Tengu

aka: Long Nosed Goblin

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The word tengu literally means "heavenly dog," but the tengu is most often thought of as a sort of mountain goblin, sometimes depicted as being crow-like in appearance, sometimes depicted with a red face and elongated nose. Historically, the tengu was often linked (negatively) with esoteric Buddhism and yamabushi (mountain ascetic) practices. Tengu are also held responsible for so-called kami-kakushi phenomena, in which they abduct a person (usually a young child) for several days or weeks.

— Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yokai

天狗 (tengu, literally "sky dog") are a type of Youkai found in Japanese Mythology that are most commonly associated with crows, known for their great agility, magical power and arrogance.^note To the point where in Japanese a conceited person can be described as "turning into a tengu", based on a common fate for such people in legend. Old stories portray tengu as The Trickster and/or Evil Mentors who lure Buddhists into depravity, but gradually they were reinterpreted into simply dangerous, territorial beings which are capable of nobility in their own right.

As with most legendary creatures from ancient myth, there is a certain amount of variation in how they are depicted. The earliest depictions, often called Karasu Tengu (Crow Tengu), are depicted as anthropomorphic crows with a fully bird-like head and beak. Later depictions, known as Hanataka Tengu (Long-nosed Tengu), instead resemble humans with red skin and comically-long noses, who may or may not have crow wings. Sometimes both types exist at once in a caste system, with the long-nosed and occasionally giant Dai Tengu (Great Tengu) ruling over the avian Ko Tengu (Lesser Tengu).

More obscure, regional tengu variants include the Guhin (Dog Guest) which have aspects of either trees or canines, the Kawa Tengu (River Tengu) which live underwater and can create Faux Flame, and the Shiba Tengu (Lawn Tengu) which are essentially Kappa by another name.

In modern fiction (particularly when they're main characters) they might simply be Winged Humanoids who otherwise look like ordinary people; likewise their large nose or beak is sometimes depicted as part of a mask rather than an integral part of their own anatomy.

Tengu are often depicted as mountain-dwelling and are associated with martial arts, sometimes being cited as the origins of Secret Arts such as Ninja techniques. They are particularly identified with yamabushi, the mountain-dwelling monks of the Shugendo religion, and are often depicted wearing the yamabushi's traditional costume (depending on the story this may be a disguise, a show of religious devotion, or the original clothing that yamabushi garb was based on). Other common features include long white hair, "tengu geta"^note Wooden sandals (geta) with one unusually tall slat rather than two, requiring superhuman balance to walk in. and large fans made of feathers or yatsude leaves.

The name tengu is derived from the Chinese tiangou (which share the same Chinese characters), although the tiangou is simply a magical dog with no human features.

