#they both transform into magical girls together and Anthy IS Utena's magic

[pricklerat]

I rest my case, your honor.

[applepi00]

Emi Liveblogs: Revolutionary Girl Utena Ep 25, Their Eternal Apocalypse, Part III

We’re still at 22 stopwatches, 20 slaps, 9 Egg speeches, and 1 punch.

This episode has a lot of breaks from the norm, gone is the stock footage of Utena walking up the stairs, and instead we have her and Anthy taking the elevator together. There’s an excellent piece about the use of stock footage that you can read here

To summarize a little, before we had the same footage over and over that for a b boring, much like Anthy would be bored of the Duel cycle and viewing it as the same thing over and over, but from here on out Utena is not just another Duelist, she’s a friend, she may be naive but she does actually care.

1) this is always cool to see

2) this could be that the normal girl persona is false and just covers the Rose Bride, but I like to see it as Anthy is both, she’s more than one facet, she’s more than an archetype or image, she can be more than one thing.

This transformation becomes more active on Anthy’s part, before Utena would magically get the additions as she walked, now she is stripped and Anthy actively grabs her in the uniform. On thé one hand that gives the vibes of the archetypal knight being sent off by their lady, but could it be too that Anthy sees her friend now?

Touga and Akio are watching with these stupid opera glasses, but there is little surprise in Akio that the sword disappeared, he knew, he planned this. I don’t know how but that’s my feeling.

This Duel would have ended with Saionji as victor had Anthy not taken and active role. I think this is a turning point in her realizing that she can change things, she isn’t entirely helpless.

TEAMWORK!! Notice how it’s “grant us” instead of “grant me”. This I think should be the image we know, not the earlier version of Utena drawing the sword from Anthy, this one of teamwork, of the Princess taking an active stance. Now this sword is still akin to Dios’ it’s still green, I was expecting the pink one, but that’s Anthy’s soul sword isn’t it? Not Utena’s.

ALSO on the topic of swords, did the Sword of Dios disappear entirely because of a plot, or because it’s a falsehood Anthy is letting go of?

I hate the weird pink sex bed thank you very much. Burn it. Also “be kind to your friends” that’s rich coming from you Touga.

CORRECTION: Akio says the be kind to your friends line, which still is a bit amusing to me seeing as he has no friends. Though it’s also sinister because it’s friendships that give the opportunity to use the Brides in conjecture with the Duelists this arc, he says be kind but it’s the dysfunction and cruelty between friends that gives him what he wants.

Speaking of beds I dislike, I feel so bad for Anthy this arc when she’s so often at Akio’s mercy and Utena is too oblivious to see what’s happening, which has to feel a bit like betrayal, that your only friend doesn’t see or understand that you are being hurt.

And we switched to Ending theme 2! Which is also Saionji’s second(?) duel theme!

[ninapedia]

Hey y’all!

So time for my next list of... Disabled Magical Girls!

I’m including girls with physical and neuro related disabilities- even if they’re not out right mentioned but heavily coded/address through the series.

I’m also included Magical Girls With Glasses who keep their glasses when they transform because technically this is a disability- albeit an “accepted” one.

Other lists:

Halloween Magical Girl Recommendations (2) (3)

Black & Brown Magical Girls

Western Magical Girls

Anime Magical Girl Recommendations

Magical Girl Indie Comics

LGBTQ+ & Gender Non-Conforming Magical Girls

Magical Girls That Wear Pants

Magical Women (magical girls over the age of 18+)

Magical Girls with Different Body Types

Magical Boys

The girls are under the cut!

This is not an up to date or maintained list, if you want the most up to date version of this list please visit the main blog post here.

Disclaimer: As always this is just a lists of each character/series. This is not an endorsement of the series or me saying the character is good representation. I highly recommend looking up each series before watching it.

