#next time: will touga win his duel???

[gamesception]

lets read rgu chapter 12

I’ve been told that this version of Juri is the originally intended version of the character?  And while I don’t think the person who said that was lying or anything, it’s still kind of hard to believe.  Partially because there seems to be a lot of misinformation going around about this series - a lot of folks online seem to think that the manga - the entire manga - came first and the anime was an adaptation from that, which my initial research says is not the case.  Partially because that bit of research also gave me the impression that Ikuhara wasn’t very forthcoming with anyone during the production regarding the overall direction of the story.  I’m not sure I would buy anyone’s account of what the original vision for Utena’s story was “supposed to be” other than Ikuhara, and possibly not even his.

I could easily see how we could go from anime Juri to this - ie, Ikuhara had an idea for the character that he knew would be controversial so he kept it close to his chest and didn’t tell anyone for as long as possible, leaving Saito with a character design but no character that might as well just be slotted in as a romantic rival for Touga’s affections in a manga story that is at least presenting itself more as an Utena/Touga romance.  On the other hand, if manga juri was genuinely the initial intent by everyone, including Ikuhara, from the very beginning, I have a hard time seeing how the pivot from this to anime Juri happened mid production.

I mean, that would take some kind of miracle.

Setting aside other versions of her character - hypothetical or realized - manga Juri is a purely physical threat.  She doesn’t have a compelling motivation to relate to, she doesn’t present a significant thematic challenge to Utena’s worldview or princely ambitions.  She’s just someone who is good at sword fighting - a fact that the still image format of the manga can /tell/ us, but can’t convincingly /show/.  The duel panels are very pretty, but don’t really convey a great sense of danger or difficulty than those with Saionji.  And Juri’s supposed unbeatable fencing skill is pretty significantly undermined when just a couple pages into the fight Utena calls down the power of Dios...

and then Utena just wins. effortlessly.

Another unfortunate thing I’m just now realizing is that with Juri having the one sided crush on Touga and being a bitter and jealous antagonist over it, there’s not much left for Nanami to do when she’s introduced....

only she’s probably not going to be introduced, is she?  I mean, the dissolving dress party prank thing didn’t happen, we haven’t seen or mentioned her yet, the manga probably doesn’t have time for comedy side episodes...  Anime’s best worst girl just doesn’t appear in this comic at all, does she?

Another of my favorite characters missing entirely from this version of the story.

Anyway, Utena tries to ask Touga if he’s the prince who saved her as a child, but can’t quite bring herself to do it.

The next day she’s still distracted thinking about it, throwing off her archery game, though we do get a cute moment of Wakaba cheering her on, so that’s nice.

Afterwords Miki approaches Utena to talk about Juri and Touga.  He feels bad for Juri, and wants to go talk to Touga about it.  sure I guess.

Touga’s dorm is a mansion for some reason.  That’s kind of funny.  I’m not sure why they’re coming here if he’s supposed to still be in the clinic?

They break into Touga’s house using a spare key, and I’m still not sure why, or what they’re doing here.  I mean, I know what Utena’s doing here - she’s snooping around to find out if Touga’s her prince.  Manga Utena is significantly more concerned about that then anime Utena.

Ok, so Miki’s snooping around because he thinks Touga’s up to something and has been in communication with EotW instead of just receiving letters from them.  At least I get what they’re trying to do, though not why he invited Utena on the spying mission.

Utena finda a picture of Touga and Nanami (forshadowing a future character introduction?  Am I wrong about her being completely absent?), mentions how she always wanted a sibling.  Miki starts to open up about whatever the manga version of his deal is when they hear someone else in the building and rush to hide.

A couple pages are out of order in the scan here, which caused a fair bit of confusion, but basically they rush to hide in a cupboard, but it turns out to be a secret door to Touga’s wizard sanctum.

And that’s where the chapter ends.

I don’t know.  It’s hard to be super invested in the rose magic wizard mystery when I feel like I mostly know what’s going on already from having watched the anime - even if there’s more detail on that side of things in the manga, where as the interpersonal character stuff - the stuff that stays compelling to me even if I already know it - is largely absent in this rendition.

I wasn’t expecting to like the manga as much as the anime going in, but even so I’m still pretty disappointed.  It’s not incompetently crafted by any means, it still looks good, and some bits even look better than the anime version, but still.

But hey, maybe they’ll do something with the star signs business, and I’ll be able to make some homestuck jokes?

[paxesoterica]

Vaguely Spoilery Thoughts About MSG: The Witch from Mercury Episode 5

Looks like a lot of folks’ theories about Elan were correct, hope they gave themselves a cookie.

I’ve finally figured out which character from Revolutionary Girl Utena that Elan most closely corresponds with: Juri.

A lot of folks have already noted how Suletta and Miorine compare (and contrast) with Utena and Anthy (which I won’t go into more since that subject’s worth its own post); Guel and Saionji seem to have a fair bit in common (though Guel seems[?] like he might be more introspective, and might decide to change his behaviour earlier and more obviously than Saionji did); and Shaddiq, between his constant observation of other duelists, his appearance (long-haired bishounen whose shirt always seems to be open), being the head of the dueling committee, and even being accused of being a playboy, gives a lot of Touga Kiryuu vibes, though he hasn’t actually done or said a lot to deserve that (aside from that comment that *women* could be stakes in a duel, which is sus enough by itself).

Elan’s been a bit trickier to associate; I know some folks connected him with Miki (possibly on the account of him appearing to be intellectual and/or his friendly overtures to Suletta), but I think Juri is a much better analogue. Juri’s dueling episode, which is the first time we really get into her head, opens with her dueling and easily defeating her clubmates in the fencing team (check), and then compares and contrasts her and Utena, with Juri noticing those differences and getting enraged by them, resulting in Juri trying to take Utena’s rose seal and eventually challenging her to a duel (Elan could have easily paraphrased one of Juri’s lines: “The rose seal gundam isn’t meant for a girl like you!”), and of course there’s the Shadow Girl skit, in which the girl misses out on going to zoo (symbolically, a ‘normal’ life) and pretends she doesn’t care (Juri and Elan have very different reasons for feeling alienated from their peers, but the result of feeling jealous and bitter is still very similar). 

Behind the scenes, we’ve gotten to learn a little bit more about both Peil Technologies and Lady Prospera; the leaders of Peil give me the impression of a sci-fi witch coven, which is appropriate for the symbolism the series is using and given the nature of Peil’s research, and I’d love to hear more about the history between the scientist who’s working with Peil and Lady Prospera.

Poor Suletta; we, the audience, obviously know she should have listened to Miorine about the situation, but it’s understandable why Suletta didn’t: between getting engaged, almost getting expelled, *and* getting mixed up in a one-sided slaughter fistfight, getting asked to hang out with someone who’s only been friendly to you (and whom you might be interested in) probably seemed like a wonderful relief at first (not to mention that it was on her list). Whether she wins her next duel or not, the fallout of Elan revealing his true feelings is going to be painful for Suletta.

[some-triangles]

Episode 35.  It's time for the puppet show!

Hmm.

Something about this feels a bit less whimsical than usual.

We recap last night’s revelations and establish that Utena still doesn't remember them.   It's nagging at her now, though.  Something about Anthy's face seems newly familiar.

Thankfully, Akio's spidey sense tells him that character development is happening and he bursts in to break it up just in the nick of time. 

(The subbers have rigged this entry in the Akio Unsubtlety Sweepstakes by translating "borrow" as "steal", just to make sure we all get the joke.)

There's kind of a greatest hits feeling about this segment - we get an encore of the Anthy's face hardening as they walk away routine, although she's less scary in this iteration and more 200% Done.

How many times has she seen this happen?

On their walk, Utena and Akio pass through the riotous fields of poppies that have totally always been here.  Akio says it's a shame that friendship isn't the Eternal Thing.   It would be great, he says,

Akio never gets around to explaining what poppies symbolize, but it's sleep, death, dreams, remembrance.  Narcotics and narcosis.  If he had gotten into it, it might have been a bigger giveaway even than the Lucifer thing.  Questions arise: what does being suddenly stuck in the middle of an enormous labyrinth of poppies represent?    And what does the car represent?  And, more importantly -

Touga wants to know exactly what Akio is doing with/to Utena - purely in a professional capacity, of course. 

It is difficult to decide which individual frame best sums up the ensuing conversation.

If I go with this one, for example, you lose the fact that Akio is lying on top of a car, which is perched on a dais, which is itself balanced on an enormous pyramid of additional, identical cars.

Then again, if I go with this one, you lose the sense that Akio is about to caress his own nipple.  Which he does.

Regardless, Touga says he's planning to shake Utena up a little before their duel, as per usual.  Akio tells Touga to bring her a present for him.   He says it can be anything - he's confident that Touga, a natural playboy, will choose just the right gift.  Touga says that Utena doesn't go for gifts, on the evidence of her having rejected that dress he bought her back in Episode 3.  Akio points out that her most treasured possession is a ring that some strange dude gave her years ago. 

Touga has the look of a man who knows that he is about to be owned very badly, but the casual villainous bonhomie he's got going with Akio prevents him from objecting.  He can't look uncool in front of his mentor, so, full speed ahead.

Touga duly delivers a pair of earrings to Utena.  She is thrilled to see that Akio has gotten her a present but is not sure if she can accept.  Wakaba, the filthy traitor, is having none of that.

...

So, we come now to a question that I've been dreading ever since I started this project, which is "why does Touga have a carrot."

On one level he has it because he is about to go ride a horse.  Horses eat carrots.

On another - yes, it’s yet another dick.  He's trying to be like big brother Akio and drench himself in sexual symbolism, but he can't afford a big red car, and he doesn't have a driver's license.  He can afford a carrot.

But the main reason he has it is for this shot:

Because... I'm sorry, the last five years of political discourse have made this more unpleasant than it needs to be, but, y'know... horns.  Sign of a cuckold and all that.

He has the carrot because he's a big steaming cuck.

