「虞姬」 by 御坂 | Twitter

๑ Permission to reprint was given by the artist ✔.

FGO 虞美人＆蘭陵王

(2020/08/23)

夏のコミックマーケット96に参加します。スペース 8/9(金)西ら15aです。

イラストは頒布予定の本より虞美人。

I participate in the summer comic market 96. It is Circle space 8/9 (Fri) “西-ら15a”. The image is a gubijin. Than I scheduled book to sell.

下着モデル「虞美人さん」 | ましゅー

虞美人 | ちゃまこう [pixiv]

FGO　虞美人

先輩と後輩

(2020/09/02)

love the smell of bad takarazuka academia in the morning

this is an anon ask that enables you to talk about Anything regarding flower language in rgu if you want to. seriously i’d love to hear anything you have to say (but you don’t have to obviously)

🥺 THATS V SWEET TY ANON… another anon was actually kind enough to ask abt the same thing a while back so i have a post about the duelists’ rose colors here :’)

this time i’ll talk about a couple of my other favorite examples!! firstly, kanae’s lilies in episode 14, and then the poppies and cacti in episode 35 hehe

kanae’s black rose duelist motif is white easter lilies

lilies, especially white easter lilies, are associated with purity, chastity, and other such ideals that tie into traditional femininity, partly because they’re associated with the virgin mary (particularly madonna lilies), and also because white flowers in general tend to be associated with purity (like utena’s white rose, which symbolizes the purity of her ideals and of her admiration of her prince). in japanese, there’s also a saying, “立てば芍薬、座れば牡丹、歩く姿は百合の花” which im not sure how to properly translate, but it has to do with the way a woman carries herself: like a garden peony when standing, a tree peony when sitting, and like a lily when walking. the part about the lily refers to how lilies sway in the wind, comparing it to a graceful woman. i think they’re also part of a trio of flowers that symbolize the three traits of an ideal woman, but i can’t remember what the third one is, only lilies and roses… but the fact that lilies and roses are grouped together like that in the context of traditional femininity is definitely interesting 👀 long story short, kanae’s lilies are deeply associated with the role that she’s under extreme pressure to perform: the perfect loving wife 😔

on top of that, lilies are the flower of the greek goddess hera… aka zeus’s notoriously unhappy wife 😬 i don’t think much needs to be said about comparing akio to zeus, speaks for itself really… but i find kanae/hera to be a really interesting comparison re: anthy, since hera is sort of known for turning her anger on the women that zeus chases after (sorry classicists/greek mythology buffs if that’s not accurate idk many greek myths that aren’t flower related 😅). kanae has good reason to be suspicious and frightened of her situation, but those suspicions are all turned on anthy: she suspects her father is being poisoned, the culprit must be anthy! she feels that something isn’t quite right with her engagement, it must be because anthy doesn’t like her! and while it IS true that anthy antagonizes kanae on purpose and it IS possible that anthy had a hand in the chairman’s poisoning, it’s also true that akio and kanae’s mother are the ones responsible for the entire plot. anthy is the perfect scapegoat because she and kanae already don’t get along, and so the black rose even compels kanae to revolutionize her situation by killing the rose bride. it’s just very interesting to me how the hera comparison recontextualizes the relationship between kanae and anthy and how it fits into the greater theme of narrative roles that women are cast in to absolve abusive men… and all of that conveyed just with a flower :’)

which brings us to poppies…

akio brings utena to a field of poppies at the start of episode 35. he tells her that poppies bloomed on the grave of lady gubijin (consort yu), and so in hanakotoba they represent… what? akio gets cut off, so we don’t get to hear. what he was likely going to tell her was that lady gubijin was the wife of kouu (xiang yu), both of whom died in the battle of gaixia. the very very short version of this story is that kouu had successfully rescued his wife from the enemy forces that captured her, but they were now surrounded with seemingly no escape. lady gubijin, feeling responsible for their situation, performed a sword dance for her husband which ended in her committing suicide upon his sword so that he would not be distracted by his love for her 😔 akio took utena to see the poppies just to gleefully telegraph his intentions: she and anthy both are meant to fall upon their swords for him.

fun fact, they probably referenced the story of lady gubijin because the very first full length production by the takarazuka revue was the 1951 show “gubijin”! unfortunately i can’t find any in depth summaries of the story, at least not in english, which is a shame, it would have been really interesting to see what all be papas might have taken inspiration from.

the poppy reappears again later in the episode with touga, when a girl approaches him to make a confession

red poppies also have associations with love and success, as well as fun and pleasure, seemingly the perfect flower for touga and his playboy persona. but this confession is coming right at the moment that touga begins to realize akio’s real intentions in grooming touga to be a “playboy,” ultimately the very same intentions that akio has for utena. touga is meant to fall on his sword so that utena can pass by him and go to the castle.

touga says he finds the girl’s earnestness lovely, but he himself accepts her confession in a pretty perfunctory way, only for us to cut to a shot of him carelessly stepping on her love letter. despite being the red rose of the duelists and the “playboy” of ohtori, touga can’t return his admirers’ earnest feelings. the poppy seems to laugh at him just as viciously as akio himself

the purple emperor butterfly that lands on the poppy is interesting, too. it’s the official butterfly of japan iirc, and heavily associated with adolescence and growing up. it also is known for being attracted to the rotten scent of carrion… not a great omen for touga

and then to really rub salt in the wound, we have the cactus scene

akio, surrounded by cacti, continues to gleefully humiliate touga, openly talking about his intentions for utena and how… interesting, for lack of a better word, it would be to see her become champion. “oh, but of course i still hope to see you win,” he adds cruelly. touga doesn’t respond to the jab, looking out the window instead as his one small cactus blooms in his hand

unfortunately… in hanakotoba, cactus flowers represent sexual attraction 😬 which makes this scene pretty painful to watch, but… well, it’s a good illustration of the power imbalance between touga and akio and how gleefully akio is flaunting it in order to humiliate touga. this episode is hard to sit through, but unfortunately all the hanakotoba in it made it one of my favorites to discuss hdgsjdbxcb 💀

well that’s about all ive got for now, ty for giving me the opportunity to ramble anon :’) if anyone ever has a particular flower from the show that they’re curious about, id love to help 👀

I wanna get railed by Xiang Yu and then Gubijin in that order

メガネぐっちゃん | kyoken [pixiv]