#ep: nanami's egg

[asofterutena]

(I wasn’t prepared for this psychosexual crisis.)

the 27th episode of revolutionary girl utena, nanami's egg, aired 26 years ago.

[nesonkin]

At this point I'm starting to think that rgu wants me to believe that Nanami is a closeted furry

[zozoubbb]

hear me out, that episode of rgu where nanami convices herself that she has layed an egg is an analogy to periods. i know it is a filler episode and it doesnt need to have meaning, but i think that ep simbolizes getting a period. like, having a period is somewhat similar to laying eggs, cause when you get one your body disposes of your non fertilized eggs, and besides that, that episode talks alot about maturing. also, nanami gets scared because she has no idea on whats going on with her body and she thinks that other girls will laugh at her if she tells them that she has layed an egg, cause shes scared of it being a common experience that she is late to. in my opinion, that episode was trying to mimic the experience of a first period in a more funny and ridiculous way.

[wild-moss-art]

what is your first fave utena ep

MOOOOOOOO 🐮

[maggiecheungs]

REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA 🌹 EP 27: NANAMI'S EGG

[showerthoughtsofagoldengoose]

Revolutionary Girl Utena is still fresh on the mind and I’m trying to figure out the Nanami lays an egg episode. I think I get it a little.

Nanami laying an egg is a second instance of her femininity causing her to be equated to being like a farm animal, in this case a chicken rather than a cow. Another connection this episode has to the previous animal one is that it shows us her obsession with how she’s being perceived, however the animalistic quality (laying an egg) is a source of shame rather than a misguided source of pride (the cowbell).

The egg represents a lot of things.

first is the most literal interpretation- hormones kicking in. Eggs come from (I hate the way I’m phrasing this) something fertile. Fertility comes from hormones. So we could interpret this as a symbol mixing together several factors- “fertility” (your period?) and sexuality.

The part about sexuality mainly comes from a one off joke where Nanami asks her brother if he prefers boys or girls without realizing how that question sounds, and when she tells him she prefers girls he gets angry with her and spouts some homophobic bs at her, while she was most likely referring to the egg, whether the baby in it was a boy or a girl. This conversation feels very real, and makes me think the egg may represent latency.

Nanami knows there’s something “wrong” with her and when she tries to address it around her brother, he gets angry with her and she abandons (represses?) this aspect of herself only to come running back to it.

she loves her egg. That’s the thing. She takes good care of it and is happy to be around it. She always has. But she’s ashamed of the fact that it came from her. Laying eggs is not something a girl normally does, at least she doesn’t think so. She could have simply had her first period but I think it’s more than just that- like her burgeoning sexuality. While it is a part of her identity it’s something she feels the need to repress. When it is seen, potentially used by someone she doesn’t want (Sayonji, the three weird guys with glasses who idek what their deal is yet lmao) she is upset.

I think the egg being broken when she wakes up is a representation of some kind of hopelessness. As if she can’t accept herself in the end for that aspect of herself, all because of the pressures surrounding her and breaks down in the end.

I think it’s important to mention how eggs are mentioned frequently in the show- what with the world’s end chick in the egg speech we get in every single episode. Latency. I think it refers to latency.

and with the act of laying an egg, being forced to confront this latency, wanting it to be released but unable to truly act on it despite how valuable it is??

I feel like while the lesbian reading is pertinent given how oddly specific the homophobia scene is, like all things utena, lesbianism isn’t all there is to it. I also mentioned maturity, growing up, hormones, fertility, some implicitly mentioned, others explicit.

It will take a lot to break down this show and staring off with this episode, this strange strange ep? Maybe not the best idea! My head hurts lol.

idk why but I always found the nanami episodes to be kind of raw and emotional despite their surreal comedy. She’s obsessed with how others see her, relies on one other person extremely heavily for affection, someone she looks up to in a way that almost seems kind of immoral (incest), and is this oddly sensitive person despite her melodrama and over the top oujo sama personality.

I think it’s worth noting that she lacks much of a support system. Her closest friends are fake, when she is traumatized she tells no one about it and carries the burden of knowing that alone. Her concept of one person she thinks truly loves her is also later challenged. I wouldn’t even call her and the little boy close. Nanami is interesting in that she does have social leverage and fits the popular bitch stereotype/archetype but I would consider her lonely in that lack of having support. Thus her anxieties are worsened, her shame about herself is worsened. This and her immaturity and naiivete. She truly doesn’t understand how a lot of things work, and this is because she wasn’t taught them.

