happy fucking birthday himemiya anthy. i could burst with the magnitude of feeling that im experiencing about this right now. shining. we are all shining someday

i genuinely can’t think about nanami and akio for too long or i do think i will keel over and die but the thing is. when he drives his car into the kiryuu mansion before her car sequence (‘it’s time for your ride’, akio says when he would ordinarily say nothing at this point), nanami says ‘it’s you’. it’s you. obvious interpretation here is ‘you’re end/s of the world’, and that’s certainly part of it. but i think it’s more so like. It’s You. as in, you’re everywhere. you have a hand in everything. you brought me into your home under the guise of protecting me, and in doing so traumatised me, and harmed me, and now you’re in my home, and everyone i have spoken to about you loves you, wishes to protect you, sees no issue with the things that you do. of course it’s you. as much as touga might try to resist nanami’s attempts to sincerely understand him, this moment gives her the first real opportunity she’s ever had to do that. here is a sliver of the ‘real’ version of her brother, in proximity to and aligning himself with this man. it’s you. it’s you. i feel like a rabid dog rn

kiryuu sibling stasis post-32 is so interesting to me. nanami tries to leave and is (temporarily but also, crucially, violently) prevented from doing so by touga and akio. after this experience she puts distance between herself and them: she leaves touga’s phone in the car, she resigns from the student council (though she dons her old uniform still), she repeatedly dismisses and undermines the authority of the rose code, of end of the world, of akio, of touga. but she’s still in ohtori, isn’t she? uncomfortable with the idea of leaving, uncertain if it’s really possible. she tried before, and it hurt her. deeply. it’s so interesting to me, nanami’s agency and how she limits her exertion of it after 32, when she realises it for what it is. contrast that with touga, who accepts this weird stalemate between them, who is, really, uninterested in having any relationship of any kind with nanami if he can’t gain something from her. he’s very passive with her after 32, compared to the passivity he’d always feigned towards her before in order to stoke reactions from her and then exploit them. i was thinking about how touga has always been able to sever his relationship with nanami, but chosen not to; first out of a sense of obligation (‘we should live to help each other’) then a realisation of how that could be exploited. i was thinking about how nanami has never realised her ability to leave, in part because it is limited by touga and the harm he does her. i was thinking about the desperation and confusion akio calls out to anthy with as she leaves. i was thinking about how different that is to the kiryuus’ strange semi-breakdown; touga doesn’t want or need nanami, and nanami might love her brother but she cannot trust him or feel safe around him, doesn’t want to see him anymore; she’s itching to leave, and just a little scared (you know, because last time she tried that her brother assaulted her), and he’s not doing anything because ignoring her means he doesn’t have to deal with the emotions of her leaving or staying. something something gendered power dynamics something something tragic siblings

something about the significance of photographs in utena, how they’re staged, static, always peddling ohtori’s lies, and then something about juri’s cutting of shiori’s picture from their school year photo. that reveal is obviously a great moment but i especially love the use of sound, the locket popping open on the cut to the photo with a crude hole cut in its centre. like, we all know that locket itself is a prison for everyone involved with it, but it’s such a juri certified moment to remove something— shiori’s picture— from one of ohtori’s many means of exerting power, and ending up recreating the same effect on a smaller scale. taking that photo and placing it in a new context that tells an old lie. there is no such thing as miracles. she did not love me. she only had eyes for him. this love cannot go anywhere. and so on and so forth

