Revolutionary Girl Utena S1E10: "Nanami's Precious One"

The episode title has me dreading this.

Are you sure I can't just skip this one?

You're sure, aren't you.

Fuck.

We open on Saiyonji, possessions all packed onto his back, leaving the school for the final time. On one hand, Touga manipulated him into it. On the other hand, all Touga had to do to manipulate him into it was write him a letter saying "hey bro if you commit these felonies on this night you'll win a prize," so it's hard to say that this is unjust per se.

Underclassmen gossip wildly over this occurence. Fortunately for Utena, her name doesn't seem to have been connected to the incident, and indeed the entire reason for his dismissal seems to be kept largely away from the general student body. The other student council members don't suspect Touga's involvement in what happened; after all, it's not like Saiyonji needed much of a push.

Touga sees Saiyonji out at the gate. Magnanimously promising that he'll do everything he can to get his expulsion reversed. It was a moment of weakness, Touga understands that, he'd never hold a little thing like this against his lifelong friend.

Also, despite having been cut across the back, Touga has his arm in a sling. Lol, he's barely even putting any effort into this. You'd think Saiyonji would notice the contradiction even if no one else did, but I guess he was in enough of a red fog at the time that he'd be easy to gaslight about what happened.

As he leaves, Saiyonji apologizes for all the trouble he's caused, and for being such a burden to Touga and the others, thanking them all for tolerating him as long as they did. On one hand, that's more self awareness than Saiyonji has ever demonstrated before, good for him. On the other hand...poor dumb stupid idiot Saiyonji.

He also gives Touga his and Anthy's message diary, and tells him to take care of it for him. Why would he do this? There might be some occult reason for it, I guess. Otherwise, I can't imagine any way that this makes even metaphorical sense.

Well, if the book had a magical purpose, I hope it didn't have a very important magical purpose. Once Saiyonji is out of sight, Touga tosses it in a garden incinerator on his way back to the dorms. Heh, with that phoenix motif that Anthy may be covertly packing, burning something associated with her could have repercussions.

Title drop. No sign of Nanami in the teaser. Hopefully the title will be a fakeout, and really it'll just be a Touga-centric episode without framing him through Nanami. Hopefully.

Student council meeting! Break the shell of the world! With Saiyonji's disruptions no longer a concern, End Of The World is eager to get this ritual completed already. He's sent a letter including the date of another duel, and this time Touga is up to challenge the current claimant. However, Touga still has everyone thinking he's injured, and so he can't fight Utena now without giving the whole story with Saiyonji away to the other Councilors (not that they'd probably mind that much, given Saiyonji's recent behaviour, but still, he'd rather not expose his manipulative nature to that degree). Juri and Miki both offer to rematch Utena this round, but Touga tells them that won't be necessary. You see, yet another new challenger has appeared.

Oh god, please don't tell me he's naming his little sister as his champion or something...

...oh.

Oh fuck.

It's the little psycho kid they just adopted, isn't it?

Well, I guess I'm here for it. Kind of. I think. I can't think of anything better for the story to do with that fucking kid, anyway.

Cut to the greenhouse, where we hear Anthy being slapped once again. Then we switch to an internal shot, and holy shit that wasn't Anthy being slapped, it was Utena. And, the person slapping her was Nanami. This isn't such a surprising thing to happen in and of itself. What IS surprising is that, even multiple seconds after slapping Utena, Nanami still isn't curled up on the ground clutching her face and crying.

Is Utena seriously just taking this shit all of a sudden now, or did she and Anthy share another bowl of curry?

Nanami bitches Utena out, and out, and out for being involved in a situation that led to her brother being injured. Even though she knows her brother masterminded that situation. Even though she knows he's pretending to be much more injured than he is. Honestly, I think that - once again - Nanami is just looking for convincing-sounding excuses to torment people she doesn't like. She's just pretending to think Utena is in any way to blame, because she knows that Utena herself probably thinks that, which means she can exploit her sense of honor to get away with abusing her over it.

And yeah, Utena has her own voice actress still. She miserably apologizes, and Nanami seizes on that sign of weakness and pushes harder, telling her that words aren't enough, NOTHING will be enough. This isn't more body-switching, Utena is just that demoralized after the previous episode's events. Damn.