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

if i had a penny for every time i screamed "Get awayyyy from her!!!" at Touga as im watching Utena ep 10 i would have three. and im not even halfway into the episode. Get a life and get away from these girls!!!!! the kiss on Nanamis eyelid like how dios kisses Utena in the intro... sickening... get away from my beloved egg girl!!!

[heartslobbf]

could you talk about food in rgu as a kind of symbol for incest? it doesn't have to be anything too coherent or anything i just loved that post and would like to hear a bit more abt it!

hello yes absolutely!!!!! i appreciate you enabling me to be incoherent because whilst i claim to be a writer, i am godawful at putting anything polished out thanks to my perfectionism. you do not want to see my rgu essay drafts.

anyway. food and incest in rgu. i made a post saying that every food item in rgu at least tangentially relates to the show's exploration of incestuous abuse and how that is directly enabled by the institution of family. underneath the cut im gonna talk about my favourite and most notable examples of this. note that i will be closely discussing examples of incestuous abuse and csa in rgu.

my big thesis on this topic stems from the fact that anthy can't cook but akio can. anthy is capable of making non-substantial food, and otherwise entirely incompetent in the kitchen. she can't really provide for herself, and thus is dependent on others (namely akio) to live. akio is an adult who prides himself on his supposed independence (note how that independence helps shape his americanised masculinity), and not only does he cook and therefore provide for anthy, later utena and nanami, but he's shown to be beyond competent in the kitchen. he bakes a cake in episode 30 which both utena and wakaba comment on as being impressive, and in episode 32 he makes a rose hip jam that suggests his culinary skills go beyond standard measures.

the family institution makes it incredibly difficult for people to leave abusive families, especially when they are children. the ability to feed oneself in rgu determines how stuck in ohtori's system a character is. wakaba, for instance, is presented as an amateurish cook, and despite having proximity to the duels and akio is never fully subsumed by them. saionji and tsuwabuki are probably the other characters most notable for culinary skills, and for both of them they are only ever shown preparing food for themselves or nanami. with tsuwabuki, this is another of his unintentionally sinister attempts to be close with nanami. he is essentially trying to make her depend upon him to live, but he's literally 10 and doesn't really understand the implications of what he's doing. he just wants to provide for her! saionji offers to make nanami eggs when he notices that she's distressed, and i think this gets at the nuance of dependence on others, and being a provider. namely, you will and should be dependent upon others to an extent. offering and accepting help alike is important. saionji offering to make nanami eggs is a nice and genuine moment between them, and is distinctly different from some other instances ive discussed because their relationship isn't abusive or toxic or pseudo-incestuous or whatever else.

i'd like to suggest that miki and kozue's milkshake is actually quite similar to the eggs, even though their relationship is both toxic and incestuous. when kozue asks miki for a milkshake at the end of episode 15, she's extending an olive branch. the milkshake is complicated undoubtedly, but i think it pretty effectively summarises the issues in their relationship a la purity and knowledge and independence. i would write more on this if i'd rewatched ep 15 recently but it's worth noting that the milkshake is textually childish and non-substantive, and that's why kozue initially rejects it whilst miki makes and drinks it.

my magnum opus of incestuous food is the shaved ice, which is kind of like saying the sky is blue. like gee i wonder why anthy tells nanami in episode 4 that mixing the red and yellow syrrups together tastes so good like i just cant work it out its too subtle as utena always is. and of course the shaved ice reprises in episodes 31 and 32, or as i like to call them, Hey Check Out This Show's Thesis On Incestuous Abuse. dont think i need to explain whats going on when anthy feeds akio shaved ice in front of nanami and theyre both horribly uncomfortably coy and flirtatious the whole time. i definitely think theres something in anthy's shaved ice facilitating incestuous implications in all its appearances, but im not sure what. the ice isnt about forcing people to depend upon their family members, it's childish and indulgent and there's certainly something in that which relates to anthy. i actually have a lot of thoughts about anthy's perception of incest, namely because she loves to make jokes about it and all of them make me very sad. all instances of shaved ice are about taunting nanami, also. lots of thoughts here.

