#and juri only has shiori’s best interest at heart and always has so like. also i don’t get it

[elizabeth-dicewielder]

Putting the word toxic, especially the phrase toxic yuri, up on the shelf until some of y’all learn how to use it properly

[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

[queen-of-hearts92]

Any more thoughts about "Beautiful Thorns"? I personally liked that Shiori wasn't demonized this time.

I’m gonna do a full thing with more thoughts later but I’ll put down what I got on my mind for now. ouo

I, personally, did like Beautiful Thorns but I do get why there are people who don’t like it. The story of Juri, Shiori, and Ruka has been simplified greatly, so if you like it or not depends on if you are ok with/like how the story turned out after simplification. 

However I don’t think the story being simplified means theres nothing to look at here, and that we should blow it off as “Saito not understanding Utena again oh hoho”. We shouldn’t do that. Let’s not do that.

So imma talk about Beautiful Thorns aka “Juri you useless lesbian, pls stop hallucinating dead people” and see the different take at the relations between these three characters as well as looking at what we got from this story as a whole. /owo/

(Quick note: I discussed this manga with my friend Fuji so I’ll be mentioning her when repeating what we discussed. \owo/)

Let’s start with Juri and Shiori and how it goes in this version. 

Juri falls for Shiori while they’re in middle/high school instead of them being childhood friends. Shiori, in this universe, is the well off pretty girl. Juri is the one who refers to herself as “unlovable” and “ugly” this time. Juri wants this cute girl to notice her but isn’t sure how to go about it until she overhears Shiori saying she thinks fencers are cool like princes. Juri, being the baby gay that she is, goes “GUESS WHO’S GONNA LEARN FENCING, IT IS I” and she learns the fuck outta fencing cause Juri is go big or go home and if fencing is the best way to impress Shiori then you bet your ass she’ll do it! She learns the fuck out of fencing so much she becomes the school’s fencing champion and Shiori does indeed notice her. However, shock and sadness, she’s engaged to another. 

That would be Ruka, who I think is also part of the fencing team. So here while Ruka is her senpai, he is also “that motherfucker engaged to Shiori” this time around. Kinda different there lol. Her feelings towards Ruka are jealously and also feeling like he is a standard she can never live up to. I’m gonna touch on this more later down the line cause this falls with the prince thing. So, lets keep going. ouo 

Juri is like “aw fuck me” and we get to see the inside of the iconic locket we all know and love and she becomes a sad gay (now in this universe Shiori facing away from the camera in the picture doesn’t. make. much. sense. but idk guess Saito just wanted it to look like the one in the anime). One day, she drops the dang thing and Ruka finds it and is like “lol if u want it back come and catch me” Juri tries to catch up to him but she forgets that Ruka has long ass legs so he gets away. 

Now Ruka during all this has fallen in love with Juri, however he realizes that Juri loves Shiori. Unlike anime! Ruka, this Ruka takes this rather well. But he is concerned by Juri’s drive to be a prince cause we all know that being a prince in RGU is a terrible idea overall. I’m gonna talk about Shiori in a moment but first imma quickly cover the part that’s taken from the movie aka the big old life changing moment for all the people involved here. 

So Juri is all bummed out cause Ruka took her locket and she’s being sad by a river on a stormy day (cause that’s the BEST time to hang out by the river, when theres a fuckin storm). Then she sees Shiori, who uh, either get pulled into the water by a wave or she fell in I honestly can’t tell but either way Shiori falls into the damn river. Juri is like “iTS PRINCE TIME” and dives in and saves Shiori’s life. But Juri can’t pull herself out due to the current and gets pulled under herself. Ruka comes the fuck in and is like “NOPE LETS NOT” pulling her out to safety and he is pulled under and dies instead. 

Now, as mentioned in a convo I had with Fuji, Juri has been outprinced by Ruka. She wanted to be one to impress Shiori with her princelyness but now Ruka has permanently upstaged her in her mind by giving up his life to save another. And this, was on purpose by Ruka. Which I’ll talk about more later. After this happens it seems like Juri follows a path like movie! Juri did. She feels like she still has to compete for Shiori’s heart, and has to keep playing the prince no matter what. 

This idea of always being a prince has slowly been messing her up over the years to a point she’s literally seeing things (magic castle bullshit aside), ignoring Shiori, behaving aggressively overprotective towards Shiori (more on that later), and struggling to win fencing matches. This mindset of “being a prince” doesn’t work so great for an adult who hasn’t coped with their guilt/trauma yet. Juri, much like anime Utena, has thrown a lot of her self identity into being a prince and now its harming her quite intensely. I’ll get to the resolution of this a little later but that’s the position we see 36 year old Juri in when the story starts.

Note: I say 36 by adding 20 years to her age she was in the original series in which was 16. Yup.