Touga and Anthy enter the greenhouse, the former commanding his sister to stand down and please just try to stop being a raging bitch for the next few seconds. Nanami clenches her fists and gnashes her teeth, but obeys. Touga, of course, plays this off as him rescuing Utena a second time. Even though the only reason she "needs" rescuing is because she's so emotionally weakened after the last situation he manipulated her into needing him to rescue her from.

He and Nanami really are the same, aside from about 60 IQ points.

Touga helps Utena to her feet, and assures her that no apologies or thank-yous are necessary; he's just doing what's in his nature. Even more vitality drains out of Utena's face. Nanami loses her shit and screams that she will never, ever forgive Utena. Her anger is genuine now, but she's not talking about the incident in the arena, she's talking about Utena having the gall to once again have her brother say something superficially nice to her in front of Nanami. She stomps out. Touga smugly assures Utena that his sister will get over this eventually, please don't take her too seriously, he's very sorry for her behavior. While the look in his eyes as he smirks at Utena clearly says "hey remember that time I sexually assaulted you." His final spoken words to Utena are "Eventually, she'll realize that it wasn't your fault.'

Not your fault. Not your merit. Not your influence. You are passive, and only silly little girls like my idiot sister don't realize that that's just natural.

I'm not sure if Touga is twisting the knife this hard on purpose or not. I wouldn't be surprised either way.

Next scene has Utena and Anthy back in the nuptial dorm. Utena sitting in the corner and staring at her rose ring.

When Anthy asks what's got her down, Utena says that what it really comes down to is that someone else got hurt rescuing her. That basically calls her entire raison d'etre into question. Holy fuck Utena humans are social animals they're supposed to fight in packs and cover for each other when they get hurt, seriously this isn't even a gender thing just save him back the next time there's a gun-toting water buffalo on the loose or whatever.

Anthy suggests that if Utena feels bad about what happened, perhaps they ought to go visit Touga as he rests and give him a proper apology and thank you. The roses are really blooming nicely right now; they can pick a few of them from the greenhouse and give him a nice bouquet.

...

Holy fuck that is the most normal course of action any character has suggested in this entire show.

...

Also, Anthy just got a new kitten. Because apparently she still has enough room in hammerspace for yet another pet. You know, it occurs to me that we hear about Anthy having other pets all the time, but we never see any of them more than once. I'm guessing she keeps them all in an enclosed hell-dimension that Chuchu guards the dread gates of. Whatever plane of existence it's going to be living on, though, the cat is pretty kawaii.

Then, a flashback. Touga's childhood, much earlier than the middle school aged incident with Saiyonji and Utena. Touga looks like he's around ten years old in this memory, which would make Nanami seven or eight I think. His age is actually very relevant, because today is his birthday! The Kiryuu family is even more sickeningly wealthy than you were probably imagining. Like, think full-on European aristocracy vibes. They live in what genuinely looks like a castle and everything. A bunch of nobleman guests in nobleman outfits are here to coldly, mechanically wish the picture-perfect, immaculately dressed and poised heir the best, and give him gifts he probably won't be able to appreciate for another ten years if ever.

The atmosphere is ruined when Nanami comes in carrying a kitten in a box. From the look of it, it's an orphaned stray she just adopted (Anthy's looked much, much sleeker and cleaner). From the look of her, she just came back from wrangling it out of an alley.

The adults, naturally, throw a fit at being reminded that nature exists.

They demand that she throw "that filthy thing" out of the house this instant before it gives them all fleas or ringworm or leukaemia or something. Nanami starts to cry. To everyone else's shock and dismay, though, the birthday boy gets up and manages to speak over the throng, telling everyone that today is HIS birthday, and he wants THIS kitten specifically. Nanami's tears turn into ones of joy. The parents grudgingly acquiesce. A few of the guests who still have a dozen-odd millilitres of red blood left in their bodies are forced to admire the young man's courage and compassion here, regardless of whether or not his taste in cats is actually this indiscriminate or if he was just pretending so for her sake.

Also, he hugs his sister and looks her in the eyes like this:

Because, you know. It's not like there's ever a purely wholesome family moment at Casterly Rock.

