#utena project

[cleave-and-plough]

you're the most normal girl i know

WAKABA ARC LET'S GO

i've really been loving utena thus far, and these two episodes somehow find a new height. this show fucking rules. how do they do it?

right from the intro it's clear something special is going to happen, as the typical prelude is replaced with a version centering wakaba. much like with utena, she awaits the arrival of her prince, and yet it's a little hollow - no conversation, no promise, no ring - she simply waits. in the meantime, she has her prince surrogate, utena, to dote upon, and the two enjoy another picnic on the lawn until they're approached by tatsuya, the auspicious onion prince.

wakaba's childhood friend and ostensible defender, tatsuya has come to confess to utena, who gently rebuffs him. wakaba stirs up and cautions utena against him, slowly revealing that she has a special place in her heart for him - a fond memory that has grown fainter by the year. hearing wakaba call him a prince, utena infers what's going on and sagely advises her friend to consider the role of fate in all this. wakaba disagrees as a lamppost suddenly illuminates the scene - a happy coincidence.

meanwhile, the student council members discuss their own desires and longing, which remain constant and unfulfilled. miki thinks of anthy whenever he plays the piano, touga remains the sun in nanami's sky, and though her name doesn't escape juri's lips, shiori echoes in her musing on one's inability to choose who they love. this prolonged, unrequited pining atmosphere will return…

utena seeks advice from her weekly akio session, wondering what to do about wakaba and tatsuya, who she feels aren't being honest with each other. akio posits that people's hearts are "veiled with thin silk" and that it's impossible to read their true desires. utena takes this at face value, unaware of how relevant his words are, sitting innocently across from anthy. akio's advice so far has made an interesting contrast to the silhouettes - while the silhouettes seem to obliquely hint at the episode's dramatic thread (prompting utena's skepticism), akio is more straight-to-the-point, and utena usually sees his words as wise guidance (when she can understand his metaphors). there's something to be said here about the voice of a male authority figure taking precedence over the shadowy plays of the feminine silhouettes, especially given akio's apparent menace. the silhouettes seem to grasp at something, possibly as misguided as the teenagers they accompany and often seem to be peers of. what is a tire, anyway?

utena, beleagueredly sipping her tea with a sage air, parrots akio's advice, prompting wakaba to confess her true feelings for tatsuya, which she continues to deny. utena's words do have the desired effect on tatsuya, and he pursues wakaba to a picturesque hill overlooking a burnt orange sunset. he asks wakaba to be honest with him, and there's a smooth bit of animation as wakaba kicks the ground, saying "i'm always honest." typically, the more fluid animations happen during the duels, so it's always intriguing to me to see when they're used otherwise - here, it seems like a potent emphasis of her flustered ambivalence. the rug is pulled and wakaba realizes she needs to embrace her prince, leaving tatsuya in the lurch. fortunately, they say the memorial hall can give guidance to those lost and confused…

just as tatsuya has re-entered wakaba's life too late, he enters the hall without an appointment, begging to be counseled. souji welcomes him, and tatsuya pours forth his anxieties - his love for wakaba, his grief that she doesn't return it, his anger that someone else will take his place and tarnish her, and his eternal hope that love will prevail and bring her back to him. and for the first time, the black rose rejects an interviewee. there's so much to wonder about here: souji claims tatsuya is a truly good person and that this is no place for him. something about how calculated souji is makes me feel like he wouldn't lie unnecessarily, but i also wonder if he simply sees tatsuya as a poor candidate for a duelist, especially when compared to saionji. tatsuya's rant isn't exactly free of incel sentiment, though i'm open to the thought that the elevator provokes a certain raw, unfiltered psyche vomit that doesn't necessarily define the interviewee. maybe it's tatsuya's lingering belief that wakaba will return to him that disqualifies him - he's heartbroken but not hopeless in the way that the other black rose duelists have been.

returning to wakaba, i truly thought she would run into utena's arms, but the fact that she used "him" to describe her prince did plant a seed of doubt in my mind. how naive i was. the ending of this episode was the shock of my life.

