Revolutionary Girl Utena S1E11: "Gracefully Cruel; the One Who Picks the Flower"

This one opens with Utena and that normie friend of hers who hasn't been relevant in so long I'm not even going to bother looking up her name laying out on the lawn in the sun. Friend seems to be very self-conscious about her recent irrelevance, and is trying to force Utena to try this super fancy picnic lunch she prepared for her to prove how much she cares about her.

Stuffing the container in Utena's face leads to a scuffle, which leads to the two of them rolling down the hill as a smattering of bystanders watch in confusion. Then the title drop.

That's a pretty light teaser, heh.

When we return to Utena and Wakaba - right, that's her name - the two of them have stopped their descent and Utena has acquiesced to her demands. She's not thrilled to see the food itself - it's pretty much all just instant stuff arranged in a high-effort cutesy display - but she pretends to like it. Before she can eat any, Anthy appears out of nowhere and declares that she's dutifully brought her fiancé lunch.

Utena isn't thrilled to have even more tribute flung at her feet. More implicitly, she also seems to resent having Anthy show up right now at all. Like, she was enjoying just having a normal afternoon with a normal friend for once, and she was hoping to not have every moment of her life eaten up by Rose Bride stuff in one way or another.

Well, either that, or she's just afraid of what spiritual consequences Anthy's latest culinary experiment might have. Or thermokinetic consequences, for that matter. Even just the explosion without the Cartesian dualism malfunction could be pretty bad.

They open the box. It turns out to be even worse than I expected.

There's finding cockroaches in the food you ordered, and then there's this.

The girls manage to all have a fun-ish social outing, even Utena despite the many annoyances. As they chat and nibble at the spiritual perils, someone is spying on Utena through a scope. It's a Kiryuu sibling, obviously, but I give it 50/50 chances on being Touga or Nanami. Turns out, it's Touga, and he's got Miki badgering him. Miki is asking him what he's looking at. Touga is explaining that he can see a lonely princess in need of fulfilment.

If no one besides him can see how lonely and empty Utena is, it's only because they lack his insight.

Even Miki thinks that this is delusional. Unfortunately, Touga is a social superior who can easily laugh him off and make him wonder if he was wrong for saying that, even though he's totally right. Rare Miki W, but he sadly wasn't able to make it stick.

After a little while, Touga starts crossing the lawn toward them, leaving Miki to be insecure by himself back in the grove. Touga is quickly pounced on by a half dozen underclassman girls who keep him too busy to finish his approach, but that doesn't stop Utena from looking out at him with a haunted expression and wondering if he could be her prince for the thirty billionth time. Seriously show you don't need to keep reminding me of this for fuck's sake, I can remember things from one episode to the next one right after it.

This entire scene was pretty much pointless, come to think of it.

Next up, it's a student council meeting! For some reason, there are a bunch of balloons rising up into the sky in the background this time, with their numbers and nearness both slowly escalating over the course of the scene.

The dialogue consists almost entirely of Juri and Miki telling Touga what a dick move it was to set his little sister up to fail like that, and him completely brushing them off with excuses that he clearly doesn't actually expect them to believe and is only saying as a show of contempt for them. Real "card says moops" type brazenness.

Thing is, DID Touga set Nanami up to fail, or was that a mandate from on high? How much power *does* he have over new candidates being chosen? If it's really all at his discretion, I can't believe that the other student council members would still be invested at this point with the game so impossibly tilted in his favor.

I'm also not sure how Nanami losing there helped him, aside from him perhaps avoiding having to fight Utena while still a bit injured from Saiyonji. Maybe that's all.

I don't really get this whole plot, but it seems like the most important takeaway is that Touga is a douchebag, and I already knew that, so we're good.

The scene ends with him just saying that caring about someone is just setting yourself up for a fall. The more you care, the worse it will be. Nanami's own fault, you see.

Implying strongly that he doesn't actually care about Nanami in the slightest. Or, if he does, that he's convinced himself he doesn't.

In fairness to him, after the kitten incident...eh, I don't know, trying to analyse culpability among those two just makes me nauseous. Let's move on.