Now Imma talk about Shiori here.

This Shiori is quite different from previous ones, especially for both of her relationships here. There are more parallels to her movie counterpart to be made due to the nature of the story which is very interesting. 

So, for the relationship she has with Juri. It doesn’t seems like Shiori blames Juri for what happened at the river, unlike in the movie where she did and mcfreakin lost it. Even if it wasn’t the smartest thing for Juri to do, Juri did still save her life at the end of the day. That didn’t occur in the movie but I can’t comment too much about the movie’s situation cause theres a lot of ??? in that particular aspect but thats a totally different discussion so moving on. I think there is a part of Shiori that feels guilty about what happened, like Juri nearly died saving her which lead to Ruka’s death. She implies she use to dream about Ruka and ghost! Ruka visiting her tells me that she’s probably also had trouble coping with the tragedy though she’s handling it a lot better then Juri has been.

However what Shiori decides to do is she chose to support Juri, becoming her fencing manager/agent from what seems like high school and well into their adulthood (which I do indeed love oh man). Juri even says that Shiori has been supporting her for quite sometime and is grateful for her support! It seems like Shiori refers to Juri as “my prince” at times cause she figured out doing so made Juri happy, which makes me think she did in fact figure out Juri’s big gay crush on her and might feel the same way but she hasn’t felt like she can tell Juri that yet due to Juri’s um. Problems. And probably her own lingering guilt for Ruka who was engaged to her in the past.

Side note: I think Shiori refers to Juri with the -san suffix here because of her position as her manager/agent. That’s just my guess anyway!

As for Juri’s problems, their relationship has started to hit a big roadblock at the time of the narrative because of said problems reaching their boiling point. It sounds like Juri has become more erratic recently but she’s had certain concerning behaviors before she started really acting oddly. 

Judging from what we’ve seen, when guys (or maybe even anyone) that remind her of Ruka get too close to Shiori, Juri suddenly grabs her, pulls her away, and is very overprotective of Shiori around these said guys. We know this isn’t a new thing for Juri to do because right after that happens Shiori says “When you act like that, I just get so…Forget it.” and Shiori even considers becoming a manager/agent for someone else because she’s getting real tired of shit like that. We can even see a bit of Juri’s possessiveness during her duel with ghost! Ruka when she says “I won’t let you have Shiori!”. I imagine maybe Shiori thought Juri’s overprotectiveness and possessiveness was kinda cute when they were 16 and therefore didn’t discourage said behavior but now they are 36, it has longgg ceased to be cute to her anymore so she’s running out of patience for it. However by the end Juri has decided to let go of “becoming a prince” and Shiori was visited by ghost Ruka as well. Now Juri and Shiori can truly move on in life, they can move from harmful roles like princes and princesses that had carried over from their adolescence and instead have relationships as healthy adult. 

Shiori, I think has already moved passed what happened back then and was moving towards the future before ghost! Ruka said hello to her in her dreams. She was just waiting for Juri to catch up. \o3o/

As for Shiori’s relationship to Ruka theres a MASSIVE difference here. It seems like, even though they were engaged to be married, Shiori and Ruka didn’t hold romantic feelings for each other. It was just like “welp we’re in an arranged marriage, alrighty. Might as well get along”. I say that due to Ruka’s crush on Juri and it simply didn’t seem like that’s the case by the brief interaction we saw between the two of them. 

Judging by her response to his death they were still friends, probably close friends. So that makes Ruka and Shiori the childhood friends here, WILD MAN. Anyways, losing Ruka was probably hard on her. We only see her grieving briefly but I think it’s enough to understand there wasn’t animosity between them at the very least and they were indeed most likely close friends. This tells me that Shiori had probably a close childhood, and seemly supportive, friend that she didn’t grow up to hate which makes a world of difference and why she’s less of a trainwreck in BT. It’s kinda a shame we didn’t see more of their interactions, I’d love to see how this version of Ruka and Shiori talked to each other and such.

There is a lot I like/find interesting about this version of Shiori. However I will say I feel there should have been a little more focus on what Shiori was thinking about all this. I feel like theres some gaps here. Like did she actually figure out that Juri is SUPER gay for her? Like I think so cause of what I said earlier and that Juri can’t hide it very well but we haven’t been given any confirmation for sure as far as I can tell. Plus what did she think of Juri before the accident anyways? Or before that? Like, I feel theres some missing pieces here hm. I’d love to see the pieces filled in but we probably won’t get that so I suppose we’re going without sadly. 8/

