Revolutionary Girl Utena S1E4: “The Sunlit Garden Pt. One”

A two-parter, you say? That wasn't actually a question, this has been a two-parter since 1997. Anyway, here's hoping that the story will start getting more engaging on its own merits instead of just being a janky animatronic to act out the social messages.


Open on the upside-down Castlevania hovering over the arena in the gloomy night sky. Then, as dawn breaks, the camera lowers itself to the arena, where Utena is confronting another challenger for Anthy's hand. It's the blue-haired student body secretary girl who we've seen in the meeting scenes but didn't show much of a personality until now. She has her sword out, and is loudly proclaiming that while she doesn't want to hurt Utena, she'll do so if it means winning the Rose Bride.

A bit surprising, given her low-key impression in the previous episodes. But, as a student council member she always was shown wearing a ring, which means that she's probably fought for Anthy at least once before now. So yeah, that shouldn't have surprised me at all.

Or...hmm. She says that she needs Anthy in order to "get the music back." Then we cut to Secretary Blue (now named as Micki) sitting by herself in a school music room, morosely practicing the piano. It kinda seems like this is either a flash forward to her having lost, or else the duel never actually happened and she's just fantasizing about challenging Utena. I think it's the latter, but we'll see. As she plays, Nanami the evil incest sister comes in and starts complementing Micki on her piano playing with a reptilian smile on her face.

I guess she's either trying to get revenge on Utena rather than Anthy now, or working on some unrelated Heather-ism that we'll learn about as it unfolds.

Micki insists that her playing is off-key, despite it sounding pretty good to both Nanami and the audience. Nanami says that she's sure the music teacher would love it if she were to sign back up for the big music competition she dropped out of again, but Micki just glumly refuses. The only reason she wants to play at all, she says, is to make "her" come back. She thinks that might happen if she completes this song she wrote for her, "The Sunlit Garden," and plays it perfectly.

The "her" in question is identified when Nanami looks through Micki's music sheets and finds a photograph.

Nanami looks downright flabbergasted at her continual discoveries regarding who does and doesn't have a crush on Anthy.

Also...wait, Micki's uniform isn't hideous. Is...yeah, that's the male one, isn't it? Okay, yeah, and Nanami referred to him as "he." His voice actor is very definitely female, though. Not even trying to sound masculine. Do we have a transmasc character, or is this just a baffling casting choice? Could be either. Well, anyway, he's a he.

Nanami is giving the picture of Anthy a venomous glare as Micki keeps telling her about his song. What's Nanami got against Anthy at this point? I thought last episode had her realizing her real beef was with Utena, no?

From there, it goes to the title card. And, from there, to a classroom, where Wakaba is venting to Utena about the terrible grade she just got on their math test. I think this is the first indication we've had so far of them ever actually going to class, rather than their "school" consisting of a fever dream mass of clubs, dorm living, and Kafkaesque formality. Verisimilitude! Anyway, Wakaba tells Utena she wishes that she could be a good student like her, only for Utena - who's been staring out the window and making monosyllabic responses - to turn around and show her own test results. She did even worse than Wakaba, to the latter's shock. Presumably, the stress and time sink of these Rose Bride shenanigans are ruining Utena's studying ability.

Also, Wakaba goes on a weird tangent about how women have a sort of logic that's good for controlling men, but apparently not so good for math.

That's a weird thing to OW FUCK NOT AGAIN OWWWWWW

*gets ice pack*

*gets treatment for concussion*

*comes back to the review*

So. This time, the anvil had a message spray-painted on top that said "toxic femininity as illustrated by Nanami is a product of internalized misogyny, with women being conditioned to not advance themselves in male dominated fields and instead devote themselves to getting what they want out of the men who hold real power as per Wakaba's speech." I think I actually lost a little bit off the top of my skull that time. Ow.

Utena groans that she, and possibly both of them, will have to beg for a makeup exam or something. Then we cut outside to Anthy, who is engaging in her two favorite pastimes of gardening and being slapped across the face by bullies.

Nanami's bitch minions are assaulting her for breaking yet another boy's hurt, in a scene nearly identical to the last time this happened. As unfair as this is to Anthy, it is kinda creepy how everyone who gets thwarted in their advances on her ends up becoming a depressed recluse who drops out of the school activities they previously excelled at.

Also, I think Anthy should just wear a helmet. Or like. Glue some spikes to her face. Every single episode so far has had someone smack her there hard enough to leave a mark.

Of course, Nanami is standing just out of sight, smirking as they do their work. What DOES she have against Anthy, after learning what she learned? Or has she just decided that since Utena is too popular to socially assault like this, she'll just have to get to her through her fiance? IDK. Once again, Anthy gets rescued, this time by the boy(?) in question himself. The bitches retreat when the person who they're allegedly defending steps up to tell them to leave Anthy alone. Around the corner, Nanami scowls and retreats, clearly not yet satisfied. I'm still baffled as to what exactly her deal is, but she'd gone for now in any case.

