watching Revolutionary Girl Utena: 9

In which

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in which

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in which the Black Rose arc concludes and I don’t even

Another DVD of Utena! With a Jodorowski DVD sitting next to it that I have to watch or give up on before the next volume. I should find some interesting suggestions for Great or Interesting Films to take out of Scarecrow along with these Utenas; this seems to be developing into a project of making me watch some movies and stuff for once.

21: Vermin

Cold open. Everyone sucks up to Mean Pretty.

A flashback to remind us that Namami is the little sister of the Student Council President. With a yellow flower in the corner to tell us to Pay Attention: Nanami’s three minions are crushing on her brother.

Flower gone, Nanami is ordering her minions to prepare  party for her brother.

One of the girls is super thirsty for him. New dress, dreamy monologue in the mirror. But! Nanami wants her to go do a fetch quest instead; she won’t get to mack on the Student Council President!

“The only girl who can get near the prince is the princess from his fairy-tale world”, thinks the girl. As she stands outside, watching him in the party; she leaves and is Romantic and Doomed to herself.

Stopwatch click. Now we’re in the school; Blue Hair is hanging with Utena and Anthy in the middle of the day. And Nanami is jealous of the attention they gave her brother last night: “I won’t let any of you vermin near him!”, stating the ep title.

This episode is remarkably free of ritual. Eight minutes in and not a single one of the Ritual Clips has shown up yet.

Some business with Horrible Demon Monkey-Mouse Chu-Chu being “cute” and sniffing its own farts brings us to the observatory Anthy’s big brother hangs in. He approves of their relationship, I think.

Mean Popular’s minion helps her broter in the rain. Mean Popular is jealous! Later in school, she busts her out of all the clubs. And now her minion is the vermin!

Minion sees her friends and begs them to try and get Mean Popular to declare her Part Of Society again. Her friends aggressively ignore her: she has been declared Unseen and Untouchable.

And there she is all alone. And there she is with a closeup on her twitch of a twisted smile, and the sound of an elevator. And then there she is in the elevator going down. Here’s our Ritual Scene for this episode. She’s gone.

And she’s creeping on the Student Council president. And seducing a sword out of him. He’s hers.

More ritual: a duel invitation for Utena, the Silhouette Play on the Window that fails to work with the episode at all – something about bugs eating each other? And then the duel. Inevitably so – I had it paused on the silhouette play when I typed that it was coming, and there we are singing Ultimate Destiny Apocalypse.

The desks this time are strewn with umbrellas. A symbol of the minion’s love for the Student Council President. Utena, I feel, will be casually triumphant in this fight, let’s see if I can call it…

Utena draws her sword from Anthy to a new song. One whose lyrics feel utterly dismissive of this minion. And at her last, she realizes that Mean Popular is the parasite/vermin of this episode, not anyone Mean Popular has labeled as such.

She falls into a red shadow. A new shot that emphasizes how many there are. And Utena didn’t even know who she just fought.

The minion is back in Mean Popular’s good graces, and sucking up to her. She’ll never chase the Student Council president again, no ma’am! And then Anthy (who was watching on the sidelines) opens her mouth and a deep history of pain comes out as perkily as possible: she’s oh so very used to lying to herself to keep a broken relationshp going. Which horrifies Utena. And me.

Next episode: Backstory on the Hundred Dead Duellists.

22: Nemuro Memorial Hall

We seem to be out of Black Roses, despite there being a hundred duellists. Time for Evil Boy Utena to come out in public?

Blue Hair wants the Student Council to find out who these Black Rose people are. And… he takes over the Council. ANd stabilizes it: here’s the Elevator Scene, with three silhouettes. He’s in the center, unmoving and solid, while Mean Popular complains about working. We have called bac to a Ritual Shot that was built up through all of the first season, and gone in the second until now.

