part (still debated about which is which). Many people believed Cyrillic added his part at the end, but it later turned out it was not his.

After Cyclic was kicked out, Manix648 would fill in his gap, with Riot also adding a logo art to replace the 'Embrace, Death' text at the start of the drop. However, Riot got into a drama with Manix648 for unknown reasons, and several days later, he kicked Manix648 from the collaboration. ASonicMen then used the swing-copter from Manix648's former part into his part in Bloodlust.

During this drama, Riot quit and handed Yatagarasu to Surv. After Riot gave Yatagarasu to Surv, Surv quickly made progress, reaching 33% in just three days.

Viprin hosted a creator contest to fill in the missing gap. Manix648 tried to win it but sadly failed. AbstractDark eventually won the contest, and LmAnubis changed the gameplay of their parts at Surv's request. Vermillion's cave effects were made darker, csx42's part was buffed, green orbs were removed from WOOGI1411's part, and the skull art from Rustam's submitted Yatagarasu part was added to Vermillion's part.

Aurorus would leak a copy of the level in August 2016. It was a rather outdated copy, featuring some older parts that were replaced, but it included the updated art at the start of the drop. The origin of this version presumably dates to when Manix648's part was removed (it was not in this copy). It was still superior to the version now regularly known as 'Old Yatagarasu.'

Sometime later, Surv started to grow tired of the level, so he quit and handed it to TrusTa.

TrusTa then achieved 57% in a few days. However, he suffered from lots of fails from then on. He ended up nerfing and balancing the level to make it more consistent and possible. Many people were unhappy with the nerfs as it contradicted Riot's original intent of the level being harder than any level. Others argued that Yatagarasu would not be the hardest level anymore (Bloodlust and Blade of Justice were already fully built, and The Hell World was in the reconstruction stage) and were just happy the level was going to be out.

After several nerfs and a devastating fail at 95%, Yatagarasu was finally verified on 13 January 2017, approximately 14 months after its origin. It has since been rated Extreme Demon and was featured almost immediately.

A short time later, Surv conquered the level that once had conquered him, making him the first victor of Yatagarasu. Sunix, BlassCFB, Skullo, Wooshi, and Kevelia eventually beat it as well, and Yatagarasu then held five victors to its name. Later, more people beat it. However, with harder levels being released, Yatagarasu eventually lost its Top 5 place, later would fall out of the Top 10 and continue to drop on the Demonlist.

The most majestic part about Yatagarasu is that it did hold the end for one of Geometry Dash's most magnificent chapters - the one in which legends rose, grew dominant and fell - 2.0. Two days after Yatagarasu was released, RobTop finally released 2.1 after approximately 17 months of waiting from the community. It secured its place as a sequel to Bloodbath - as Bloodbath marked the end of 1.9, Yatagarasu ended 2.0.

Gameplay[]

It has been requested that this section be rewritten.