Despite this, he successfully whisks Utena off to his next, upgraded penis symbol, which is A Horse.   He is badly off his game, here - cross-examining her about princes and horses when he hasn't even bothered to check out a white one from the... horse library... or however this works. 

Also whatever point he was trying to make is diluted somewhat when the resolutely not-white horse hops over a tree root and Utena flies the fuck off.

Then this happens.

Akio's is bigger.

(He also has, like, impossible upper body strength, but that's neither here nor there.)

"I don't know what I was expecting"

So, the worm has turned, the rattler become the rattled.  The sight of Utena gazing adoringly up into Akio's face has put him in such a mood that he can barely be bothered to knock off his daily middle-schooler.   He's sick of being a 'playboy' - particularly now that he's getting his head handed to him by a playman, and let me just apologize immediately for that

Even Saionji can tell that something's up.

So what's the cause of Touga's sudden deflation?  Why can't he perform?  The shadow puppet girls have a theory, which they deliver via an elaborate fishing metaphor.  The super cool nice-guy playboy fisherman can catch any kind of fish except one:

Which also means "love" in Japanese.   Thus the joke.

Later, Utena is lost in a reverie.  She can't stop thinking about how Akio let her touch his horse.

Similar equine double-entendres follow.  Utena can't quite believe that her prince actually showed up on a white horse - her bullshit detector is sitll in there somewhere, under all the gunk - but she's lost enough that she falls asleep holding the gift he gave her.  Anthy finds her there and has a face about it.

Akio tells Touga that he lost the game.  This is clear anyway - Akio has many cactuses, and Touga only has one.    Akio tells Touga that he thinks Utena should be:

Touga isn't sure.

I really shouldn’t have to tell you what the cacti represent at this point.

Touga and Saionji head up to the balcony for the last meeting of the student council before the End of the World.  It's just the two of them.  Saionji has now been through the wringer enough that he's graduated from fool to wise fool, just like Nanami - it's the folks who were ground down the most by the game who have the clearest view of it.  Touga says that he... might?... genuinely love Utena, and that he wants to save her from Akio by beating her in the duel.  (When all you have is a hammer, etc.)  Touga wants the power that got Utena out of that coffin, but Saionji points out that she's still in that coffin, isn't she?  Or she wouldn’t need saving.  They're all still in their coffins, come to think of it.  The miraculous power that Akio has isn't as miraculous as it's cracked up to be.

It's a crucial conversation and in order to make sure we pay attention to it the camera throws in a phantasmagorical press conference, rampant shirtlessness, a completely superfluous visual pun about tea, the most egregiously phallic shot of the chairman's residence to date and Touga touching his own invisible anime nipple.  I feel that in trying to capture it via screenshot I would only be doing it a disservice - I will only say that I love that these boys take off their shirts to discuss feelings.

Meanwhile, Utena and Anthy are out in a field together, in their usual idyllic fashion,  except Utena is preoccupied with Akio’s present.  Then she looks up at Anthy and sees

The feeling of having forgotten something important - the thing that, if remembered, would reframe your history entirely, tap your life's context just a little bit so that it settles for the first time into something comprehensible - there’s excitement and dread in that feeling.  The possibility that there is a key to understanding yourself, coupled with the possibility that you will never find that key, and will continue to make the choices that a lost person makes until you have made so many mistakes that you can no longer find your way back to your truth. 

Nothing as terrifying as a glimpse of the real after a long sojourn in fairyland.

[princeoftheroses]

Since you want asks, PLSSSE I want your Utena TH0ughts. WHAT is your favourite black rose episode? actually how do you feel about the black rose arc in GENERAL

black rose arc, black rose arc, oh black rose arc!!! by you adding how do i feel about the arc in general you are unleashed me to make a long post giving my very disorganized thoughts about this arc.

a couple of people call it a filler arc? i guess technically it is because it does not directly contribute to the main storyline and it wasn't in the manga and also the ending of the arc sort of makes it so the whole arc kind of didn't happen???

but also i think if a person labeled it as a filler arc they are kind of missing the point?? even if it doesn't contribute to the main plot (which it absolutely DOES but i'll get to that) it adds so much nuance to the characters of utena.

you get to see side characters and how they tick!! some of which like kozue and shiori become very important later as they become miki and ruka's rose brides in the akio arc! (side note : what was up with ruka he just kind of showed up and disappeared lmaooo)

also, it adds to akio! (tw warning for only the next paragraph, i'm talking about akio so you can except me talking about grooming and abuse)

not only is this where akio is introduced, but he is always so omnipresent. it was ... honestly really terrifying to see how chill he acts with utena here. of course the real grooming begins in the akio arc but you can see how he starts here. how he kind of builds himself as anthy's cool older brother that utena can trust and ask for advice for... but we the audience know that he CANNOT be trusted as even know we see him being shady af in the background. i really feel like if we skipped straight from the first arc to akio arc a lot of the creepiness of akio would not have been realized because of ... just how NORMAL he akio acts to utena. he's charming, he's smart, and he overall is somebody utena SHOULD be able to trust bc we should all be able to trust an immediate family member of a best friend , but of course the world doesn't really work that way. anyway akio tangent over because BOOOOOO akio (he honestly terrifies me so much because of how many predators like that exist and you can meet without realizing their intentions)

BACK TO BLACK ROSE ARC

one of the main reasons i feel like this isn't a filler arc, at least not in the traditional sense of the phrase, is because it builds a lot character relationships. something that i didn't like when i first watched revolutionary girl utena but now is one of my FAVORITE things is that for a while we don't really get a straight forward utena/anthy episode. because their relationship doesn't need to build in an episode, it just slowly builds over time. we just see these two causally existing and they just start to trust each other.

in the akio arc we get to see just how close utena/anthy have gotten over the series because of their late night conversations. like how if the black rose arc didn't exist akio wouldn't have been as impactful, if the black rose arc didn't exist it would feel more sudden how close utena/anthy have grown imo.

this arc adds a lot to the world as well. as long as the students stay inside of school they will not grow. dead people wander the halls thinking that they are still alive. these two facts contribute a lot to utena theorizing and analysis (mainly, the ideas that ohtori exists within a plain of frozen time literally because of anthy's magic and metaphorically because the cast is very cozy in their coffin) and i could not thank this arc for that enough. not only are these very cool ideas that may or may not have inspired elements in my own story (i can neither confirm or deny that one of my oc story is heavily inspired by utena) but they just add so many layers!

this arc also felt necessary because of the new duelists??? if we went straight from the first arc to the akio arc then it would've kinda gotten very tiring to see the student council constantly duel and lose to utena (with the exception of touga's sole victory to utena in the first arc before she duels him again and wins) but these new duelists possessed by the black rose are very interesting!

if i did have to make a compliant about this arc, though, i will say that at times the stories felt very disconnected to each other. while it was very funny for utena to not even know who keiko was when she dueled her, it would've been nice if sometimes the arc of the black rose duelist intertwined more with utena. as the arc goes on, the student council is on alert and is trying to figure out where the black rose is coming from, but they never really try to ask utena about it and utena never really tries to get involved? she just is chill until she gets the note to go to the duel arena to fight the black rose duelist. i don't really have a solution on how to fix this? maybe have the student council member that the black rose duelist takes the sword from be more involved? idk.

the villain of this arc mikage also really fascinates me??? i... really like him??? but not even as a villain ... i just really pity him. the realization he has in his duel with utena that everything he has been doing is for nothing because mamiya is already dead .. that always really hit me? the horror in his voice when he starts to recall the truth in his false memories.... for some reason, this is one of the most terrifying parts of the show for me. the realization that something you were doing, something you were doing that might've been awful but you were doing it because of somebody you care about deeply and love, it was all for nought. how much time he has wasted...

even before his duel with utena, there's this moment when after he got punched by utena he says something like "if she hadn't seen my duelist ring and challenged me to a duel, she could've killed me" or something like that, he's just so pathetic and i feel very bad for him but at the same time am too disconnected to him to truly feel empathy for him... that's some TOP TIER shit

overall, this part of the show is one of my favorites. the only part i like more is the last few episodes because it makes me very emotional.

NOW FOR THE SPECIFICS

favorite black rose duelist: honestly? wakaba. the girl deserves it this is stress relief for her. not only is this duel very emotional as i don't think we've ever seen utena refuse to duel somebody (at least not in the way that she does in this episode) but just the SHEER emotion.

i'm a real sucker for fighting the person you care about the most which is why the dark signer arc in yugioh 5ds is the best yugioh arc and this just really takes the cake in this arc. utena always shows concern for the black rose duelist because they are clearly people in pain who were not able to properly duel with their grief which let mikage manipulate them, but it's taken to a new level here.

the way that after the duel is completed, wakaba comes home to her empty dorm where saionji used to be but now isn't always gets me. she's just such a lonely girl and that's never really resolved for her. a lot of the other duelists have a optimist note to end on (kozue asking miki for a milkshake, shiori and juri saying hello to each other as they walk past, keiko being friends with nanami again, etc.) which is why the fact that wakaba is more alone now then she is ever... it is a feeling i can relate to an almost embarrassing amount.

favorite episode: COWBELL OF HAPPINESS, NANAMI TURNS INTO A COW-

ANTHY YOU GLORIOUS TROLL-

favorite episode that isn't cowbell of happiness: i'm very torn between the landscape scaped by kozue and thorns of death. shiori and kozue are both very interesting characters that i like a lot. but i'm going to go with thorns of death for now, as while i really like the landscape scaped by kozue, i think my preferred miki/kozue episode is their episode in the akio arc. meanwhile i like thorns of death way more than i liked whispers in the arc (mostly because i just do not really care that much for ruka, but azure paler than the sky was a banger and he was in that?) i just loved the feeling of seeing shiori the girl juri loves so much and juri's reaction to seeing her. the way my heart was wrenched when black rose shiori mocks juri... it really did hit different. but the hopeful ending did make me feel a lot better. i do like the way that juri out of all the student council members is the one closest to self actualization and this really sets that up even if there is still a bumpy road until then.

honorary mention: the boys of the black rose and kanae as a black rose duelist are both really great. i feel like if this wasn't the arc opener it would've had more room to stretch its legs and show how horrific it could've been. kanae is a girl i feel really bad about and similar to wakaba, i don't really think her episode was a very optimistic ending for her especially since akio probably killed her later in the show?

honestly the minute akip appeared on screen, engaged to a girl who HASN'T EVEN GRADUATED and is also emotionally manipulating her so much and having his little sister manipulate her too... throw the whole man away

tl;dr - the black rose arc is very good and i like it a lot, the ending of the arc really fucks me up, somebody give mikage & all the black rose duelists therapy, throw akio in the garbage, and this show probably exists in some sort of time loop / frozen time space as a metaphor for the whole coffin thing but you can probbaly find people smarter than me talking about that.

oh and go rewatch cowbell of happiness it's great

[roselevesque]

Rose watches Utena for the first time and writes down her thoughts - Episode 7

Revolutionary Girl Utena spoilers ahead!