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Examples

Anime and Manga

• Anpanman has Tengu Boy, a young tengu that uses his powers to get out of doing his chores (much to his father's displeasure).
• Ponosuke Ninokuru from Ayakashi Triangle is referred to in a volume extra as a hato tengu—like a karasu tengu, except a pigeon instead of a crow. He's still a humanoid bird that dresses and uses a staff like a yamabushi, but Ponosuke is humble, excessively-formal, and only a bit bigger than a regular pigeon. He also has wings on his back like a dai tengu. Ever since the exorcist ninja Soga rescued Ponosuke from a cat, he's served as his familiar and his family's retainer.
• In the Shoujo manga Black Bird (2006) the male "romantic" lead is a tengu, as well as all his pretty-boy relatives. Other spirits also fight with him for the protagonist, because drinking her blood gives a spirit immortality and marrying her brings prosperity to his clan.
• Bleach: Love's zanpakuto is modeled after a Tengu's nose, being absurdly large and being named Tengumaru.^note -maru is a common ending for a Japanese male name or, as fitting for this case, the name of a sword.
• Karatenmon from Digimon is a Wizard Digimon whose name and design are derived from the mythological Karasu-tengu.
• The Fragments of Horror story Black Bird featured a Tengu as the villain. True to the myths, she was depicted as a mountain-dwelling entity that was half-human and half-crow, and able to shift between the two forms at will. She's also able to travel through time, and uses this ability to feed the protagonist pieces of himself.
• Gugure! Kokkuri-san's Tengu is a Knowledge Broker mountain god... and a paedophile.
• The Mountain God in Hell Teacher Nube has several Tengu as his minions, and he often uses them to sever Nube and Yukime's bonds to one another. One of them almost succeeded in killing Nube using its giant wind-blowing leaf, which it first used to blow bad daydreams into Nube's mind and then went for the more direct approach of blowing Nube onto the train tracks as a train sped by.
• Hetalia: Axis Powers: Japan dresses as a Tengu for the Hetaween 2011 Halloween party, at least until the Food End of the event, where he ends up drunk and dressed in the same rags and Slave Collar that North Italy had been wearing, due to Ancient Rome's attempt at making the costume popular.
• In Japan Tengu Party Illustrated the fractured and disgraced remnants of the tengu species come together from all over the country to rise up, reclaim their pride, and rule over the nation of Japan.
• Kurama from Kamisama Kiss.
• In Kekkaishi the main character helps the great tengu god to make an offspring.
• So far, only Karasu Tengu appear in Monster Girl Encyclopedia, although their profile does mention Daitengu. They mostly avoid humans, preferring to gather information about them in secret, but will kidnap men during mating season. They only seek a Nice Guy, and can be driven away simply by verbal insults.
• The Uchiha clan in Naruto are sometimes depicted with tengu imagery; most notably the Susanoo technique in its complete form is shaped like a Dai Tengu. The name Uchiha itself means "fan", an item commonly associated with tengu.
• Setsuna from Negima! Magister Negi Magi is half "bird tribe". They never say the name, but they have encountered a full Bird Tribe Demon and it resembles the classical tengu.
• In Neko Musume Michikusa Nikki the Tengu is, well, a tengu who serves as the overseer of the area's youkai. While he spends most of his time in the shape of a crow, he can transform into a Hanataka Tengu.
• In Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan there are a big amount of them, being shown not only as the big nosed old men, but also as humans with crow wings or small anthro crow creatures.
• Usopp from One Piece is referred to as a tengu by the samurai Kin'emon due to the former's long nose and assortment of tricks that the latter mistakes for jutsu. While this assessment is incorrect, Usopp does indeed draw some inspirations from tengus due to said reasons.
  • The swordsmith Tenguyama Hitetsu in Wano not only has the word Tengu in his family name, but his appearance also greatly resembles one as well. He wears a dark red tengu mask with an extremely long nose over his face, has white hair, a pair of large white wings on his back, and he wears extremely tall wooden geta on his feet.
• Pretty Cure has two villains based on tengu - Shakince of Maho Girls Pre Cure and Tenjo of Star★Twinkle Pretty Cure. The former has wings, the latter has red skin and the telltale long-nosed mask, and both use fans.
• Haiji Miyamoto from Rosario + Vampire, one half of a Vitriolic Those Two Guys with Ginei Morioka, is revealed to be a karasu tengu, which was foreshadowed before the reveal, as his being a Comedic Lolicon (and proud of it!) is due to his particular type of tengu being known for loving children, though in a different manner from how he does.
• One episode of Samurai Champloo features a cult of fanatical sohei (warrior-priests) who disguise themselves as tengu to waylay travelers. In Real Life, the legends of the tengu probably originated from sohei.
• Sengoku Youko: two giant Tengu (one humanoid, the latter crow-like) guard the entrance to the land of Ooyama Mizuchihime. When they're defeated by Senya they split into hundreds of smaller copies.
• Both Haruka and Sugino in Tactics are tengu — Haruka is known as the Oni-eating Tengu before he is named and bound by the protagonist. Sugino fights with the traditional feather fan that magically raises huge gusts of wind, while Haruka carries a monk's shakujou with a spiked base. It's also stated that while Haruka was born tengu, Sugino became a tengu through arrogance and hubris — a genuine folklore reference.
• Tonari no Yōkai-san: Both types of Tengu exist side by side in Fuchigamori. One of the main characters, Jiro, is a crow-like Tengu, but he shares his house with a long-nosed Tengu named Tazenbo. Also, while they have wings and can thus fly, Jiro claims doing so takes a lot of effort (he compares it to a human running at full speed all the time), so they prefer to walk or use other modes of transportation, like riding the bus.
• Tengu Brunch from Toriko, while later some more bird-like Tengu are encountered in the Hex Food World working in Brunch's restaurant. It's later revealed that all the youkai are actually the descendants of those humans who mutated after being forcefully injected Gourmet Cells by the Blue Nitro.
• Kurama-hime from Urusei Yatsura is a Cute Monster Girl version of the Tengu (though she trades the long nose for little crow wings on her head and is thusly an avian Beast Man). She's also served by more traditional Karasu Tengu (which are runty little humanoid crows).
• The leader of the Eastern youkai in Ushio and Tora is a tengu, though his usual appearance is an old man. Later during the great Bakemono War arc we see a eastern Karasutengu (though he looks like a hawk) and a western counterpart, both serving as the right hand man to their leaders. According to Word of God, Shinno, the leader of the Western Youkai, is a Daitengu as well, though he doesn't look the part, (he resembles a normal human with elongated lobes and spiky hair).
• xxxHolic features the “Kurasu Tengu,” who look like yakuza children on flying skateboards.
• One of the first story arcs in Yaiba features a village infested by a mischievous Tengu who steals their food. It's actually revealed to be Musashi with a Tengu mask on.
• Both families of Tengu Yokai from the Yo-kai Watch anime show up in the same episode—Tengloom, the apathy Yokai, shows up in a long short where Nate has to stop him from inspiriting his friends and making them gloomy, while the actual Tengu shows up in a short afterwards mostly to show up Whisper after Whisper pretends to be Tengu's friend. In the English dubbed version, although the dub implicitly takes place in America, Nate notes that tengu are such famous mythological figures that even he's heard of them.
• Yotsuba meets Jumbo dressed as a tengu boss during the cart-pulling festival of Yotsuba&!. She's young enough to find it scary, even though she knows it's a mask.
• Some fans have referred to Shishiwakamaru of YuYu Hakusho as this.

