in which elephants.7. Unfilled Jury
Some loose thoughts on character design: Every Student Council member looks pretty much alike. They are distinct from the Ordinary Students in both dress and body shape. Ordinary Students come in two models, boy and girl; Student Council members pretty much come in one androgynous model with a couple different heads. They’re all at least a head taller than Ordinary Students.
And then there are Utena and Anthy. Utena is pretty much a Student Council member with different but related clothes; Anthy is… Anthy.
Loose thoughts on the series: Does what happens in the arena have any objective reality? It’s in a place of highly improbable physics, and Anthy displays magical powers that she hasn’t used outside of the arena so far. I could argue that it’s actually a shared dream/vr/whatevs. Later events in the series may contradict this reading; I figure there’s a decent chance this weirdness will spill out into the “normal” world. (Which is not too normal either but I’m just gonna accept that as a given – it’s clearly not set in the Real World, this is the general shape of the fantasy.)
Lots of still shots with no animation in the beginning of this one. Is Is there gonna be some crazy stuff in the second half of this ep or it it just a simple one?
As always a Student Council meeting scene was heralded by the elevator scene, with the exact same dialogue over it. Honestly? My inner Magician perked an ear the first time they said this, and now she’s poking me in the back and saying that this show can definitely be looked at as a sigil. All these repeated elements pounding certain things into your head; I bet that there are a lot of women out there now who watched Utena growing up and can recite that exchange about being a chick breaking out of the eggshell that is the world verbatim. (The other repeating scenes that stick out at me: the blue-haired musician clicking his stopwatch, Utena traveling up to the arena for a duel. Also the Did You Know shadows but they seem to be getting more and more oblique.) How has this programmed you? How has it altered your view of the world to turn that idea over in your mind?
Yeah, that duel was where all the work went for this episode. Hell of a deus ex machina. Also this time the chorus listed a whole bunch of angels and demons. The inner Magician wants to pull out 777 or some other Majgyckqxual Correspondence Chart and ponder these. And possibly look at the various other things the chorus has listed in previous duels; they seem to do that a lot.
wait the ending animation changed, now it’s Utena in the arms of the Remembered Prince, intercutting with Anthy in the arms of the Remembered Prince. Okay? And then the teaser for the next episode is a body-swap between Utena and Anthy, which somehow feels very related to that new symbolic image.
I guess this ep’s Did You Know shadow skit about one shadow being all “I bet those grapes were sour anyway” about being too sick to go on a zoo trip is supposed to relate to Orange-Haired Duellist’s emotions still being tied in a knot over her former best friend having stolen her boyfriend? This ep was full of flashbacks about that. As always, I’ll chalk part of that up to lost in translation. I never knew how spoilt I was as a kid when I was reading the fabulous Anthea Bell/Derek Hockridge translations of the very pun-filled Asterix. (Okay also Asterix’s story was always told a hell of a lot less obliquely than Utena’s.)
(I’m wondering if this is going to be a recurring thing: before Utena fights a Student Council member, we get an episode – or even a two-parter – exploring their personality, history, and a major tragedy in their past that relates to why they’re chasing the Rose Bride.)
8. Curried High Trip
The prince-and-princess shadow puppet animation opens this episode again. I just realized that the prince has Anthy’s hair. And her profile for that matter. And in the one shot where their flesh isn’t blacked out, his skin is the same color too. He wraps the princess in a “rose-scented embrace”, too. Though roses are such a repeated symbol that I’m honestly not sure that really MEANS anything.
Also man I sure do see some naked booty in the thumbnail for this one on Youtube. Or is that someone’s blonde hair? It sure looks like Anthy is staring at a butt here.
Maybe I just have a dirty mind.
Mean Girl has a pair of binoculars with a rose on the hinge. Roses roses roses everywhere. Basically at this point “a rose” is starting to suffer semantic overload; while a big rotating rose still feels like it means something in this show, just seeing a rose worked into something means absolutely nothing any more. It’s a show about legs and roses.
HIGH SCHOOL PRANK GOES BAD! Utena, Anthy, and a whole class of students without names die. And now an emergency Student Council meeting is convened. On the way up, of course, they have the same speech in the elevator. It’s a ritual by now. This whole show stinks of ritual.
Blue haired musician clicks his stopwatch again. It’s 12 seconds and change. Isn’t it usually 5? He seems shocked by its count, too.
Yeah seriously creepy red-haired council member, green haired sword-obsessed council member, and orange curly haired council member would look absolutely identical if they were naked and bald, modulo breasts and genitals. (Why is green-hair almost never in the council meetings? I guess he’s off practicing with his sword.)
…this world includes cel phones? And here I thought it was pseudo-medieval, what with princes and princesses and sword combat.
Blue hair times something else this episode. Outside of the Council meetings. 3s this time. What was he timing – how long it took for an ordinary student to taunt Anthy?