Back to the present, Nanami wakes up in...is that supposed to be her fucking dorm room? It's big enough and fancy enough and all to her self enough to be her giant-ass bedroom in the family castle. Eh, whatever. She wakes up in the middle of the night, and sees her brother - still bandaged up - practicing some sword moves out on the lawn. Naturally, she hurries outside to beg him to stop exacerbating his massively exaggerated wound, please, she couldn't stand the thought of something else happening to him now. He insists that exercise during recovery will prevent his muscles from getting stiff around the wound, but she's unpleasable.

Is there a personality disorder that Nanami doesn't have?

As her eyes tear up at the prospect of Touga maybe losing a few millilitres more blood than he has to, Touga pulls her into one of his gentle hugs and reassures her. While also holding and gazing into her face like this:

Lannisters gonna Lannister.

He dabs her eyes. She asks him for a kiss, and puckers. And then, he surprises me. Touga tells Nanami that they aren't kids anymore, that stuff is no longer acceptable for siblings at their age. He chuckles good-naturedly at her bit of silliness there, and tells her that he's going to bed now, so she should try and get back to sleep herself.

Huh.

I guess their situation is slightly more complicated and probably a little less fucked up than I thought. Was Touga ever grooming Nanami? It's less clear now. It's still pretty strongly implied that in their preteens to early teens, they had some kind of incest thing going on, but it may have never gone quite as far as it looked, and Touga himself may have been young enough at the time that "grooming" isn't necessarily a fair description.

On the other hand, Touga is manipulative and predatory enough that it's hard for me to imagine him in any kind of sexual relationship, even one that doesn't go all the way, without him doing some creepy shit to his partner. Psychologically, if not physically. And, when its an older kid and a younger kid, well.

Also, whatever they were doing, they may have only stopped doing it much more recently than he's making it sound right now. Or maybe not. Who can tell when we have only the word of a pair of known liars and they aren't even talking about it directly?

In any case, it seems at least possible now that Nanami was always as much of an instigator as Touga, when it comes to the incest stuff. Not for sure, but possible.

Touga goes to bed, leaving Nanami standing alone on the grass, staring silently into space. Her face slowly darkening.

She's decided this is Utena's fault, hasn't she?

...Nanami is almost like a reverse-Miki. She thinks everything that happens around her is caused by a specific other person.

For just a moment, we see a box taped shut, perched at the edge of a pool, while rain pours down all around it. Did Anthy throw out her kitten? Did Touga or their parents end up throwing out the one Nanami got him for his birthday way back when? Or is it just symbolic, Nanami seeing herself as the discarded kitten? Hmm. You know, thinking about all this again, it seems odd to me that that kitten didn't try to rip Nanami's tongue out of her mouth the instant she exposed her face to it. Maybe she has a special cat affinity that not only makes them her personal symbol, but also makes them - alone out of every animal species - unaware of the bounty placed on her by the great god Faunus.

The following day, Utena and Anthy head out to properly thank/apologize to Touga and bring him some get-well flowers. He isn't in the dorms, though. When asked, a hallmate of his explains that he and Nanami are both back home celebrating his birthday. Heh, I'm surprised he came back to campus that long between hospitalization and birthday, if he was going to do the latter at home anyway, but that does explain why the setting of that last scene looked so un-school like. Anyway, Anthy and Utena might not have been specifically invited to the party (well, maybe Anthy was, but if so she hid the invitation and never mentioned it to Utena because of weird Rose Bride reasons), but everyone who knows Touga assures them that he'd be thrilled if they dropped in just for a bit to wish him well. Well, okay, sure!

Cut to the Kiryuu mansion, where their teenaged son's birthday party has all the pomp, formality, and expensive catering of a diplomatic summit. I guess they live pretty close to the school, because Utena and Anthy don't seem to have bothered changing out of their school uniforms before setting out. Which means that they're severely underdressed at this event.

Anthy might actually fit in better if she wore her full Rose Bride getup. Not perfectly, but better.

As they enter, Touga happens to be chatting with Juri, who naturally is among the guests. She's trying to get him to spill the beans on who this mysterious eleventh hour duelist is. Touga, clearly savouring every moment he can hold something over her head, insists that he'd rather not talk about End Of The World stuff at his birthday party, let's all just have fun and relax for a few hours.

Touga is just so perfectly awful its amazing lol.