So it is known in advance, before starting the show I was aware of the following things:

Anthy is not what she seems

Anthy’s brother is the prince and he is trash

There are abuse and incest plotlines between the aforementioned characters

Utena and Anthy are canon

Utena kind of dies in the end

With that out of the way, I’ll be posting here my reactions and analysis of the series, so I can look back on them when I finish.

This being said, let’s get on with the episode. Discussion under Keep reading.

The student council member who has the focus today is Juri, an imposing young lady and amazing fencer who has a reputation for not being beaten in battle. Yet, despite these qualuties she possesses, she doesn’t feel fulfilled. The title of the episode and her first lines of dialogue point this out in an obvious way.

What’s interesting is that the one she’s telling this is Miki; fellow student council member and fellow highly-accomplished individual who doesn’t take pride in his talent due to unresolved personal issues.

A recurring theme with these two is using the duels and, by extension, Anthy, as a tool to mend their cracks instead of confronting them head on. It wouldn’t surprise me if the other duelists are revealed to be in the same or a similar boat eventually.

Cut to Utena and Juri’s first discussion. Originally, Utena presents herself as a nonbeliever in Anthy’s power, who thinks of a practical use for such a thing, like acing her finals ( something that Juri also says she could use the power for during the student council meeting ). Their talk about miracles stirs old memories for Juri, but she remains calm, probably because of Utena’s down to earth attitude.

It isn’t until Anthy shows up and offers her a rose, the same type of rose as the girl she loves must have once given her, that she snaps and slaps Anthy. ( And the amount of slaps this girl was put through in less than 10 episodes is maddening. #Anthydeservesbetter )

The rose Juri is associated with is a light orange. I’m aware that there’s a ton of rose symbolism in this show and I’m no expert, but I’m gonna try my best. The rose she wears during the duel being the same one that girl gives her in the flashback is a reminder that she fights to confirm her own cynicism, sewn in her by the girl’s words about miracles not coming true for her. Orange is considered a passionate colour, it’s the warmest colour after all. Juri’s orange is closer to a pastel than a vibrant shade, a possible sign to her “disillusionment”, lost faith and lack of fulfillment.

Touga’s monologue about eggs proceeds as usual and he informs Miki that Juri fights to disprove miracles’ existence by winning the Rose Bride. Touga then calls her out on the fact that a small part of her still hangs onto hope, hope that her feelings can reach the right person, hope Anthy’s powers are the answer, hope miracles exist.

We go through a bunch of flashbacks from which we gather Juri used to have two friends, the girl in her memories and a guy. The girl liked the guy and the guy might have liked Juri, so the girl ended up distancing herself from Juri and getting together with the guy, leaving Juri behind in the dust. ( Hmm, wonder who Juri could have feelings for. The guy whose face we barely see or the girl who had the first line of dialogue in this episode and is the reason for Juri’s rose being orange. Hmm. )

Moving on to Utena and Juri’s second discussion ( that doesn’t end anywhere near as well as the first ), the girls meet somewhere at night. They begin with remarks about each other’s clothing, all well and good. After which Utena shares her story about the Prince and things spiral fast from there. Juri loses it. She’s basically looking into a mirror that managed to be more open about her hope, and she seemingly can’t stand it.

Both Utena and Juri:

Claim not to believe in the power to revolutionise the world, yet hang onto wishes that would require a “miracle” to be fulfilled

Can’t escape from a certain event from the past that made them who they are today, events involving a person each one holds some kind of amorous feelings towards

Have a piece of jewelry as a reminder of these past events

The difference lies with the fact that Utena’s event shaped her into the noble prince persona, an archetype who makes miracles happen in fairy tales, while Juri’s cemented her negativism.

The contrast between them is established earlier in the episode, when Juri was praised for her work as a student council member, while Utena was once again being scolded for technically breaking a rule.

Right before the duel we get a scene of Anthy, alone in a classroom, singing about…rabbits ( she uses her hands, each probably representing one rabbit, Utena and Juri respectively )

And there’s also the regular Shadow Girls show. One Shadow Girl gets sick before a trip to the zoo and loudly proclaims she didn’t want to see the animals anyway, yet the other Shadow Girl sees through her act and says that she actually wanted go. Juri is quite obviously the sick girl, proclaiming that believing in miracles is foolish, but desiring one anyway.

* Starts jamming to Absolute Death Apocalypse *

Utena continues to prove she’s not a regular human by climbing all of those damn stairs and the duel starts.

The duel song brings to my mind a lot of imagery that signifies duality and contrast “Universal light”/“Mosaic light”; “Lucifer”/Michael"; “Light”/“Dark”; “Two sexes, two poles, two of me”; “Angel/Devil”. The polarity is inside Juri too.

The middle part makes a point to express how life is about the people leaving you behind.

“Life is merely…

…the moving shadow of the living.

In the universe of the mind.

…the drifting shape of the living.”

This leads to the lyric talking about light being a temporary existence. Light = miracle. A fact made much more obvious with these:

“The globe of Gyunus shining with light.

Gyunus, in every way, born in miracles.”

And for all of her internal conflict, Juri still feels hollow.

To make matters worse for her, she loses. Beat by what appears to be a miracle. ( This is the 2nd time in a duel when some force has appeared to aid Utena. It’s definitely the Prince’s intervention, but I don’t know what exactly it is or how he’s doing it. Possession? Power boost? Guess we’ll find out. )

The episode ends with surprise, surprise the discovery that Juri is in love with the girl who told her about miracles and that she carries a photo of her in her necklace. She sits under a tree, mulling about how she hates not being able to reach that girl.

And this is the end of my first Utena review-analysis. Hope I did an ok job and everything sounds coherent. I might watch the next episode either today or tomorrow and I’ll see when I’ll be able to write down my thoughts.

Also, I’d appreciate if anyone reading this could avoid spoiling me if you decide to comment on my thoughts. Thank you!

[halmoney]

RGU Ep 9: The Castle Said to Hold Eternity

*Spoilers Below* I don’t recommend reading if you haven’t watched RGU.

I just wanted to share my thoughts upon watching this episode again! I wrote this breakdown because I just wanted to better understand this show which has so much to offer and so much to love. Posting this here bc I wanted to share my thoughts with anyone who cares to listen! These are my opinions and you don’t have to agree with them, but if you have anything new to add/point out please respectfully let me know. This is only my second time rewatching, and there are so many layers to this show that I might’ve missed, but I wanted to share some of my takes anyway. Not sharing in order bc, well time doesn’t exist in Ohtori, anyway.

The episode begins with a sparring match between Touga and Saionji. Touga wins the match and the duel ends quickly. This is the perfect introduction to their relationship: an imbalanced rivalry.

It is revealed to us in this episode that Saionji and Touga have known each other for quite a long time. I would also like to mention that Saionji's relationship with Touga is very homoerotic, but their rivalry and mutual distrust get in the way of any fulfilling relationship potential. Saionji distrusts Touga, not without due cause ofc, because, as we see in later, Touga is also a severely damaged person, who does not believe in friendship or love. He views his relationship with Saionji as nothing: Saionji is a tool, someone to take advantage of and humiliate - for laughs, and well, Saionji seems to know this. We are given a flashback into Saionji and Touga’s past, where Touga openly admits that Saionji is the only one who will spar with him (and perhaps that is the only reason Touga keeps him around).

Throughout the show, the themes of "nothing is eternal" and "there are no such things as miracles" are prevalent and heavily repeated. Those two statements are also heavily intertwined in this show, as “eternal things” are seen as miraculous. In the same flashback, we see that the boys met Utena when they were younger. After learning that a girl whose parents have passed away has gone missing, they go searching for her and Touga soon finds her in a coffin. Utena was that girl in the coffin, although Saionji does not know it yet. She is the mysterious girl from whom Saionji first learned that nothing is eternal.

Touga’s disillusioned answer is very telling. He does not believe in the eternal and therefore, walks out on the girl despite his claim at being “chivalrous”. The next day, when they see that the girl has come out of the coffin, Saionji notices that the girl looks different and asks Touga if he ended up showing her something eternal afterall. Touga responds no, but Saionji doubts him, thinking Touga is holding back from him again. Saionji says several times in the episode that he refuses to lose to Touga, the person who's always been one step ahead of him, and believes that in order to finally be on equal footing with him, he must be the one to enter the castle with Anthy (ahem -- episode title).

He receives a letter from End of the World, saying that the castle in the sky would come down and decides to drag Anthy up there with him. However, something happens and he passes out, is later revived by Utena, and they go up the stairs to see a coffin. The coffin opens -- and there’s a girl. It’s Anthy. 

Saionji remembers the letter he received and welcomes the coming of the castle -- the coming of eternity. But then the castle starts to crumble. While Saionji watches the castle coming down, Utena goes to save Anthy, and then, as if everything were a dream, we see the castle in the sky again and Utena is holding Anthy. Crumbling under the weight of possibly losing again, he goes to attack Utena, but look who comes in acting like a prince again:

It's revealed later on that the letter Saionji received was just a scheme of Touga's. Saoinji had been tricked. And obviously, this whole thing helped play out to Touga’s benefit in tricking Utena into thinking he was her prince.