Asian Animation

• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Joys of Seasons episode 21, Mr. Slowy tells the goats about the lunar eclipse occurring in Goat Village actually being the result of a tengu trying to eat the moon. Mr. Slowy instructs the goats to bang pots/pans and wooden spoons to scare it off.

Comic Books

• Gargoyles: In Gargoyles: Bad Guys, the comic continuation of the series, the word "Tengu" is used as the Japanese word for "Gargoyle".
• The Outsiders: Batman and the Outsiders #8 involved Katana running afowl of a flock of tengu summoned by magic.
• Usagi Yojimbo: Miyamoto Usagi met a long-nosed tengu when he was just a student. We later learn that his name is Sojobo. In Tengu Wars Sakai deeply dwells into Tengu folklore, depicting Sojobo's ex-wife Nozomi as a purple-skinned Cute Monster Girl with a blue tengu mask, the diminutive, crow-like Karasutengu and the rarely seen Guhin Tengu, low-tier Tengu who infest the lower parts of the mountains and are here represented as monstrous humanoid dogs.

Fan Works

• Between Three Rogues: Daigo named Tenkou after "tales of creatures between man and bird, they who had been feared at first and who became protectors and guardians".
• Hearts of Ice: Akane becomes trapped in the Kami Plane, and is trained by Masakazu, a tengu. He looks like a red-feathered, long-beaked birdman, and he is both a great warrior and a mischievous trickster.
• Tales of the Undiscovered Swords: While not an actual tengu, Ōtengu is obviously tengu-themed through his name, his constant talk about "getting his wings back", and his tengu mask motif.

Film

• 47 Ronin: The tengu were the ones to raise the main character before he ran away and entered human society. Unlike most portrayals, the tengu are shown as bald monks with almost no nose and very large eyes and offhandedly mention a "persecution" suffered at the hands of men.

Literature

• The Dresden Files: Harry is briefly assisted by a group of katana-wielding tengu (referred to here as kenku) during the events of Changes.
• The Eccentric Family: Several characters are tengu living in modern-day Kyoto.
• Fengshen Yanyi: The character of Leizhenzi/Thunder-Quaker is transfigured into a monstrous winged being upon eating two magic apricots, growing blue skin, red hair, wings and an elongated snout/beak with sharp silver tusks. In many depictions, he looks remarkably like the typical karasu-tengu, portrayal reinforced by his ability to fly across long distances in short time, mountainous home and using a massive staff as a weapon.
• Jiraiya Gouketsu Monogatari: Jiraiya's disciple Rikimatsu is a student of tengu magic. After Jiraiya and Tsunade are poisoned by the Evil Sorcerer Orochimaru, Rikimatsu saves their lives by flying from Japan to India and back within a single day in order to retrieve the antidote.
• Tinker: Riki turns out to be a tengu spying for the oni. It later turns out that the tengu are the only Oni Servant Race who aren't evil but only serving the oni because their leader is being held hostage
• Tokyo Ravens associates most of its cast with ravens, and indirectly with crow tengu^note Japanese does not differentiate between crows and ravens - both are karasu., but also features a group of tiny crow tengu as Kogure's Familiars.
• Tokyo Vice: Bernard Adelstein is occasionally compared to one thanks to his prominent schnoz. He also resembles a crow, in that as a crime reporter he's inquisitive and drawn to the stench of death.
• Washio Sumi Is a Hero: Sonoko's first Fairy Companion is a tengu named "Kurama Tengu".

