#it has “in the end all girls are like the rose bride” AND the badminton scene AND the cantarella scene

[transmascutena]

episode 37 is my favorite episode easily i love it so much there's not a single scene that doesn't hit me like a truck

[oodlenoodleroodle]

The thing that makes Revolutionary Girl Utena tv-show so enduring and powerful imo is that both the straight reading and the queer reading are equally powerful. Like it's ambiguous on purpose due to the time it was made in, but the straight reading isn't weaker or more confusing. Both "queer love between women" and "true friendship between women" work as catalysts of revolution in this world.

Whether Utena does what she does at the end because she queer-loves Anthy or because she friend-loves Anthy creates different but equally compelling narratives. In the queer reading you contrast Utena and her love for Anthy with Jury and her love for Shiori (both kinda tragic loves, but Utena overcomes by not in the end hating her love for her betrayals [both Shiori and Anthy commit plural betrayals so it's not even just a magnamonious forgiving of one mistake]) and in the friend reading you contrast Utena and her friendship with Anthy to Touga and Saionji's friendship (which is also full of betrayals). Like which ever reading you do, she revolutionises the center: either she revolutionises love between women, or she breaks apart Touga and Saionji's truism that there's no such thing as real friendship in this world.

I really like the "just friends" -reading also in the sense of how it works towards Anthy. Saionji and Miki are both boys who want Anthy for themselves in a romantic/sexual way, and I like that the friendship reading doesn't include that aspect for Utena: she doesn't want Anthy, her desires don't enter into it, she wants only good things to come to Anthy, she wants Anthy to be free to want what she wants, rather than being a pawn. Obviously all of that is true even in the queer reading (like Utena tries to explain during the badminton, her love for Anthy is "pure") but it comes to the fore in the friendship reading since you don't have Utena's own romantic feelings to consider.

The friendship reading also makes her rejection of Akio different: rather than choosing which sibling she loves more, she chooses "the sisterhood" over a man (which is especially important since the show has shown Akio as really desirable and that all the girls are competing for him). She stays true to her original noble heart: her goal since childhood was to save the witch from eternal suffering. However in that there is a possible pity trap. Child-Utena seeing the Rose Bride for the first time is clearly moved by pity (call it empathy or sympathy or whatever if you must) so there is a risk of seeing Utena's actions towards Anthy as rising from pity - which is eliminates by the queer reading when she is more motivated by her queer love for Anthy.

And of course there are moments where one reading is more powerful than the other. Utena's rejection of Touga at the dueling arena is more interesting in the queer reading than in the straight reading. Like yes Touga assumes Utena loves Akio, but she doesn't actually say so direct, and since Akio and Anthy are obviously thematically connected in Utena's mind, it's not far-fetched to assume that in that moment Utena thinks about whether she loves Akio or whether it's actually Anthy she loves.

[whoslaurapalmer]

utena 36-39!!!!!!!!

i should have done these as two separate posts but by the time i got all my thoughts together about 36-37, it was the time i was gonna watch 38-39, so i just KEPT THEM ALL TOGETHER

36-37

-touga has a motorcycle now............. -oh hell yeah that post was right!! he is bargain bin akio and saionji is luigi, and there they go in their knockoff motorcycle with a goddamn side car  -aaaa god especially when saionji stood up and touga said “standing that way is dangerous.” y’all  -they really can’t be completely like akio because they are missing the fundamental control akio has  -everything they do backfires with utena, and anthy (because of utena)  (-oh.........and then they get downgraded to their original bicycle........)  (-idk i guess i feel a little bad for them. still gonna say ‘ew’ when i see them though.) 

-i had a vague vibe when touga gave utena the earrings but this time......juri and miki talking about how she looks like a girl now, utena taking the ring off and saying “i’m starting to think that ring doesn’t really suit me.”, “in the end, all i’ve been doing is playing prince.” -didn’t think i would say this but put the prince back in the girl  -well no that’s not successful either. but.  -it’s something utena relies on and that reliance is the core of who she is and akio’s taking it out piece by piece and. it’s turning her into someone she still isn’t (to the point that she goes on a date with touga!!! LIKE, TWICE!!!), she’s not “a princess” sort of person either, she’s utena but who is that, too  -when utena has nothing left, who is she?  -but ugggggg the fact that akio was the whole REASON she did it in the first place!!!! BOTH TIMES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD  -mmm. thinking about when the shadow girls said “a girl who can’t become a princess becomes a witch”  -before you know the eight kinds of whiplash in the play i was like ‘!! is the prince in this scenario utena? .....THE PRINCE WAS AKIO????’ -me, this morning, thinking over yesterday, putting all the foreshadowing together yet again: ......you know, lulu, you really should’ve seen that one coming too.........you literally thought they looked alike........ -also me, this morning: .......WAIT me: IS THAT WHY ANTHY HAS THE SWORD IN HER???????? -okay hold on back to the ring. that she takes it off after she sees akio and anthy (and that she’s upset at anthy :( )   -and also that she would give up the ring, the idea of her prince, for, WHO IS EXACTLY THE SAME DAMN PERSON  -i have a lot of feelings about this i’m also upset i did not want to seriously consider it  -there are no true princes, in anything, anywhere! but! that is not a bad thing!! 

