#on a serious note i DO think that nanami anthy and touga watches of those eps are like >>>

[heartslobbf]

rgu girlies vs actually thinking about touga’s character for .2 seconds

[aroanthy]

Besides Anthy what other characters do you are aro- or any kind of a-spec?

All Of Them.

on a more serious note, im very partial to the following aspec readings of characters:

aroace/aroace lesbian nanami; one thing to know about me is that i realised i was aromantic because of two things. the first is that i wrote a 55k word fanfiction about two side characters from the 2005 bbc political satire 'the thick of it' that was basically just me airing my fundamental discomfort with romantic relationships, and the second is watching her tragedy and the romance of the dancing girls for the first time. Yeag.

aromantic nanami is profoundly important to me and i really just resonate with her character on a personal level. like shes so me. i dont get it. i too have convinced myself of all kinds of taboo and 'weird' affections and feelings because i Dont Understand Romance (just as a side note: i understand why some people take the cold turkey 'nanami never considered romantic feelings for her brother!!' reading, but for me personally. i think it's important to consider nanami considering those feelings, specifically because they make her feel uncomfortable, alienated, etc. there's also lots of interesting things to be said about how incest can affirm heteronormativity (and how it can't!! but that's more of a kaoru twins can of worms)).

and there's other stuff but we needn't get into that. i love when other people feel able to talk in-depth about how their personal expereinces shape their responses to rgu, but im not quite at that point with certain things. i do also just really like reading nanami as an aroace lesbian bc i find her connection with utena specifically to be soooooo. gah. delicious. fascinating. devastating. and also i love aroace lesbains they are the best

asexual utena; i just think he's neat :} sometimes i feel hesitant to read characters as asexual if theyre teenagers or if they have sexual trauma and funnily (not) enough, utena is both! having said that, i recently decided 'fuck it' and have been thinking about this interpretation of his character more and more. like, my aromantic identity is partially political, partially trauma-informed, and i feel quite strongly about queerness in part being one's choice to define (or not define) themselves on their own terms, be they 'contradictory' or 'inaccurate' or whatever the hell else.

i also have a fondness for asexual masculine characters. me personally i read utena as butch and transmasc and i think it's really interesting to think about how that queer masculinity can be expressed outside of allosexuality, especially considering what rgu as a show tries to do wrt that matter. dont ask me about my feelings on ikuhara and false dichotomies of love and lust in his works or i WILL explode ok sarazanami is The aroallo show and im soooo normal about it all tbh

i have this kind of vague arospec touga reading that im always knocking about in my head but kind of scared to talk about online because like. it's quite a lot to get into and, as an aroallo person, i dont want to get into discourse about if it's problematic to read a character like touga in that way. bc like. i dont think it is. but that's because i'm basing this reading off of my own lived experience and understanding of what aromantic allosexuality can look like. to be honest, if i really had to stick labels on them (bc labels are a shorthand to me that never fully express the complexity of identity that i want to personally (writer disease)) i read anthy as an aromantic lesbian and touga as aromantic and gay. but normally you would have to waterboard that out of me because im terrified of how people who aren't aroallo respond to aroallo conceptions of like... Anything. lol.

i think the tldr of Why im compelled by those similar readings of their characters is. something about how terrifying and constraining and rigid and incomprehensible and inaccessible romance feels to me as a concept. and something else about how important sex is to me as a concept, and kind of. this radical sex positivity that is so essential, imho, to beginning to unpack the issues baked into our hetero- and amatonormative conceptions of romance and sex, and thus reclaim human connection as we please. blah blah blah wah wah wah body as a bargaining chip or whatever (guy who is mildly terrified of talking about these things for Reasons).

that's it for specific readings i have of specific characters, but i will say that i do find it hard to put myself in the shoes of certain characters if im thinking of them as alloromantic. like i think juri probably is but i dont not understand her conflict with shiori and why it agonises her so much. but tbf, most of my focus on juri as a character is her struggle for self-acceptance and her fascinating gender troubles. funnily enough, that's also kind of how i feel about saionji. they are just both so genderfuck self-hating gay plagued by the power dynamics and i love that for them.

anway yeag :} rejoice, aromanticism be upon ye

[empty-movement]

sorry but please... post your akio plastic covered couch tweet here... the world needs to know...