i love how fraught and complicated discourse around various utena characters ‘dying’ is when anthy is literally stabbed to death eternally by a million swords imbued with human hatred. and then utena gets stabbed to death by them also. like. ‘death’ is incredibly interesting in rgu because most of the time it’s this ambiguous figurative thing that has interesting implications re: ohtori as a closed-off world one can escape. we are all trapped in our coffins. mamiya is the only named character with a grave. nemuro memorial hall functions as one all the same. ruka is implied to have died in the hospital— was he dead all along? who was the boy we saw for these two episodes? is this dead boy the same boy, or is this just another coincidence from the shadow girls, cutting like a knife? it’s heavily implied that akio and anthy murder kanae by poisoning her, adding to the previous implication that they were poisoning mr ohtori too, but there are no perceptible consequences of this. kanae’s absence is not felt. she’s fed an apple slice. what happens to the bodies? we know what happened to the 100 boys, but what about everyone else? and so on and so forth. ‘death’ is a tricky thing in utena, i think it’s constantly functioning on figurative and literal levels in very different ways for very different purposes. dios died. dios was dying. dios didn’t die. he grew up. etc etc

the symbolism of revolutionary girl utena is key to understanding what it’s even trying to say narratively and thematically. if you remove the symbolism, if you remove the ways in which the narrative obfuscates itself and abstracts what it’s saying, then what it is saying changes dramatically. if rgu was like ‘yeah lol and did you guys know that incest is bad’ or ‘maybe gay people are good’ or ‘hey did you know that csa victims are Real and Alive and Have Interiority’— like those are all paraphrases of things that it says, but the way that it chooses to say them is so powerful and conveys so much nuance and complexity that those simplistic statements don’t. it provides an incredibly meaningful commentary on the way that systemic violence and abuse are covered up, codified, made part of our culture that supposedly resents those things. it’s examination of incest, the incest taboo and how that impacts incest victims— it’s all so incredibly considered and layered because the show chooses to convey what it’s saying through symbolism, through its metatheatrical framing, through allegory. it retains the reality of these issues; it shows them to us only when we’ve already bought into the system’s lies to make a point about how that operates, how that works to make us all complicit in that violence. nanami. nanami.

dont even get me started on how the movie uses its symbolism to demonstrate how the abuse anthy and touga experienced is simultaneously built into the world and culture they exist in, and always obfuscated and abstracted for the sake of their abusers (also specifically the way that it engenders shame and prevents people from seeking help. rgu is so damn good at understanding how and why people don’t ‘do what they should’ in abusive situations: the systems in place don’t fucking work bc they are an extension of the system built upon that abuse). anthy is the model in all the paintings, the symbol of so many undesirable things, the canvas on which they are painted. her likeness is used as an approximation for all of these awful things, many of which are a part of her in a way, but such that her interiority, her feelings, are never regarded, never seen, never understood. she’s the model. akio is never explicitly named as her painter.

of all the things one can say about episode 33, one ive been thinking about a lot recently is disrupted sleep. like, the day/night cycle and character's sleep schedules alike are being messed with here. akio's fucked up endless highway is perpetually night, so that certainly contributes to it, but i just think-- there is something so viscerally upsetting to me about spending the day at an amusement park, going to bed in a hotel, and being driven home from that hotel when it is still dark. you know? i thought about anthy's disrupted sleep in the black rose arc too, and how akio wakes utena in the car by brushing her cheek. that idea of being in and out of sleep, of not getting enough of it... and then the (family) day-out nature of this trip to the hotel, the way utena is so thoroughly positioned as a child in this episode. what if i got stabbed to death by some swords real quick

juri and saionji after another long day of performing a masculine ideal that makes them uncomfortable in an attempt to obfuscate their gay ass sexuality like yippee!!! time to go get emotionally/sexually manipulated by my childhood best friend who i feel is not honest with me about Anything for reasons that clearly reflect how they hate me and not themselves. haha. awesome. i think the biggest difference between these two is the fact that saionji is so openly angry and incapable of hiding his feelings whereas juri is the repression master. she still has all those feelings they just don’t go anywhere

episode 11 is so underrated somehow episode 11 i love you episode 11. the way that utena is so right and so well-intentioned and so desperate to have herself heard and understood. stop going on about who gets to own the rose bride!! she’s just an ordinary girl named himemiya anthy!!! the way that touga’s little prince act functions to foreshadow how akio will isolate utena from anthy and make her lose sight of her desire to help anthy— which itself is just a reiteration of what happened in their very first meeting, wanting to help the other and being distracted by the self (being undermined by Some Fucking Guy, but. you know). the way that anthy and touga have orchestrated this whole thing with a sense of togetherness that isn’t amicable but was all the same togetherness until touga asserts a fundamental difference between them in this coded way that only anthy can understand for what it is. literally everything this episode has to say about identity and selves and recognising and seeing one another…… oh it’s just too much. oh? are you really just an ordinary girl?