-“in the end, girls are all like rose brides.” all girls suffer for doing good things? all girls are treated like possessions?  -all girls do terrible things in return...... -all girls get used to it 

-oh to be playing badminton with friends........ -.........in soft sunshine on green grass and pretending nothing is wrong before the end of the world but you know  -completely irrelevant here but it got me thinking of the badminton scene in fruits basket......the sweetest softest scene in the world  -WHY CAN’T EVERYONE HERE HAVE A GOOD TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  -ahem. anyway  -nanami.............you do care about utena...........

-look i’ve heard vocaloid cantarella, i screamed when anthy said cantarella 

-seeing akio actually look angry was Even More Terrifying than regular general akio  -anthy :(  -okay i will admit. i have no damn idea what happened on the rooftop 

38-39

-that utena and anthy are still gonna go in, together.......... -OH I GOT THE ROOFTOP NOW -there it all is :(  -“i used you and your naivete” “i was protecting you for my ego” :(((((((( 

-of course “reality”, “eternity” would be akio’s room. of fucking course 

- “she enjoys being a witch!” “she’s the rose bride of her own free will.” what else is there 

- “you could never be my prince. because you’re a girl.” when you’re so used to one thing, no matter what it’s become, no matter what you’ve become!! who are you when you let go of that, despite what it is? -of course a girl can’t save you!!! that’s not how a story goes!!!!!! 

(-akio saying that it’s your fault at this point has absolutely no meaning. especially because he still doesn’t do anything???) (and what it is that he even desires with whatever power he would get isn’t what matters at all because it’s the fact that he desires in the first place and the way he goes about it, that it’s about him and not anyone else, not anthy, that he would step on and use anyone again and again, to try and open that gate) (i think i meant to go somewhere with that sentence but i lost it by the end.....) 

-god...........it’s not trying to fight for someone or trying to protect someone it’s just about loving them and wanting to help just like that :((((((((  -IT’S JUST ABOUT BEING TOGETHER NEXT TO SOMEBODY  -YOU’RE THERE!!!!!!!! SO ARE THEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! that’s enough, to do anything, to cause any change.........to be happy.......to be able to take just one step somewhere else, to stop  -nothing else matters!! there aren’t any other words!!!!! that’s all!!!!!!!!!!!  -and that anthy does choose to take utena’s hand!! that that is a choice she gets to make! that she’s allowed to make!! that she makes herself!!!!  -that they both.......do get out of their coffins, in the end.............. 

-“she’s gone from your world.” the world akio creates as a means to an end to cause whatever change on his terms vs the world akio creates as an abuser  -ah.......it was a combination of ‘how long has this been going on’ and ‘how many times has this happened’  -but that everyone else is still there........ :( but that they’ve changed, a little, too............that time still goes on...... -wakaba :( 💔 

-there are more words i could put in here but aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa -someday!!!!!!! together!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ✨✨💕💕��🌟 (-they hold hands at the beginning and the end...!! 💞💞) 

[iztarshi]

Duel Patterns

I’m procrastinating so hard I wrote long, rambly Utena meta.

Miki gets the most straightforward pattern to his duels.

Miki > Kozue with Miki’s sword > Miki and Kozue

Perhaps because of this it feels like he doesn’t really change much, though? His duels start and end with the same problem, and the final duel just plays it out. Miki is easily convinced to duel, but irresolute while duelling because he feels (…fairly enough, I suppose) that the duels make him impure, and doesn’t want to risk his own invincible innocence. Kozue is unable to resist acting out to get Miki’s attention, even when she knows it’s only making things worse. Kozue distracts him by making out with Anthy, Miki can’t keep going in the face of that, and acting at cross-purposes causes them to crash — Miki is hit by the car Kozue was in.

Juri’s duels would follow the same pattern, but the addition of Ruka spreads the final duel out over two, with Ruka and Shiori, and Ruka and Juri. It’s hard to say whether the pattern disruption helps or hinders Juri’s arc. Considering Ruka had to first manipulate and then bargain to get her to duel at all, it seems as if she might simply have made good on bowing out without his interference. Ultimately, she doesn’t wind up so far from where she started either. She wanted to either confess to Shiori or be free of her — by the end she’s still struggling with that, even with the locket gone.