Warning: pics of gross shit happening on the couches

I'll do you one better and include the STORY! So, I, Vanna (note: Yasha mostly does the Tumblr and I mostly do the Twitter,) was smoking enough weed to knock out a large horse or put a very tiny dent in my constant back and shoulder pain, as one does when when they're a middle-aged Registered Nurse in the year 2023. (I'm 39 but it's an old 39, lmao.)

Scrolling through Twitter, I stumble on a fanart of Suletta from Witch of Mercury sitting goofily on a white couch. Now I haven't seen this show yet, but the white couch....looked familiar, and I know the show is very much a descendent of Utena in terms of creative teams. For those that don't know, the series is written by Ichirō Ōkouchi, who also wrote the two Revolutionary Girl Utena novelizations...which if you didn't know about before, you know about now, and can read translated on our site here! (Warning: Touga and Miki uh, in the novels...)

Anyways, so I hop onto my own website and start downloading the images that will constitute receipts, before realizing 1. these images are all on multiple computers feet away from me, 2. the couch isn't an identical match, 3. that'd have been weird anyway, and most importantly, 4:

AKIO'S COUCHES DON'T LOOK RIGHT. OBSERVE:

The edges of the armrests have sloppier upholstery than the blanket I have covering my computer desk. I took the time to tuck seams at least. What is this??

Now it could absolutely be leather, I thought. It would absolutely track. But leather upholstery doesn't look like this. It doesn't wrinkle quite this way. It would have cleaner seams.

No. No that's too shiny for leather. So here I am, presented with this strangeness I'd never really considered in how Akio's couch is drawn, and having spent the last few months learning about my Italian-American family history, my chemically altered ass came to the only reasonable conclusion:

Akio Ohtori has plastic coverings on his white couches, like he's a depression era American in poverty.

Fuck yeah, I though, A HIT TWEET, there, at the end of all Tweeting things. (Yeah I'm working on that, stay tuned, lmao. I of all people know when to bail on stupid men with stupid power.) Because I am me, I framed it as semi serious by pulling a context to explain it out of my ass:

I was joking.

But the replies? They were not. And then I thought about it some more. And I've kept thinking about it. Do I seriously think Ikuhara and Co literally are intentionally drawing a plastic covered couch? Doesn't that feel, Vanna, like a bit of a stretch, even for Utena meta?

Listen to that CRONCH when Akio sits down in episode 31, before Anthy is seen by Nanami. Look, the buttons on the back rest don't quite fit, but the rest? Yeah it kinda does. I was high, but not wrong!?

Akio *does* surround himself with a bizarre hodgepodge of Americana as an aesthetic. The arm garters. The piping and cut of his cowboy-ass shirt. His American car. His mullet. His miniature fucking golf. Why not the plastic covered couch? It's a trope of American poverty that would absolutely have fallen neatly into the diet of American pop culture that influenced Ikuhara. (He makes references to E.T. and The Godfather and Suspiria and all kinds of things in his other work, Utena itself is a little less obvious with individual references but inherits HUGE amounts of vibes from the same content--Ikuhara and Co watched Lost Highway in theaters during the production of the Akio Arc and I will not be convinced otherwise.)

So yeah. That's the story, and that's the theory. Do I seriously believe it was deliberate? Maybe. Probably. Possibly. But it fits so well it's headcanon for me, and in the Utena fandom, pretty much all canon is kind of headcanon so enjoy this one.

What an asshole.

[wlwkiryuu]

nanami is a closeted lesbian

this was a theory of mine i used to have just minor evidence for, but after i tried to search up that evidence to compile i realized i actually have a LOT more than i bargained for! so heres ALL the evidence i have so far under the cut :’)

(also please note that i am adding my own personal experiences as a lesbian to this to derive this headcanon, so as they say: your mileage may vary! this is just for fun although i certainly wouldn’t put it past ikuhara + the producers of the show to hint that nanami isn’t straight.) 