The shadow girl's play in this episode is very telling - they talk about "made-up things" such as Santa Claus, wizards, fairies, princes on white horses, and true friends. The cynicism of this is a metaphor for Saionji and Touga's worldview. The girls are balancing spinning plates (perhaps a metaphor for the precarious nature of reality, how sometimes the world we believe in can break just as easily as a plate.) This is Saionji and Touga's reality -- but I think the difference is that Saionji really wants to believe. He wants those things to be real and not just fairy tales. At the end of the girl’s play, you can hear the plates break.

Saionji wishes for the eternal “something” that is promised in Anthy because he was denied that by Touga. Saionji feels constantly inferior to Touga and excluded from his world, so he does not pursue Anthy (or anything else for that matter) with chivalry, but rather desperation. He wishes to be the one to save the girl from the coffin, to whisk her away to someplace safe.

So when Touga rushes before him to protect Utena, he thinks Why? Why are you, of all people, putting yourself before my blade? Why do you, someone who does not believe in friendship or love or the eternal, get to be the prince while I remain helpless?

Do you remember his screaming at Touga to not open the coffin when they were little? The look of terror when he sees Anthy in a coffin? Why is he so scared? I think it's because he also sees himself in the coffin. He’s begging for someone, anyone, to show him something eternal. 

And all the while he thinks: “How unfair Touga...how unfair.”

 I know I probably didn't get everything, and this whole thing is still a work in progress. If this was insightful at all, I'm glad I could help! #not an expert just really love this show

[applepi00]

Emi Liveblogs: Revolutionary Girl Utena Ep16, The Cowbell of Happiness

We’re at 17 stopwatches, 16 slaps, 9 Egg speeches, and 2 Mikage speech’s.

All the boys where the ugly tootthpaste uniforms and all the girls are wearing these long formal evening gowns that honestly I feel like they took from their moms closets and I don’t trust ikuhara to not put meaning to that though.

Perhaps something like they’re playing at being grown up even while all still trapped in their own adolescence? I dunno.

The glowing is straight up funny and damn Anthy specifically put her cow’s name on the shipping address instead of her own specifically to fuck with Nanami and honestly I can’t believe Nanami was stubborn enough to wear the bell multiple days.

I like this little soft image that happens when people can’t bring them self to say cow.

Is this the Emperor’s New Clothes Cowbell? Only the innocent children unaware of status and brands can callout this bullshit.

...you could say she’s been cowed.

Jokes aside, I lowkey hate that all of Nanami’s development and progression is in these silly seeming episodes. She was the next most likely to revolutionize the world after Utena and it’s barely acknowledged as far as I’ve seen.

In a way, isn’t this Nanami’s response time a duel of Self? It’s not a proper duel like it was for Utena but the response is the same, despondency and behaving differently. Nanami falls in line and acts like a normal person for once, though this started from her desire to stand out and be the class idol. But she doesn’t have a Wakaba to snap her out of it. So she loses herself entirely and becomes a cow until someone does come along to bring her to her senses.

Hair bows I can understand but how and why does she have a cow patterned gym uniform?

The cat and mouse play! It’s definitely directly “reap what you sow” which fits Nanami in her episodes very well, now and ep8 being notable examples. However! This play also tells us what’s going on at Ohtori on a grander scale: the mouse and cat stroke up an agreement that the mouse will allow the cat access to eat the other mice in exchange for its life. The cat eats all the mice anyways.

Touga now is using Nanami to do his dirty work (manage the council) though he’s planning to use all of them in the end anyways. Even bigger: Akio/End of the World is using all the Duellists against each other. He’s manipulating all of them but nobody can really win here.

I’d like to wonder if the shadow girls might’ve been Duellists once too, maybe they won but accepted Akio’s offer, maybe they lost and this they haunt the halls and try to warn other Duellists. Who knows? Not me.

I took this shot for a reason but now I can’t think of what.

The bullfighter bit is funny I admit but there’s probably some actual meaning behind it I’m not thinking of.

So is it cow Nanami in the movie or actual Nanami in the form of a cow?

[yasuda-yoshiya]

Thoughts on Revolutionary Girl Utena

So, as a first step in my ongoing effort to detox from 800 episodes of card games and expand my anime horizons a little, I've spent the last month or so watching Utena. Wow, what a cool and fascinating series! It honestly felt to me like a really strikingly bold and subversive show even by today's standards, let alone for the time it was made. Having had some time to think on it, here are some tentative thoughts:

While I definitely enjoyed and felt engaged with this show the whole way through, I think the last few episodes were what really pulled it all together for me. Up to that point, I absolutely loved Utena and Anthy as characters and their relationship, and found the general surreal presentation and aesthetics of the show really consistently beautiful and intriguing in a way that made it always feel engaging to watch, but it also felt like a kind of episodic and disjointed show where the various characters' stories didn't really seem to connect with or impact each other in any meaningful way.

But the endgame of the series was where it really took me by surprise in how it went so far beyond what I would have expected! The way the show had been framed up until then, I was basically expecting the big finale to be about Utena definitively making the choice to be Anthy's "prince" and rejecting the role of the "princess" that Akio wanted to push on her - and I would still have really appreciated and admired the show even for that alone, for Utena's gender non-conforming presentation and relationship with Anthy being portrayed so positively in general and for the way her feeling pressured to be more like a "normal girl" was always so explicitly framed as the "wrong choice" by the narrative - but I felt like the show really took things a step further in not just upholding Utena's role as the prince but outright rejecting the prince/princess framework and the hierarchy of the dueling game system altogether. It felt like such a daring ending to me in the way it totally breaks down and reframes the whole premise of the series up to that point, and made me look at a lot of the characters and themes of the series in a whole new light! It honestly made me realise that I'd probably been projecting my expectations of this kind of story on Anthy in much the same way as Utena had, and it made the show end up feeling really intelligent and insightful to me in its willingness not just to overturn gender role expectations on traditional romantic narratives and flip the bird to heteronormativity (which it still absolutely does, and does very well), but also to really question and criticise the assumptions behind those narratives on a fundamental level.

And the more I think about the series since then, the more I feel like so much of the series' broader imagery and themes really clicks for me in that light? The whole system of dueling over the Rose Bride feels like a very apt metaphor for the way so much of mainstream society and media does present romantic love, as a struggle to "win" your ideal partner as proof of your self-worth and as a magic cure for all your personal unhappiness and insecurities, as a sort of contest where the “losers” who can’t “get” a partner look up at the “winners” with envy and resentment - and the way Akio ultimately pulls back the curtain on that system to reveal that the ideal castle that all those people were fighting to reach was just a false image he was projecting to them to serve his own ends, that their attempts to escape their insecurities and "revolutionise the world" through winning the duels were really just upholding and reinforcing the status quo, felt really powerful to me. While I was watching the show, a lot of the side characters and their subplots had sort of frustrated me at times with their frequent emphasis on unrequited love stories that felt really obviously shallow and unhealthy, but I felt like the last few episodes really successfully reframed a lot of that to me as a remarkably perceptive commentary on just how much those kinds of empty romantic ideals and societal conventions can constrain people and warp their individual potential on a systematic scale.

In that sense, I feel like I can really appreciate the show's portrayal of how even fundamentally decent people like Miki and Saionji can be warped by the system into people willing to objectify Anthy and fight to possess her as a way of alleviating their own insecurities, even when they wouldn't have been naturally inclined to be that kind of person, through the pressure of the people around them accepting it as the norm and the false promise of the ideal happiness waiting on the other side. How people like Wakaba and Keiko can be made to believe that happiness is impossible for them and to resent the people around them for "stealing their happiness away", because everything around them has led them to the subconscious belief that the only "happiness" out there is being noticed by a popular guy like Touga or Saionji. Even Utena, the one who most explicitly rejects the dueling system and specifically sets out to treat Anthy as a real person with her own autonomy, still ends up unconsciously projecting her own ideals on her and playing into the established system in the ways she goes about being her "prince", because the influence of those flawed ideals and norms is so deep and pervasive that it's almost impossible not to internalise some of it.

It feels like something I can definitely relate to as someone who absolutely did buy into a lot of that crap as a teenager and seriously hurt other people as a result - and while I did eventually manage to break out and see the toxicity of the system for what it was, it's also horribly easy for me to see how easy it must be for people to stay constrained by it and live out their whole lives without "breaking the world's shell", without even realising how the toxic assumptions they've inherited from "the world" are killing them and distorting the ways they interact with other people - how their attempts at escaping from their insecurities are hurting themselves and others, and ultimately just perpetuating the same system that's strangling them. Akio is a horrifying villain because the ways he insidiously manipulates and influences the people around him feel absolutely real - he's able to play to people's vulnerabilities and unexamined assumptions, to make them follow along with his script while keeping them always genuinely believing that they're making their own independent decisions and fighting for their own happiness and fulfilment. It's very hard to fight something that embeds itself on such a deep and unconscious level in people's basic assumptions and frameworks for viewing themselves and the world, where people don’t even see the ways it’s influencing them.

But I think Utena's ending feels very honest and hopeful in acknowledging that, while the system can't really be defeated or destroyed by individual people in any meaningful way, what people CAN do is make the decision to step outside it and not allow it to have power over them - and, hopefully, to inspire other people to be able to make that choice for themselves too. That part towards the end of the film where the other student council members came to the rescue and helped Utena and Anthy escape, wishing them well in the outside world - "We still haven't found our own way out yet, but we'll definitely get there some day" - honestly made me tear up a little! It really communicated a strong sense of hope to me in the idea that these kids might have made a lot of mistakes and still have a lot of growing up to do, but it's still possible for them to break free from Ohtori and everything it represents the same way Utena and Anthy did - that the present doesn't have to keep following the way of the past. It’s still possible for the next generation to escape it and leave it behind. The whole imagery around the film's ending - "it may be a world without roads, but we can build them" - felt really uplifting and beautiful to me as well; as ridiculously bizarre and surreal as the film was in a lot of ways, it felt like it capped off the series' themes really nicely.

