#Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku

[nerd-artist]

The Horizon-Utena mash-up nobody asked for 🌹

[shopwitchvamp]

I know a lot of people were waiting for the return of these Utena pins 🌹

If you've been wanting one, now is your chance!! I've got 7 left in stock and I do not plan to continue making enamel pins in the future.

💟witchvamp.com💟

[sheppyscribbles]

Remember that one 90s anime, with the gender nonconforming teen girl in short shorts, and the dark-haired otherworldly girl who's always suffering, featuring a buttload of surrealism and something about world revolution?

Yeah, neither do I. Zettai Unmei wa Ai Janai.

[entomophagouserisian]

Incoming: some weeb shit I've folded one of my favorite math things into (permutations)

So I recently went back to Revolutionary Girl Utena because my girlfriend hadn't seen any of it yet and I hadn't seen much beyond season 1 (I know it's a foundational work of sword lesbianism and regret not having gone harder on it before).

I was kind of laughing with her about how edgy the translated lyrics of Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku (Absolute Destiny: Apocalypse, the song that plays during the scene where Utena climbs up to the arena every episode) and I noticed that there wasn't a translation for a chant at the end of it that hits my ear in a very pleasing way.

The chant in question:

Mokushi Kushimo

Shimoku Kumoshi

Moshiku Shikumo

The reason there is no translation is that it's mostly gibberish. They took the word "Mokushi" (Apocalypse) and rearranged the syllables in all possible ways to create this particular piece of poetry. The repetition of syllables in this way ends up feeling really good to my brain when I hear it and I have therefore been alternating between trying to memorize it and analyzing its structure for the past few days.

Unfortunately in order to present my process for this analysis I'm going to have to teach you some basics of the mathematical conception of permutations.

(The following aside into math is actually wholly unnecessary to my overall analysis, so feel free to skip to the clearly marked conclusion at the end if it feels like too much or you just don't feel like engaging with it)

A permutation is any reordering of a set of objects. Note that it's just reordering, it doesn't include deletions or the introduction of new elements or new copies of old elements. Commonly if we want to analyze permutations directly, and more specifically to talk about the permutation where the first object goes to 2nd position, second object to 3rd, third object to 1st, we use (123) (read as 1 goes to 2, 2 goes to 3, 3 goes to 1). As well, if the 3rd object stays put and the first two swap places, we would use (12) (read as 1 goes to 2, 2 goes to 1) to describe that. If no change is made, we usually just use (1) (read as one goes to one or the identity) to describe that. (This is very much lacking the rigor and generality that I would've preferred, but this post would've been substantially longer if I'd gone into that much detail, so I'm kind of hoping someone can come in with just this much explanation and understand what comes after)

So my first step in my analysis was to try to record how each of the "words" related to the base/actual word Mokushi (this is admittedly where it would be quite useful for me to change over to hiragana, but I don't know it and don't have a keyboard downloaded for it and don't feel like downloading one just for this post or copy/pasting the hiragana repeatedly, sorry to those of you who study/enjoy Japanese)

So, rewriting the chant as the permutations applied to Mo-Ku-Shi (written this way to emphasize the 3 objects being permuted):

(1) (132)

(123) (12)

(23) (13)

It was fun but didn't get me anywhere (other than verifying every possible ordering was present, but I was already pretty certain of that) so I instead chose to look at what permutation is happening at each step in the sequence rather than just how they compared to the original:

* (132)

(132) (13)

(132) (132)

Here, we see a much more obvious pattern. For all but one transformation, we are permuting by taking the first syllable and pushing to the end, moving the other two toward the beginning of the "word". To hear it, it is very easy to recognize the 2-syllable repeats happening throughout that first pulled my attention. However, this one permutation couldn't be done exclusively if they wanted to cover all possible permutations, as applying (132) 3 times brings you back to the original word, so the third Permutation is instead (13) which just reverses the syllables in this case since there's only 3 of them, but this also notably changes them to a "word" not yet seen which can bring us to the two we are still missing by applying (132) two more times.

It was after all of this that I properly noted that that middle step reversed the previous "word" and I mentally zoomed out to notice

~~~~Conclusion~~~~

the chant is set up to mirror itself. The pairs 1&6, 2&5, and 3&4 are all the reverse of one another, ordered such that for all but one pair heard in sequence, there is a 2-syllable repetition when moving from one word to the next. (Yes it took me this long to notice it was mirrored. No all that permutation work was definitely not necessary, but forgive a [likely autistic] math nerd for her indulgences.)

It's just a silly chant in a cartoon but it made me happy to see permutations in it and I am sincerely moved by the poetry of making gibberish out of a dark and serious word like apocalypse by listing off anagrams.

[rytron]

IS THAT YOUR BALL?

From the fan-translated Shoujo Kakumei Utena: Itsuka Kakumei Sareru Monogatari for Sega Saturn. I streamed this VN/dating sim twice and had a grand ol' time.

[zmyaro]

DC Comics writers trying to spell “apocalypse”:

[citricriticrickrit]

Don’t call yourself an Utena fan until you can chant  Mokushi kushimo Shimoku kumoshi Moshiku shikumo Mokushi kushimo Shimoku kumoshi Moshiku Shikumo

Five times over without tripping up, from MEMORY.

[coldwind-shiningstars]

This is my favorite Utena dub moment, personally

noW IT'S RHUUUINED

[conventofpleasure]

the student council have an elevator and poor utena has to walk up those stairs every episode

[clearlitebergaming]

suffice to say, when my comm took that elevator to omphalos chamber, certain theme song is playing in my head

[liquidstar]

actually lion king by ghosting works as an utena song

[sheppyscribbles]

Hey, remember that one anime with the gender non-conforming heroine in short shorts wielding a sword, and the beautiful otherworldly girl with blue hair who's in constant pain, and all the references to revolutionizing a corrupt world?

… Utena who?

[weedle-testaburger]

new genre of image I've just discovered that's sending me: miraculous ladybug frames with the same picture of anthony fantano edited in

[ryuki-blogs]

I love when robots change form instantly, one frame to another. It's like... oh, you CAN do it in one second. But all those other times, you just like showing off, don't you.

[coldwind-shiningstars]

YEAHHHHH!!!!!!!!