0-4% (Viprin): The level starts with a ship sequence. This section is dark, making it difficult to see the layout. A Yatagarasu (A three-legged bird in Asian mythology) makes an appearance in front of the player. There is a Low Detail Mode key in this section. Next is a cube sequence with invisible obstacles, with the only indicators of them appearing as mirror images on the floor and ceiling. At the end is a teleport portal leading to LmAnubis' part.
4-8% (LmAnubis): This part contains the ending of the difficult cube sequence, followed by a short UFO with several gravity changes. Next is another cube, this one short, with a triple-spike jump. Afterwards is a brief straight-fly sequence through an invisible-spike corridor, followed by a short mini-ball segment with precise timing.
8-12% (Jeyzor): This part is a very lengthy and difficult wave part with a flashing background and very tight openings. The tight gaps require precise timing to get through, and there are multiple speed portals to throw off the player while Jeyzor's name watermark flashes by quickly along the ground.
12-15% (WOOGI1411): This segment starts with a UFO sequence, later becoming a moderately tight ship sequence. Next is a tight wave segment containing a few invisible gravity portals and speed portals to trip the player up.
15-19% (Findexi): This segment starts with a simple ball segment. Next is a ship with several sizes and gravity changes. Following is a slightly harder ball sequence. This part contains several objects with a white pulse effect. In addition, this segment is likely one of the easiest parts of the level, along with Rek3dge and Xcy-7's.
19-22% (Rek3dge): This part closes off Findexi's ball segment before switching to a brief ship sequence. A short cube sequence is up next, with several orbs. Next is a brief auto segment that shows the name of the level, along with its logo, the Yatagarasu itself, with the level's name in capital letters, 'YATAGARASU' in the 'Oxygene 1' font. The level then transports the player to weoweoteo's part as the music's pace halts.
22-26% (weoweoteo): The music then drops and picks up a new, faster pace. It is marked by a triple-speed straight-fly ship segment and turns into a difficult wave part. If the player passes, they will enter a mini-ball section with extremely difficult timings.
26-30% (stellameoww): This part is composed of a double-speed wave section that requires good timing and good spam abilities, and then it transitions into an easier straight-fly mini-ship segment.
30-33% (AbstractDark): This part starts as a confusing cube segment with difficult timings and teleport portals. It then switches to half speed, with tricky timings of a UFO and robot part.
33-37% (Giron): This starts as a brief triple-speed straight-fly, then changes to a difficult and confusing mini-cube, which then switches to an equally difficult ball with difficult timing.
37-40% (Aeidux): This part begins with a difficult mini-ship segment, with a few size and gravity changers to throw the player off. It is followed by an extremely difficult ball with precise timing required.
40-44% (Xcy-7): This is considered one of the easiest parts in the level. This part is a simple hard cube with some tight and crucial timing.
44-51% (Vermillion + Rustam): This part starts as a double-speed ship segment with straight-flying and difficult timing with effects to create a 'cave' effect where the player has a limited vision of the obstacles in front of them. It is followed by a difficult ball with difficult timing, similar to Aeidux's part. There is also a skull art created by Rustam at the ball part.
51-54% (Zelda): This part starts as a brief half-speed robot sequence with difficult timing, followed by a wave segment that is mostly an enduring wave 'spam' segment, which changes to single-speed as it transitions into Michigun's part.
54-58% (Michigun): One of the most difficult parts in the level, this starts with a double-speed robot with difficult timing, followed by a cube with equally difficult timing. It goes into a triple-speed wave with extremely difficult timing and then a brief but difficult straight-fly segment, with a difficult triple spike at the end. The player must jump shortly after the triple-spike, or else they will crash due to a move trigger that will cause the Yatagarasu to fall and kill the player, synced with the 'caw' in the music. There is also a trigger under one part of the wave changing the RobTop quote at the end to a picture of an Easter egg. Next to the egg, it says 'Viprin' and 'Michigun'.
58-62% (Luneth): This part starts with a half-speed UFO sequence with very tricky timing, followed by a ball segment with equally difficult timing. The music slows down here.
62-70% (Hinds): Hinds' part is yet another difficult part that starts with a swing-copter with extremely difficult timing, then switches to an upside-down mini-ship with a tunnel-like straight-fly that appears in a few Hinds' levels. It is followed by another extremely difficult swing-copter mode, followed by a difficult mini-ball and mini-UFO with difficult timing, and a final mini-cube segment.
70-74% (Evasium): The obstacles' hitboxes in this part are very hard to locate, and the entire part is at half speed and made with very dark decorations. The first half has a similar style in its ship gameplay to Viprin's part, followed by a UFO with difficult timing and gravity portals.
74-79% (loogiah): Here is another difficult part. It starts as a mini-ship, becomes dual and changes back to a non-dual to mess with the player and is entirely straight-flying. It is followed by a half-speed wave with extremely difficult timing and a mini-ball part with equally difficult timing. The ball transitions to a normal-sized ship with changing speeds, marking the transition to csx42's part.
79-84% (csx42): This is perhaps the hardest part in the level and was once near impossible. The part starts with a half-speed mini-ship sequence with difficult straight-flying, followed by a wave with extremely hard timings. It is followed by a ball with confusing and difficult timing. Then, it transitions to mini before transitioning to a mini-ship with a short difficult straight-flying.
84-93% (FunnyGame): This entire part is in mini size. It starts with a triple-speed mini-ship sequence with tricky and difficult manoeuvres due to moving objects and trick orbs. It is followed by a ball segment with a mechanic identical to one of FunnyGame's levels, Lonely Travel; however, it is much more difficult and confusing. It is followed by a UFO segment with tricky timings and more moving objects. In the background for the entire sequence, FunnyGame's name watermark is visible.
93-100% (Riot + Viprin): Decorated by Viprin, this part is mostly a cube section; however, it is filled with tricky and difficult timings. Words temporarily flash by in the foreground starting with 'D' (Except for TrusTa), including 'death,' 'decay,' and 'TrusTa,' the verifier of this level. It then ends as an auto-ship being 'carried' by the Yatagarasu with RobTop's ending quote, 'It is not enough for me to succeed, others must fail.' After that, there is a heart between the last two spikes of the level. Finally, the level ends with the Yatagarasu and the text 'The End.' The end screen shows an intricate art piece of the Yatagarasu. The RobTop ending quote can be replaced by an Easter egg found in Michigun's part.