Live-Action TV

• Akumaizer 3: One episode features Onitengu, a demon resembling a cross between a tengu and an oni.
• Choujin Bibyun: A Karasu Tengu, a bird-like youkai wielding a giant fan, appears as the youkai of the week in an episode.
• Metal Heroes: In Sekai Ninja Sen Jiraiya, the Torinin (Bird Ninjas) Karasutengu are the common underlings of the Sorcerers Clan.
• Super Sentai / Power Rangers :
  • Dai Sentai Goggle Five's Tengu Mozoo is one of two Monsters of the Week based on mythical creatures in the series (the other being a Kappa).
  • In the Movie and third season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Tengu warriors (spelled Tenga in season 3) acted as mooks for the bad guys. Their designs favor the crow aspect of the myth, as opposed to the human.
  • There is also a Monster of the Week in the third season of Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers named Professor Long Nose, whose design adheres more to the classic tengu image. This is because he was directly a Tengu in Ninja Sentai Kakuranger.
  • Tensou Sentai Goseiger had Hit of the Tengu, whose motif was hybridized with a scorpion and Pennywise the Clown. He was adapted into Nojoke in Power Rangers Megaforce.
  • A Tengu whose appearance was hybridized with a clarinet was a Monster of the Week in Shuriken Sentai Ninninger. He was adapted as Badpipes in Power Rangers Ninja Steel.

Mythology and Folklore

• "The Tengu's Magic Cloak": A boy looks through an ordinary piece of bamboo and pretends he can see distant places. A tengu, overwhelmed by curiosity, offers to trade it for a magic straw cloak that renders the wearer invisible. Having duped the tengu, the boy continues his mischief while wearing the cloak. Another version of this story tells of an ugly old man who tricks a tengu into giving him his magical cloak and causes mayhem for his fellow villagers. The story ends with the tengu regaining the coat through a game of riddle exchange and punishes the man by turning him into a wolf.
• "The Old Man's Lump Removed": An old man has a lump or tumor on his face. In the mountains he encounters a band of tengu making merry and joins their dancing. He pleases them so much that they want him to join them the next night, and offer a gift for him. In addition, they take the lump off his face, thinking that he will want it back and therefore have to join them the next night. An unpleasant neighbor, who also has a lump, hears of the old man's good fortune and attempts to repeat it, and steal the gift. The tengu, however, simply give him the first lump in addition to his own, because they are disgusted by his bad dancing, and because he tried to steal the gift.
• "The Tengu's Fan": A scoundrel obtains a tengu's magic fan, which can shrink or grow noses. He secretly uses this item to grotesquely extend the nose of a rich man's daughter, and then shrinks it again in exchange for her hand in marriage. Later he accidentally fans himself while he dozes, and his nose grows so long it reaches heaven, resulting in painful misfortune for him.
• "The Tengu's Gourd": A gambler meets a tengu, who asks him what he is most frightened of. The gambler lies, claiming that he is terrified of gold. The tengu answers truthfully that he is frightened of a kind of plant or some other mundane item. The tengu, thinking he is playing a cruel trick, then causes money or rice cakes to rain down on the gambler. The gambler is of course delighted and proceeds to scare the tengu away with the thing he fears most. The gambler then obtains the tengu's magic gourd (or another treasured item) that was left behind.
• "The Tengu, and the Woodcutter": A tengu bothers a woodcutter, showing off his supernatural abilities by guessing everything the man is thinking. The woodcutter swings his ax, and a splinter of wood hits the tengu on the nose. The tengu flees in terror, exclaiming that humans are dangerous creatures who can do things without thinking about them.
• Sōjōbō, the Great Tengu of Mt. Kurama, is said to be one of the leaders of all tengu in Japan - appearing as a towering long-nosed, winged and bearded man as powerful as a thousand other tengu combined. He famously appears as a Mentor figure who taught the Folk Hero Ushiwakamaru (a young Minamoto no Yoshitsune) his famous superhuman speed and agility - either out of charity or to sow the seeds of war, depending on the era in which the tale is told. He is usually described as the former abbot of a temple whose monks excelled in the spiritual arts, but transformed into tengu after developing too much pride in their accomplishments to properly become Buddhas - hence his name, which can be translated as "The High Yamabushi" (shortened from "The Yamabushi of High Priest's Vale").
• Emperor Sutoku, whose Vengeful Ghost is one of the Three Great Onryō of Japan, has been depicted as transforming into a daitengu either before or after his death. In this role he is sometimes confused with Ootakemaru of the similarly-named Three Great Youkai of Japan.
• Izuna-gongen, a tutelary deity of Mt. Izuna frequently worshipped as a god of victory, is most often depicted as a tengu named Saburou riding a white fox. He is known for distributing "edible sand" to humans in time of famine (apparently a type of fungus thought to be the local tengus' staple food), and for being learned in the technique of controlling "pipefoxes" (weasels, known locally as izuna) as familiars. This depiction is sometimes connected to the "Izuna-gongen strategy", an outlawed wartime tactic of spreading chaos in enemy camps by raising a fox to seek dark places then tying it to a bird whose wings have been set on fire.
• Akiba-gongen, tutelary deity of Mt. Akiba, is also depicted as a tengu riding a white fox. This appears to have developed more recently than Izuna-gongen's portrayal, though the two are sometimes considered to be the same figure.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons. The 1st Edition Oriental Adventures had crow-headed tengu as monsters. They were 2-3 foot tall humanoids with a crow's head and beak and feathered wings between their shoulder blades. They were maliciously evil, trying to harm all humans in their area. They fought using katana and wakizashi and could cast the Polymorph Self and Shout spells 3 times per day each.
  • In 3rd Edition tengu are neutral and come in both crow and long-nose varieties - besides a handful of magical abilities they can mimic any sound, use their wings to confuse enemies, and have great skill with katana. Oddly, human-headed tengu are only half the size of humans while crow-headed tengu are the same size.
  • D&D also features "kenku", a race of sneaky bird-men who lurk in the slums of large cities and are skilled at fighting in teams. Various editions of the game have gone back-and-forth between basing them on tengu (winged, with crow heads) or differentiating them (wingless, with hawk heads), and they may or may not share the D&D tengu's Sound Mimicry ability.
• The tengu of Legend of the Five Rings are aloof but benevolent, and some of Rokugan's greatest swordmasters trained under them.
• Tengu appear in Malifaux as some of the many mythical creatures serving the Ten Thunders.
• Pathfinder
  • Tengu are a playable race, albeit wingless — their arms end in clawed hands. They are proficient with all sword-like weapons, skilled at picking up new languages, and can eventually learn to transform into crows or long-nosed humans. Their patron deity, the Lord of the Ocean Hei Feng, usually takes the form of a raven-like tengu with glowing eyes.
  • Bestiary 6 has the daitengu, a powerful, mystical variant of the common tengu that resembles the traditional long-nosed, red-skinned humanoid of Japanese myth.
  • Yamabushi tengu are a type of Oni, evil spirits who mimic humanoid races to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh, and are based on the more negative characteristics attributed to tengu. They cans shift between two forms at will — one resembling a regular tengu with wings sprouting from its shoulders and one resembling a winged human with red skin and prodigiously long nose.
• In Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the Tengu are the East Asian branch of the Corax were-ravens, who serve as Gaia's information gatherers and messengers, and were the ones who came up with most of the Corax's battle powers. One group are known to kidnap mortals and train them as monster hunters.
• Great Long Nose from the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG is based on the Tengu of Japanese folklore; its Japanese name translates to "Great Tengu." There is also a Trap Card named Goblin Fan, whose depiction is based on a yatsude leaf.