thinking about nanami and touga both telling utena not to trust anthy at the end of the series. whilst nanami and anthy being friends is something that makes me bawl like a little baby and overjoys me immensely, ive never bought a reading of nanami post-32 that is anthy positive. like idk how you could get that impression when all she does is talk about how anthy is a terrible and dangerous person. she’s scared of her. and you know she shouldn’t be, but it’s understandable why a 13 year old living in ohtori academy might be scared of someone she already didn’t like after finding out something deeply traumatic regarding them and not having the tools to make sense of it in a compassionate way. and it makes me want to eat drywall

what’s really interesting about all this to me tho is how both kiryuus tell utena not to trust ‘the chairman/end of the world or himemiya anthy/the rose bride’. anthy and akio are a package deal of toxicity and harm to both of them and if that isn’t just the most fascinating thing ever. also the difference between nanami’s ‘chairman/himemiya’ and touga’s ‘end of the world/rose bride’ (nanami giving her warning during the badminton scene, touga giving his at the end of his duel. so much going on here wrt roles and settings and rituals and reality). but getting back to my real point isn’t it so cool (agonising) how nanami and touga are incapable of extending compassion or understanding to anthy despite the fact that they’re the two people who know the most about her other than utena and akio. and like. they don’t know a Lot, but theyve both had a smidge of insight into an abusive relationship that mirrors aspects of their own lives in myriad ways

idk something about the rose bride as a symbol who bears all of humanity’s hatred. and in the end all girls are like the rose bride yes, but key word here is like. an approximation; all trapped, all agonised, yes, but not all literally fucking crucified for eternity by a million swords that shine with human hatred. not abstracted in such a particular and insidious way. i always find anthy/kiryuu parallels compelling wrt issues of race and class and mannnnnn. nanami takes a step away from the duelling game. she’s not out, but she’s not actively partaking, not actively being exploited. touga, whilst a little more overtly involved in stuco business and still meeting with akio, does also take a step away. like, they’re both able to do that. it’s a bit of an artifice, sure, they’re still here, but oh my god oh my god oh my god. theyre not anthy. am i making sense can anyone hear me holy shit

i think what im trying to say is that for everything that both nanami and touga learn about ohtori academy and the people living in it, for everything that forces them to self-reflect and question the ground that they stand upon, they fail to break the chain with it. like, they too contribute to anthy’s abstraction. she’s an idea that they secretly embody/emulate (not sure which word works better for what im trying to say just yet), and not a person who shares experiences with them but is still wholly separate from them. this kind of compassion is like. it’s too hard, when you’re in the situations that all three of them are in. anthy too perceives both of them as nonhuman, but there is a crucial power dynamic at play here. how can you stomach such a kindness to someone you can only see as a poor imitation of the worst parts of yourself, whom you loathe??

^ THIS GUY loves it when characters commit acts of extreme violence against one another that they themselves have experienced. the nanamianthytouga brand

the thing about ‘rgu is told from akio’s perspective’ is that it is true— but i’d go even further. rgu (the show specifically) is told from the collective perspective of ohtori academy, and at various moments it leans more into specific characters’ interpretations of what ohtori even is. it prioritises and privileges akio’s perspective over others because he’s at the top of the tower, but it doesn’t stick with him. we flicker, we dance, we dip into worlds we can’t quite see and yet— we do. moments of the show are to me like bona fide utena pov. others are 100% shadow girls, general student body takes— and these are influenced and shaped by akio yes, but there’s personhood within that untouched by him. he’s just a guy in a tower. the tower reaches further. it continues to stand without him in it. and so on and so forth

i have a regular amount of emotions about them

[ID: an edited version of the ‘can’t stand her fake ass’ meme, featuring nanami and saionji from ‘revolutionary girl utena’. it is comprised of two panels.