All in all, I ended up feeling really fulfilled and satisfied with this show! It feels like a very deliberate series that's extremely conscious of everything it wants to do, and generally executes it well. I would say I probably didn’t really connect with a lot of the individual character arcs on a particularly deep level - Juri's resolution with that one guy who popped in completely out of nowhere felt particularly odd to me, and I wasn't a huge fan of Nanami or Touga either - but I think it really nailed the bigger picture in terms of its thematic project and the ideas it wanted to convey, and on the whole I feel like I just have a huge amount of respect for the things it had to say and the way it went about saying them. The whole imagery of the setting with the school as an isolated, self-contained world with its inhabitants unknowingly being overseen and controlled by Akio from his tower as "the highest place in this world" really feels like such a strong and vivid metaphor to me, and I honestly felt really impressed with just how perceptively and accurately the show manages to portray the subtleties of the various ways social and patriarchal pressures really do operate on people (and on young teenagers who are still figuring out how love and relationships work in particular). It's weird to say about such a surreal and often goofy series, but I honestly feel like I haven't seen a story that approaches those kinds of subjects with this kind of clarity, and I feel like this show's framework has honestly helped me to reexamine and better understand a lot of my own messy teenage experiences as well. Definitely a show whose whole feels like more than the sum of its parts for me, I think, and one that I expect is going to stick with me for quite some time!

[retro-friki]

Utena Manga Recaps: To Plant Part II

 To Plant Part II or Anthy’s Malice Part I

As you may remember, in the first part of this volume, we got introduced to manga!Juri who, as all girls in “Utena”, had terrible taste in men. Now, we will meet the Student Council member who everyone knows as the one that’s most likely to be the only decent guy in the story. Unlike Juri and Saionji, Miki is not interested in the duels, and because of that he is rewarded with a hug.

“Finally! Someone with common sense!”

And speaking of common sense, someone that lacks it in spades is our protagonist, who can’t stop thinking about Touga and her prince.

Anthy is tired of all this nonsense and she just nopes away from the story (it’s not like the plot needs her or anything).

Miki is supposedly worried about Juri (and I say supposedly because he doesn’t talk about her again) so he really wants to investigate Touga, Utena decides to join him because… you guessed it, she wants to know if Touga is really her prince.

Anyway, Touga’s house is known as the “White House” because he’s the Student Council President and he gets all the privileges of an actual Head of State. This is like a 100 times more ridiculous than Ouran and we’re supposed to take it seriously.

Utena tries to climb into a window, while Miki simply opens the door with  a key he took  from Touga’s locker (this kid could be dangerous) It’s so in character for both of them, I love it!

Miki tells Utena that Touga is the only one that’s in communication with End of the World and now she’s convinced that Touga is the Prince. Ok, but considering that End of the World is the one that came up with all the Rose Bride business (something that Utena sees as inherently bad), wouldn’t that make Touga/her prince a bad person? This is so simple and yet she doesn’t see it!!

While rummaging through Touga’s office, Utena finds a photograph of Nanami. If you haven’t watched the anime, let me tell you that Nanami is Touga’s little sister and the anime’s One True Protagonist.

It’s funny that Utena finds her pretty, wonder what Nanami and anime!Utena would feel if they knew this (I’m pretty sure anime!Utena thinks the same but will never say it).

Miki and Utena discover that Touga has a secret Homestuck themed room inside his closet with a clock that indicates the duels. Apparently Miki and Utena are scheduled to fight next month. But why?

And speaking of the devil, Touga makes his dramatic appearance. Jeans, black jacket and a t-shirt with “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” written on a dull font. Touga Kiryuu: fashion icon, people.

Also, he states his dominance as an alpha male by displaying a totally homoerotic kabedon on Miki.

Utena ends up trapped on a room with that jerk, this is in no way a good scenario, at least the manga acknowledges it, since Miki gets terrified by this.

WHY!  THE HELL! ARE YOU FRAMING! THAT PANEL! WITH ROSES!!???

Touga tells Utena that they’ll duel soon. I’m still waiting for Utena to punch him in the face, but that will never happen.

After that, our protagonist faces the very complex concept of “twins”.

“There are two Mikis!” Utena pls.

“There are two Dippers!” - Utena, apparently.

Kozue is Miki’s little sister who is so clingy that she literally wraps herself around him and she doesn’t let any girl get near him.

Meanwhile, Anthy comes back to remind us that she exist and to inform us that she also has a big brother (this will be important later on, but for the time being we can happily ignore it).

Turns out that Utena failed her tests because lately she’s been distracted by your usual teenage banal problems, namely Avoiding Getting Stabbed by the Student Council. Fortunately Miki’s here to help her study. (Anthy has better things in mind, and she nopes out of the story again).

After studying for a while, Utena conveniently gets tired and takes a nap in Miki’s living room. Turns out Miki has a crush with Utena, so he takes this perfect chance to kiss her.

That trope stopped being romantic a long time ago.

Kozue catches Miki and proceeds to blame Utena because Kozue is a Jealous Harpy (ugh), Miki assumes the responsibility (good), but then he slaps Kozue, declares his love for Utena and says that he can date her if he wants to (bad manga, bad). Shocked by this, Kozue runs away.

Utena appropriately scolds him for mistreating Kozue like that, and he says that he won’t kiss her again without her permission. At least the kid learned about consent… but that’s not the problem we’re having at hand, Miki!

Meanwhile, Kozue gets kidnapped by a mysterious entity. Who could that be?

You take your eyes off her for two minutes and she’s already kidnapping a student, classic Himemiya!

Miki gets a card in which he’s informed that he must go to the duel arena if he wants to see his sister again. And so, Utena and Miki must battle each other.

Cool art tho

At first Utena is determined to lose on purpose, but for some sheenanigans, Kozue can’t be rescued unless Utena activates her sword, however, if Miki loses, Kozue will die.

Turns out that this was a lot of B.S since Utena wins and Kozue is safe and sound. In fact, she wasn’t kidnapped at all, Himemiya was the one that told her to do that so she could see if Miki really loved her.

Later that night, the manga remembered that Utena and Anthy are supposed to have some sort of relationship. Our protagonist asks Anthy what was the deal with the fake kidnapping thing, she actually isn’t mad at Anthy, in fact she wants Anthy to trust her because they are friends. Anthy’s surprised by that.

Utena gets suspiciously flustered when trying to be honest with Himemiya. Cute! (This manga is only giving me scraps and I’m gonna gobble them up).

Utena doesn’t know how to frame questions: “You couldn’t have possibly done that on your own, right?” “Someone made you do it, right?”. Naturally Anthy only tells Utena what the former wants to hear and explains that End of the World made her do it. (Himemiya must be rolling her eyes by how easy it is to fool this girl).

Anyway, the manga can’t afford giving us more Utena/Anthy interactions when there are more important things to focus on. Later on, Utena receives a letter from her Prince in which he tells her to meet him at the Rose Garden. The girl runs there, heart racing in anticipation. Finally, after seven years of wait, she’ll have the encounter that she awaited for so long…

Turns out it’s Touga (or so he says). Well it’s not too late to reconsider all your life’s decisions until now, kid.

If you like what I do, please consider buying me a ko-fi

[docholligay]

Saionji’s entire thing here is like someone who gets a haircut and they don’t tell anyone but they just keep hinting that SOMETHING is different, when all they did was cut like two inches off their hair and who can even tell at that point? 

Same, Saionji, you’re exactly the same as you were in the beginning, using Anthy to move forward toward your dumbass goal of finding eternal ‘friendship’ with Touga or some shit. All the growth I would say you had in that last scene, the way your goals became reasonable and focused on your talents and letting Touga go, smashed in one instant, and that’s actually pretty fucking humanizing, I hate this show and also you. 

He thinks that something about him is so different, and in fairness maybe if I had gone speeding down a highway with an unmanned car and my crush next to me while some wackjob cackled shirtlessly, I would feel like life was looking a bit different to us all too. 

But there’s a couple things I want to think about for a second: 

1. He still hasn’t seem ‘something eternal’ or at least that’s what his whole repeat of his earlier attitude seems to suggest, it’s just that Akio has once again promised him ‘something eternal,it’s definitely coming, Saionji, you just gotta hang with me’ and Saionji believes it every fucking stupid time, he gets dragged back in, and I think it’s so...sad? Tome? that this time we SAW what drew him in, which is that promise of friendship, of esteem in other’s eyes. 

2. This might be just a weird translation choice, but we’re going to act like it isn’t, because I want to do something with it. When he says “Unfortunately” I’m not the same man I was yesterday, it’s such a wonderful turn of phrase. Like he knew how far he’d come, like we the audience are supposed to know, that this is a tragedy in slow motion, Saionji coming back to the duels. He won’t win, there’s nothing FOR him here, but he comes coming back to that same well, keeps trying to dive for something where there’s nothing left for him. It’s such a brushed aside way of saying what we all know, and I really enjoy it. 

Please note I haven’t seen anything past this and am watching spoiler free! Please don’t confirm, deny, or explain anything to me! Even if I should be able to figure it out based on past episodes! Even if it’s cultural! Even if there is no answer! It ruins it for everyone when I get spoiled!

[gamesception]

lets read rgu chapter 19

Last time Utena lost her duel - and with it Anthy - to Touga, and now she's so depressed that she, gasp, wears the normal girls' uniform. "Boo hoo, I was just a normal girl this whole time," says Utena. "I guess I might as well stop pretending to be weird and different."

*strikes the most ridiculous, elbows out, imitation fashion model poses* "This is how a normal girl sits, I think? I am nailing this."

In the student council chambers Miki and Juri are both giving Touga a hard time about it.

"That was a dick move Touga, and you suck."

Even cringefail Saionji's getting in on it. Everyone's ragging on Touga and it's hilarious.

God Dammit Saionji, you were cool for like five fucking seconds.