“We have a lead”, says Blue Hair. And Orange Hair talks about starting to figure outwho’s leading the Black Roses, but we’re distracted by a freakin’ railway crossing sign blinking and gonging in the background, with an arrow pointing off-screen to where Blue Hair is. And then as he talks we see the crossing arm descending onto his shoulder, like a sword coming down to make someone a knight: here, Student Council, here is your new leader. Who has a quest.

Mean Popular has to shoult over the roar of a passing imaginary train that the Black Roses are being run by the same organization that ran the Student Council in s1. Blue Hair has to shout that they’re on the campus. It’s not important that they’re on the campus. We know that already. Pay attention to the symbols in the imagery, not to the dialogue: Blue Hair is the Leader. Of the student council, not the Black Roses. When we see the last shot, the cross-arm going back up looks like a sword, just to really slam the point home.

Back to Utena. Who’s looking for Chu-Chu. WHo has been fond by… Evil Boy Utena.

Who invites Utena to join his “seminar”. Which is to say, the Black Rose.

But first? He will tell us the story of the Hundred Duellists and how they came to die. A terrible fire. A long time ago. You shouldn’t concern yourself with them, Miss Utena; it’s perfectly safe here.

Utena seeks advice from Anthy’s big brother, but he’s nowhere to be found in his observatory… he’s giving orders to the Black Rose Boys. From, one presumes, End Of The World.

And then we fall into a flashback: how he came to the school to join this seminar, and began to learn of the Society of the Black Rose. A scene where a woman from the Bard of Directors of the society comes to talk to him is Not Important – or at least that’s what the fingers blinking on and off, with loud beeps on the soundtrack, pointing at seemingly-unimportant parts of the backgrounds want us to think. Are they telling us there are symbols to watch for? Or ones we’ve seen? A black cat in silhouette. The teapot she pours from. A picture of a butterfly.

Ah: the same fingers pointed the way to the Interview Room. I seem to recall the teapot in that context, as well. But the butterfly on the wall? Oh, I know that picture well. This poor innocent boy just got on the elevator that leads to a Black Rose ring and he doesn’t know it.

A leaf, floating in tea.

More meaningless conversation. Just stuff to fill time while the fingers point to two silhouetted cats. And then three cats.

The finger wants us to pay attention to the fact that there are two boys holding hands in a shot of all the researchers. Buy-Utena and Boy-Anthy? We only see their hair for a couple frames and I think it’s just black hair on both of them,

Three leaves in the tea. The hand wants us to pay attention to the woman’s lipstick stain on the teacup. To Boy Utena.

And then the hand really, really, really wants us to pay attention to us discovering that her clumsy son is Boy Anthy. I expect to see a caterpillar any second now. These two are having a case of Love At First Sight whether they want to or not. And Boy Anthy is sick… but the Project may cure him! He works like crazy on it now. Time passes.

Boy Anthy is resigned to wasting away.

And then a shot of nothing but a wall with a picture of a leaf, and a finger beepnig at it. And Boy Anthy is politely smiling at Boy Utena.

YOU HAD BETTER BE FIGURING OUT THAT BOY ANTHY IS HIS TEMPTATION, YOU IDIOTS. CAN WE BE MORE OBVIOUS ABOUT THIS.

And then we’re in Boy Utena’s office. He’s having trouble with his work AND HAVE YOU NOTICED THIS CUP OF TEA WITH SOMEONE’S LIPSTICK ON IT HERE COMES BOY ANTHY’S MOM but even more importantly, here’s Anthy’s brother giving him the key to saving Boy Anthy?

The Black Rose rings symbolize a pretty demonic-sounding contract made with Anthy’s brother. Will he take one?

The finger tells us that it’s important that Anthy’s big brother has an affair going on with Boy Anthy’s mom (who is Boy Utena’s superior). Boy Utena sees this from afar. And this is when he cracks: here’s a teacup with the lipstick on it, and the Black Rose Ring waiting in it. Here’s a fallen duellist’s coffin. He’s just hit the bottom of the elevator. And he belongs to the Black Rose.