Theatre

• Tsukino Hyakki Yakou, the Tsukiuta series's Yōkai AU, has several:
  • In Kurenai Enishi, the 6th play in the Tsukiuta series, the idols are sutten-kororin'd into the ayakashi world by a young tengu, and get caught up in the fight between his two older brothers, leaders of rival tengu villages. The tengu look like ordinary humans, without wings — unlike in the previous stage play, Natsuyumesai, when Kai's tengu form had wings.
  • Kai and Tsubasa also appear in their tengu forms in other episodes of the series.

Toys

• The Monster in My Pocket line includes at least two versions of the Tengu among its monsters. It is described as living in hollowed out trees in the forest, and being arrogant but easily tricked. They also have an Invisibility Cloak.

Video Games

• Achaea has wild Tengu in one of the forests. They appear as winged black kittens, and are about as cute as you'd expect flying kittens to be.
• In Angband, tengu are minor demons that can cast some teleport spells.
• Mr Karate disguises himself with a Tengu mask in Art of Fighting and a couple of The King of Fighters cameos.
• Kuya from Ayakashi: Romance Reborn is a tengu. He even wears the tengu geta mentioned above. He can generate a powerful gust of wind with a flick of his fan.
• One of the many characters you can kiss in Chulip
• In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, the Empire has the Mecha Tengu/Jet Tengu, an anti-infantry skirmisher and air superiority fighter with a long nose. The Command and Conquer wiki explicitly points the connection to the mythical beast, calling it a half-bird half-man with a long nose and a bad temper, not to mention the pilot mentioning dogfights.
• Gohyakumine Bankotsubo, the boss of Dead or Alive 2, and a playable character in Dead or Alive 4. His skin is dark black, with white facial hair, and a very long nose. The arcade version of Dead or Alive 5 Ultimate brought back his moveset but in true Dead or Alive fashion, gave it to an attractive female, Miyama no Nyotengu, instead.
• Doodle Champion Island Games: Both species of Tengu are featured in the game. The Karasu tengu form Team Red and are renowed for their wisdom (their headquarters being a library), while a Hanataka tengu is the boss in the Ping Pong minigame.
• Dragon Quest X: 2.4 of the game introduces the Tengu Crow, a rarefied monster that can appear alongside Hawk Men from Dragon Quest II and have the clothing and fan part down, natch while casting Kathwack and using a dark version of Kaswoosh. In addition, an entirely new monster, Galengu, makes its debut to the series starting with Version 6, attacking enemies with wind abilities^note Consisting of Blind Whirlwind and Gale Assault, and the Kaswoosh spell.
• Dungeon Crawl features tengu as both enemies and a playable race.
  • As enemies, regular tengu and their conjurer and warrior counterparts are rather weak due to their low HP and weak spells, but tengu reavers are much beefier,physically hit harder,pack a punch with their elemental spells, and can summon a battlesphere that deals irresistible damage. Their king, Sojobo, packs similarly hard-hitting spells and is usually found with a court of fellow reavers.
  • Similarly, as a race, tengu excel at all sorts of schools of fighting and are good at air magic and general conjuring. However, they have low HP and have to rely on dodging and simple running away to avoid damage.
• In Fate/Grand Order, Rider Minamoto-no-Yoshitsune (Ushiwakamaru) is said to have studied martial strategy under the tengu. She wears tengu-geta sandals and a feathered headdress to honor them, and her "Tengu's Strategies" skill increases the charge rate of her party's Noble Phantasm attacks.
  • A later event went further and added her mentor, Kiichi Hogen, who in the Fate-verse was Sojobo, the leader of the tengu
• As shown off in the post-Heavensward dungeon Xelphatol, the Ixal of Final Fantasy XIV have several tengu-like features. They live high on mountains, wear masks with long noses on them, and use enormous battle fans to blow their opponents around — and, of course, they're humanoid birds.
• Ganbare Goemon:
  • The Legend of the Mystical Ninja has a stage named Tengu Mountain, where the long noses of tengu heads carved out of rock can be used as platforms. There is also a Mini-Boss fight against three tengu warriors, one of which throws a yatsude leaf as a weapon.
  • Goemon's Great Adveture: A side mission later in the game has you hunting down five tengus at the request of a young woman who says the avian yokais has been attacking those who cross the Wonder Valley. Tengus also appear in the secret Creep Village accessed in the post game. One of them is happy that you taught a lesson to his mischievous brethren.