unable to wait, i continued. the warm, hazy light from the sunset returns and suffuses the air of this episode, gently accompanying wakaba as she descends into the town to shop and then returns to her dorm, to saionji. what a contrast to the other episodes - in place of miki's golden memories, nanami's noir imagination, and juri's preserved photographs, wakaba floats in a heavenly summer aura. her reality has become better than her dreams, and though her fate seems bent towards sorrow, for these few days, weeks, she has attained what every other character longs for. she has found her shining thing, her miracle.

removed from the influence of touga, the council, and ohtori, saionji has become remarkably docile and emotional, tearfully thanking wakaba for hiding him after his expulsion. stripped of the pressures and rituals of the school, he has a chance to reforge himself, exchanging his kendo sword for a whittling knife and paint. yet, his uniform hangs on the wall, a reminder of all he lost and might regain.

wakaba is in bloom. in an arc of secrets, hers is one to treasure, and in keeping it, she has become, for the first time, special. she excels at school, at sports, and though she loses touch with her friends, she can go home every day to her prince, acting out a quaint domestic life not unlike anthy and utena. utena knows something's changed, and consults her advisor, akio, who spins a tale of two kinds of people: those with special destinies, like utena, and those without, like wakaba. the latter, he explains, may become special - but only temporarily. utena is confused by akio's words, which he cites as proof of her specialness, but it all certainly smacks of any number of hierarchical -isms and -archies. that said, he may be right that utena's uncertainty at her own "specialness" is a component of her success - her humility, chivalry, and nobility are the rare qualities that bring her good fortune, popularity, and victory, while her rivals, such as touga, who see themselves as superior to others, consign themselves to defeat. it of course remains to be seen how akio's ostensible sense of superiority will affect his fate.

meanwhile, saionji presents the leaf clip to wakaba, and she sheds a tear. "it's perfect," she says. her life can soar no higher.

leaving only one direction.

as wakaba cheerfully recounts the goings-on of the council, she just so happens to omit one of their members, prompting saionji to ask the fateful question: "how is anthy doing?" and so an unignorable crack forms in wakaba's perfect life. touga's cruel words from long ago echo: "your feelings will betray you as deeply as you feel them." saionji hasn't let go of his feelings for anthy, and wakaba fears she can't compete with her, relegating her back to obscurity and unspecialness. as her heart begins to cloud, souji strikes.

"no secret escapes the notice of the black rose circle," he tells saionji, once again bringing the arc's themes into stark relief and following it up with another knockout line: "how will you escape this purgatory?" i thought, "of course!" the lovesick pining, the endless fealty to end of the world, wakaba's earlier comments that nothing ever happens at ohtori - all reflections of the purgatorial nature of the show's world. everyone is waiting, unchanging - saionji waits to return to school, tsuwabuki waits to grow up, utena and wakaba wait for their princes, juri waits for a miracle, miki waits for his shining thing to return, nanami waits for touga to reciprocate her love, and touga now waits for a resurrection. what is high school but the long wait before "adulthood" - a wait that we fear may be both far too short and unending? in this atmosphere, the duels stand out as rare moments of action, as characters finally move to seize their desires. and all along, the prince's castle hangs in the stars above, while the fires of the memorial hall's incinerator burn below.

i can't wait to finish the show and read what other people have made of it - i feel i'm barely scratching the surfaces with moments like this.

souji's moves are keen as a razor, and he dangles exactly the right bait for saionji: the reversal of his expulsion. "i'll need something of yours," he says, rich with dramatic irony. everything falls into place. anthy wears the leaf clip in front of wakaba, shattering her into pieces. she returns home and seizes the sword from saionji with frightening speed and violence. utena ascends to the arena and is rendered speechless. "utena, the sword!" anthy pleads, but utena can't raise it against her closest friend. wakaba delivers some truly heartrending plaints (huge props to her VA), cursing utena and the school's elites for trampling her life into the dirt. all she wanted was what they want - love, and a place in the sun. so utena provides as best she can, reassuring wakaba of her love for her, and yet… and yet… "i'll save you."