OK first off nanami seems to have a crush on miki waaayyy back in the sunlit garden prelude, when he's first introduced. but then she gets jealous when it turns out he’s too busy crushing on anthy.

she then decides to do everything she can in that one episode (snails. garter snake. octopus. you know the one) to get anthy out of the picture, 

but then eventually it turns into her getting obsessed with utena and anthy themselves rather than getting them out of the way between her and miki.

compare nanami trying to humiliate anthy in front of miki vs her trying to ardently spy on utena and anthy to the point where she knows their schedules in order to sneak that curry into their class. it’s because of her own personal vendetta against them at this point. and THEN compare THAT to nanami trying to warn utena about akio in season 3 near the series finale even though there was literally nothing that required her to do that.

what's even more interesting is that nanami’s repeatedly been said to be one who never gets her own hands dirty when she’s up to no good; and yet in regards to utena and anthy?

she’s DEFINITELY more than willing to get her hands dirty. these two are just that special enough for her to be worthy of her attention.

(and even after touga is out of the picture—that is, once he’s basically revealed himself as the manipulative asshole that he was towards his sister all along—utena’s still deemed worthy of attention by nanami, who goes so far as to warn her about akio, which is...hmm! interesting!)

and what's even more worth mentioning on top of this is that whenever nanami humiliates someone? she usually succeeds in it! a prime example would be keiko in her black rose episode. even at the end, she just comes crawling back to nanami. but utena and anthy...they really end up testing nanami to the bone. and of course, that’s what makes their dynamics with nanami so interesting!

 but more on that later. the main point here is that this is one of the first (if not the first) times nanami’s bullying has ended up hurting her rather than her victims. and it consequently opens up nanami’s eyes. she begins to regard these girls in a whole other way, on her own footing. which is kind of a major step in her making tensions with her brother reach a peak, until the season 3 arc comes crashing down on her. this makes her eventually realize she will never be able to see touga in/be with touga in the same way ever again, causing her to resolve to cut ties with one of the only men she has a eminent relationship with.

buuut back to the miki episode. notice nanami’s word choice when she praises miki! pride of the school. almost like she's inclined to like/settle for miki because of this, because she considers herself a pride of the school as well. she focuses more on his status and supposed superiority than anything; that’s the kind of thing nanami’s after/the kind of status she thinks makes her better than others as well. and you know who else she/the rest of the student body considers a pride of the school...?

yep! this asshole! and obviously she can't fulfill being loved that way with her brother bc a) she’s explicitly screamed and shoved him away when he tried to make an advance on her because she knows that kind of relationship is not right and b) her devotion to him to the point where she completely ignores other guys is a product of her idealization of men + compulsory heterosexuality.

(for clarification: touga is saying the top half after nanami pushes him away when he tries to advance on her, and nanami is saying the bottom half).

and here we have obvious proof that nanami does NOT want him as a partner and NEVER wanted him like that all along. so what am i trying to get at here? that she KNOWS touga kiryuu is unattainable. a significant aspect of compulsory heterosexuality is getting crushes on/idolizing guys who are idealized/unattainable. you can't get the guy anyways, so it's both “proof” that you're straight, and no one can say you never acted on that “crush” because getting that guy is impossible anyways.

this matches the theme in revolutionary girl utena surrounding the generalization/idealization of men by women forced into compulsory hetereosexuality perfectly (i mean miki’s literally called a “prince” because he has all these “ideal” noble qualities: rich, kind, good-looking, honest, talented, good grades/prodigy) and honestly provides a great parallel to utena and her “prince” (i say “prince” and not simply akio because touga toys with this idea as well in order to make utena lose her duel with him in episode 11!)

you know that scene where anthy’s wearing the dress nanami gave her and she watches it get wet and tear away at anthy’s clothes? you know, the classic introductory oh shit, nanami’s actually a huge asshole moment? 

yeah, so upon rewatching that scene i realized the entire scene PLUS the part where utena rescues anthy and starts dancing with her is cut in between in various places by nanami’s commentary:

so its safe to say this whole scene is from nanami’s point of view.