The badminton game takes Juri and Miki into trying to let go and form new relationships (with Utena) instead, which is good. In the post-revolution sequences, though, it seems to be Kozue and Shiori who are finding themselves and changing their behaviour. Although perhaps Miki and Juri letting up helped with that.

Saionji and Touga have a different pattern. Their Black Rose duels are almost irrelevant (Touga’s especially). Saionji might have been sincerely grateful to Wakaba, but she doesn’t have anything like the hold on him Kozue and Shiori have on Miki and Juri. Wakaba and Keiko more bring out the theme of the Black Rose arc itself — people who feel like they’re nobodies reaching for those who are somebodies.

Outside the Black Rose arc Touga and Saionji often echo each other’s duels. In the first arc the first and last duels Utena fights are against Saionji and Touga, and both end with the other with the Sword of Dios and her with a broken sword. Both boys fight her twice, too. There’s also the “the Sword of Dios has no special powers”/“the Sword of Dios has special powers and you didn’t know about them” echo, as Touga reveals what he knew that Saionji didn’t.

There’s also the unscheduled trip to the arena, which isn’t really a duel, and definitely not part of Akio’s patterns (he went surprisingly easy on Touga for how near that came to revealing a few key things about the nature of the duelling arena) but in a way it’s the centre of Saionji and Touga’s arc in the first set of duels. For one thing it reveals their connection to Utena and how much her own formative experience was theirs too. Even if the part she remembers of it has become distorted into a fairytale by time and she no longer remembers it clearly enough to see herself in the despairing girl they couldn’t save.

For another it lays bare the worst of them. Saionji may say he loves Anthy, and even acknowledges that fighting to own her is probably not congruent with that, but he’s still going to do it in order to defeat Touga. However much he wants it to be about saving either Anthy or the girl in the coffin, in the end he’s reaching for his lost friendship and tries to grasp eternity rather than helping Anthy when she appears in a coffin.

Touga manipulates the whole thing, willing to get his former friend expelled in order further his own chances of winning Akio’s power. He’s also willing to throw himself in front of a sword for it — never let it be said Touga doesn’t risk himself for his own ambition.

Saionji and Touga’s final duels are even more mirrors, and they wind up mirroring Utena and Anthy in the final arc too.

Saionji’s duel doesn’t fit the new pattern, because it establishes it. He’s the only one of the duelists to go on without a bride. But that’s because this duel is establishing Anthy as Utena’s bride. Until now, Anthy’s been giving the Sword of Dios to Utena as she would to any other duelist, but, when it vanishes, Anthy — acting of her own will in direct opposition to Saionji having just been convinced she doesn’t have one — draws Utena’s. And does so with great tenderness. The shadow play about teamwork seems to be aimed both at Anthy and Utena — who now have to rely on their bond to fight — and the future duelists who will have to try to do the same.

Saionji also learns a few things this episode, but they seem to take a while to sink in. He goes back to duel feeling special because he’s been singled out for attention by End of the World and doesn’t yet know this is the new pattern, but his motives haven’t changed. (I appreciate Utena and Miki both being like “You’ve changed? How exactly?”) It seems to sink in later both that he wasn’t special and has been duped once again, and that Akio saving the girl in the coffin means Touga doesn’t have any special access to eternity either and being equal to him doesn’t require duelling.

Having ended Saionji’s motivation for duelling to catch up with Touga, Touga’s duel episode explains Touga’s motivation for duelling to gain Akio’s power. Intriguingly, Saionji — amazingly the voice of reason by this point — thinks becoming like Akio is a terrible idea. There’s been a chain of toxic masculinity with Saionji imitating Touga who is imitating Akio, but meeting the actual source seems to have soured Saionji on the whole thing. Not that it stops him being a jerk in many ways, but he’s found some chill.

Their duel seems to highlight their relationship as much as Anthy and Utena’s. Especially with a shot of Saionji’s eyes as he draws Touga’s sword that’s very similar to a shot of Anthy’s eyes during the duel with Saionji as she drew Utena’s. They can’t defeat Utena and Anthy —  their relationship is still very new and in attacking from the motorbike they’re still trying to duel from a shoddy copy of Akio’s system. Their motivations are also… not great. Touga thinks he needs to own Utena to protect her — to be fair, a mistake Utena herself has made with regards to Anthy — and Saionji doesn’t have a problem with this logic so much as he believes the duels themselves are a no win game with any motivation at this point.