Micki helps Anthy pick up the books the bitches knocked out of her hand, apologizes for this having apparently been caused by himself in some weird way, and starts walking Anthy across the campus. Staring out the window as she sulks about her math test, Utena spots them and asks Wakaba who that boy is.

The pattern of Utena not knowing literally anyone at their school despite being super popular continues. Complemented by the one of Wakaba knowing everything about everyone. In this case, Micki is a freshman wunderkind - academic prodigy and talented musician - who made a huge splash with his enrollment this year. So yeah, naturally Utena would have never heard of him.

I'm starting to get the impression that someone surgically removed the part of Utena's brain that remembers people, stuffed it in a vat, and force-fed it concentrated moe until it grew into Wakaba.

Wakaba wonders what he'd be doing with Anthy. Utena just stares in obvious trepidation, having been condition to expect nothing but headaches, conflicts, and constant need of rescue from her betrothed, and for this to ruin her academic career.

Cut to Micki in the library, being approached by someone who I thought was a teacher at first, but seems to actually just be a student several years above him. There's still enough of a size and appearance-of-age gap to give her leaning over him an "ara ara ara" sort of vibe.

He's going over someone's math test to help them find what they did wrong. At some questioning from the girl, who he adresses as "Ms. Jury," he reveals that he's going over Anthy's test, specifically. I guess everyone had a hell of a time with that test, not just Utena. Cut ahead to him and Anthy working on her math in the study room of the giant empty dorm she shares with Utena. Utena, studying on her own while the horror monkey doodles in her notebook, is initially happy to see Anthy making other friends, if jealous that she's getting special math help. Before long though, Micki's shows her the ring on his finger, and his (very impressive, considering he's a freshman) position on the student council becomes apparent.

Micki insists that he has no interest in any of that Rose Bride nonsense, and he simply joined the student council for the sake of his resume. He knows about Utena and Anthy because of the stuff the other councilors talk about, but his relationship with Anthy is merely friendship (a total lie, given his daydream and piano-pining at the beginning). No word on how he got his ring, but Utena doesn't press him on the subject. She just tells him that she's glad to hear this, because at this point she has just had it with the student council's occult politics bullshit. Anthy isn't the only one who hasn't had time to study thanks to all these maniacs fucking with her, you know.

Micki didn't know, actually. Or at least, he claims not to have. When Utena reveals that she also needs to retake that test, he seems surprised, apologetic, and willing to help her as well.

I foresee Micki either coming clean as part of breaking with the inane system they're all working within, or going full Nice Guy and becoming an antagonist. Or else discovering herself and changing her gender presentation to match her VA, that could also happen.

Jump ahead a day or two, to Micki sadly playing the piano to himself again. This time, he's approached by President Kiryuu himself rather than merely his incister. Kiryuu complements Micki on his playing, in his typically suave and politic manner, and then asks him if he's managed to rediscover the "shining thing" that he claims to have lost long ago. Micki tells him that he may actually be starting to make progress toward that goal, at long last.

Kiryuu asks him exactly what his happy shining thing is, and how he thinks perfecting this song might return it to him. Kicki just deflects, and Kiryuu chuckles in a way that sounds good naturedly and tells him that he'll just ask again once the song is completed.

Then we get a little black and white flashback, depicting what APPEARS to be a much younger Micki and Anthy playing piano together in their home neighborhood. I think?

The girl's profile looks a lot like Anthy's, but her hair...even with the color shift, I'm not sure. It could be her.​

So, if that IS a younger Anthy, then that means Micki knew her before she became the Rose Bride. Which would mean that she actually is "human," at least to the extent that any of these characters can be said to be. And his interest in her may not actually be as romantic or as possessive as the episode intro made it appear; maybe they were just best friends, and he thinks the only way to have that again will be to insert himself into the Rose Wedding business. Maybe? Or it's actually a longtime crush. Either/or.

There's a shot of Nanami looking sinister. Then it's back to the shadow puppets, who are doing an utterly bizarre skit about someone's nerdy boyfriend dumping her for liking professional wrestling and putting too much garlic in her ramen. O...okay? Is that supposed to be why Micki and Anthy had their falling out before being reunited at this academy?

Cut ahead to that evening. Micki comes over for another study date, but this time he's brought someone else with him.

Utena is very wary when she sees Nanami at the door with him. However, after exchanging a few tense greetings, she suddenly relaxes and invites both of them in with a smile.

Well, unless this story's weird inter-episode amnesia is coming back into play, Utena must have figured out that Nanami was responsible for the dissolving dress incident. She sent Anthy the damned dress, after all. And Utena's initial wariness at seeing Nanami fits with her and Anthy having deduced this. So...well, Utena must have either decided to just play it cool for now until she can figure out what Nanami's next move is, or she's already come up with a plan to feed her to Anthy's rat demon.