...yeah. NANAMI’S point of view. and its ALSO worth mentioning that this is the first time nanami’s ever seen or heard of utena at all. thus begins our closeted disaster femme icon’s first taste of lesbianism.

oh and of course, the iconic scene from nanami’s egg where this happens.

ok WOW lots of good stuff here. yes, on the surface level, of course, the specific moment in context is where nanami confuses preferring to have a girl as a child to preferring girls romantically. but then again, it’s not like nanami actually laid an egg. revolutionary girl utena’s metaphor soup! there’s more to things than just face value.

what i’ve seen as the most universally accepted interpretation of this episode is that it’s about puberty, and specifically, the taboos involving menstruation. and of course, this completely makes sense! egg motif? check. tsuwabuki literally mentioning that nanami has to attend a health class? check. the episode starting out with a dream where nanami is a child, then paralleled throughout the rest of the episode with current, teenager nanami? check. touga talking about “eggs” disparagingly? check. the episode is about puberty, maturation of feelings, and adolescence, meaning that discussing sexuality is really not too far of a stretch in an episode that pretty much covers puberty in general! it totally matches the whole “coming of age” theme in both this episode AND the series (albeit it’s done in more serious undertones in the non-nanami bits of the show).

and you know what’s even more interesting? when touga hints that nanami liking girls is wrong, she doesn’t immediately jump to the fact that she likes guys as her defense. rather, she jumps to her specifically loving touga as her defense. and as i pointed out earlier, she knows she doesn’t want touga romantically. miki whom?

not to mention this gem:

...yeah. nanami’s first time seeing the “eggs” in question being put to use is by guys, and she’s visibly disgusted/horrified by it. not subtle at ALL, ikuhara.

and what’s MORE that i realized just from this one iconic episode? the alien motif. 

ah, nanami’s incredibly absurd imagine spots. gotta love those! and they all fit a particular theme: alienation. and it’s honestly really odd to think about how nanami has this constant fear of alienation throughout this episode (and arguably throughout the series); she’s rich, popular, and consequently has the whole student body in the palm of her hand. and yet she STILL believes she’s not normal. really kind of parallels being closeted/”hiding something,” doesn’t it? and it’s cleverly referred to again upon nanami’s big arc in season 3, when her entire world comes crashing down as she believes her and touga aren’t actually siblings.

(the scene in question is right when keiko slaps nanami because she tells touga that “he shouldn’t go out with a girl like her [keiko].”)

ostracism/fear of ostracism seems to be a popular theme for nanami throughout the series.

so in this episode, nanami soon transitions from imagining being alienated to being behind her peers instead. 

it’s constantly established that nanami only has eyes for her brother; the “only one she loves” is him. she’s never shown interest for any other guy, which is paralleled especially well in keiko’s black rose episode; nanami’s vicious attitude towards keiko manifests because keiko turns out to have eyes for the only one nanami has eyes for. 

keiko’s the one acting “normally”; nanami’s the one seen as overtly possessive.

and, of course, knowing the nature of nanami’s character, her idolization of her brother is painted to such absurd extremes that she essentially shows she absolutely refuses to find another relationship. she’s in a “fairy-tale world”; she refuses to grow up, which even her brother admits at times.

another common aspect among closeted lesbians is the feeling that we’re “late bloomers” for failing to find any sort of interest in men. and so, thus, the line mentioned earlier that describes nanami’s fear, “being late compared to most people,” could very easily fit into this context.

and regarding tsuwabuki? yeah, this just sums it up perfectly.

miki’s so brutal in this episode, i love him. brutal but accurate!

and then, of course, we get that sweet, sweet confirmation again:

immediately followed by miki spitting out the truth yet again.

oh and interestingly enough, even with tsuwabuki, where she blatantly treats him like her personal servant, she still doesn’t want to let him go; particularly, she doesn’t want to let him go to other girls.

even with a (give or take) 10/11 year old child, nanami refuses to acknowledge him interacting with another girl. simply because he’s a guy.