because she needs saving. just as utena once saw herself as anthy's savior, she now sees herself as the savior of wakaba. and, as nobly as she means this, it creates a distinction, a hierarchy between them. and so it's utena who makes the calls. wakaba's rose is cut. saionji returns to ohtori, rumors swirling about whether he'll try to rejoin the student council, his star once more ascendant among the school. and wakaba goes home to an empty room.

just like normal.

stray thoughts:

the silhouettes discuss purchasing tires and fox weddings, a legend i remember from akira kurosawa's dreams collection. been meaning to rewatch that sometime soon, i think i'd get a lot more out of it now.

hard to think of something scummier than akio telling anthy "i hope you find your own prince soon."

love that wakaba's home life with saionji is so funny - him scampering away to hide and then wiggling out from under the bed like some kind of giant insect, and meanwhile she's pretending to be a religious devotee to cover for him.

interesting that saionji frames his return to school as like, being part of a mission to space. "launch!" maybe he'd been spending time with akio before this? ever since akio's fixation on the stars was introduced, i've wondered if the show will somehow eventually go to space, continually expanding in scope a la gurren lagann.

anthy's cries to utena to draw the sword reminded me of another of my favorite desperate shouts: "chan! we need fire! bring the fire!" from the tunnel fight scene in snowpiercer (happens at 3:10 in the clip)

thought about the beast asking the woodsman "are you really ready to go back to that empty house?" in over the garden wall when wakaba got home at the end.

[empty-movement]

Hi, Vanna here. I have submitted to the strange authority of Xenforo's image hosting system, which demands that if I want gallery items to appear in proper order, I will have to upload them back to front.

As such, welcome to the last few page's of Animedia Magazine's September 1997 supplemental Duelist Bible, translated by Nagumo and edited by me!

Anyway

THIS IS NOT A DRILL, VINTAGE OFFICIAL PATTERNS FOR YOUR VERY OWN DIY CHU-CHU

[zomb1ance]

i love you eloise......

[astrateiaa]

Have some Anthys from an animatic I’m working on :D

[primarydragon]

🎃 the Lobelia Bride 🍇

[ebaltika]

Zig-zagged position is a prominent theme in the show. No matter how much they try to understand each other, they can't fully reach one another because they continue to project things towards one another because neither can truly see each other.

Contrast to the ending movie scene where both can at one another directly and understand each other

[prismaticglass]

TOWER: IN REVERSE

Happy Valentine's Day!!

[pippenpaddlopsicopolisthethird]

Juri is finally finished! I got some really pretty pictures at the con and I feel like this is a cosplay where I'll end up with a lot more.

Photos were taken by @spontaneousmusicalnumber and edited by me!

[biruesque]

sending my love !!!! from the other side of !!!!!! the apocalypse !!!!!!!!

[cybersodas]

While we wait for the tarot card orders to arrive, I’m happy to announce a new upcoming preorder campaign!

vv Details below vv

As it says on the tin, these are for dried flower acrylic charms! Featuring a blooming flower and an empty coffin, you will be able to buy either of these pins individually for $20, or you can buy one get one half off when you buy them together for a total of $30!

This is another preorder campaign, and I think these ones are going to take a little while in production (around 2 months I believe). But, if we can make a total of 30 preorders, we’ll go forth with manufacturing!

The preorder period begins March 23rd! look forward to it, and thanks for stopping by the soda shop!

[cafeleningrad]

Okay, it's funny because when working out that yeah Shiori does feel inferior to Juri, and might not be aware that her attraction to her is lesbian love, she still is the one who tries the mature thing of communicating, apologizing, asking what went wrong between her and Juri, hoping that they could sort their relationship out. My girl tried the mature proper thing and ran straight into a concrete wall. Like, I never want to read jokes of Shiori being the Lana del Rey girl again.