Jump ahead a bit to the four of them sitting around the dinner table. Neither Anthy nor Utena are showing any sign of hostility or wariness toward Nanami now, so either they're good actresses, or they forgot about the previous episode's events after all (not sure why Utena was so defensive for the first few moments at the door though, in that case...), or they both remember what happened but are too stupid to realize that the girl who sent Anthy a dissolving dress must be responsible for her dress dissolving. They chat gaily. Nanami complements them on how well they've cleaned up this abandoned old dorm. Utena fondly explains that Anthy spends all her non-gardening free time tradwifeing the place spotless. As they chat on, Nanami silently plans to destroy Micki's interest in Anthy by revealing the terrible truth about her.

Does Anthy like Pathfinder better than 5e or something?

It turns out that Nanami doesn't actually have anything on Anthy, though. Rather, she plans to hide a snail in Anthy's pencil case, and make Micki think that Anthy is a weirdo who keeps snails in her pencil case. Then he won't want anything more to do with her, and will indeed feel betrayed at having been tricked by Anthy into thinking that she was a person who doesn't keep snails in her pencil case. Nanami refers to this plot as "operation: Anthy is a weirdo who keeps snails in her pencil case."

So, she asks to borrow the pencil case, surreptitiously opens it a little to hide the snail inside, but then startles back as she sees that the case is already full of snails. It turns out that, by total coincidence, Anthy actually does keep snails in her pencil case, and Nanami had no idea.

Anthy apologizes for accidentally giving Nanami the pencil case that had her snails in it instead of the one with pencils in it. Utena sighs and asks her to please find a better place for her snails to prevent this from happening again. Micki, meanwhile, finds it adorable how Anthy dotes on her snails and has a name for each one of them.

I feel like this is borrowing from a Hindu fairy tale. I don't recall the exact one, but I'm getting crazy deja vu, and I know it was an Indian folktale.

Nanami is ruffled by the snail surprise, but she has a plan B. Plan B is to put a garter snake in Anthy's desk drawer. That way, Micki will think that Anthy is a weirdo who keeps garter snakes in her desk drawer, and be totally disillusioned with her.

I'm not sure what I take bigger issue with: Nanami carrying a bunch of live animals around in her backpack just as contingency plans, or her thinking that Micki will turn against Anthy for having a snake when he's just demonstrated that unusual pets don't bother him. I'd say that Nanami must have a one-track mind where the only thing that can make a person unlikable is keeping weird animals around, but...she obviously couldn't be THAT bothered by them herself, if she was able to catch all these critters and carry them around in her bag. So...huh?

Also, I still am not sure why she wants to turn people against Anthy after finding out that Utena was the one her brother's been crushing on. Is she just lashing out in embarrassment at having picked the wrong target before? IDEK.

Regardless, the snake doesn't last long after Nanami opens the desk drawer, due to the hungry mongoose that was laying in wait in there.

...

Two questions here.

1. Why have none of these other exotic pets of Anthy's been mentioned or hinted at up until now?

2. The mongoose in this episode and the rat in episode 2 are ample proof that the artists are good at drawing cute animals. Given that ability of theirs, how the FUCK did Chu-Chu happen?

...

Third time turns out to not be the charm for Nanami either.

Okay. The joke was already getting diminishing returns with the first repetition. With the second, I was sighing impatiently and waiting for this sequence to be over before Nanami even started sneaking toward the closet.

Defeated, Nanami just clams up and sits irritably back in place. She tried to offer the others a lunch she brought, but this time an infestation has gotten into it totally unplanned.

You know, if this was what made Micki freak out and leave Anthy's dorm never to return, I could dig that.

Anthy apologizes yet again for her zoomania and demon summoning, and runs off to prepare some fruity shaved ice for them to share instead. They start eating, and then Nanami breaks down and starts complaining about literally nothing and demands to know why everyone loves Anthy so much.

Micki is surprised by this. Utena and Anthy also seem to be, which...well, they're just not smart I guess.

Anthy understandably retreats from the room. A few moments later, they hear her playing the piano. Utena didn't even know that Anthy played. Also, apparently their form has a random piano in it I guess.

At any rate, its unmistakable "The Sunlit Garden," the same song that Micki's been trying to get right. He gets up from the table and heads to the source of the sound, the other two following him curiously. When he sees Anthy at the piano, he declares that this song is...

So, that was his sister in the flashback. Okay. She's connected to Anthy somehow, I guess.

Micki says that he's found his Shining Thing again. To be continued.


This just feels like more of the same, but with an extra thick spreading of "lolrandom" humor that only landed for me about half the time.

The "Anthy has a million pets" gag especially feels off to me, considering that she described ChuChu as her "only companion" back in episode 2. Did she acquire all these new ones since then? When? This might have worked as a joke if it happened a little later in the series and had at least a touch of foreshadowing. And also, like...do Utena and Anthy remember what happened in the previous episode, or not?

Nanami and Micki...well, I'm guessing we'll find out exactly what's going on with Micki in part 2. Nanami's motivations continue to elude me. Utena and Anthy were both pretty static and honestly barely even present as active agents in this episode. So, more commentary next time I guess.