an extremely common and integral part of nanami’s character is her constant desire for acceptance (lots of episodes showcase this! namely nanami’s egg and cowbell of happiness). she’s a “late bloomer” who shows no romantic desire for men whatsoever; therefore, she fulfills this criteria for “normalcy” by having literally every other relationship with guys except for romantic, as shown with touga, tsuwabuki, and even saionji and miki to some extent. but for the most part —it’s shown with touga and tsuwabuki, simply because they’re the most obvious examples of non-romantic relationships: siblings and a literal elementary schooler. it’s kind of funny, almost; it’s like nanami thinks “having relationships with guys” is just one of many things she’s obligated to cross off on her checklist for societal acceptance, and literally goes in the most roundabout way to achieve it without realizing what it even means (i.e., romantic relationships with a guy, not just a relationship in general), and completely failing. 

and all of this leads me, of course, to the final aspect to analyze: nanami’s relationship with utena.

yeah, it’s pretty safe to say they don’t get along on the best of terms at first. nanami even tried to kill utena during their first duel!

so it’s incredibly interesting to see their relationship evolve after the events of that skirmish.

regarding their first duel in particular, the duel lyrics have a LOT in them to unpack.

My eternal self The eternal stranger Two relations Two births Scales of mystery Human constellation

“my eternal self” versus “the eternal stranger” brings up some interesting parallels. touga seems to be the eternal stranger, with whom nanami believes she is closer to than anyone else, and yet she seems completely unable to figure out his inner workings and who he really is as a person. no matter what she’d like to or not like to admit, touga is and always has been a complete mystery to her. this “human constellation” can thus never be truly connected. but you know who else is a mystery to nanami?

yep! the boy-girl of ohtori herself. you have to consider this isn’t only a duel provoked by touga; it’s a duel with utena. a duel between nanami and utena. their relationship is bound to be mentioned in the song as well. which is exactly why i believe nanami says this right after utena technically “wins” the duel by slicing nanami’s rose off.

nanami’s essentially setting herself up for a long, long rivalry spanning the rest of the series with those five words. it seems like nanami’s more interested in seeing what makes utena tick than her own brother, whom she claims to be the “only one she loves.” simply challenging utena isn’t enough; she has to understand her in order to defeat her. and this ideology is called back to later in nanami’s second duel with utena!

nanami ends up giving one hell of a fight the second time around. despite only fighting her once prior, she ends up knowing all of utena’s moves beforehand and dodging them. that’s how well she knows utena’s fighting techniques.

now lets look at the nature of the duel itself. what exactly makes nanami want to challenge utena a second time?

individuality! distinction! that’s what nanami wants. she dreads the thought of being “one more fly in the swarm.” now that she’s discovered her relationship with touga’s been lying on top of a foundation of lies the whole time, her world comes crashing down. she doesn’t want to adore her brother anymore. she wants to surpass him, and so, essentially, escape her problems. and so, in a sort of roundabout way since utena was the reason behind nanami’s meddling and tensions with her brother, she believes defeating utena will be the key to defeating all of her problems.

and, spoiler alert: it isn’t. the fact that nanami isn’t able to win this duel is especially important. even after she’s able to jump the hurdle of her brother, she fails to jump the hurdle of utena. she wants to “surpass everything,” that is, leave the old her behind. and at first it seems like she’s succeeding to leave everything behind...except for utena.

touga serves as the last link nanami has towards any sort of affection towards a guy. and in this duel, she straight up BREAKS it by admitting there was nothing between them at all. 

and THEN utena asks if nanami feels better. even though she, like...literally just lost the duel. given utena’s character it’s probably just her naivete showing through, but given the underlying messages this series is ridden with, it probably refers to how nanami “defeating” touga was FAR more important than her actually defeating utena—that is, she never needed to defeat utena in the first place to feel better.

so, what we get from this is: a) nanami succeeds in breaking her bond towards touga, but b) fails to break that bond with utena. 

🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

and of course the lyrics here in this dueling song as well:

You, me, our nature Our nature, our nature Free will and existence

who’s it about? the nature of the kiryuu siblings? the nature of nanami and utena as they act as foils? the ambiguity of the song is what really makes it interesting. not to mention—free will and existence. nanami wants out of this oppressive system. and she believes utena is the key to it (and, well, she’s not wrong!). take of that what you will symbolically, metaphorically, ikuharaesquely, etc.

and that free will and existence line just leads me to believe that nanami’s a foil to anthy in regards to utena, since free will and existence is essentially what utena fights for anthy to achieve in the end, and what anthy desperately desires: autonomy. and, so, given that these two are foils in regards to utena...well, we all know what anthy is in regards to utena.

...yeah. exactly. imagery/parallelism they didn’t absolutely HAVE to do, but did regardless.

and, so, by the end, even nanami’s seemed to have caught that inescapable sense of fondness for utena. she comes entirely out of good will on her own accord to warn utena of akio, and doesn’t even consider giving up when utena brushes her advice aside.

she’s insistent on drilling into utena’s head that she should get out of that house—even though doing so wouldn’t benefit nanami at all. utena promptly points out how uncharacteristic of nanami this is:

to which nanami immediately snaps back with:

nanami’s essentially admitting that utena’s the one who’s permanently altered her character and made her much less of a selfish brat (although she still has a loooonnggg way to go, obviously) than she was prior to the series canon. utena’s the cause for everything, direct or indirect: clashing with touga, getting over her brief crush on miki, developing a sense of empathy while transitioning from a desire for social acceptance to a desire for social independence...it’s all been catalyzed by utena at some point.

so, in brief?

utena revolutionized nanami’s world (see, i can’t even look at that sentence without thinking about how gay it sounds).

OKAY, so first off: thank you so so much for reading this far! i want to get into my last point of contention now, which is a super subtle conversation between utena and nanami near the end of the series but speaks VOLUMES, but before i do, i just wanna show two marginally interesting screencaps that fit this theory suspiciously well because i really want to save the best part for last.

exhibit a:

nanami + physical contact’s only ever been shown in regards to her brother. and yet the second utena comes into the mix...well, despite how trivial this scene is, the reaction is pretty satisfying.

exhibit b: nanami’s reaction to juri in the video game.

just tattoo i love women onto your forehead next time, nanami.

now on to what is possibly my favorite exchange in the entire series—that’s how much i love the underlying subtleties in this scene. utena brings up having “blood type-B” when talking to nanami in said scene. why? because just a few episodes earlier...

nanami finds out touga’s blood type never correlated genetically with her family’s. 

which, later on in the episode, she ends up telling utena (and the fact that at this point she’s trusting utena enough to even marginally tell her what this whole mess is about is gratifying in itself). 

so basically, the importance of this conversation?

(for clarification: utena’s saying the first half, and nanami’s saying the dialogue on the bottom-most screencap).

it shows the COMPLETE 180 nanami and utena’s relationship has gone through. misunderstandings and petty arguments and hostilities into something that’s blossomed through adversity to a relationship of mutual understanding. and, it feels like, for the first time in either of their lives, they’re actually in the loop on something, rather than being hopelessly confused in a maze of the bells and whistles of student council, the mystery behind the eternity duelists seek at the arena, the end of the world, the complete enigma that is touga kiryuu, and can finally just interact in this sort of liberating way that shows both of them at their best with one another. 

and what i love about this is that nanami doesn’t get mad at utena. she doesn’t snap about how she spoke too soon about the whole incident. it’s questionable if she even cares about the whole incident now, considering the ties she broke off with touga at the climax of her second duel. rather, she knows what utena’s jokingly pointing at, and the two are in a mutual understanding of how much they’ve been through together in the hellscape that is ohtori academy.

but, the BEST part of this entire exchange? the part that shows probably the first time nanami’s ever gotten actual happiness from someone, something that shows that she’s finally past the superficial happiness from her unwitting adoration of touga that’s essentially been crumbled to dust by the end of her character arc, allowing her to finally set aside pleasing others and end up potentially discovering herself, far from when she first met utena?

nanami’s final reaction to her.

[iztarshi]

Season 1 Flashbacks

I really love the ways Utena uses animation in various memories and flashbacks. There’s both an overall style to them that ties them together and different visual elements used to show the different ways different people remember, from traumatically vivid memories to memories of an event you know happened but no longer remember the details of.