Shark Easter egg[]

Sussy monster ururur — The monster Easter egg in Nexus completion.

When entering the upside-down UFO portal in LmAnubis' part, a shark appears on the bottom left of the screen. Nobody noticed it in Nexus' completion. It may be an unintended psychological illusion.

The same shark can be also found as an Easter egg in Digital Descent.^[3]

Music[]

The song is 'Flawless Wings of Yatagarasu' by GlassSkinned (GLS for short). This song is a remix of one of Touhou's mainstream OSTs, 'Nuclear Fusion,' a theme song for Utsuho Reiuji, the last boss of Subterranean Animism.

The original song characterises a fight against Utsuho through the Hell of Blazing Fires. In 'Flawless Wings of Yatagarasu', Geometry Dash players depict the song as a terrifying melody with an exceptionally devilish tune.

The purpose behind being called 'The Flawless Wings of Yatagarasu' is that the song is a remix of a song that is the theme song of Utsuho Reiuji, a Touhou character.
- In the Touhou Franchise, Utsuho's species is a Hell Raven, who absorbed the ancient deity 'Yatagarasu' (clearly alluding to the level AND the song).
  - This is valid because Utsuho has otherworldly forces that permit her to have the Abilities of the Mythical 'Yatagarasu' of old Asian culture, although in the most nuclear, solar and atomic ways possible.
The reasoning behind Geometry Dash players describing the remix as the above is a result of the dim nature and satanic climate that GLS has remixed within the song.
- This statement can be upheld with the clarification; the song is used by a few red/hell-themed Demon levels, e.g. The Hell Factory and The Flawless.

Fails[]

SolusGD crashed at 95% twice before beating it, stating that it was his worst experience with an ExtremeDemon.

Trivia[]