in the first panel, nanami is repeatedly punching saionji in the chest, whilst he cringes away from her. impact text reads in all caps: ‘bitches be like / cant stand her fake ass!’

in the second panel, nanami beams at saionji with tears in her eyes, exclaiming: ‘oh…! thank goodness!’. impact text reads in all caps: ‘20 seconds later / me and kyoichi!’. ‘20 seconds later’ has clearly been edited over the original text, and ‘kyoichi’ is a screenshot of a subtitle nanami says in ‘utena’. /end ID]

trying to write something about how much i hate the ‘misandry in utena/the utena fandom’ crowd but it feels kind of redundant to me. i think i just don’t consider people who use the word ‘misandry’ serious people. i do however feel an obligation to occasionally make my position clear on that front, because im aware i tougapost and some people love to bring that guy up as the misandry in the utena fandom poster boy. which is so fucking stupid because touga is not victimised by ‘misandry’, touga is victimised by homophobic violence which is wrapped up in misogynistic violence, both of which are the cogs in the machine we call patriarchy. touga is not affected by misogyny in the same way that anthy is, that’s one of the key takeaways you can get from their being foils, and i don’t really like the whole ‘oh patriarchy hurts men too’ stuff because it neglects the fact that men reap so many material benefits from what some people deem ‘harm’ to them (emotional repression being the big one. it’s not great but when you’re the privileged party and gain power from it, who cares? it’s like the inverse of kozue trying to use sexuality to gain power: she can’t do that). but touga is a shitty dysfunctional person who has been shaped by violence and in turn perpetuated violence, and his character excels, imho, at examining how patriarchy functions and attempts to homogenise life’s many complexities. same deal as nanami really. they just play different roles in this gender essentialist nightmare that crunches out any grit. and you can extend that idea to all rgu characters but i am who i am and that is a kiryuu siblings enjoyer

rgu is such a distinctly aromantic show to me that i sometimes forget some people think it’s like the pinnacle of romance. and that’s not because i think utena and anthy don’t ‘love’ one another, it’s because i think rgu criticises ‘romance’ as a heterosexist construct. you cannot buy into the prince/princess, duellist/bride formula. everything ‘romantic’ is wrapped up in rgu’s representation of patriarchy. also have any of you guys even seen nanami fail to understand romance as a concept i mean my god. she’s just like me fr

if you evennnn fucking. Care

[ID: a production sketch for ‘revolutionary girl utena’. it shows nanami and touga’s younger designs from the front and back. they are holding hands. nanami smiles widely, whilst touga wears a neutral expression. /end ID]

everyone reading atr for the first time vs me who read it for the first time three years ago and has been insane about it ever since. (guy who loves the painting motif) the paintings!!!!!!! also i think it’s neat that akio and ruka die again even if juri’s chapter is a bit wobbly wrt dunking on that guy. i dont consider it canon in the strictest sense, primarily bc if touga was 37 years old before he had an ounce of growth it would kill me, but i think its ideas and messaging are largely scrumptious. i deeply enjoy the baby-utena-spectre thing and the utena-prince thing and how transparently and directly the stuco’s perceptions and understandings of who utena was have shaped them; in turn, how that has trapped some remnant of utena in ohtori, as ‘prince’. also shout-out anthy bc the way she functions in atr ohhhhhh it makes me crazy. what chiho saito says about not seeing an aged up utenanthy about seeing only a previous form of themselves that maybe isn’t all that real at all, ohhhhhhh it’s incredible 10/10 no notes on that front for me. we’re still storytelling within ohtori and that is sososososo important. it’s not as good as the movie manga imho, but atr is like. it just holds a special place in my heart for being such a compelling and mixed bag of Stuff. great food for thought. i think everyone should read it honestly im baffled that people are choosing not to