So, I wrote some thoughts on all the season 1 flashbacks, although I’ve probably said a lot of really obvious things.

Episode 1 — Utena’s flashback

It’s very theatrical, right from the start with a curtain going up. The flat shadows on the background make it even more so — it’s not just that the silhouettes replace barely remembered people, the entirety of the scenery is false.

The sudden flashes of accurate animation seem to indicate the few real events that she remembers enough to have built the fairy tale around, but it would be reasonable to assume she remembers they happened rather than actually remembering them in the visual detail we’re seeing. Mistaking Touga for her prince makes much more sense if she doesn’t actually remember he had dark skin and white hair.

The silhouettes, too, are a stylish way to show only barely remembered people, but I don’t think they necessarily mean the only thing anyone remembers is hair colour.

Also, I just like that Utena remembers a totally non-existent horse. Princes have horses, right?

Episode 5 — Miki’s flashback

Miki’s flashback starts out framed like old sepia pictures. It’s a warm look and a very nostalgic one.

The colours become colder and the outlines firmer once it’s the specific story of the concert and not just a nostalgic memory of any and every time they played the piano in the garden, but it’s still heavily stylised. Miki and Kozue both remain silhouetted, suggesting he doesn’t know who either of them were back then. The colours get colder and darker still once Miki is ill and then when Kozue won’t play the piano again. The whole thing is more detailed and real than Utena’s flashback, but still suggests an event that Miki remembers remembering perhaps more than he remembers exactly what happened.

Episode 5 — Kozue’s flashback

Kozue’s image of them makes them both silhouettes, too, casting doubt on whether her memory is accurate either. Her picture is the very nostalgic sepia tone we started off with in Miki’s, even though she’s saying she never enjoyed it and talking about the concert. Her black rose duel kind of gets back into this, that she wants to return to those days just as much as Miki.

There are red rose petals in the background of hers, too, which… I think red can often be associated with desire for something. Red things in Utena are often desirable — the Akio car, Anthy when she’s playing the Rose Bride role, and Touga himself is desired and plays on that a lot.

Episode 6 — Mitsuru’s flashback

You know, I wasn’t sure whether to include this. But it’s still a flashback, it’s an important formative experience for Mitsuru, and it has a bit in common with the episode nine flashback in which some other boys also can’t save a girl.

It’s told in semi-shadows. Not the silhouettes of imperfect memory, but something more like the shock of not being able to take in everything at once. The background is very bright, whited out, and only the bull, Nanami, Touga and Mitsuru are really remembered.

Touga’s age seems a little wrong here for how small Nanami is. Maybe it’s Mitsuru’s hero worship colouring things, but he did apparently just punch out a bull, so who knows.

There’s also a parallel between Mitsuru and Utena, here, in that they’re very devoted to becoming a “prince” or a “big brother” which has nothing to do, really, with becoming royalty or literal family. Mitsuru’s sneakier than Utena, though, willing to put Nanami in danger in order to save her and fulfil the role he’s set himself, making him more — hilariously — a parallel to Touga who will do exactly the same thing to Utena herself.

Episode 7 — Juri’s flashback

Juri remembers the people in detail, but the background is stylised and black and white and the poses are often staged. She remembers everyone involved, but the exact events are lost in the general thrust of the developing love triangle.

This is the first time a flashback comes with an associated photograph. One of the memories takes place during a class photo shoot — did Shiori really whisper that exactly then, or is Juri imposing it on a moment she has reason to be especially well able to recall?

As a side note it feels weird to see the student council in normal Ohtori uniforms, a reminder that they’ve been in Ohtori longer than they’ve been in the duelling game. Given that Ohtori has an attached elementary school and Miki, Kozue, Touga and Nanami appear to live locally enough for their actual houses to be within Akio’s sphere of influence, I wonder if they have any sense of how weird any of this is? Have their whole lives just been mildly surreal?

Episode 9 — Saionji’s flashback

This and Nanami’s flashback are the most intense, probably because Saionji and Nanami seem actively traumatised by these events. To the point both of them attempt to lash out and kill Utena while caught up in reliving them.