Seeing Utena and Anthy approaching, Touga pulls himself away from Juri and gives them a disgustingly fake-suave greeting. Utena hands him the flowers, making sure he understands that this is NOT a romantic gesture. He laughs at her. To be fair, she kinda did just accidentally make herself act like the archetypal tsundere caricature, and going by her embarrassed expression after the fact I think she realizes that. Heh.

As Touga draws out her embarrassment in that entertainingly loathsome way of his, Nanami watches from the terrace, glowering and seething. Notably, she can't see Utena's face at this angle, but she can see her brother's, so when Touga starts laughing it looks like he's chuckling at a joke Utena made instead of mocking her like he actually is.

A few episodes ago, Nanami expressed great pride in her ability to get away with things without implicating herself. After so many failed attempts at causing trouble for Utena, though, and generally worn and beaten down emotionally from her string of recent traumatic and also very stupid experiences, Nanami has been reduced to a much more primal and impatient remnant of her former queen bee self. She descends the stairs, crosses the foyer to where Utena is talking to her brother, and goes for the face again. This time catching Utena completely by surprise. Like the slap version of a sucker punch. And then starts loudly, unhingedly, accusing Utena of inviting herself to Touga's birthday just to try and get with him.

Once again, Utena doesn't retaliate with superior force, but she looks a lot closer to doing so than last time. Rather than just folding miserably, she has her hands clenched into fists and is standing at full height glaring at Nanami. Dispirited she might be, but Nanami is still pushing her luck way, way too far. If they weren't in Nanami's house, in front of at least one other member of Nanami's family, I suspect Utena really would have hit back this time.

Anthy puts herself between them, and tries to explain that this was really all Saiyonji's fault, not Utena's. True, and also diplomatic, blaming the guy who's already been denounced and discarded; even if this WASN'T all Saiyonji's fault, pinning it on him would be the smart thing to do in this conversation. Unfortunately, Nanami just isn't having it. Her arm lashes out again, and this time she knocks Anthy right the fuck over, saying that this is all her fault more than Saiyonji's, Utena's, or anyone else's.

Huh. I was about to chalk this up to Nanami being her deranged self, but then I realized that coming to see Touga, in fact, Anthy's idea. She talked Utena into it. And she was also the one who proposed bringing him flowers, which potentially has romantic symbolism even if it's also totally normal as just a hospital gift. Plausible deniability.

Did Anthy know that Touga was doing his birthday party tonight, when she made the initial suggestion to Utena? She might have, or she might not have.

So, it's possible that Anthy actually did engineer this confrontation, for whatever inscrutable reason. Not that Nanami is smart enough to realize this. She's not smart enough to realize anything. But in this case, she might have blundered her way into the correct answer by sheer coincidence. It's not certain, but it's...

Oh. I just rewound and rewatched this scene from the beginning. The other girl at Touga's dorm didn't tell them it was Touga's birthday, just that he was at a "party" at his nearby family home. When they arrived, Utena noticed Anthy bringing a boxed present in addition to their bouquet, and asked her if she knew that this was a birthday party, to which Anthy replies with a nonchalant "yes." There's a (very momentary; it's no wonder I missed it the first time, it's literally a blink) shot of Utena giving Anthy a sort of bemused look, like she's irritated at her for not telling her before now.

The show is calling attention to Anthy having known this and made a point of not telling Utena.

Yeaaaaahhhh.

Also, for just a second we hear a mew from inside of Anthy's gift box after Nanami knocks her down. Was...was that just Nanami's imagination, being triggered by the similar design of the box, or did she actually...fucking hell sanity what happened to it I used to enjoy that stuff.

Mindfucked away from Anthy by the possible kitten hostage, Nanami returns her attention to Utena and keeps babbling about how a cultureless butch peasant slut like her is never going to come anywhere near Touga, she could never even DREAM of being worthy of him. Utena seems like she isn't sure what to do. Touga just gives her a pained expression. Anthy remains on the floor, avoiding drawing more attention to herself.

The guests, however, all start whispering. The shouting and violence have ensured that everyone in the room is now paying attention to the conversation, and they all hear Nanami's accusation and see Utena's rage and Touga's mental exhaustion.

They all begin whispering. Touga and Utena? Really? Well, he DID seem to start spending an unusual amount of time around this non student council underclasswoman recently. That would all fit, wouldn't it.

