Revolutionary Girl Utena S1E5: “The Sunlit Garden Pt. Two”

Time for the final commissioned episode of the series my fiance refers to as "The School Sword Magic Lesbian Flower Show." Let's see what's up with piano-playing student council femboy Micki, psychotic ectotherm-hoarding bully incister Nanami, and both of their unexplained fascinations with Anthy.


Open on a fencing match. A normal fencing match. With visors, foils, and a setting that doesn't look like a Final Fantasy budget sink. The match is accomponied by the disembodied gossip of what sounds like the shadow puppets, who inform us that the faces behind the visors are those of Micki and his briefly seen friend Jury, both of whom compete in fencing at the national level.

National fencing competitor Micki? I wouldn't have expected this of him, but people are like onions, they have layers. Him actually challenging Utena in the sky arena is a real possibility, then, not just an idle fantasy of his.

The match concludes with Micki the victor.

After the match, Jury complements him on his improved skills. This is apparently the first time that he's managed to beat her. He rolls his eyes at the complement and tells her that his fencing style is still imperfect. Just like his piano playing is still imperfect. Micki's problem is pretty clearly with his self-perception rather than his ability. She also tells him that "his imperfection is his strength," which I'm not sure how to interpret. She tells him a moment later that he's improved sharply just since yesterday, so maybe that's just a clumsy translation of "your imperfections are motivating you to improve really well" etc.

She asks him if perhaps he's been getting a morale bonus from that girl he was over helping with her homework last night, wink wink, nudge nudge. He unconvincingly denies it. She shrugs, and tells him that he should just remember that his sword is not for combat. Which I guess is either a) a warning that he's not up to conflict with people who don't want the best for him, b) an attempt to keep him away from the Rose Bride duels for some intrigue related reason, or c) a dick joke.

The title card drops, and we jump ahead to Anthy in her garden, being startled by someone's approach. I don't blame her for the jumpy reaction, given how often she gets ambushed by face-slapping assailants out here, but fortunately for her it's just Micki this time. They greet each other, and have themselves a sedate, Byronic frolic among the roses while appropriately bittersweet music plays. This proceeds until Utena happens to wander over, and the two of them react as if they've been caught with their pants down by a jealous spouse.

To be fair to him, Micki just knows that the two of them are engaged by rose magic law. From the audience perspective, Utena has yet to show any romantic or sexual interest in Anthy and is only going along with the "marriage" thing because everyone badgered or strongarmed her into it, but as far as Micki knows she might be a jealously possessive husband. Anthy, meanwhile, seems to be constitutionally incapable of understanding that Utena doesn't want to be her husband. So, their trepidation makes sense.

Utena says hi, and then we flash ahead to Anthy playing piano and the other two watching.

Micki is having her play "The Sunlit Garden" again, and going on about how remarkable her rendition of it is and how it's what he's been trying to recover for all these years since he and his little sister wrote it.

Oh. Huh. I guess Anthy knowing it isn't such a magical mystery after all, then. Apparently, Micki and his sister released their first hit single before they reached age ten.

Micki tells the story now. He and his sister were both musical prodigies. His greatest pleasure as a child was sitting with her in the garden, playing the piano on the patio and coming up with songs. The Sunlit Garden, their first song to get attention beyond their own neighborhood, was inspired by the experience of practicing their music together. Sort of a meta-song. At some point after this, the siblings were invited to perform at a concert in front of a big audience. Micki was excited about this, but his sister suffered from stage fright. He convinced her to do it anyway, with the promise that he'd be there with her, so she could just concentrate on his presence and shut out the audience. Unfortunately, Micki came down with the measles just days before the show, leaving his sister to be pressured into doing it alone.

She got up on stage, had a panic attack, fled the stage, and refused to ever play the piano again from that day forward.

Micki blames himself for this, at least in part. And he also feels that his attempts to solo play "The Sunlit Garden" ever since then - as well as other people's renditions of it that he's heard as the song's popularity increased - were missing a certain something. It no longer captured that golden time of his childhood with his sibling.