Later that day, Utena goes to the greenhouse to see Touga already there talking to Anthy. He sure is slipping over here a lot, isn't he? Probably easier for him to manage now that Saiyonji isn't guarding the place half the time. As Utena creeps up to the door to eavesdrop, Touga asks Anthy about that picnic he glimpsed her sharing with Utena and Wakaba. Anthy says she had fun, and she looks and sounds genuine, but who knows. Anthy mentions that Wakaba's contribution to their picnic was really good (um...yeah, she's bullshitting) and she wants to try cooking something like it someday (lmao Wakaba's was all canned stuff she didn't even really cook anything).

Touga responds with a chuckle, looms over Anthy, and tells her that the Rose Bride has no place cooking. That's beneath her. Her job is to tend the roses in here. And, he promises her, when he is her husband, he will ensure that she stays in this birdcage (and yes, he is the first character in the show to explicitly describe the greenhouse as a "birdcage" as per its shape) forever, and never, ever leaves.

Utena finally throws the door open and tells him to get the fuck away from her. She's sick of the way he and the rest of the student council treat her like some kind of object or pet rather than a person, and she's going to force them all to understand that Anthy Himemiya is a human being and not just a Rose Bride if it's the last thing she does.

Touga asks her if she's really so sure about what Anthy is. And, frankly, he may actually have a point here. Sort of. Well...actually, that's giving him a little too much credit. Anthy does do some things on her own initiative, and she clearly doesn't like being abused. So, even if her psychology really is as alien to human norms as he's suggesting it is, the way he's acting toward her would still be wrong (assuming she isn't Dios acting a part and/or he himself isn't aware that she is Dios acting a part, of course. If the two of them are in on it together then obviously none of this applies).

HOWEVER. It does seem like he and Utena might, even if there's no moral equivalence in how they're doing it, be making the same kind of mistake. Both of them are projecting something onto Anthy and mentally papering over any evidence against their understandings of her. Or at least, Utena is. Touga might know and just not care.

Utena tells Anthy to tell Touga how she really feels about being the Rose Bride. Anthy stammers nervously. She urges her to go on, come on, tell Touga how much she hates this. Anthy then, much more confidently, tells Touga that she hates being the Rose Bride.

-____-

Congratulations, Utena. You sure showed him. :/

Touga gives that exactly as much credit as it deserves, and then changes the subject by saying that his business here isn't really with Anthy, it's with Utena. Even though he was just going on about his own plans for Anthy lol. For some reason, Utena doesn't call him on this blatant contradiction. And also, for some reason, acts blankly confused when he mentions he has business with her, even though he's already sexually harassed her repeatedly.

-_________-

...

See. This is why Utena the character frustrates me. It feels like every beat of character development for her needs to be repeated eight times before we can move on to the next one. It isn't even written in a way that suggests she's stubborn and refusing to learn as a character flaw; it's more like the previous iterations just never happened. So we keep going through multiple interpretations of her making the same mistake for an arbitrary number of repetitions until the rest of the story decides to acknowledge one of them.

...

Touga tells her now, in no uncertain terms, that he is her "prince" from her childhood, who found her when she was weeping in the coffin. He was filled in on these rumors in recent student council meetings etc, so he's now able to put everything together with his own memories of the little pink-haired girl who he just kind of abandoned after deciding he couldn't help her. So, now that he remembers that, he's trying to convince her that that's not how it actually went. Maybe he even remembers it that way himself, now, and has come to convince himself that he actually comforted her and gave her the ring. And, her own memories of that night are muddled enough that the memories of the multiple guys who opened her coffin kinda blur together I guess.

...

I kinda want a crack AU fic where Utena somehow turned into a vampire in there ngl.

...

Of course, it's also still possible that it really was Touga's body that came back and consoled her later that night after he and Sayionji left. His body, being puppeted by Dios. Dios is obviously manipulating Touga just like Touga manipulates everyone else, after all.

Anyway, Utena finds his claim convincing. And lets him kiss her.

It feels similar enough to when Dios kissed her as a little girl (not on the lips, to be fair, but still creepy) that Utena is now convinced that this is in fact the same guy.

And she never thinks to ask why he never mentioned this until now.

Including the previous time that he tried to get her to kiss him.

Sigh....

Well, as frustrating as the above is, I'll take this as additional evidence for the "possessed Touga" hypothesis. If his lips and fingers feel exactly like Dios' did back then, it's likely that those were in fact the same lips and the same fingers.

Then, as soon as he releases her and steps back again, he says this:

Looks like End Of The World sent them their next date already, and while Touga is fully recovered he's still not going to fight Utena without completely sabotaging her emotionally first if he can help it. Because seriously, is there any other way that Kiryuu Touga would ever do things?

