watching Revolutionary Girl Utena: 8
In which we consider Theme and Princes and why one of these things sucks butt.
Back to the more detailed notes with episode 18: Mitsuru’s Impatience. Which one is Mitsuru? I can’t remember anyone’s names.
As usual the intro reminds us: Utena and Anthy are a couple. And they will lose each other. For good? Hell if I know. But if they do, you can’t say you didn’t see it coming; Utena is alone at the end of the theme song.
And as usual after watching a few episodes I’m trying to sing along with the theme song, and rework the English subtitles into something that actually scans.
Aaand… ugh, the dubs I was watching on YouTube two years ago are gone. Now there’s just subs. Luckily Scarecrow Video has the dubs; I guess I’ll be renting those from there. And figuring out how to toggle the subs quickly for the songs - which turns out to be simpler than I was afraid it would be on the PS4. I also rented Gilliam’s “Doctor Parnassus”, which should be a fascinating hot mess for the next couple days.
The Student Council meets without their introductory ritual. In the rain. Concerned about these mysterious new duellists.
And Mean Popular Girl is the worst new Student Council president ever.
Oh god is “Chu torturing snails” going to be a subplot *whimper*
This episode’s focus is on the kid who follows Nanami around and lets her use him. And he gets this told to him in front of… a window full of roses. Exactly like the one we’ve been seeing the Shadow Chorus in, except lit entirely from this side for a change.
And once again we have the girl who told Nanami’s little voluntary slave off trying to tell him he’s being used. Through a window.
Nanami is talking to Evil Boy Utena and wants to… join him. Well. And her slave wannabe gets invited too. Well I guess we know who’s going to be this episode’s Black Rose host?
Aand.. yep. His weird devotion to Mean Popular Girl is the source of his Black Rose initiation. And his desire to… be a grownup, who can destroy everything. And forcibly extract no less than two swords from Nanami in a very rapey scene.
The Shadow Players are talking about losing one’s virginity. Which is pretty related to the plot again. Oh no, ha ha, they’re talking about giving blood, which you have to be an adult to do, whatever else were you thinking of you silly pervert? And then it’s Absolute Destiny Apocalypse time.
This time, every desk holds a half-eaten candy bar, which is a symbol that’s beem tied to the boy’s desire to Become An Adult by Having Adult Experiences. Like kissing girls. And more.
Another duellist falls. But now the boy gets a rose frame. After his duel - usually I think we see this on secondary characters as a sign that they will duel in the future? Does he keep this in the future?
Next time: Curry, and children pretending to be princes and princesses. I mean, besides Utena.
19: A Song For A Kingdom Now Lost
A rose fable. A mysterious prince and an innocent princess.
Utena’s little shadow wants to feed her. And she gets Rose Vision about a boy who comes to bring Utena a message. He’s white. She’s orange. They used to be the Onion Prince and Princess with each other when they were kids.
Two episodes in a row about jealousy. 18 involved Mean Popular’s possessiveness of her little boy-slave. This one? Utena’s shadow is jealous of anyone talking to her Onion Prince. Which will be problematic when he turns out to have a crush on Utena…
This show continues to amaze me with its willingness to leave a conversation half-unspoken, and give you a silent moment to contemplate the lack of that half.
Student Council tower, no elevator ritual. Mean Popular Girl still ain’t running it right; I can tell this by the lack of the ritual. And of course she isn’t; she tries to score a point on Blue Hair Boy instead of leading the council, and he scores one right back. This is not a functioning organization any more. Its rituals are gone.
Utena tells Anthy’s brother about this, and relates it to the overall theme of Waiting For Your Prince. Anthy’s brother drops some wisdom about Princes.
Utena’s shadow is painfully in love with the Onion Prince. She can’t say it and he can’t see it; he flirts awkwardly at Utena right in front of her. Luckily Utena wants him out of her hair and tries to make her say she loves the kid. There are many lingering shots with rose frames.
And then the Onion Prince confesses that he’s chasing Utena’s shadow, and only wants to be near Utena because the girl is always following her.
Utena and Anthy walk past the rose windows of the Shadow Chorus as they discuss this little love polygon. Instead of a duel notice in her locker, Utena finds a grumpy note from her shadow. And then the Shadow Chorus does an insane little skit about… eating tires.
The Onion Prince and Utena’s shadow have a conversation about whether or not they are Troo Wov Since First Sight, backed with the mellow sax mix of the title theme. But just when you think it’ll be that, she traipses off looking for Her Prince! Who is not him.
And the Onion Prince goes for an interview. But he doesn’t get one. He just sits there in the elevator dumping his mopes. It goes down but the picture never changes. It doesn’t even let him out on the Coffin Room; the elevator goes back up and Evil Boy Utena sends him away. Because his heart is pure. The ritual told me he wouldn’t get this; I typed that the picture never changes before seeing the second shot of the picture on the wall resolutely remaining a butterfly, instead of becoming a chrysalis/caterpillar/leaf.