The first thing that’s interesting about this flashback is that Saionji is telling it to Utena, who remains completely unaware that she appears in it. The two of them have made such different stories out of the memory that they can’t reconcile them at all — Utena doesn’t even remember Touga and Saionji were there and he can’t recognise her as the girl they wanted to save.

Saionji’s first flashback image is a warmly sepia coloured picture in which he and Touga appear as silhouettes. Incongruously it makes him scowl and declare he won’t lose to Touga. Like Miki’s sunlit garden, it appears to be a nostalgic image of something they did a lot rather than a memory of a specific scene.

They start out as greyscale faceless silhouettes, with Saionji’s bandage standing out white, and then are suddenly lit into colour when Touga sees the funeral and stops. It’s a neat effect, as they go from a general memory of something they’d done dozens of times, the hurt hand the only unusual thing about it, into the vividness of a specific and traumatic memory.

It’s only himself and Touga that Saionji remembers clearly, though. The adults in the memory remain silhouettes and Utena herself is one, recognisable by her pink hair.

It’s not clear whether the background is greyscale or whether it’s just the darkness of the storm, but the coffins are not, and the red roses on them stand out especially. Juri’s flashbacks tend to black and white with orange standing out, Saionji and Nanami both have flashbacks where red is the dominant colour.

Nothing about the memory is stylised or staged, though. Saionji may not understand the people involved, but he seems to recall the events very accurately. The fact that Touga spends the memory behaving rather strangely only makes it more plausible.

When Saionji flashes back again after hearing the word “kamikakushi” he can’t see anyone’s faces, as if he’s no longer sure who he and Touga were back then either.

Not a flashback, but I really appreciate the way the greyscale picture of Touga in bed with a bandaged chest echoes the grayscale picture of Touga and Saionji on the bike with Saionji’s bandaged hand.

Episode 10 — Nanami’s flashback

Oh, Nanami.

The shot of the birthday cake gives us a much more fixed time for this flashback than any of the previous ones. It’s Touga’s birthday, and you can count the candles to find out that he’s twelve. You can also see this is the same mansion they’re living in now, the vaguely threatening shot showing layers of empty halls and doors is virtually identical to the later one where Touga is telling Nanami why she shouldn’t be a lesbian. (If there’s a connection, I’d guess it’s that Touga is becoming one of the adults who shuts her out and doesn’t try to understand her.)

The adults are certainly threatening here, a faceless, colourless mob, where you can’t even really pick out Nanami’s parents. Touga and Nanami are the only ones in colour — they’re also the only children present. Touga seems to be both enthroned and surrounded, people are calling him Touga-sama and kneeling, but is this really the kind of party a twelve-year-old would want?

The way Nanami reacts when her father tries to grab her, and how quickly — and adultly — Touga intervenes just makes the adults seem more of a threat. You can see why Nanami misses being sure her brother was on her side when she’s never had anyone else.

Interestingly, when Nanami resumes her flashback for the more traumatic part, she and Touga are now greyscale. The only thing that stands out is the red of the apples he won’t help her pick. Something Nanami wants, but needs Touga to gain.

Honestly, I think getting angry with Nanami for hitting his cat is the most emotion we see Touga display, ever? Even in Saionji’s memory, his emotions are very guarded, here he’s reacting far more like you’d expect a child to react. Although Nanami’s response to it suggests that she’s not used to this kind of reaction from him. She’s taking it as a serious rejection, not as her brother being upset with her right now.

Nanami is now standing in front of her own memory, as if it’s a cinema screen and she can watch it all unfold over again.

In the last section of her flashback her dress and hair are yellow again, for the first time her own colour is the one notably present in addition to black and white. (She was in colour earlier, but wearing pink and red.) The part she most associates with herself is the worst part, the kitten’s death and her own remorse.

There are also a few flashes of green in bits of her memory, an adult’s suit and the leaves Touga was playing with the kitten with. Jealousy?

The way her killing the kitten and regretting it is interspersed with her attacking Utena suggests she really did intend to kill Utena but, like the kitten, would have regretted it immediately if she’d succeeded.