Boy Anthy and Boy Utena are the ones who set the fire, sacrificing all the Black Rose researchers. Making them into fuel for Black Rose duellists.

Flashback over. Buy Utena, we now know, has done horrible things in the name of his love for Boy Anthy. He would burn the world for him. He’s already started to.

The Silhouette Play: seems to be about how Boy Utena is now completely owned by the End Of The World society?

We’re around the first couple episodes: Boy Utena sees Utena trying to convince Anthy to not be such a doormat with some of the same things Boy Anthy’s mom said to him in his first scene.

Next Episode: Utena starts wondering where all these Black Rose kids are coming from. And accidentally sends Anthy out on a Black Rose interview.

23: The Terms Of The Duellist

The opening song seems more and more profoundly ironic.

Down to one Black Rose duellist. If the Boys of the Black Rose can’t defeat her, will they have to ally with her?

And Nanami is still officially the ruler of the Student Council. She would like to invite Utena to join them despite hating her. They want the Rose Bride’s owner on their side now that the Black Rose is clearly a problem.

Boy Utena tries to recruit her. She has a flashback to moping next to her parents’ coffins and feeling suicidal. Which is what you do in that situation, I’ve been there.

And then. Oh geeze. And then she and Anthy are in bed together – they’d had an argument earlier and Anthy had stalked off – holding hands. Utena wakes up and is happy about this. And then there is a quick cut to a shot from the intro of Anthy and Utena’s hands slipping apart. We cut back to them holding hands, with the entire intro in our heads. We have known from the start that Utena would lose Anthy. The intro has told us this twenty-three times now. And now it reappears. Fraught with potency. Well done, Be-Papas. Way to play the long game,

“Hey Anthy?” Hands falling apart from the intro. “It’s impossible for you to quit being the Rose Bride, isn’t it?”. Clasping hands. Lying together, shot from above.

Apparently the Black Rose boys think the castle above the duelling arena holds the secret to eternal life. And Boy Anthy wants to live forever now.

Utena discovers a wall full of Black Rose duellists. All the previous people she fought this season. And leans they all came here to lose painful memories.

She is not without those.

And he starts to— Nope. She’s having none of this. She’ll lose nothing of her memories.

But she has a rose ring that looks so much like a Black Rose ring.

Utena’s VO: She challenges him to a duel. Over the interview room sequence. It’s in use. But who? Not her.

Evil Boy Utena. Is a chrysalis, going down. Silently. Interviewed by his memories of Evil Boy Anthy.

Convincing himself he must fight her.

He hits bottom, still a chrysalis.

Meanwhile Utena is still her friend’s Sweet Baboo. And the Shadow Players are… Shadow Players.

We don’t get the Ultimate Destiny Apocalypse or any of the climb up the stairs this time. Is this an authorized duel? Regardless: the hundred desks have a hundred pictures of Boy Anthy, and Boy Utena must face Utena.

And then the pictures change? And his memories of Evil Boy Utena change to match? And Anthy’s brother’s voice over gives us a data dump of how apparently Evil Boy Utena has been dead for years and he’s been stuck in his memories all this time?

And then Utena and Blue Hair are looking for Anthy and come upon ruins that have always been where the Black Rose hall used to be? The world has just been retroactively edited in front of us, and only Evil Utena knows?

But Boy Anthy… is still here, being talked to by Anthy’s big brother. And then

Boy Anthy is Anthy

and Anthy’s big brother is telling us Boy Utena was a phantom all along and

Okay reality in this show is definitely pretty broken.

Next Episode: Mean Popular’s diary falls into Utena and Anthy’s hands.

But that’s the next DVD.

Shit fucks what just happened here. Who was who’s imaginary friend come to life. What the fuck is up with Anthy. Is anyone in this show besides Anthy actually “real”. Is this the game they’re playing now or is that just me being stoned.

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