• Genshin Impact: Kujou Sara, the primary enforcer for the Raiden Shogun, is this. Like common depictions of tengus, Sara is depicted with bird wings (which resemble a crow's), a red mask with a long nose, a pair of tengu geta (wooden clogs with only one tall "tooth") and a feather fan that serves as a conduit for her powers. Amusingly enough, however, her Wings Do Nothing, and she must use Wind Gliders as with any other character in order to glide. Taking a page from common depictions of the tengu, Sara isn't necessarily arrogant; she a Noble Demon who is willing to act with consideration and listen, and is at worst undyingly obedient to the Shogun's orders, causing her to be a villain by association.
• Ghostwire: Tokyo: Tengu hover over tall buildings in Shibuya, and you can grapple onto them to get onto the roofs.
• Guild Wars
  • The Tengu are native both to the European-style Tyria (where they are universally hostile) and to the Eastern-themed Cantha (where one clan is friendly). A branch family modeled after the quetzal bird can be found in the Tarnished Coast.
  • In Guild Wars 2, the tengu clans have reunited and formed a neutral nation of their own, the Dominion of Winds. Due to years of being treated as monsters and their recent forced exile from Cantha, the nation is understandably reluctant to make allies.
• Love Nikki - Dress Up Queen has a Tengu costume that was one of the outfits available in the Youkai themed Haunted Night event. It has the wings, mask, and other traditional clothing.
• One of these is a miniboss in MadWorld. Or at least, a guy dressed like one. He uses ninjutsu, and appears in stages and stage segments with ninja.
• Naturally, Tengu Man from Mega Man 8 and Mega Man & Bass, a Robot Master with a long red nose and wields the power of wind. In addition, one of the Wily Bots in his stage, Tencrow, has the usual fan projectile, which can damage Mega Man, and in the case of the latter game, Bass. He has an Alternate Universe counterpart in the sixth entry of Mega Man Battle Network named TenguMan.EXE, where his sharp nose can be extended and is a straight-up Armor-Piercing Attack.
• Metroid:
  • In the series backstory, the Chozo started off as Ancient Egyptian Tengu IN SPACE!, but had an epiphany in their twilight years that led them to reinvent themselves as peaceful scientists. Even in the present day, however, they are more than capable of training Samus into one of the galaxy's greatest warriors.
  • Metroid Dread introduces a villainous Chozo named Raven Beak, leader of the still-warlike Mawkin tribe, who takes the resemblance even further. In addition to having dark feathers and a face resembling a raven, he demonstrates the ability to sprout black-feathered wings (though it's unclear whether or not they're part of his body). He even has a nod to the stories of tengu disguising themselves as humans in that he spends most of the game impersonating Samus's Mission Control.
• Mini Ninjas features tengu prominently, living in remote forest locations and helping wandering ninjas on their way.
• Monster Hunter: Rise features several monsters based on yokai, including the tengu-inspired Bishaten and its Blood Orange subspecies. Being feathered, mountain-dwelling mammals, their inspiration is clear. Both are crafty tricksters; the nominal species flings fruits that can stun or poison its targets, while the subspecies uses exploding pine cones and fire breath.
• The later Monster Rancher games have the Raiden family of monsters, which, though named after the god, are clearly modeled on tengu, with their birdlike faces and mastery of martial arts.
• Tengu are present in the mountainous regions of Muramasa: The Demon Blade. Both purple/black and red/white varieties look roughly 50% human and crow. The red/white ones explode when killed.
• Musya has a tengu Recurring Boss who fights you in an early stage. It's relatively easy to beat until it returns for a rematch later on.
• Namco × Capcom features the Aku and Gou Tengus, minions of Ouma, who fly, attack enemies with kicks, and in the case of the latter, attack enemies with their fans. Like their Blue, Orange, and Red Kamaitachi comrades, they reappear in the Endless Frontier and Project X Zone games.
• Nefarious features tengu as one of the types of grunts Crow fights against in the Sukochi kingdom. Interestingly, they're depicted as corvids wearing tengu masks.
• Tengu show up as teleporting monsters in Nethack. They offer a chance of granting teleport control if you eat their corpse, but this can also have the unintended effect of giving teleportitis instead, an intrinsic attribute which causes random teleportation at irregular intervals. This becomes a positive if teleportitis and teleport control are combined, essentially granting a free teleport every now and then at no power cost, making tengu farming via cursed scrolls of genocide a very attractive option.
• Ninja Hayate: Act 12 features a traditional karasu tengu. Less traditional is his ability to breathe fire, which is his main form of attack. He can also fly and wields a katana.