final big cornerstone in food = incest relates to a throwaway moment at the start of ep 11 where utena reveals that she intended to eat a single pre-packaged piece of convenience food for lunch, and wakaba and anthy both provide elaborate bentos for her instead. utena is an orphan. there's no one to provide for her in any socially conventional way, her parents aren't making her lunches nor have they taught her how to. returning to my Akio Can Cook point, in episode 26 akio tells utena that he considers her 'practically family'. there is a pseudo-incestuous nature to akio's relationships with both utena and touga, which is a broader point for a broader topic, but what's really important here is that utena feels she can depend upon akio to provide for her. and, horribly, she can! this makes it all the more difficult to reject him, because he is everything she has wanted ever since her parents died. you can also link to tsuwabuki here with pseudo-incest, and returning to touga momentarily there's something about the kiryuu family and all of their food being made by staff and also, you know, incest and pseudo-incest.

i think these are the big things to hit in regards to this idea. the curry episode is also absolutely fascinating, as is kanae and the apple, as is the cantarella scene and tea and cookies in ten years time. im kind of just throwing ideas around now but im not trying to write some deeply considered essay here, more so throw around some ideas ive had and see if anything sticks with anyone else.

[ladyloveandjustice]

Utena always had a bit of a slice of life element to it, so my question is, what's your favourite filler episode from the show and why

Hmmm probably Cowbell of Happiness, it's just too iconic. Nanami's Egg is close behind though.

I do think that the Nanami episodes are essential to what makes Utena the show it is, so I wouldn't really call them filler, but it's a broad word so I get it! The only ep of Utena I'd truly consider filler is the Secret Nanami Diary recap one, you lose nothing by skipping it (other than the knowledge Mitsuru is even more of a ten year old freak than we already knew) and I usually skip it when I'm showing Utena to a friend or partner.

[wlwkiryuu]

Fav Nanami EP. Or moment?

nanami episode....definitely her tragedy. it probably has some of the best parallels of nanami to anthy (and by extension, touga and akio's dynamics with the two) in the whole show and really drives home the fact that they're foils. romance of the dancing girls is a close second though because of how it follows up on her tragedy!

nanami's precious thing is very underrated though imo. a lot of people immediately dismiss it from any analysis of nanami because of the Cat Discourse (which is. wild. why is that still happening). it's an incredibly important episode in terms of how it shows her defining motivation to duel, though. i think what really makes nanami stand out is that every other duelist is dueling utena because anthy has affected them, somehow, but with nanami...even if she dislikes anthy, it's more because of her grudge against utena. her motivations to duel are a lot more personally connected to who she is dueling than the others.

as for the sillier episodes, nanami's egg is definitely the best one to me. while cowbell of happiness also shows off nanami's insecurities and desire for status and acceptance, i think nanami's egg does it better with the space alien motif and the um. touga homophobia speech LOL. plus it's got the best saionji-nanami interaction in the show...they were very cute in that one conversation :')

AS FOR BEST MOMENT...THE number one nanami moment for me is near the end when all the council members are playing badminton together, and nanami shows up just to warn utena about the end of the world. nanami warns her not to go, utena responds that she's "blood type b" (referencing how nanami's blood type doesn't match up with touga's), meaning she's stubborn, and nanami says she is too, and smiles. the final indicator that she's completely divorced from her identity as touga's sister that she's held onto so long in the show, and literally the only time she's genuinely smiled at utena. SO good.

oh yeah and i guess she turns into a cow too which is pretty funny

[asofterutena]

(sometimes “you broke me into sharp little pieces” isn’t an euphemism.)

[original comic by @diaryofadissembler]

[transmascutena]

so excited to finish and post my bird essay but i'm afraid i'll be missing something because i keep remembering new symbols when i was sure i had them all. initially it was just. the birdcage garden, the bird flying into the window and the nest kozue saves. but then i was like what about the student council speech, can't forget that. what about NANAMI'S EGG and anthy's chicken. and i just woke up in the middle of the night to think about nanami and touga ep 31 brood parasitism shadow play......

[worlds-best-sippycup]

Okay, so in my last post/reaction about Utena ep 2 I maybe didn't get into any detail properly so here's some stuff:

I actually follow someone who's watched Utena, and I watched an AMV that got into Anthy's brain pretty often. So I know that Utena and Anthy's relationship isn't a simple/pure protector one, that Anthy is being groomed by her brother, her brother is the Prince, both of them are immortal(?), and that someone called Nanami gets turned into a cow. I probably didn't consider some context we were given in the first two episodes: Utena is in middle school/"junior high" so she's probably 13 or so? That explains a lot about the way she talks about gender- she hasn't really marked herself as 'not a girl' even though she doesn't fit with it. She is just not thinking about it, is the sense I get, which is fine, because she's 13! There's also that bit with the teacher, where she notes that a girl wearing a boy's uniform is not outside the rules (we're skipping over the fact that none of these boys seem to be wearing skintight shorts lol) so... she hasn't had a need to break the rules yet, which might be interesting with the statement of "Revolution!".