If nothing else, it's Juri's making up a Shiori that does not exist. Juri prefers the feeling of being tragically in love, and understanding love as anguish rather than interacting with the actual Shiori. Juri banished herself into melancholia, and a rigid understanding of the world, considering herself to be doomed for tragedy. If nothing else, Juri is the Lana del Rey girl.

[cleave-and-plough]

YOU SON OF A BITCH

what a warped episode, huh? the black rose arc seems to come to a close, the whole thing seemingly orchestrated by akio, using anthy as a false mamiya. some questions are answered, but many more are raised as nemuro dissipates and akio solidifies his place as the power behind the scenes.

down to the final black rose and unable to find a way to defeat utena head on, souji redoubles his efforts to recruit her into the seminar, unromantically confessing to feelings for her and posing himself as a savior - someone with the genius and resources to help her and her friends out of any trouble. utena considers; she's usually able to get herself out of any scrapes, but there is someone dear to her who seems powerless. dreaming of her time in the coffin after her parents' death, utena wakes in a dim room, the tv playing static, anthy's hand entwined in hers. a transference occurs in this ghostly, liminal space - utena recognizing her past helplessness in anthy and that sometimes outside help is needed.

meanwhile, souji experiences his own transposition, seeing utena as tokiko and substituting her in utena's place. it's an uncanny moment that foreshadows the strangeness to come. as the end approaches, he coldly dismisses his secretary, who notably resembles tokiko, and her comment that she can "finally let her hair down" seems pointedly loaded. untethering himself from his worldly connections, he floats between the present and the past over an unending banquet table, remembering how he refused the lab boys' duel challenges once his work had finished. mamiya appears at his bedside, bringing flowers as if to a funeral, and questions his opening of the arena and castle. knowledge of the arena's existence seems to instill the academics with the belief that eternity will be attainable by the champion duelist. suddenly, mamiya changes tone. "don't you want the power to revolutionize the world?.... i want... eternity."

until now, it had seemed mamiya was reluctant to be preserved like the roses in tokiko's garden, but his strong words now spur souji into action. in the memorial hall, as utena beholds the portraits of the black rose duelists, he confesses to her yet again, this time as both the architect of the black rose and tokiko's would-be lover. but, he argues, utena and the other black rose duelists aren't so different, are they? at their core, they are bound to their most precious memories, have based their lives upon them, and are willing to fight for them. and fight utena will, punching souji and pinning him to the ground for daring to equate them. he smiles, acknowledging her memories must be very precious indeed. he's not entirely wrong, which is what angers utena, but he does seem to make a key misapprehension - utena doesn't wish to live in the past, she looks towards the future. her childhood experience of pain and salvation is something that she draws strength from, but it isn't something she wants to eternalize. nevertheless, she can't allow souji to continue his schemes, which have threatened her friends and endangered anthy, so she formally challenges him to bring an end to all this.

collapsed in the elevator, souji has a vision of the past, extending his funeral-like air from earlier into something like his dying words. visited by mamiya's spirit, he accepts that dueling utena is his last hope, as she is closest to the power of dios. and yet, there is some relief in this desperation, as he feels he has been reunited with tokiko - perhaps, to die by her sword is its own kind of eternity. somehow, the spirit of mamiya hands him the final black rose, allowing him to call forth a sword that looks strikingly like the sword of dios.

the duel begins amid a sea of photographs of tokiko and mamiya. souji continues his psychological warfare, drawing parallels between himself and utena and claiming that their lives were both changed by a special person in their past. this, he says, is why they can enter the arena - their lives are built on an elusive memory. utena rejects his comparisons as mere manipulation, and souji begins to falter more and more. his shoulder wound ails him, he slashes the photo, and, most damningly, he fails to realize anthy's deceit in the duel's final moments. hearing "mamiya's" voice in the arena, he becomes lucid for a scant few seconds before his rose is severed, his last sight the true image of mamiya.