Meanwhile Utena's still moping about being a "normal girl" in the least normal way possible, and, like, in the anime this bit makes me legitimately feel bad for her, but in the manga version it's just hilarious, and like I get that this is a big emotional low point of the story but I'm pretty sure this is funny on purpose. Like, look at that stupid little face on the would be suitor as he slips past Wakaba to hand Utena his confession letter, and Utena's reaction to it... "Maybe I'll ~try~ going on a date with somone... That's what makes ~normal girls~ happy, right?"

Saionji shows up, and if he could keep his damn hands to himself and stop slapping Anthy around for five fucking minutes he'd really be earning a ton of points with me in this chapter. Like first he slides in doing his knock off of Touga's knock off Akio bit like he's going to neg Utena into bucking up and getting a grip, but he's too bitter and sincere so he can't help but sneak in a 'well now you know how I felt' bit in, and Utena's just leak "boo hoo yeah I dooooooo" and he's so fully taken aback that it like snaps him out of his entire affected personality?

And then there's this whole bit where Touga shows up and hangs all over Utena, half hitting on her and half gloating over how far she's fallen while Anthy just stands there and Saionji disappears. But Wakaba's still there and she's so offended that she tries to throw her glass of water in Touga's face, but of course...

Which leads to Wakaba blaming Anthy for Utena's depression instead of apologizing, and Utena half snaps out of her doledrums to, of course, leap to Anthy's defense, leading to a fight between Utena and Wakaba, and the whole thing's great drama, and for a moment I think that, like in the anime, Wakaba forcing Utena to recognize her feelings about Anthy is what's going to snap her out of her depression. Like, we'll get that cathartic moment of Utena deciding to challenge Touga to a rematch not simply to protect Anthy, but because she wants to be with Anthy herself, and if Anthy's decided she needs to be the champion duelist to do that, then so be it.

But this is Manga Utena, and for Manga Utena everything comes back to Prince Licky-Licky. So instead Wakaba runs off, and Utena goes home, and finds a gift from her prince with a new boy's uniform and a new letter.

And now that she has her man's permission to get over herself and go fight for Anthy, she does.

Yeah, by comparison the anime's choice to downplay Utena's search for her prince and put the emphasis more on becoming a prince herself was a good call.

Meanwhile Anthy's having a sincere emotion about it, and it's been so long that she doesn't even know what's happening.

These pages are great - Utena showing up in her new outfit, Anthy's heart leaping when she sees her, the duel challenge... only slightly brought down by Utena thinking about her prince.

Utena follows up her challenge with a big speech, and Touga accepts, but wants to put an extra wager on things, which Utena agrees to. If Utena wins, Touga will quit the student council, but if Touga wins, utena will be his girlfriend.

The next day the student council is gossiping about the bet, and they all think Touga's taking things too far. Meanwhile, Utena bumps into Touga on campus for a bit of smack talk & in the middle we get like the first sincere dialog from Touga so far, where he talks about his extremely abstract motivations, and...

What a nerd. What a teenager. This is very high school, and yeah it's kind of cute actually, and for the first time in this manga I could actually see these characters working as some sort of friends.

Of course, Utena ribbing him a bit in this moment of unintentional vulnerability causes him to disappear back into his defensive play boy routine.

So the actual duel starts, and I'm just going to rush through it because it goes basically the same as the anime...

Touga has Anthy power up the sword to Super Sword Level 2.

Which cuts through Utena's sword, leaving her with basically just a hilt, calling back to her first duel with Saionji.

Utena clasps her hand over her rose, risking physical harm rather than losing the duel.

She catches super sword level 2 on what's left of her normal sword, and Anthy starts waver.

Utena says she'll protect Anthy even if she gets hurt.

Anthy shuts off the sword's power, shocking Touga who sincerely thought Anthy had no agency what-so-ever (this is more excusable in the manga because Anthy hasn't been pretty blatantly choosing the winners of almost every duel to this point like she had been doing in the anime).

And between losing the sword's power and Touga's momentary distraction, Utena seizes victory.

But while the anime more or less ends the episode there, with Utena and Anthy walking off as the bells sound, leaving a shocked Touga speechless behind them, in the manga a bunch more stuff happens. The castle starts coming down, Dios comes out of the castle to bless Utena's victory, and she recognizes him as her prince, but not as Anthy's brother even though Dios is even more clearly Akio's double in the manga.

And in the most striking twist/divergence from the anime, Touga not only quits the student council, but swears himself to Utena as her follower, like Genos to Saitama. Which is probably sincere but could just as easily be a bid to annoy Utena until she releases him from his promise to quit the student council just to get rid of him.

All in all, this chapter is pretty good. We've been on a strong run since moving away from Miki and Juri.

I'm also not sure where we go from here. We're on chapter 19 out of 27, so I don't think there's really time to do the Black Rose business, but there's a bit much time to go straight to the Akio duel, and in any event need to build up drama between him and Utena first. And if the manga actually follows through on 'Utena's Squire, Touga' then that'll be completely new.

[gamesception]

lets read rgu chapter 10

So we ended off chapter 10 at the party from anime episode 3, only instead of Nanami’s disintegrating dress gag, Sionji shows up to try to kidnap Anthy and or murder Utena outright, something he didn’t get around to until like episode 9 in the anime.  I’m not even sure how this is going to end...

But I probably should have guessed it would end the same as Sionji’s episode 9 outburst, with Touga jumping in to protect Utena & getting hurt.

So we really are just doing the episode 9 thing, only without the weirdness of the whole dueling ritual falling apart and/or skipping to the end/the castle collapsing/Anthy returning to her coffin when Saionji forces events out of order.

In the anime that whole situation was explicitly set up by Touga to manipulate Utena’s feelings.  Here at least for the moment it seems like Saionji was acting on his own and Touga’s self sacrificial heroics were at least partially sincere.

I know Saito wasn’t working with a full summary or script, so this might be accidental rather than a deliberate move, but if it was intentional it strikes me as a good call, plot wise.  For one, it’s more believable for Touga’s eventual win if he has more time between his injury and the duel, for another the manga wants to put deliberately more emphasis on Utena’s relationship with Touga, and moving this moment much earlier in the plot helps enable that, giving Utena a reason to look past his playboy reputation and red flag behavior to this point.  This also effectively combines Saionji’s second duel and later rampage, saving some time.

At the emergency clinic Utena, Anthy, and the student council gather to wait on news of Touga’s condition, and, us, what are you doing Juri?

Um, I’m not sure what’s going on here?  Is Juri trying to warn Utena not to fall for Touga’s act?  Or... please don’t tell me she’s jealous?  If manga Juri strays so far from her anime characterization that she has a thing for Touga, I’ll be sorely disappointed.

Juri’s introduction is pretty hostile.  Miki by comparison seems much nicer, and sticks with the anime’s conviction that dueling over Anthy is wrong, a conviction I’m sure will prove every bit as fragile as in the anime.

Wakaba also shows up, which is nice, but we really only get her being possessive over Utena.  That was part of her anime characterization, but we’re still missing the more fun & funny aspects of her character.

The student council talks to Touga, & it’s not terribly clear if his actions towards Utena were sincere or not.  Apparently they discuss what to do with Saionji off panel, because the next scene is Juri and Miki confronting Saionji:

2 week suspension?  He attempted to murder another student in public with dozens of witnesses and severely harmed the student council president in the process.  In the anime he was expelled, and there were no independent witnesses there?

Anyway, Saionji argues he shoudln’t be punished for hurting Touga because Touga had interrupted a proper duel, but nobody buys it - Touga had to step in as student council president since it wasn’t a duel, just one student attacking the other.  Saionji counters that Touga only stepped in because he’s smitten with Utena, which Juri objects to, and...

“compared to you who loves Touga”?  Please, please don’t be going there.  Please let this either be a mistranslation, or Saionji being an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

I don’t have much to say about the rest of the chapter.  Utena brings flowers to the clinic for Touga and Juri mocks her for it.  Juri and Miki talk about Utena while fencing.  While playing baseball utena knocks a foul ball into the fencing room and Juri catches it on the point of her sword...

That’s kind of cool at least.

The chapter ends with Utena and Juri staring each other down, but I’m still just distracted with dread over the direction the manga seems to be taking one of my favorite characters.

[retro-friki]

Shoujo Kakumei Utena Manga Recap: To Till or The Plot Actually Happens

Last time, we read the introductory arc of this manga, however wether you only saw the anime or this humble post is your first contact with “Revolutionary Girl Utena”  it doesn’t really matter if you haven’t read the introduction, the characters and most plot threads that appear there are never spoken of again so if the manga doesn’t care about them, neither should you (unless you want to take this quiz). The real story starts here. So first allow me to present you to the main characters:

Utena Tenjou: The protagonist, she was saved by a prince when she was little and now her dream is to to find him and emulate him. Not very bright, but at least she’s good at basketball.

Anthy Himemiya: She’s supposed to have a protagonic role but the manga often forgets that she’s a character. We could describe manga!Anthy as a total cutie with mysterious powers. What kind of mysterious powers? We’ll find out soon.

Wakaba Shinohara: Best friend ever, 1000 times better than Utena’s other “best friend” from the introductory arc. If the universe was fair she would be Utena’s girlfriend, but we are in the worst timeline and Wakaba has a terrible taste in men.

This douchebag (A.K.A Kyouichi Saionji): He’s a total asshole and would probably die alone unless he hooks up with…

This other douchebag (A.K.A. Touga Kiryuu): He’s the reason of like 69% of my frustration with this manga. I even wrote an essay about it.

These other two members of the Student Council: Are not important… yet. Let’s wait till next volume to learn more about them.

Anyway, let’s go straight to the story. Naive tomboy Utena Tenjou enrolls in the prestigious Ohtori Academy hoping to find her beloved prince that saved her many years ago. Meanwhile, the Student Council of Ohtori –– a very exclusive group formed by misguided teens –– dedicate their time engaging in sword duels in order to “win” the Rose Bride, a girl called Anthy Himemiya who has the legendary Sword of Dios inside her…. literally.

Quite, literally. (Also, what’s wrong with Saionji’s face?)

Legend has it that whoever possesses Anthy and wields the Sword of Dios will have the Power to Revolutionize the World. If you have never seen the anime and all this mess confuses you, let me warn you that this isn’t the weirdest part of “Revolutionary Girl Utena”.