Nanami's rage redoubles at this. Utena is horrified. Touga, through his mask of irritation and exhaustion, lets just a tiny bit of the smugness glisten through. Did he know about this ahead of time, or did things just happen to work out in his favor tonight? He IS cooperating closely with Dios, and Dios and Anthy are very likely in contact even if they aren't literally the same entity in different guises. It's entirely possible that he helped them set this all up.

It seems like Nanami might really be the new duelist. This all seems like it's building up to making her suicidally angry at Utena and Anthy, and she is perfectly positioned to be given a ring (either her brother loaning his to her, if that's allowed, or him passing her a new one freshly forged and given to him by Dios). I don't think we've seen any hints of her being a fencer like her brother, but that doesn't mean she isn't; it would be like her to get into fencing just because Touga is into it, after all. And even if she isn't, she's easily stupid enough to challenge someone to a duel regardless of that, if the idea was planted in her head. They might not need her to WIN this duel, just to fight in it.

After the (pretty much ruined, at this point) party, Nanami is off sulking by herself while Utena for some reason is sitting down and having a private conversation with Touga. I'm not sure why she didn't just GTFO without another word after that whole shitstorm, but okay. The topic is Nanami, and what Touga should be doing differently (or, perhaps, should have been doing differently) to make her not be like this.

It isn't clear what measures, if any, Touga took to clear up the misconceptions that Nanami gave all the guests about him and Utena. I feel like he must have at least gone through the motions of trying to counteract them, for Utena to be tolerating him at all right now.

Touga recounts the events of that earlier birthday of his, the better part of a decade ago, when Nanami couldn't think of anything to get him that he didn't already have, so she brought him a stray kitten. The cat disappeared one day, after he'd had it for a while, but for the time that he had it he treasured it more than any other birthday present he'd ever received.

Hmm. I wonder how much of this is true? And, I wonder what really happened to that kitten? My leading hypothesis is that Nanami decided her brother was paying too much attention to it instead of her, so she ate it. Or maybe it came down with the "animals hate Nanami" virus and she had to kill it in self defence. One way or another, I suspect that the disappearance of the cat was a case of Nanami giveth and Nanami taketh away, but it's not guaranteed. The parents didn't approve of that cat, after all, and while Touga himself doesn't seem like the specific type of nutjob who'd murder a pet I can see him having been one for a little while during childhood.

Just then, Anthy comes up to them and asks if now would be a good time to give Touga that present that she brought him.

Oh god what fresh hell is this now?

Naturally, Nanami is watching this from the shadows, seemingly unnoticed. She's still watching when Touga opens the box and reveals, unsurprisingly, the kitten that we saw her playing with at the beginning of the episode during her talk with Utena. Hah, right, I actually forgot that we already saw her preparing Touga's present at the start of the episode, there's just been so much shit going on since then and Anthy has enough random one-off pets to begin with that I forgot about it. As Nanami stares in cold, parched hatred, we get a flashback of her own. And, heh, I was totally right.

It wasn't even a few weeks, as it turns out. The kitten barely got a chance to grow larger than it was when she gave it to Touga. Nanami got jealous of the kitten when Touga started playing with it instead of her sometimes. So, one night, she taped it back up in a box and dropped it off in the nearest body of deep water. It was the cat's own fault. It tried to take her brother away from her. She should have never trusted it, let alone introduced it to him.

Okaaaay. At this point I'm actually not sure who was the victim and who was the abuser in their house. Fucking hell.

We don't see what happens next, back in the present. Just hear another slap (or is this one an outright punch?) and then see Nanami being confronted by the other three. Touga and Utena are both telling Nanami that the way she's going she's going to be following Saiyonji right out into expelledville. She doesn't care. She will fight to keep her brother to herself. No matter what.

So, with a sigh, Touga tells her that if she's determined to make this violent, there's only one way he can keep her on the right side of the law. He retrieves a spare ring that was recently given to him by End Of The World and places it on Nanami's finger, naming her as an entrant into the tournament.

The marital connotations here don't make Touga and Nanami's relationship any less uncomfortable.​

Oh. Kay.

Does Touga know what Nanami did to the kitten?

It seems like he knew ahead of time that his sister was going to take the bait. But that implies that he and Anthy were working together to goad her. And that would require him to realize exactly what the kitten in the box signified for Nanami.