That evening, Utena stands around anxiously in the nuptial dorm, pondering her ring. Reunion with and validation from the Prince is what she's been chasing for half of her life. It's what brought her here. It's what turned her into what she currently is. But now, her one material link to him is forcing her to fight him?

Utena, seriously, think about this for a second.

If Touga really is the Prince, and if you aren't willing to admit that you were just plain wrong for having wanted to emulate him in the first place, then you don't need the damned ring any more. You found your sensei. You can learn more shit from him, or try to impress him, or whatever else you wanted to do, at will. Finding the dude on campus isn't exactly hard.

In fact, if he is your Prince, and he gave you that ring with those words of encouragement, then doesn't that imply that he wanted you to fight him all along? Heck, isn't that USUALLY how these "prove your worthiness" stories tend to go? Fight the sensei to demonstrate that your swordplay, honor, and determination are all up to his standards, and then get the boon/training/knowledge/etc as a reward?

Actually, Utena, if you really think he's the prince, why didn't you ask him why he gave you the ring?

Basically, this is a type of emotional turmoil that I just don't buy coming from this character in this situation. If Utena were trying to reconcile her belief in the Prince with Touga's multifaceted horribleness, that would make sense. And, I guess I can see how "how can I fight my role model?" might be sort of a proxy for "how the hell can THIS guy be my perfect prince?" in Utena's mind? I guess? It's a bit of a stretch, though. Especially since I'm not sure what would prevent Utena from just tackling that contradiction directly. It's not like she was invested in the notion of Touga being a good guy up until now, even if she was much more charitable toward him and the other student councilors than she should have been.

As Utena wrestles with these unconvincing anxieties, Anthy tells her that it's tea time. I'll bet the tea she made flips your alignment or gets your stomach pregnant with a blue devil or something.

Well, they sit down with the tea that I would absolutely not trust, and start chatting. Anthy goes on about how she really enjoyed the picnic today, especially hanging out with Wakaba. Utena tells her she should try and make proper friends with her, independently of their shared friendship with Utena, and then Anthy goes all quiet. Eyes downcast. Slowly, quietly, she whispers that she wishes she had more friends. She would like that.

Hmmmmmmm.

This could be genuine, but it could also be an attempt to play on Utena's belief that she's a brainwashed abuse victim who needs encouragement. Utena HAS been getting more frustrated with Anthy over the last few episodes, so maybe Anthy thinks she needs to throw her a bone to keep her invested. Show her a sign of what she WANTS to see and make her think she's making progress.

What's worse is that it could conceivably be both at once. Anthy could actually be be what Utena thinks, AND she could be using that to manipulate Utena.

Utena gives Anthy a big cheesy speech about how she can have all the friends she wants if she just opens her heart, and how there's a whole world waiting for her, and so forth. Anthy stares at her own reflection in her cup and lets Utena run out of breath.

"Open my heart and stab everyone with the sword I've got in there! Yessir right away sir!"​

What's in that expression, really? Introspection? Guilt? Indecision? Or just reptilian impassivity that you can walk away from with whatever Rorschach Blot impression you prefer?

Credit to the artists here. Conveying that ambiguity in this simplistic art style is an achievement.

When Utena tells her that she'll help her practice her social skills and meet more people, Anthy...oh god damnit...Anthy widens her eyes in amazement as if she can't believe anyone would ever do something so kind for her, and then gives Utena a sad, dewy-eyed little smile and says she would love that.

Next thing we know, Utena is marching off toward the arena, her determination renewed. She is resolved to save Anthy from anyone who would try to take away her agency and force her back into her cage again. It is what she must do. She can't allow the progress she's made with her to go to waste, not when she's just been made so sure that Anthy really does need saving. Even if that means fighting her own Prince.

Turn her "back" into a regular girl, Utena? What makes you assume she was one to begin with?​

There's no way the timing here is a coincidence.

...

The question at this point is whether or not Anthy and Touga are working at cross purposes. And - if so - why.

If they're NOT at cross-purposes, then they're motivating Utena to fight as hard as she can against Touga for ritual purposes. Dios gets more power or whatever out of the duel if both combatants are giving it their all.

If they ARE at cross-purposes, then this could mean one of three things.