• Unsurprisingly, Tengu are just one of the many yokai enemies encountered in Nioh. Armed with a staff that gives them wide sweeping attacks, limited flight that lets them close the distance fast, the ability to strike from afar with Razor Wind, and grapple maneuvers that can't be blocked, and you have a very dangerous foe that can qualify as a boss in and of itself.
• Ōkami has the crow-like version ("Crow Tengu"), and the long-nosed version ("Great Tengu").
• Ōtengu and Karasu-tengu from Onmyōji (2016), obviously.
• The Pokémon
  • Zapdos, an Electric and Flying type, and one of the Legendary Birds has a long nose-like upper beak, feathers around its face resembling a mask, and fan-like wings.
  • Shiftry is a Grass and Dark type also based on a tengu. It has a long nose, fan-like leaves for hands, and even feet shaped like tengu geta. Its version counterpart (Ludicolo) is based on a Kappa.
• The "Iai Slash" minigame in Rhythm Tengoku features various Tengu as the main enemies.
• In River King: Mystic Valley you can befriend three spirit pets that you can raise. One is a boy named Tenma who is obviously modeled after a tengu.
• In RuneScape's Player-Owned Ports minigame, the Agility-based client is the Tengu: a sapient mask of the long-nosed variety created to hold the knowledge of an entire sect of martial mystics, and an elderly, white-feathered crow man who willingly wears the mask and acts as his body.
• A tengu resembling the Hanataka variety is one of the many creatures you can summon in Scribblenauts and all it's sequels.
• Tengu, one of the four heroes from Shadow Force, is a Cyborg based on a tengu, with a similar mask and never shows his true face.
• Shin Megami Tensei has several types of Tengu running around: from tiny annoyances (Koppa Tengu), to evil corruptive spirits (Karasu Tengu) to competent, powerful warriors (Kurama Tengu), each modeled after a different branch of Tengu.
  • In Persona 5, Goro Akechi's outfit as a Phantom Thief includes a red mask with a long nosepiece similar to a tengu, earning him the codename of "Crow". That is, until The Reveal that he's a bad guy and a subsequent Evil Costume Makeover.
• In Samurai Shodown, one of the newcomers introduced in the 2019 game, Yashamaru Kurama, is styled after the crow-billed kind, particularly with his mask which evokes the same thing. He also possesses special powers from having tengu ancestors in his bloodline, which is evident when he does his Rage Explosion, turning his hair black and enhancing his abilities. Also, many of his moves and attacks are accompanied by several crow feathers, befitting his heritage.
• The first stage of Round 6 of Shinobi III: The Ninja Master has Karura, a crow tengu Mini-Boss that appears in a whirlwind of feathers.
• The Mysterious Murasame Castle features enemies of the same name that will teleport and attack Takamaru with gusts of wind.
• Touhou Project:
  • Aya Shameimaru from Phantasmagoria of Flower View who teams up with Hatate Himekaidou in the Shoot the Bullet spin-offs are both Crow Tengu reporters. Aya even dresses up as a newspaper boy in order to move about in the Human Village in the Forbidden Scrollery manga.
  • Momiji Inubashiri from Mountain of Faith is also listed as a Tengu, but she is of the White Wolf variety instead of a crow. It could be that she is a Tiangou, a dog-like creature from Chinese mythology that's related to the Japanese tengu.
  • Megumu Iizunamaru, introduced in Unconnected Marketeers, is a Daitengu and the leader of the Crow Tengu. Her ability to manipulate the stars is likely an allusion to old stories about how astral abnormalities were regarded as omens of catastrophic Tengu activities and her alliance with the kudagitsune Tsukasa Kudamaki is a reference to Megumu's namesake: Iizuna Gongen, a mountainous wargod often depicted as a Crow Tengu riding a white fox.
  • Tengu are noted as having the most advanced society of all youkai in Gensokyo, due to there being an unusual number of myths about its organisation. Specifically they have a government of Great Tengu, a bureacracy of Long-nosed Tengu, printing presses run by Yamabushi Tengu, a "nimble information corps" of Crow Tengu (the variety most often seen by outsiders) and a border patrol of White Wolf Tengu, all lead by Lord Tenma.
• Yokai Hunter Shintaro, a game where you fight yokai constantly, have a tengu as it's Dragon-in-Chief seeking to awaken an ancient Yokai king to Take Over the World, and it's up to you to stop him.
• Several Yokai in Yo-kai Watch are modeled after tengu. Tengloom and Nird resemble anthropomorphic crows, but there's also a Yokai just called "Tengu" who resembles a more traditional tengu with a long nose. (There's also his Palette Swap, Flengu.)
• The toriningen of Yume Nikki, being tall humanoids with long, beak-like noses. True to form, the angry variants carry off Madotsuki and place her in inescapable areas.
• Zeno Clash: Father-Mother appears to be inspired by this, if not explicitly based on them. He/She sports the phallic nose, and general crow theme.