akio takes a phone call. calmly, he reveals everything to souji. nemuro's regrets over tokiko froze him in time, and mamiya passed away long ago. akio used this to some advantage, but no longer. "the path you must take is not prepared for you. now graduate from this place." and with that, just as all the black rose duelists lost their memories of the black rose, so too does ohtori lose its memory of professor nemuro. the hall he had rebuilt in his memories lies derelict and forgotten. "he was never really here," akio says, sounding very like the end of the world. "just like you." anthy turns to face him, smiling.

reflecting on nemuro's last moments and his life of regret, i thought of the lyrics to "komm, süsser tod” from end of evangelion:

i wish that i could turn back time 'cause now the guilt is all mine can't live without the trust from those you love i know we can't forget the past you can't forget love and pride because of that, it's killing me inside

...

i'll never love again my world is ending

stray thoughts:

during the duel, souji's style seems to mimic past duelists' techniques, just as the black rose duelists' imitated those of their swords' sources. i noted saionji's sweeping horizontal slash and juri's footwork - i'm sure there are other connections to be made.

the silhouettes depict a father missing the golden days of his youth, which have been replaced by the challenges of adult life. to recapture that glory, he attempts to re-enter high school, just as nemuro reinvented himself as the student mikage souji to remain at ohtori.

the use of the word "graduate" seems significant, extending the metaphor of the school as purgatory, and begs the question of what (adult) life outside the school is like. the staff don't seem to be a viable source of information, and the only visitors have either been transfer students or tokiko herself (and nemuro, at first). perhaps kanae, hoping to advance in life, realized that akio would always be "in school" and misdirected her frustration towards anthy.

i look forward to learning more about the nature of the school and how the saga of nemuro aided akio's plans, especially given that utena doesn't seem to remember the experience - what role will the black rose come to serve in all this?

[bixels]

So I l’ve been getting into your ko crisis story lately (it all sounds rlly awesome btw) and i was curious - you’ve said in the tags in a previous ask that ash is comphet, so is that gonna play a major role in her character arc/journey in any way?

Yeah, the story basically covers her journey of redefining her identity as a queer Asian-American disabled woman in a sports-entertainment industry, which is a media landscape that specifically targets, exploits, and fetishizes people like her.

[viciart]

[os-eclipses-tamen-son-yuri]

A thing I really enjoy about RGU is how when producing the anime the crew was aware of the budget and limits that often come with TV shows at that time and created their own cinematographic language based on them.

The roses, the frames, the transformation sequences... Not only were they able to use them smartly but also make them reinforce the core themes of the show; that of repetition, circularity, a repeated movement, a revolution.

I personally greatly appreciate when narrative media is -meta- not in a direct way but in its semiotics. Utena creates this language based on repetition and is constantly seen subverting it, adding new "rules".

Episode 33 is cinematographicaly one of the episodes I find most interesting because they literally put the turning point of the story (I personally think of this episode as a turning point because we see Utena finally with her "prince"; except that, instead of the happy "ending" one would expect in traditional stories, it is here where everything comes into place and the grim reality is made perfectly aware. Were Utena a traditional princess story, episode 33 would mark a happy conclusion. Instead it is only the beggining of what lies inside the box and once opened it cannot be closed again) in an episode that is all about repetition. A recap.

Also, for as much as many people gloss over the Black Rose Arc I very much think it crucial to establish all of RGU's symbols. Because Utena doesn't tell us things, it wants us to learn them by noticing the patterns, by seeing the repetitions and where they are being broken, so that we ask ourselves why. The elevator sequence is one of such cases where we learn more of the characterization of these characters by seeing how they act inside of it. It's even a basic screenplay exercise: "how would your characters act trapped inside an elevator".

Mikage itself is a shadow, not just of himself but of Utena as well, an omen forever frozen in time.

Because that's another theme, shadows. And how in a way they are echoes, simplified and distorted repetitions of oneself.

And while shadows are cast in contrast, projections are cast forward. While one is a memory of something, projections are the reproduced illusion of it.

Utena works with parallels and repetitions and understanding their semantics and syntax allows us, the viewers, even subconsciously to feel their weight.

[giallogigan]

realizing there's this specific type of character