Mobility Disability

Togo Mimori (Yuki Yuna is a Hero) - Wheelchair user; even as a magical girl she doesn’t get the ability to walk (DISCLAIMER - spoilers)

Mashiro Kazahana (Mai-HiME) - Wheelchair user

Sonoko Nogi (Yuki Yuna is a Hero) - Tetraplegic  (DISCLAIMER - spoilers)

Pfle (Magical Girl Raising Project) - Wheelchair user as a magical girl; she is a book only character at this point.

Dhabian (Emara: Emirates Hero) - He’s a magical boy not a magical girl but he’s a wheel chair user

Amputees/Missing Limbs

Yang Xiao Long (RWBY) - In Volume 4 she’s missing an arm & gets a prosthetic

Pop Blitz (Sleepless Domain) - Minor character; Missing a leg and gets a magical prosthetic when she transforms

Dhabian (Emara: Emirates Hero) - He’s also a double amputee

Vision Disability (Glasses)

Taranee Cook (W.I.T.C.H)

Fuu Hououji (Magic Knight Rayearth)

Hazuki Fujiwara (Ojamajo Doremi)

Charon (Lady Jewelpet)

Ajimi Kiki (Pripara)

Lotte Yanson (Little Witch Academia)

Madeleine (Fantasista Doll)

Jeanie (Z-Squad)

U Suha (Flowering Heart)

Anthy Himemiya (Revolutionary Girl Utena)

Маша (Fairy Patrol) - glasses turn into a visor when she’s a Magical Girl

Shy Violet (Rainbow Bright)

Shout out to @amainoyuki​ for helping me put together this portion of the list! I haven’t seen Flowering Heart and Fairy Patrol yet (both are on my to watch) and I had completely forgotten about Jeanie and Hazuki!

For the complete list the includes Magical Girls with perceived or confirmed chronic illnesses, who are a-neurotypical, or have a mental illness please visit the main blog post. You can also suggest additions there.

[some-triangles]

PART 2

We’re back. Utena’s still unpacking.  She has more dresses than you might expect, suggesting that her commitment to rolling the gender dice is a relatively recent development.

Further underscoring this is a photo of a girly-as-all-get-out Utena hanging off Touga’s neck, set in a novelty frame decorated with an intaglio prince and princess embracing amongst the stars.  Utena sets it on a high shelf and regards it dubiously.

Then there’s a knock on the door and Anthy walks in like she owns the place.  Utena says that she was about to go to bed, and anyway she doesn’t invite people into her room, as a rule.  Anthy gets up to leave.  Utena pulls a Move.

This move falls into a special category of moves, which I could describe as “that probably went better in your head” moves, or “only actually acceptable under fictional circumstances” moves, or “much less cute if het” moves.  (It’s almost a Kabedon variant.)  Regardless, they’re on the bed now, and the lights are out. Anthy wishes Utena was this smooth - therefore, in this universe, she is.

Utena asks about the ring and Anthy explains the whole tiresome shebang.  A complicated bit of business ensues in which Anthy lets Utena believe that she’s only coming on to her because the rules of the rose say she should, just to see how she’ll react.  (Negatively, is how.)  

Unsure which side of her gender coin would do what in this situation, Utena attempts to kick Anthy both out of bed and out her room.  Anthy goes and has a rummage through her closet instead.

Why is Utena OK with being the perpetrator of aggressively seductive behavior but not the target? We’ll find out later, because we’re off to the Ghost Zone now.  Dead people are talking.

Touga and Shiori engage in dead couple activities and tell dead stories.  Touga gives the “Utena is still fixated on the prince” routine a whirl. Shiori breaks out the drowning girl story and says it’s all the girl’s fault the prince is dead.  (Anthy has a self-portrait specially prepared for this iteration of the rose bride slander.)

But Shiori thinks Juri was the drowning girl, and so wants to punish her by making her be a prince?  It’s all very confusing.  The ghost zone is where the remains of the stories from the old academy go to echo and molt and twist around each other.  It’s a place where Anthy can examine her anxieties, hang parts of her identity on different people, make and break actions and motivations like a child playing with dolls.