1. Dios needs the battles to be hard-fought as per above, but Touga doesn't know this. Thus, Touga is trying to emotionally sabotage Utena and make the fight easier for himself because he thinks the game is actually about winning, while Anthy is trying to motivate her because she knows that it's really about the fight itself. If Anthy and Dios actually are one and the same, then this option is the most likely.

2. Dios has decided that Utena is the one he wants to enter the castle at the end, so he doesn't want Touga to undermine her odds of victory. This is compatible with Anthy=Dios, but makes it less likely; given that Touga and Dios have direct lines of communication via both phone and mail, it seems like Dios would just sabotage Touga directly if he wanted to fix this match.

3. Anthy actually does prefer Utena to Touga, because Utena treats her better than he would. Unfortunately, given her situation and nature, earnest encouragement of her chosen one is indistinguishable from cynical manipulation of her chosen one. Frankly, even if Anthy just came out and told Utena "please don't let Touga take me" instead of the roundabout approach she took, Anthy's past behaviour would make it seem just as suspicious at this point.

Now, all that said? The Juri episode sure made it seem like Dios and/or Anthy is already perfectly capable of fixing (or at least, heavily slanting) the matches using sword manipulation if they want to. So, that also effects things.

...

This episode's puppet show is basically a thematic restatement of the whole problem with "princes" as a concept, using a darkly humorous twist on the William Tell story.

It's not even slightly ambiguous who the butt of the joke is this time. Touga might call himself a prince and style himself (deliberately or otherwise) after Dios, but he doesn't seem to be under any illusions about what that means. This bit of shadow-puppet satire isn't directed at him.

So. Zettai. Unmei. Also, mokushiroku. I feel like there might be some slight differences to the otherwise stock stair climb sequence, this time. Not sure. Utena looks a little less sure of herself than usual, to me, especially toward the end, but that might just be new context tinting the same old frames. Before the battle starts, Utena asks Touga if they really need to fight, and Touga pretends to be very sorrowful and solemn about this as he silently nods yes.

...

Utena, pull out a gun and shoot him, seriously, just Indiana Jones this bullshit.

...

There's a really bizarre visual...thing...that I'm not sure is an artistic choice or just down to animation oversights. When Anthy pins the roses to the two combatants' chests, she appears to shrink to about 1/3 her usual size. It's obvious enough that it feels like it has to be on purpose, but like...huh?

It's over pretty much as soon as it happens, also, which doesn't help with the ambiguity.

As he draws his sword, Touga tells Utena that he unfortunately must now "take her precious bird from her." Which...is this actual projection on his part, or just another attempt to get under her skin? Whichever it is, Utena - disappointingly enough - just takes it laying down.

Begin fight. The initial clash of blades goes against Utena, but I'm pretty sure that's happened in almost every duel so far to try to establish the opponent's threat, so I'm not sure if it really means all that much lol. Touga does distinguish himself, though, by following it up with some insufferable condescension as he plays the mentor Prince role. Sort of.

Like I said. Gun. The correct answer here was gun. Or, like. A super soaker full of bleach. Maybe just a brittle ceramic ball full of bleach with a handle on it or something. Substitute bullet ants for bleach at your leisure.

Fight continues. Touga paternalistically comments on Utena's sloppy swordsmanship, but she seems to be putting up a decently sustained fight against him. Then, when he manages to briefly disarm(? I think? She has the sword again the very next time we see her, and she never appeared to lean down and pick it up. Maybe he just knocked one of her hands free and not both?), he prepares himself for the thing he scouted out in the previous match between Utena and Nanami. As she grits her teeth with determination against that near-defeat, her ring glows. And, just as Touga was waiting for, that spectral shape descends from the castle overhead toward Utena.

And now, apparently, Touga thinks it's safe for him to try and end the duel.

Erm...I guess he figured out that Utena can only get exactly one special surge of power or skill or luck per battle from that Dios phantom, and he was waiting for her to use it up before making his real finishing move?

I guess?

Not sure how else to read this.

Well, at least he might have been honest in his assessment of Utena's swordsmanship, then, if he's been softballing up until now. He really is that good, despite Saiyonji's claims to the contrary. He's earned the right to be smug about this the honest way, at least.

The duel song is probably the best of the series so far, btw. It has a strong, meloncholy sound to it, and the words are about imprisonment and delusion. *Generational* imprisonment and delusion. The chains of society that people shackle themselves with for century after century while wondering why they can't be free.