At the beginning of the story, Anthy is engaged to Saionji (the douchebag), how did this happen? not even the most cultivated utenologists know for sure, so don’t ask me. As we have stablished before, Saionji is a total jerk and treats Anthy badly (he claims he loves her even if he slaps her frequently) however, this isn’t what prompts our local hero Utena Tenjou to kick his butt, turns out that her best friend, Wakaba, was in love with him and Saionji broke her heart and humiliated her publicly. Utena proceeds to challenge him to a duel which he accepts because he wrongly thinks that she’s after the Rose Bride.

The ring that the prince gave Utena when they met is actually a key that allows her to enter the very secret Dueling Arena where the Student Council hold their very secret duels. The place looks really cool actually.

(Notice the castle in the sky? This is normal in “Revolutionary Girl Utena”)

Even if she doesn’t know anything about this Rose Bride stuff, Utena manages to beat Saionji by using a broken wooden sword no less, because sometimes she can be a badass like that. Thanks to this, Utena earns the Sword of Dios, which causes her to go all Super Saiyan Pink.

(what? you thought I was joking?)

Touga –– the Student Council President and also a total creep–– was watching the duel in secret and gets very surprised when he sees Utena wielding the Sword of Dios. Apparently Utena is the only one that has managed to activate the sword’s enormous power. He gets so excited that he jumps into the dueling arena and declares that he could be falling for Utena. The girl feels flustered and gets out of there as fast as she can…leaving Anthy behind. Good job, hero.

However, running away doesn’t mean that Utena is free from all this mess, soon enough she learns that she’s now engaged with Anthy and that both of them have to live together in the East Hall dorms (alongside Anthy’s weird “monkey”). Anthy explains that now that they are engaged more Student Council members are going to keep challenging her to duels on an attempt to win Anthy from her. Utena wants none of that nonsense and she decides to investigate, however. she gets distracted when she finds someone that looks like her prince at the rose garden. Just when she tries to get to him, Touga appears out of nowhere and kisses her…

Ugh...

For some reason this particular kiss scene keeps appearing again and again in other iterations of the story like the musical and the light novels. In the manga there’s two pages of this and the second one is beautifully framed with roses. This is supposed to establish Touga as the charming playboy he is…but actually, the whole thing is annoying at best and gross at worst, not even the protagonist herself is happy with getting her first kiss from that guy…however, to be fair, it’s better than getting kissed in the seat of a car by a guy who doubles your age while your friend is watching… so yeah.

After that unpleasant experience, Utena asks Touga what’s going on. He explains that all the Student Council members get a ring just like Utena’s that helps them to access the Dueling Arena and fight in order to win the Rose Bride. They do this under the orders of a mysterious entity known as “World’s End” who only communicates with them via letters and who has assured them that having the Sword of Dios that lies within Anthy will grant them enough power to accomplish whatever they want. Yeah… sounds legit. Touga invites Utena to a dance and promises to tell her more about “World’s End”, however, the girl refuses.

Shortly after, Utena finds Saionji slapping Anthy AGAIN (this happens a lot in the story), she stops Saionji and tells him that if he has any problem with Anthy being engaged to her, then he should duel her again. Anthy is surprised that Utena is now getting involved in the duels. Utena says she’ll keep fighting until she finds out what’s really going on.

That night… (or some night, the manga isn’t good at telling how much time has passed), the girls receive a package from Touga with a pair of dresses for the dance, Utena still doesn’t want to go but she wants Anthy to socialize with more people and anyway, the plot needs them to be there so off they go.

Utena takes this opportunity to ask Touga about “World’s End” but the guy doesn’t tell her anything because he only wants to talk about how pretty she looks in the dress that he got her. Utena just wasted her time and she didn’t help Anthy at all since she left her behind. Meanwhile Anthy is being bullied and slapped, again. Look, if you’re taking an introvert to a party you MUST hang out with them and ensure that they are comfortable at all times! This is Handling your Introvert 101, Utena! Get a grip! To make things worse, Saionji appears, takes Anthy with him and tells her that he chose the dress she’s now wearing. Now I wonder if buying dresses for girls is Touga’s signature move and Saionji, being the big loser that he is, attempted to imitate him.

Our hero tries to rescue Anthy but, in a total dick move, Saionji keeps Anthy away from Utena and then proceeds to attack with a sword. Utena is defenseless because she can’t get the sword of Dios and also the plot has decided to turn her into a damsel in distress again. Now, I’m not expecting the hero to be a total badass who can win a fight with her bare hands (although that would be awesome), it’s ok if Utena is defeated sometimes, however, what really bugs me from this particular development is… well we’ll find out next time.

(If the manga can end on a cliffhanger so can my recap).

See you.

[some-triangles]

PART 3

The following morning: it’s art class.  Utena is spacing out because she was up too late last night ballroom dancing in rose space. Anthy takes her by surprise and they have a bit of a chase sequence through 20th century architecture’s greatest hits. Hey, it’s the Guggenheim!

They finally make it to the erstwhile chairman’s residence.  Utena is knocked out by the view.

Who’s that girl and her girlfriend?  Standing right where her brother used to stand?

Utena sketches Anthy and thanks her for everything she did last night.  Anthy brushes it off with an “I’m engaged to you, after all.”  Utena takes her ring off and says she wishes Anthy would cut it out with the whole engagement business and just be honest with her, so they can be real friends.  (The jolt of emotional intimacy she got last night really hit the spot.)  Anthy essentially says “you first.”

So Utena strips. Anthy was possibly not prepared to have her bluff called in this instance.

Anthy begins to sketch Utena, very, very slowly.   Utena summons up the maximum amount of princeliness she can muster while naked and says “it’s not fair if I’m the only one doing the modeling.”  Smooth! Or would be, if she wasn’t trembling so much.   Anthy gets up and takes off her uniform.

Utena can’t look at her. (This is Anthy’s response to the “why didn’t you just say something” critique. Who’s going to listen?  Who can listen?)  She turns away and looks at the paintings instead.

Akio’s paintings, in fact.

And the subject.

Something inside Anthy is missing.  There’s a prince where her heart should be.

To find out why, we’re gonna have to go back to the shadow puppet girls.  They present a brief filler interlude (featuring Nanami’s only appearance in this film, in cow form – Anthy never did like Nanami, did she?)  before delivering the goods.

Anthy’s version of Akio is a sad clown.  He’s got his sex car but he lost the key, so he has to take a taxi.  (Poor Kanae!)  Seems like the only thing that really turns his crank is painting pictures. Pictures of his drugged sister, specifically, starring in her own Henry Darger afterworld.

So, we’ve got an updated take on what those tiny paintings from the opening credits were about.  They’re the remnants of the old academy, capsules containing the entire rose bride mythos. They persist even after Akio is gone.   They are not literally Akio’s work – one of them, after all, depicts his fall from the tower – but they remain inside Anthy, coloring the way that she sees herself.  This movie is about her setting them on fire, one by one by one.

(Good save?  Good save.)

Anthy shows Utena the secret of the rose bride, but we don’t get to find out what it is, cause this is the point where time starts to dissolve.

Holy shit what happened!

Utena and Juri are dueling now.  OK!   Juri says Utena’s not gonna beat her playing half-prince, so Utena swaps her bichrome outfit for the full white Dios suit and wins.  No time to soak that in, though, as revelations are flying thick and fast.  It turns out that the significant thing Anthy showed Utena up in the tower wasn’t the hole in her chest, but the castle in the sky, which is a shame, because we get from that lie to the actual truth within about five additional minutes of screen time, and it would have felt like a more complete gesture if everything had actually come out up there in the mutual nudity zone.  Instead, another cavalcade of compressed rigamarole has to go down, of which this is the most significant element:

The crime of the Rose Bride: her complicity.   This is a problem because Akio can only “find his key” if he thinks his sister is innocent. Knowing that she’s willing to go along with it all because she loves him deflates his boner completely and he ends up doing a bit of a murder/suicide. 

(Anthy gets better.)

She’s blamed for his death, of course, and flees.  (This is happening now, rather than in flashback, because cause and effect collapsed pretty much entirely after everyone got naked.)  Utena has the presence of mind to run after her, but ends up in the Black Rose Arc somehow, except where you’d expect to find pointy fingers there are road signs.  Utena runs into a Do Not Enter but the distant beep of a car horn tells her where to go next.

I’m going to be honest with you: it is at this point that it becomes difficult to pretend that anyone other than Ikuhara is calling the editorial shots.  You can feel the hypomania ramping up.

Utena stumbles across the elevator of truth and prepares to Go Deeper.  What personal delusion could she possibly have to address?  That Touga’s still alive, of course.   (The fact that this is a delusion she shares with Shiori is not addressed.  Maybe Shiori’s also a ghost?  Which makes Juri, maybe, a half-ghost?  We definitely saw Anthy get murdered, also, and nobody seems to have a problem with that.  It is ultimately difficult to tell if anyone in this story is actually alive or not.)

Touga’s ghost tells her she can stay in this world with him forever if she wants to.  Utena declines, saying there never really was a prince.  Her memories are coming back, you see.  It turns out that Touga gets to be the rape victim and the drowned boy in this version of the narrative – meaning that he takes the suffering of the female characters upon himself, rather than the other way around.

We’ve figured out a way to atone for toxic masculinity!  Get buggered in a cabbage patch and drown.

Having cured Utena of her prince complex, Touga swims away.  He kind of pulled a Ruka here, startlingly enough, as he returned from the dead just long enough to fix his ex-girlfriend’s brain by manipulating her into swordfights.   (Assuming he’s an actual ghost, and not a figment of Utena’s imagination.)  This is the problem with Ikuhara’s habit of returning endlessly to his thematic hobbyhorses: every time he goes back to the well he seems less and less critical of what he finds.

Whatever.  You were a relatively decent phantom this time, Touga, and we’re going to interpret you as a Jungian combo of Anthy’s guilt and Utena’s masculinity, both now integrated and put to rest.  Godspeed.