Let’s get to Ruka and Shiori now, on the Ruka side of things that is. This Ruka is quite different from the Ruka in the anime. Looks like a major difference between anime Ruka and this one is that anime Ruka HATED Shiori and blamed her for all of the problems she and Juri had and was also very jealous of the fact Juri liked her but not him. BT Ruka on the other hand was childhood friends with Shiori and had been engaged to her when they were children. They were close enough to a point when after he died Shiori is shouting to his body “How could you get yourself killed saving Juri?!” which implies that Ruka doing “princely things” isn’t out of character for him to do and he normally didn’t die doing them and Shiori knew that quite well hence his death was all the more shocking. So he didn’t villianize Shiori for breaking Juri’s heart or anything like that. Instead he wanted both the girl he was in love with AND his childhood friend to be happy. Which is super duper different than anime Ruka cause lets face it, in order to make Ruka be likeable enough to be considered a prince figure this kind of change had to be made. Oh yeah and bonus points for BT Ruka for not committing sexual assault, thank god I probably would have died inside if that occurred and was treated as heroic omg…. 

Ruka, was indeed a prince this time around. Fuji and I had discussed that being a prince means sacrificing EVERYTHING, including your life. That’s why he didn’t want Juri to go down that road, if she did she’d end up dead. Hence he calls her a goddess instead, unlike princes a goddess is immortal. It’s hard to say what was going on in Ruka’s mind when he saved Juri and if he had maybe drowned willingly? But why? Like Ruka, buddy. I have a lot of questions still. And there isn’t much answers, cause everyone who writes Ruka love to keep him super mysterious it seems like.

At the end of all this, thanks to ghost! Ruka and Revolution Force Ghost Utena, Juri decides to stop trying to live up to this unobtainable prince role and let it go. Clinging onto this role was damaging to her and the people around her. Instead she’ll do things if she wants to and because she loves to, not because it’s a princely thing to do so. Hence “fight Jyuri” (which I can’t decide if Ruka can’t fuckin spell her name or he is making a TERRIBLE pun) being engraved on the locket. Fuji and I talked about how, this story, as well as the one right b4 it, is alll about finding value in yourself and not in toxic impossible roles either in life or relationships.

Ok! Now I’m gonna talk a bit on the fandom’s reaction. Note to all reading this, I’m not here to say you gotta like this chapter or else. I just want to address a little bit of what I’ve seen online since the translation came out. I understand if you dislike how the story was told/simplified, like each to their own. I’m not here to bag on you, like or dislike whatever you want. If you like it, ok! If you don’t, also ok! Cool? Cool.

Anyways, I’ve seen a couple people saying things like, “what. Juri wouldn’t *insert impulsive/intense action here*” or dislike that its not as complex as the anime/saying Saito doesn’t understand Utena. 

Well first off this isn’t the same Juri as anime Juri, so probably should think of this as a different version of her or it’s gonna be a bad time. And Juri making impulsive choices due to an outburst of her emotions is quite in character, in fact we see that in episode 7 when she nearly tackles Utena into a fountain trying to yank Utena’s ring off, or that episode when she slaps Anthy in the face for seemingly no reason (I know there is one but she still shouldn’t slap her) like listen. Juri pretends/tries to be calm and collected, she isn’t totally what she appears to be. Like, that’s a pretty frequent theme in Utena y’all. But yeah I find that an odd thing to say something like that for a story thats just a different take of these characters, you don’t gotta like it but don’t say its out of character in the context of the anime because we aren’t in the anime’s context. Like this isn’t the anime and never will be. Speaking of which.

I think the fandom can be a bit, overly critical towards Chiho Saito. Is the original manga good? Eh, I think it’s only ok personally (it really has problems tho man). Is it better then the show? No, the anime is still the best version of Utena out there.

Look. Expecting this manga to have similar complexity that the anime had isn’t a good idea because the anime was written by a group of ppl instead of just one person like this manga was! You’re just not gonna get the same result. A group creation will always been different than a single person creation. Always, always, always.

Listen, this series is over 20 years old and has had a ton of media over the years. You don’t have to like this manga if you don’t want to, or any of the other Utena media if thats how you feel. But, I think people are wrong saying Saito doesn’t understand Utena. She does, maybe differently than you do but what’s done in this manga ties in well as a continuation of Utena’s themes. This manga (both the chapters) is about adulthood and moving on from what occurs during childhood and adolescence. It’s a pretty logical move forward for the series to take, you can’t go back to adolescence. You can only move forward and try find yourself as an adult. And that, strikes me as quite RGU feeling indeed. Even though no one has turned into a car yet, but hey. Maybe next time! \*w*/

Super side note: Why the fuck does Miki look like a 13 year old’s head on a grown man’s body? It’s weird! It’s fucking weird! Like gdi Saito you couldn’t like give Miki a new hairstyle or a mustache or something? Is this a plot point? Did Miki find the eternal youth fountain? I’m concerned. Pls let Miki’s face age he is in his 30s omg.