I might have to take back what I said about not being sure who the real abuser in their family is. Fucking what the hell.

Also, if Touga (or End Of The World, if that's where the order came from) was so determined that Nanami join the tournament, why didn't he just tell her to? She'd take the ring and jump into the arena unquestioningly if her brother told her to do it. He knows that she would. Why didn't he just do that?

That might be the wrong kind of question to ask in a show like RGU. Which, fair enough, but if so that's kinda one of the things that makes it hard for me to get very invested in it.

Juri and Miki, who suddenly materialized between shots, are shocked at the revelation that Nanami of all people is the new challenger. Honestly, if I were them I'd be relieved. Even in the unlikely event that Nanami turns out to be a really good duellist, you could probably just say "hey, your rose has a spider on it" and win without even having to swing your sword. But, Touga just assures them that it is what it is, and the duel will take place tomorrow as per End Of The World's command.

Hmm. Juri and Miki know that Touga had identified the new combatant at least a day ago. If they're seeing him give the ring to Nanami now, then they must realize that tonight's events were all planned out. How are they going to react to this, I wonder?

I guess it's also possible that Touga will try to play this off as a last minute change of plans on his own part, but that would mean that EOTW has authorized Touga to just give rings to whoever he feels like willy nilly, which I don't think would sit right with them either.

He does openly describe Nanami as "one who has been chosen by End Of The World" in front of the others, at the end of this scene, but he also seems to be playing this as Nanami forcing his hand, so...yeah I really don't know.

Puppet show. This time the puppets just argue what to name a kitten, only for the show to be interrupted by an ACTUAL kitten. Possibly the same one that Touga never ended up taking from Anthy, if that weirdly pale arm was somehow still hers after all.

Heh. Foreshadowing a blind spot in Anthy/Dios/Touga's manipulations? Could be.

Next up, the staircase climb! It's basically a mid-tro for the episodes that contain a duel, isn't it? A couple minutes of canned material that fills up runtime. In this case, it's a welcome reprieve from the psychological horror train that is the Kiryuu family's existence.

There's one line in "Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku" that jumped out at me this time, in light of the stuff that the last few episodes revealed or implied about the power behind this ritual. "My own birth. Absolute birth. Apocalypse." If the subject of the song isn't the alleged champion who holds the sword, but rather Dios, then him being empowered and released in full from the castle in physical form could be a "birth" of sorts. And "End of the World" might end up being slightly-to-severely more literal than any of the student council members think.

Utena reaches the platform, where Nanami and Anthy await. Curiously, Touga is also here. I don't think any of the previous duels had observers standing right here on the platform. Maybe without her brother in sight Nanami will forget why she's supposed to be here again or something.

Speaking of Nanami, the outfit she's picked for the fight actually, somehow, makes her look kind of badass.

I know, right? I didn't think it was possible either.

Utena makes one last attempt to talk Nanami down before they do this, but Nanami has spent the last fifteen years being completely impervious to reason and she's not about to change that now. Utena, resigned to this now, pulls the sword out of Anthy. The bells ring. The fight begins.

It turns out Nanami actually does know how to wield a sword. That's not completely surprising, given how obsessed she is with her brother. She openly admits that she took up fencing so that there'd be one more hour of his day she wouldn't have to stop humping his leg for.

Utena is actually surprised by Nanami's sheer speed, though it's not clear if she's faster than the other duelists or just faster than Utena expected from her specifically. The fight song is about the planet being dwarfed by the Milky Way galaxy. Yeah, that's appropriate I'd say.

Anyway, Nanami isn't a complete pushover after all. However, compared to the likes of Juri or Saiyonji, she's also just not that strong or experienced. Utena beats her after a short-ish battle without any weird trick or divine intervention, just superior skill. I like that. It would be weird if Nanami turned out to be a super badass or something, and Utena could use some plain old wins that she merits herself.

That said, there is a...thing?...that happens. Some weird geometric object seems to momentarily fall from the castle overhead, and Touga's eyes fixate on it, just before Utena wins. It didn't look like any crazy twist of fate or anything happened, but the castle did SOMETHING just at her moment of victory, and Touga noticed it. Hmm.

Utena calls the match. Nanami...pulls out a dagger and tries to kill her.