The level is free to copy.
The level contains 87,707 objects.
The level is 2m 57s in length.
The level was ranked #24 in GDToday's 100 Greatest Levels of All Time list.
The level was initially placed at #1 on the Demonlist on 14 January 2017, above Sonic Wave (#2).
- This change pushed X Adventure into the Legacy List.
The level was nominated for and achieved Best Demon Megacollab in the Geometry Dash 2.0 Awards.
Quite ironically, Yatagarasu is a mythical bird sent from heaven in ancient Asian culture (China, Korea and Japan) and represented the Sun, bringing harmony and well-being, not a hellish bird creating hazards, as depicted in the level. Due to this level, many people mistake what the Yatagarasu is; they believe it is 'Just an evil bird from hell.' Yatagarasu is Japanese for the crow with three legs.
- Although Yatagarasu is a hell-themed level, it is actually correlated to heaven.
The level was believed to be a sequel to Bloodbath, a collaboration also made by Riot.
Dorami beat the level, not knowing he was in Practice Mode (auto checkpoints were turned off, and he had MegaHack to hack the practice music). He then asked Luqualizer if beating the level in Practice Mode counted, which Luqualizer stated was legit.
- Dorami later went back and noclipped Yatagarasu in Normal Mode.
Both of Rustam's and Terron's parts that were entries for the creator contest to replace Manix648's part are later re-used for two levels: Devil Vortex and Crimson Planet respectively.
Cyrillic posted the old version of the level, with Cyclic's part in it, along with Zelda's extended part.
Several players, including LmAnubis and Michigun, have changed their parts completely from their initial versions.
There has been a debate on whether Yatagarasu or Bloodlust was harder. Manix648 himself said that Riot confirmed that the harder level was Bloodlust. Due to Yatagarasu's nerfs, the level ended up placed below Sonic Wave, meaning Bloodlust is certainly harder.
Surv's record before he quit was 34%, while Riot's record was 13%.
In his preview video, Jeyzor states that the level used to have a build limit. However, the level now has nearly 90,000 objects, surpassing the object limit for the 2.0 version of the game, and still exceeds the current 80,000 object limit of version 2.1.
On 17 July 2016, Surv accidentally deleted about 45% of the objects from Jeyzor's part and saved the level after rage quitting in a stream during his verification process. Luckily, they later got restored.
Viprin remade his ship part at the beginning of the level, quite early in the building process. Findexi wanted to remake his part later, but Viprin declined him, stating the level now is 'the final product.'
Jeyzor's name watermark is incorrectly layered behind the spikes instead of over it.
Surv once got upset on one of his streams over repeatedly dying at WOOGI1411's part, then he abruptly ended his stream without warning and quit Geometry Dash a few days later.
Yatagarasu was verified on Friday the 13th, generally considered an unlucky day in Western superstition.
There is a secret way right at the end of Luneth's part. If the player goes up and misses the teleport portal to Hinds' part, they will discover a secret way but later crash at the end by the intentionally placed saw-blades; therefore, there is no way to beat Yatagarasu using a secret way. This secret way eventually got patched entirely.
Both Sunix and Skullo managed to die at 98% by failing to hit the final set of blue orbs quickly enough to provide their cubes with enough height to jump over the last spike.
The verification video on YouTube currently has over a few million views, making this one of the most popular verification videos in Geometry Dash, only surpassed by a few videos, such as the verification of Bloodbath and the new record holder, Bloodlust.
- However, this video got removed from YouTube after Riot's account was unexpectedly falsely terminated. Riot's channel has since been restored.
Surv has such a low attempt count on the level because of his experience as the former verifier. (Approximately 5,000 attempts.)
AreaFiveOne crashed at 73%, which caused him to throw his keyboard out of the window in frustration.
It stayed in the Top 10 for a long time, lasting roughly 28 months.
There is a joke-level remake called Jajagarasu.
Yatagarasu is part of the player-made 'RGB series,' along with Sonic Wave and Erebus.
Zoink verified the unnerfed version of Yatagarasu on 30 December 2023.^[4]
There are currently two remakes of Yatagarasu in development: Itsumade and a semi-impossible remake known as Amaterasu.
Tyson currently has the largest fluke on Yatagarasu, fluking from 43%.
Yatagarasu is one of the three Extreme Demon levels containing the letter 'Y', the others being Yuh and Yggdrasil.
- Both Yatagarasu and Yuh are the only two Extreme Demon levels containing the letter 'Y' on the Demonlist.
  - Yatagarasu was the first Extreme Demon containing the letter 'Y'.
Yatagarasu is the 24th former Top 1 in the game's history.
The placement of Awedsy on 13 September 2023 pushed Yatagarasu into the Legacy List after standing on the list for 2,434 days.
- This makes Yatagarasu the longest-standing level before being pushed into the Legacy List at the time, surpassing Erebus' previous record of 2,277 days. The record is now held by Sonic Wave at 2,508 days.
- This also makes it the second level in the 'RGB Trilogy' to fall into the Legacy List.
- On Twitter, the Demonlist team made a quote on their tweet for Yatagarasu's legacy.^[5]