And Utena’s shadow runs to her prince: the green-haired Student Council member, who has been out of the show for a while.
Next time on Utena: the Onion Princess is carrying on with Green Hair.
This episode is focusing on the Waiting For Your Prince theme that runs through the show. Utena decided to become her own Prince, and became Anthy’s Prince as well. Her shadow? She obsessed over her own childhood Onion Prince, then decided she was better off without that memory of a dream of a nonexistant romance polished to a perfect sheen in hindsight. Will it work out better for her this way? Probably not; the preview ends with her all hopped up on Black Rose.
There was no duel this episode. None at all. Hmm. Is there a pattern of no-duel episodes? Let me look through my notes:
1: duel
2: dunno, probably
3: unsure, my notes don’t say
4: duel
5: not sure
6: Nanami Is A Lunatic
7: Duel
8: No, Really, Nanami Is The Center Of A Screwball Comedy Cartoon
9: Out-of-ritual broken duel
10: duel
11: duel
12: semi-broken duel
13: arc 1 recap
14: duel
15: duel
16: no duel (have we mentioned lately that Nanami Is A Lunatic)
17: duel
18: duel
19: no duel
…nah, I don’t feel like there’s a particular pattern of when duels happen. 12 or 11 out of 19 episodes have them so far, slightly more than half. (My notes may have missed a few.)
20: Wakaba Flourishing.
“Flourishing”. Yeah the “next episode” teaser from last time makes this title feel pretty ironic. (Side note: Can I steal those? I want to steal those for Parallax. I was already thinking about the occasional fake ‘last time’, I want to hint at some events and let the viewer completely fill them in. I am watching this show to learn things, I already applied some things I learnt from it to Rita…)
Ah; we haven’t seen Green Hair because he got expelled. But Utena’s Shadow lives with him. And she keeps him trapped in her apartment. It doesn’t feel like a good relationship. At all.
Moral: Do not obsess over princes. It never leads to anything good.
Sure, she’s excelling in school. But she’s got a prince wasting away captive in her tower.
Anthy’s brother gives Utena a lecture about how she’s the main character, and how her shadow is temporarily being a major character. But for most people… that never lasts.
Ah, and now we know what will drive her to the Black Rose: fear of losing her captive prince.
But first Evil Boy Utena shows up in her apartment, talking to Green Hair. How on earth does he get there? And he’ll do a deal: Utena’s shadow for Green Hair’s freedom.
Utena’s shadow sees Anthy walking past the other way as she walks home. Anthy’s got a brooch in her hair just like the one Green Hair carved for Utena’s Shadow. Jealousy and fear consumes her; will she run home? No. We’re in the Black Rose Interview Elevator, and she’s already got a chrysalis on the wall.
She has no fear about the path of the Black Rose. No doubt. She stands defiant in the door, ready to accept her ring.
She catches Green Hair about to escape her apartment, and pulls the sword out of his heart. Duel time.
But before a duel we have to squeeze in the Shadow Chorus. That’s the shape of the ritual now. They discuss the rarity of fox weddings (on sunny rainy days) and the greater rarity of rabbit weddings (on sunny snowy days): why get married at all? And then it’s Absolute Destiny Apocalypse time. Utena’s just cranking through these people with swords pulled out of the hearts of the Student Council.
On the desks: a hundred different-colored copies of the brooch.
And Utena can’t fight. Not against a friend. Ah. It’s about time she encountered a problem; every other Black Rose duel has seen her being the consummate heroine.
The supporting character screams injustice at the title character. As well she should. Her story is just a minor part of the saga, merely there to reflect and support the title character’s arc.
And this time? She defeats this Black Rose with their own sword. Because she just can’t use the Sword of Deos on a friend.
Green Hair is back in school, back on the student council. Back in a frame of roses. And Utena’s shadow lives alone. Never to be framed by roses again, I suspect.
Next time on Utena: Mean Popular Girl is Mean and Popular.
But that’s the next DVD.
Utena continues to be a masterclass in the use of repetition. What’s normally a fault in animated TV shows has become a major asset in the hands of Be-Papas; going from one transformation scene that repeats every episode to multiple scenes that repeat, both straight up and with variations, has given them a very powerful storytelling tool. There are places in these notes where I knew how a sequence was going to end simply because of how the repeated scenes were played straight, or changed. This is a thing I would like to consider using. It requires a ton of setup, though - you have to show a thing working the Right Way at least two or three times before you can show it breaking. It’s definitely for serialized works, where each episode has its own story that can hit several of the repeated scenes, rather than a more condensed work that focuses on a single story from beginning to end.
Utena shows a way to stitch an otherwise-sprawling series into a tight knot around its themes. There are things to learn here, to be sure.
Originally published at Egypt Urnash. You can comment here or there.