Anthy tells her that the match is over, there's no prize to win for her anymore. Nanami doesn't care. It's only after nearly a minute of this lunacy that Touga intervenes, and even then she only stops when one of her weapons gets broken against a stone pillar Utena dodged around.

There's a flashback to Babby Nanami pushing the box with the kitten in it into the raging river, venomously whispering that the cat brought this on itself for coming between her and her brother. Even though she's the one who put it there. As the box washes down toward the waterfall, it comes open, and the tiny kitten pokes its head out and makes desperate, terrified eye contact with her. For juuust a moment, Nanami appears to feel remorse, gasping in horror at what she's done and starting to take a step forward in vain hope of saving the kitten. But, it's too little too late. The box, and its occupant, fall down into the deep water below the dam, never to be seen again. Presumably, another animal saw this happen and told every single other animal on the planet about it.

Back to the present, she holds up her broken sword and babbles some nonsense about how she still hasn't lost. Touga just tells her that she has no reason to fight; he's here for her. He puts his arm around her, and she collapses, sobbing, against him.

As she cries, she begs his forgiveness for what she's done. This is intercut with her child-self crying and apologizing to him for what she's done, though it's not clear if she actually told him about the kitten and apologized to his face, or if she was just saying it to herself while she ran home from the crime scene. In the present he pats her back, assures her all is forgiven, and lets her cry it out.

Utena comments that this is the most normal big brother-ly behavior she's seen from him. Touga looks up from the crying Nanami, gives Utena his incredibly punchable smug smile, and says the creepiest thing you could imagine a person saying in this situation.

Utena's expression turns to one of shocked horror. Touga leads Nanami away and silently congratulates himself on having "gathered the data" that he needed. Now, he's certain that the winner of the Rose Tournament will be himself. Overhead, the castle glows. Almost hungrily.

I guess he needed to be here in person to see that mysterious whatsit going on above them. Though why he couldn't have just done that for any of the other duels, I'm not sure. It didn't seem like Nanami was actually acting as a "champion" for him, in the end, despite what he foreshadowed at the beginning.

Well, that's the end of the episode.

There was definitely good stuff here. Turning Nanami into a proper foil for Utena is a twist that probably shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did. It's obvious in retrospect, and it landed really well in this ep. It's all but explicit text now that Touga is telling the truth when he says that Utena's prince is "someone a lot like (him)." Utena isn't causing nearly as much harm to herself or others in her quest to live up to Dios as Nanami is in her own worship of Touga, but fundamentally she's just as misguided. Just as much of a hapless tool for the entrenched male power structures. Additionally, Utena's scenes with Anthy in the private dorm suite are also really turning into nail-biting, tension-raising sequences, as we learn more and more about just how cunning and cold Anthy really is.

That said, taken as a whole, this episode was hard to watch.

Not because it was bad, per se, but because it was 70% fucked up horrible people being fucked up and horrible to each other by mass, and mostly without much of a point to it beyond telling us how fucked up and horrible they are. Here's incest! Here's gaslighting! Here's kitten murder! Here's grooming! The bad guy was in control of everything all along and everyone did exactly as he predicted, keikaku means plan!

At this point, the only major character who isn't a completely awful person is Utena, and she makes up for it by being so guileless and oblivious that she barely even has agency amid the manipulators. I get that that's part of the point; she's helpless to change things as long as she tries to fit into patriarchal norms and play the patriarchy's game. Sure. But there HAS to be a way of showing that without it being so frustrating to watch.

Seriously, why is she still on speaking terms with any of these psychos after the shit they've done to her and the (to the best of her knowledge) innocent Anthy? Unless Touga is explicitly threatening to get her expelled unless she plays nice with all of them, I just can't see it. It's at the point where I'm starting to lose my sympathy for Utena herself.

It might sound silly for me to pull out this buzzword for this work. No one's died. No one's been horrendously tortured or anything like that, at least onscreen. But, nonetheless, I'm going to call it grimdark. Not the entire series, necessarily, but definitely this episode, and possibly the whole arc that it's a part of.

There's characters you love to hate, and then there's characters who you just don't want to see on your screen. I'd be happy if the Kiryuu siblings stopped being on my screen.

Utena (the show and the character) can rebound from this, but if it doesn't happen soon I'm going to lose patience for them.