The juxtaposition where they’re in Akio’s room posing half-naked on his car while Miki and Juri play badminton with Utena is one of the creepier effects in a creepy series. Miki and Juri are finding a certain amount of freedom through Utena. Touga and Saionji, in spite of the fact that they’re rooting for Utena at this point, are stuck with Akio. (In some ways paralleling them with Anthy, who is still very much not free of his influence yet.)

And, while the Student Council splits  in half along those lines, Nanami isn’t quite in either half.  She attends the badminton game but doesn’t join it and, rather than asking Utena what she will do, tries to warn her off as Touga and Saionji do later. She knows more than Miki and Juri, and isn’t as tangled up in it as Touga and Saionji.

Nanami’s duels follow an in-between pattern too. Tsuwabuki’s Black Rose duel doesn’t really add to the pattern, but he’s not as detached from her as Wakaba and Keiko are from Saionji and Touga. The fact that his initial motivation was to be a big brother like Touga makes him, maybe, a bit of a stand in, which is relevant because Touga is central to Nanami’s two actual duels.

Looking at the pattern of Nanami’s own duels what I mostly get is… fuckery. Nanami gets the weirdest and most disturbing push into duelling of anyone, especially the second time. I think there are two reasons for this.

First she’s being manipulated in two, not entirely synchronised, ways. If you look at her first duel, it seems doubtful that Touga knew why Anthy gave him a kitten, or that it was part of getting Nanami to duel. I don’t think he knew where the blood type compatibility test was going at first, either. His first reaction is to ignore it until Nanami starts rambling about how it has to be wrong, because she and her parents get along so well, and then snap that he’s not interested. If he’d known where it was going, I think he’d have either encouraged her or discouraged her more thoroughly. Instead, he just doesn’t wanna hear it.

Second, Akio’s also manipulating Touga and it’s in Akio’s interest if he can be pushed to burn his own emotional connections to the ground. I think this ties into the first one, in that Touga may not have known where the blood type compatibility test had gone until Nanami told him she wasn’t coming home because he wasn’t really her brother. And that’s right in front of Akio, who Touga wants to impress with his coldness, meaning that any chance of him comforting her or picking anything but the most cruel and opportunistic response was right out.

The lengths to which Touga goes to make it more awful than it needed to be, including staging that conversation with Keiko, are on his own head though.

Both times Nanami ends up in tears. The first time Touga comforts her, seemingly more for Utena’s benefit than hers, and the second time he just ignores her. Neither time did he expect her to win or want her to.

Nanami’s ending is also the most ambiguous. Miki and Juri have found a way to carry on caring about the people they loved without it being an all consuming obsession. Touga and Saionji have each other, and there’s at least some hope in that for them. Nanami’s a little close and a little distant, making tea for the boys rather than interacting with them. Given that it’s been three months I sort of hope the fact that she’s interacting with Touga at all means there was one hell of an apology somewhere in there…

[transmascutena]

what’s your favorite episode from rgu?

oh this is such a hard question to answer and it honestly changes all the time depending on my mood. but how about i give a top 5 based on how i'm feeling at this specific moment?

1 - episode 37. probably most consistently my favorite. it just has so many incredible moment. "in the end all girls are like the rose bride", badminton scene, CANTARELLA scene, rooftop scene (though the good part of that is in 38.) i really love the calm before the storm sorta vibe it has.

2 - episode 38 and 39. i'm gonna include both of these in one because they're a two parter and don't really work without each other. an absolutely amazing finale. i could go on forever about them but here i'll just say that they're the perfect ending to my favorite show of all time and they both make me cry my eyes out every time i watch them.

3 - episode 25 is great at both introducing the third arc (my personal favorite) and developing the relationships between the show's three main characters, which is why i love it so much. this is when utena and anthy really start to care about each other a lot even outside their roles, and it's when anthy starts resisting and even fighting back against akio in small but important ways. + the new ed + the utena sword pull + the car etc, etc.

4 - episode 33 is constantly on my mind and i kinda hate it. i mean i think it's a fantastic episode, there's a reason it's in my top 5, i'm really impressed with how the show handles the topic of sexual abuse, and i think this episode is a great example of it. but i do sometimes wish it didn't haunt me like it does. the feeling of dread and nausea still has not left me since the very first time i watched it.

5 - shout out to episode 34 for probably being the most important one in the entire show. the reveals in this episode are incredible and literally recontextualize the entire premise of the show. it's not as high on my list as some others people's, just because it's not as interesting to me on a rewatch due to it being mostly exposition. a damn good exposition episode though.

some of my other faves include: 30, 31, 32, 27, 29 (can you tell i really like the akio arc?), 20, 17, 11+12