There is nothing real here.

The arrival of the ghost zone marks the beginning of the mind games portion of proceedings, the part where back in the real world Anthy would go and play mean tricks on people to get them to fight each other.  In this academy, though, she has no reason to do that, so Shiori and Touga do the work.  

Touga kicks things off with Akio’s “which one of us are you really jealous of” routine, to rapturous response:

Then, back in the ghost zone, the conspirators get a call from the ghost of Akio himself.  It turns out that when he’s not in control of the story he doesn’t get to have that manly baritone.  He’s kind of vague and fussy instead.

That’s because he’s being played by this guy:

Mitsuhiro Oikawa, a pop star known as “The Prince.”  Jokes!

We’ve heard his version of the story before, so I won’t bother recapping it.  I’m honestly more interested in this painting, which appears when Touga says that he’ll take the bride’s magic for himself.

Anthy is straddled by a prince with no face.  Where his face should be, there’s a blue window, and sitting in that window is another woman, who looks not unlike the Venus of Willendorf.   The prince, animated by the primordial magic of the feminine?   Called into being by the sin of Eve?

No time to think about it, because suddenly Miki and Kozue are taking a bath together.  We are getting motivation and character development for the entire supporting cast within the space of about five minutes, because, to Anthy, none of them matter very much.  I’m sure she finds this image of a brother and sister arresting, though.

There’s barely time to reflect on how all the participants in these scenes are grooming each other – thinning eyebrows, painting nails, cleaning ears – and to wonder if the double meaning even works in Japanese before Touga decides to go ahead and render the implicit explicit, as is his wont.

What do we do with this scene?

Consider: a young boy is chased into a cabbage field by his adoptive father, who has purchased him from his birth parents for use as a catamite.  As the boy is raped, he fixates on the white wings of a cabbage moth and imagines that it is a beautiful fairy.   Consider also: a woman is sucked into a kind of malevolent washing machine and transformed into a sports car, after which she must navigate a cannonball run type situation and escape from a giant fairy tale castle on tank treads.

These are scenes from the same movie.  They would both be much easier to contend with if we were not forced to evaluate them as elements of a single piece of art.  

Viewing the piece as Anthy’s creation helps a little.  Shiori and Touga are here to let Anthy work out her abuse and her feelings of complicity in it.   Shiori plays the part of the backstabber.  Touga, in an extraordinary turn for him, plays the victim.  Anthy relives her pain through him.  She watches those wings unfold –

Then we’re in the basement with the tank drone brigade.  We go right from the cabbage moths to the cars.   This film is merciless in its rapid-fire conflation of the beautiful, the horrifying, the tragic and the ridiculous.  

We get the setup for the first Juri duel (same as the old academy but compressed into about thirty seconds) and then we’re suddenly back on the roof of the world.  Movie Anthy doesn’t go visit Akio at night, but she does go stand on the edge of her OSHA-uncompliant rose garden and think about jumping off.

Utena comes to visit. Anthy remorselessly waters her shoes.

Utena wants to know if Anthy was the one who turned Touga “strange”.  The bride, as always, bears the blame for the absence of the prince, but in this incarnation she is whole and well enough to be generous and help Utena through her pain.   She cradles Utena’s head in her arms.  Then she quietly rises to her feet and gets an axe.

This is your poisoned cookie moment, folks:

And we absolutely cut back and forth between the axe and Utena’s head a couple of times before the blow lands to let the implication sink in. Anthy’s sense of humor has not changed.

Here’s what the axe is actually for: Utena was sad about not getting to watch the stars with Touga, so Anthy cuts a water main and destroys her entire garden to create a giant mirror so they can dance together in a galactic panopticon bestrewn with floating roses.   This is a Move. 

Anthy’s moves, unsurprisingly, are better moves.

I will never be able to fully separate the ensuing scene from this one time I hella made out to it in my freshman dorm room so we’re just gonna call this one here.