Visual Novels

• Chikage in Enchanted in the Moonlight is a tengu, although being as it's a romance game he lacks any trace of the traditional long nose and instead appears as a handsome young man with black-feathered wings.
• Tenma Taro in the case "The Monstrous Turnabout" of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies is modeled after a tengu, although he's not explicitly referred to as such in the English script.

Web Original

• The SCP Foundation's SCP-746 is a Japanese birdlike humanoid creature with a long nose. It claims to be 700 years old, yet demonstrated high agility and skills in several martial arts during attempts to capture it.

Western Animation

• In Legend of the Three Caballeros, the trio must escape the Underworld by fighting a Tengu guarding a gateway back to the Living World that leads to the foothills of Mount Fuji. Despite being called a Karasu Tengu, he is also described as being falcon-like instead of crow-like.
• In Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, the feathers of the Tengu were used to create the Ninja suit. In the episode "Evil Spirit Week," Howard becomes possessed by a Tengu.

Other

• "Turning into a tengu" is a Japanese idiom meaning "becoming arrogant or conceited". It's sometimes depicted literally as a visual gag, with characters' noses briefly growing longer when they act self-important.
• The goblin shark's English name was coined as a translation of "tengu shark", given to it by Japanese fishermen for its ability to shift its face into a weirdly humanlike one with a long nose.

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