Anthy suddenly grew a pair of brass ovaries, too. This would be shocking and curious if the teaser at the end of the last ep hadn’t said “next time: a body-swap plot”. Cue montage of Utena and Anthy acting like each other, still dressed as they normally do, under music left over from a Vince Guaraldi score for a Charlie Brown cartoon.
Any episode involving Mean Popular Girl quickly turns into broad comedy. “We need to get more of the magic body-swapping spice! Where’s it from? India!” And then she and her minions are on a plane. And then they’re chased by angry elephants.
Green-haired student council member is so about to get kicked in the balls by Utena-as-Anthy. Or not. Because he has a SECRET DIARY. Oh, he showed it off earlier when he was talking about the HIDDEN LOVE he and Anthy have. Huh, that wasn’t just a throwaway gag. Nice.
Mean Popular is going to have hella elephant problems for the rest of this episode. She and her minions just got knocked off a cliff by an elephant falling out of nowhere.
And crossed a rope bridge to be trampled by an elephant somehow running the other way down it. And were chased across the ocean by elephants on surfboards. I’m imagining the brainstorming session for these elephant gags now. Drunken laughter as people tried to come up with ever more absurd ways for the elephants to attack Mean Popular Girl.
Nice touch: when Utena-as-Anthy gives Green Hair the love diary she’s sabotaged, we have a lingering shot of Utena-as-Anthy with the trelis-and-roses border – and the roses are pink, rather than the white they normally are for rose-bordered shots of Anthy.
This episode did pretty much absolutely nothing to advance the overall plot but I don’t give a shit, I laughed my ass off. (Or not, given that the preview of the next episode is all about the repercussions of Utena-as-Anthy writing JERK ASS in the secret love diary Anthy and Green Hair swapped back and forth. Hah. And here I thought the shadow puppets talking about karma were referring to Mean Popular’s travails – nice switch, Be-Papas.)
Ending animation is back to normal, too. Okay that’s… interesting. They’re playing with the opening and closing sequences to communicate things; the story occasionally spills out from its expected container. I like that.
Also I am now finding myself having an urge to cosplay as Utena sometime WHAt IS HAPPENING TO ME. I’m tall enough and I’m about half legs, I could pull it off…
9. The Castle Said To Hold Eternity
Something I noticed about the opening: whenever Anthy’s in the Rose Bride outfit, Utena is in the duelling variant of her costume. Duelling Utena and Normal Utena are very similar, but there’s two differences: dueling Utena has a little frilly skirt between her gym shorts and the bottom of her coat, and she has the epaulets and dangling cord of the Student Council uniforms.
Also after seeing the dynamic action shot of Orange-Haired Council Member show up in the duel between her and Utena, I am pretty much assuming that every shot in this opening sequence is going to show up in the actual show at some point.
horrible monkey demon abomination Chu has a doodlebug to play with what hideous torture will he visit upon it
oh nothing because a frog ate it. Lucky. It had a clean death.
This episode looks like it’ll be delving into the bromance between Creepy Red-Head Student Council President and Creepy Green-Haired Sword Obsessive.
whyyyy is flashback Utena(? she’s a silhouette body) hiding in a coffin next to the ones for her dead parents that’s fucked up whyyyy were there three matching rose-themed coffins waiting for them all who are these two grown-up silhouettes looking for her in the past I bet this will be delved into in the later arcs of the show from the stuff I saw skimming the show’s Wikipedia page before I started watching it
huh and I guess this is when Red Hair gave her the rose ring? It certainly implies that to me.
ALSO I think Green Hair just told that flashback to Utena while standing outside the greenhouse creepily staring at Anthy?
HEY WAIT WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THE STUDENT COUNCIL MEETING PLACE WITHOUT THE ELEVATOR INVOCATION.
whose arms just showed up in the light in front of the shadow play girls? that’s another definite break in these repeated motifs. This time they talked about losing your childish illusions as you grow up. Like believing in princes on white horses who will come save you.
Utena now believes in the rules about Who Can Do Things With The Rose Bride too.
Aaaand… the reality of the dueling arena is definitely called into question now, in my opinion. Green-hair just died as the floating castle fell on him, and then all of that was unhappened when Utena grabbed Anthy. What the fuck is going on here. Will this ever be explained. I’d bet money that much of it never will be – though that may just be my own feelings on how to properly deal with reality breaks in stories.
Ironically, Creepy Red Hair Who Might Be Utena’s Prince saved her from death at the hands of Green Haired Sword Team Captain’s sword at the last minute, at what looked like the cost of his own life. She hasn’t let go of that childish dream of a prince who’ll save her, I guess. Even though she’s creeped out by him insinuating he’s That Prince.
Also the dueling arena was entered without the usual sequence of the stairs and Utena’s outfit becoming the dueling outfit and the ABSOLUTE DESTINY APOCALYPSE song. They broke the rules by going to the arena without an official duel to fight, and all of the rituals of the show were also broken. The big question: will they resume next episode?