Finally, Utena thinks she has an opening. She lunges. At the last second, Touga lowers his defenses and puts his face directly in front of her sword. Heh, well. I'll give Touga credit for at least warning her he was going to do something like this. Unfortunately, it's not a warning Utena heeds. She clumsily aborts her attack to avoid hurting "her prince" and ends up stumbling by next to him instead. Letting him easily cut off her rose as she passes.

Touga wins. Utena loses.

The Sword of Dios in Utena's hand dematerializes. It can no longer be drawn or wielded by her.

Sheathing his own blade again, Touga politely congratulates Utena on having been freed of her obligations. She's been going on and on about how much she hates this whole Rose Bride system, so he can only assume she'll be glad to no longer have anything to do with it. Come on, bullet ants, you've got to have some stashed away somewhere Utena. He manages to keep a straight face for all this, which...why is he even pretending, at this point?

Utena begs him to not take Anthy and imprison her. Almost tearfully. Looking more desperate and vulnerable than she has since the show began, as the person she thought she could save falls back into the abyss. Touga asks her why he shouldn't. Utena tells him that Anthy wants to be her own person, she was just starting to undo whatever trauma or indoctrination she's suffered and trying to live again. Touga asks Anthy if this is true. Anthy hesitates just a moment before saying that no, that's not true. she doesn't want more friends. She's happy just tending the roses.

Utena stammers in disbelief. Touga, meanwhile, just echoes Miki's own words to him earlier in the episode. What Utena saw was an illusion of her own invention. When she first met Anthy, she thought she saw a victim who needed rescue, and she wanted to rescue her. So, that's what Anthy became, for her. Complete with the slow signs of recovery. The resurgence of agency, in all the idiosyncratic little ways Utena would expect an autonomous human being slowly coming back to life to show. Her own person, perhaps, someday. The salvation of whom would be a prize for Utena to mount on her mantlepiece.

Implicitly, any genuine distress Anthy may or may not have felt as part of this role is Utena's fault. If Utena had just wanted her to be happy as she was, Anthy would have been happy as she was. If Anthy has genuine emotions, then Utena's fantasy forced her to experience some really unpleasant ones.

...

Of course, there's a giant Saiyonji-shaped hole in Touga's pronouncement, here. Anthy did NOT seem to be happy under Saiyonji's domination. She had to struggle through the words when she claimed to want to stay with him. During the initial duel between him and Utena, whenever we saw Anthy, she really looked like she was silently rooting for Utena. This was before Utena became her master, so she had no reason to conform to her desires or expectations yet at that point.

If Saiyonji was some sick fuck sadist who was getting off on having a sobbing prisoner to torture, this could fit. He would have wanted a victim just like Utena wanted a victim, albeit for different reasons, and from the outside looking in Anthy's shift from Saiyonji's desire to Utena's would look like normal trauma recovery after a rescue. The thing is, I don't think that Saiyonji WAS that. He was a brute, a misogynist, and an abuser, but not in the depraved torturer kind of way. When he hit Anthy, it always seemed like he was actually frustrated with her, not like he was getting off on causing her to suffer. In his interactions with her since the pilot, he always seemed to think she genuinely loved him, which is irreconcilable with the notion that he wanted her to be an unwilling victim for him.

Of course, this whole analysis is ignoring the evidence we've been given that Anthy is actually, like, the devil or something. Most likely, this is all just a game for her (if she even is a "her"), and the humans who think they're in control are the toys. If Touga actually believes what he's telling Utena right now, then the joke is just as much on him; just not for the above reasons.

...

Anthy tells Utena that she's sorry, but Touga is telling the truth. Please just try to cheer up and move on. Touga bids Utena do the same; really, she's best off just forgetting all about this entire thing and moving on with her life.

The episode ends with Utena sinking to the ground in tears as Touga and Anthy walk away, babbling about how she knows Anthy needs her, how deep down she must be struggling against her new master.

From the outside looking in, Utena is acting an awful lot like Saiyonji right now.

Two episodes in this set in queue to go. I wonder how things are going to proceed from here. The circumstances that normally allow for rematches haven't been made at all clear, and unlike Saiyonji Utena doesn't have the political clout to force one. So, yeah. Unless Anthy/Dios does something proactive to keep Utena in the game for whatever inscrutable reasons of theirs, or Touga gets struck by lightning and causes Anthy to default back to her previous master, I'm not sure how the story would continue from here.

As a final thought, I love how the episode's title could just as easily refer to Touga or to Anthy.