The basement elevator goes down so far that it arrives at the top of the tower, and Utena steps out into the rose-infested dusk.  Anthy says Utena’s now the prince of this academy and all the shiny things she wants are hers forever, as long as she stays here.  Utena, fresh off having been healed by a dead boy, says:

“Let’s go outside!”

These, unfortunately, are the magic words which activate the machinery of the denouement.  It’s time for… oh, jesus

If all of this felt a bit rushed to you – the unpacking of Anthy’s abuse, the explanation of the nature of the academy, Juri’s entire arc, the revelation that Touga and possibly a few other people have been dead all along, Utena’s internal unraveling of the prince myth as it applies to her – understand that it is very important that we save an entire half hour for what happens next.

[some-triangles]

EPISODE 36.    Only three more to go.  I’ll miss these crazy kids… Greeny, Blondey, Bluey.  Cow.  The Murder Child.

You know who I’m not going to miss?

I’m not going to miss Akio and his endless, endless stream of vehicle-based dirty talk.

(A horse is a vehicle.)

Akio tells Utena that she looks just like a princess in the woods.  They make out.   Later, Miki and Juri see Utena walking home and Juri makes the following observation.

Everything’s changing. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold, falcon, gyre, etc.   Everyone was so excited about revolution that they forgot about the scary parts – baskets of heads, rotting in the Thermidor heat.

There follows a scene which is almost miraculous, in that it manages to earn for Touga and Saionji a tiny amount of my sympathy.  The secret, of course, is that you can’t spell sympathetic without pathetic.

Touga is taking Saionji for a ride in his sex bike.

After another flood of double-entendres – Saionji is not happy to be bottoming, although it’s hard to imagine how else this was going to work out – they get around to discussing the business at hand.  Saionji asks whether Touga is really going to duel again, and in so doing play into End of the World’s hands. He says that it is time for them to rise out of their coffins in defiance.  Touga says he will have his answer tonight.

Tonight.

Then Touga tells Saionji that standing up like that is dangerous.  It’s almost adorable, how hard they’re trying.  Poor fucked critters.

Later, Utena is chatting to Chu-Chu about Anthy’s visits to Akio, under a giant projection of Saturn and one of its moons.  (The best I can do for you there is that all of Saturn’s major moons are named after greek titans, all of whom married their siblings.   Let’s say it’s Rhea, who married Saturn himself, Cronus.)   Touga arrives unexpectedly.   He invites her out to the dueling arena to talk about End of the World.

After the above-pictured continuity error, Touga tries a couple moves, to no avail.  He tries again up on the platform, under the phantom castle.  He asks her if she’s in love with the chairman – she says there’s no way that could be, he’s got a fiancée and everything – and then asks if there’s no way that he could be her prince.  He tells her that he loves her, simply, and without the usual farting around.  He says that if she’ll stay with him that night, the memory will be all he needs.  She buys it, because he’s telling the truth.  

The next day, Saionji asks if Touga has his answer.  He does:

Touga admits that he has experienced the love feelings with all the grimness appropriate to this, his fall from playboy status.  He then turns around – oh, you dumb, dumb cluck – and says that now that he is armed with this information it is extra super clear that he must duel her and beat her so Akio can’t have her.   Not that he should, like, warn her, or tell her what’s going on, or anything like that.  That would be breaking bro code.   No, the only way to beat Akio is to excel in the contest that Akio invented and to follow the rules that Akio made up.  Hammer, meet nail.

He rolls up to Utena the next day and duly challenges her.  If she wins, the student council is done fucking around with Anthy, forever. If she loses, she must become… his woman.  

Nor did I.  He’s supposed to be better at this. Love, the ruin of conniving men.

A flurry of really execrable puns (this is not the shadow puppet girls’ finest outing) and we’re off to the dueling arena!  Already! 

When we get there it turns out that Saionji is an absolute natural at princessing.

He climbs into the car, the model of passivity, and commits.  If he’s smart, he’ll think about that when all this is over.  

Interestingly enough, Touga’s heart sword isn’t a katana – it’s a bastard.   Hee hee hee. 

The battle begins.  Touga and Utena go at it hard, pausing only for a sentimental borgesian dyad mid-skirmish. How many times have the two of them dueled, here?

It’s a moment of genuine tenderness.  In another life, one where Touga isn’t quite such a lange schwert, they could have had something real together. (Unfortunately in that life he pulls a Jeff Buckley before they have a chance to get anything going, but that’s another story for another time.)

Meanwhile, the arena is setting up for the finale.  It’s the last sanctioned duel of the tournament, a special match demands a special gimmick, and there are none more special than the Iron Circle. 

Touga takes advantage of the distraction caused by actual cars whizzing by at unsafe speeds to try for a sneak attack.  Utena backflips away.  There’s no time for half-measures; we skip right to the finish, as the bride abandons her body and protects the sword. 

It works.

As is often the case with heavily gimmicked matches, there’s no time for storytelling here – it’s just a series of big spots.  Utena may be a one-woman wrecking derby, but Touga’s got one last trick up his sleeve.

Oh, my poor, brave, deluded boys.

Utena doesn’t even bother summoning the prince.  She charges the sword-wielding moped jockey on foot and cuts his fucking bike in half.

Those who live shirtless die shirtless.

After it’s over, Touga warns her to beware End of the World, and the Rose Bride too.   She no-sells it and gives him the ol’ sayonara.  He’s toast – finished – done.  Except not quite, as there still needs to be an audience, to watch the rest play out.  And, to usher in the final act: Utena falls asleep early, with Akio’s name on her lips, but wakes in the middle of the night to find Anthy gone.   She goes looking for her and sees for herself the primal scene.

Good god, what now?

[some-triangles]

Episode 34 isn't fucking around.  "Poison" plays immediately, meaning trauma time is here again, and the camera is right back to extravagant art framing, making symmetrically cropping these screenshots needlessly difficult.

Pop quiz: whose tears are those?  If you guessed Anthy - you're wrong!   Akio is really broken up about this whole situation.

As she leaves him to his post-coital mumbling about comets (stars cannot be owned, they need to be free, just like him, and his dick), he asks: "and yet still you torment me?"  Anthy gives him the bittiest of smiles and departs.

Anthy's whole job is taking the blame for her brother, so the fact that Akio thinks this whole sitution is her fault should come as a surprise to nobody, but what kind of elaborate justification could he have ginned up to support that reading?

Let's ask the Shadow Puppet Girls.

Before that, though, let's make sure we get a shot of Akio looking through a camera, so we can be reminded that his framing shapes our understanding of everything that happens at this school.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the actors have no say whatsoever in how they're remembered.

Even after Anthy has had her way with the blocking, a little ambiguity remains. Is she trying to keep Utena away from Akio?  Or is she trying to keep Akio away from Utena?

Either way, it’s time for the play.  Akio, Utena and Anthy take their seats.  The play is about the Rose Prince, who could, once upon a time, be relied upon to save all damsels in distress at a moment’s notice, even though the female population of the world was made up entirely of princesses... that is, until an evil witch tricked him into riding into a floating castle, where he is now trapped forever.  Then, the twist: 

The sister/witch recaps everything, hitting the key words REALLY HARD as handy spotlights are activated to indicate which of her audience members is getting slandered.  Then she addresses Utena directly, with a warning.

So...that's one framing!  Wow.

After the break, we stop in with Touga and Saionji for a reminder that Touga's up for a duel next.  (Poor guys feels like an afterthought now, a fact of which he is acutely aware.)  Touga says that you-know-who is alarmed that Utena keeps winning even without the sword of Dios helping her out.   To underline that point, we head back to the observatory, where Anthy is heading to bed early to give Akio and Utena some worrying alone time. 

Akio says that the play was a bit sophomoric, and shows her how the real pros do it (’it’ being dragging Anthy):

He then goes in for some more canoodling.  Utena isn't up for it - she really wasintending to wait for her prince, you see.  Akio, sensing victory, asks her what she remembers about her prince - not much, it turns out. 

Later, Utena goes to bed and dreams about him.

It turns out that when she met him he told her a story - the story of the Rose Prince.  It's a lot more compelling the way he tells it.

In this framing, Anthy locked Dios away because trying to be the world's prince was killing him.  In retaliation, the world turned the entirety of its resentment for the failures of the prince onto her, condeming her to an eternity of torment.

It turns out the eternal thing Akio showed to Utena was this:

Anthy, up on the cross, suffering for the crime of keeping Dios all to herself.

Utena asks Dios why he can't save Anthy, and he says he can't become her prince - after all, he's not even a prince anymore.  He's End of the World.  Only a prince she truly believes in can save her.

This story is still garbled - it's End of the World telling it, after all - but we have at least arrived at the truth of Utena’s experience.  As Utena grew up in Akio's world, she got a few wires crossed, and lost some important details regarding which prince was which.  The prince for whom she wears the ring was always supposed to be herself.   As for where it was supposed to lead her:

To consciousness of the suffering of women generally, and of this woman specifically.

Utena wakes up, and forgets upon waking.  Anthy is beside her.

--

Regarding the Rose Prince fable, I'm gonna offer framing number three, here, if I may - once upon a time a sensitive teenager got "seduced" by his little sister and was sufficiently wracked with guilt about it that he developed an entire mythology centered around his villainy and her suffering.   In search of post facto justifications, he worked actively to create a world where the gender roles that he felt were responsible for what had happened between them were enforced and reinforced, and sucked in a bunch of other damaged people in an attempt to find someone who could save her from him, in a situation where he held all the cards.  In this scenario, he gets his private suffering - he gets to be the "prince" figure that he feels that he needs to be in public - but he also gets to do whatever he wants to whoever he wants, as part of a plan to redeem his own past that does not need to make sense to anybody but him.

Meanwhile, his sister, socially stunted and unable to escape his orbit, takes out her resentment on the world in every little way she can.

Here is a discussion question, as we enter the home stretch: would Shoujo Kakumei Utena be a better or more effective show if Anthy wasn't Akio's sister?  Or is it an indispensable part of the story?