She is fully ready to fight for her friend Wakaba (as is only right, Wakaba's the best) even if she wasn't initially ready to fight for Anthy. Maybe the idea that Anthy can't leave the duels hadn't occurred to her?

Anthy calls Choo-choo her friend and not her pet, maybe because she doesn't want it to feel forced to stay like she is?

The metaphor with the egg and the chick being about revolution feels like foreshadowing - Utena and Anthy need to break this system now or it will crush them. Also interesting that the song that plays while Utena climbs up the stairs has several lines about birth, midwifery, paradise lost (Lucifer falling from grace) - so perhaps the arena is the place where this hatching must happen.

Lastly, the council mentioned that the upside-down castle only appears... when the person bringing revolution arrives? Does that refer generally to anyone holding a sigil, or anyone holding Anthy, OR is Utena some kind of Chosen One?

None of these are questions I'm asking the good tumblrites to answer btw! Talking to myself!

[blueiight]

nanami!

NANAMIN<3

First impression

anime regina george?

Impression now

if i had a daughter id want her to be like nanami kiryuu (but not really) (but maybe so). one of the best characters ever

Favorite moment

I WANT TO SURPASS EVERYTHING… the person i once was… my brother… anthy.. and YOU!. god thats the coolest thing ever to me. her duels in ep10 and 32 are one of my favorites of the whole show. i also think its beyond adorable when she genuinely tends to the egg with so much love and care even tho shes under the ever present fear of being socially outcasted for it she never discards it she always takes dear care of it. so profound for an ep ppl skip dont u think. COWSTIAN DIOR .

Idea for a story

nanami trying to become a prince AU.. transmuting her belief of ‘not wanting to be part of the swarm’ with wanting to transcend being a little sister (& never being allowed to be a princess). if i cant be Ur Princess. I wont be a Witch. so I’ll Be a prince Instead! But was that a good idea?

Unpopular opinion

in recognizing the parallels between akio & anthy they fail to realize that nanami’s sibling relationship to touga is entirely different. and sometimes nanami is just a teenage girl

Favorite relationship

touga, saionji, utena, tsuwabuki, the ‘flies in her swarm’ (i love the relationship she has w keiko and the girls theres a genuine middle / high school air of fake friendships about it all that its so fascinating)

Favorite headcanon

gave up my hc w/ touga but another one she meets wakaba post ohtori and ends up being in the craziest homoerotic friendship ever with her. their complexes combined would be fascinating to see

[maggiecheungs]

EP 16: THE COWBELL OF HAPPINESS || EP 27: NANAMI'S EGG

[aptericia]

i finished utena last night and if you hadn't said utena x anthy was canon i wouldn't have known lol. how do people in the comments know all this stuff that i thought was going to be revealed but wasn't? like that anthy put the egg in nanami's bed or that anthy was disguised as mamiya or that people in akio's school don't age? is that in the manga or movie? i am trying to watch the movie now i like utena's new look but not anthy's

Omg, congrats on finishing the show! Yeah UtenaxAnthy isn’t explicit in the series but it is in the movie (and I think the creators might have stated that it was intended for the anime as well?). The movie is… a thing… I don’t like it as much as the anime but it has some cool concepts. Personally it makes more sense to me when viewed is a sequel, rather than a retelling. Also Anthy’s skin being so much paler in the movie has some unfortunate implications… :/

About the anime: I think a lot of the un-reveals are much clearer on a second viewing (or by reading/watching people’s analyses). For example, at the end of ep 23, Mamiya’s “false” appearance is present in Akio’s tower and then he turns around to reveal Anthy’s face. It’s not really clear what happened from just that scene, but if you rewatch the arc with that connection between the two in mind, you can see how Anthy has been manipulating the duelists into coming to Nemuro Memorial Hall to serve Mikage’s (actually Akio’s) goals, and given that Mamiya is actually dead, it makes sense for her to be impersonating him.

I’d be happy to link you to some good analyses I’ve found, if you’d like! I’m not very eloquent and my interpretation is mostly just a mashup of other people’s anyway 😅 I do hope you liked the show, and feel free to tell me your opinions on it! Good luck with the movie as well XD