Until he heard Anthy playing it. Because of flower magic, presumably.

Back in the present, Micki happily proclaims that he's found his "shining thing" again, and takes over from Anthy at the piano. Utena asks him if that means he's in love with Anthy, and makes some good natured cougar jokes in her direction on account of him being a freshman. Anthy laughs it off, and tells Utena that that cannot be, because she is Utena's bride and no one else's (at least for the moment).

At this point, Utena has run out of patience for the Rose Bride bullshit.

She says that she never agreed to this, and that Anthy shouldn't agree to it either. Utena has no respect for a system of rules that eliminates someone's personhood, and just having it waved around in her vicinity has started to piss her off.

...Hahahahahaha, I knew it was coming that time! Dodged the fucking anvil like a pro! Still chipped my floor, but better that than my skull!

To get into some subtext that the blaring foghorn of the text might otherwise drown out, I think Utena might be starting to realize that the ideal of the "prince" is innately flawed even without the gender issues.

...

She defined a prince as someone who comes to the rescue of maidens in need. Sounds like a good thing to aspire to, if you don't think through the implications. But if you do, then you're forced to ask what the hell a "maiden" is, exactly.

Apparently, it's someone who needs to be rescued. Who needs to be rescued in every damned episode, in fact. It kind of makes being a prince a tiresome, unrewarding career choice, doesn't it? More than that, it raises some uncomfortable issues about what it means to define yourself as a prince. Princedom doesn't just require you to have power. It also requires the maidens to lack it. In a world where they could rescue themselves, princes wouldn't be able to exist. In essence, Utena's ideal is actually just the other side of the same coin as Saiyonji's bully mentality. Either way, your sense of identity and self-actualization is invested in other people being powerless and under your control. You're always just wielding someone else's sword, and at risk of having your sense of self taken away by theirs developing.

Basically, if you actually LIKE being a prince, then you're a Saiyonji waiting to happen.

This gets back to the "avenging feminine" concept I addressed before, though it isn't restricted to just gender dynamics. For a sane, healthy society to exist, violence needs to be seen as something that any human can do. Not as something that certain specific humans are.

...

Speaking of The Patriarchy,™ we cut from Utena's rant to the student council doing their apocalyptic mantra as they begin another meeting. That Jury girl is another member of the council, apparently. Don't recall if she was there for the previous meetings or not. Anyway, these meetings are usually held upon the reception of letters from End Of The World, but this time it's for one of the rare motions proposed by a council member. Specifically, Micki's. Specifically, his proposal to dissolve the student council and stop concerning themselves with Anthy's relationship status.

He basically just recites Utena's rant from the day before, with minimal paraphrasing.

And...apparently, the student council has literally no purpose besides fighting over who gets to marry Anthy. At least, that's how he's making it sound.

I'm guessing that Micki missed the critical step of getting Anthy onboard with her own emancipation before calling this meeting. Cue arc about naivete, toxic activism that leads to well-meaning allies putting themselves in the same authoritarian role as the systems they theoretically oppose instead of empowering the victims, the futility of rescuing people who don't want to be rescued, etc. Just a prediction.

For now, Jury and Kiryuu dismiss Micki with some evasive dismissals about his youth and non sequiturs about how the earth needs them to break its shell. Everything except actually engaging with the argument. And, someone like Micki who can only parrot talking points he's been provided with is just not up to confronting a panel like this. On top of his failure to actually get the support of the person he's theoretically advocating for. Babby's first social justice twitter post, basically.

Next scene has an unnamed purple-haired girl obstructing Micki in the hall on his way to the music room.

The dialogue that follows, in which he talks about having given up on trying to get her to play piano again, suggests that this might be the sister. Wasn't she supposed to be younger than him, though? And isn't he supposed to be young even for a freshman? How is she enrolled here? Eh, whatever, there's no actual rules to support the literal narrative, I shouldn't bother trying to make sense of it.

When asked why she's even in the music room if she doesn't want to play piano again, she just tells him that that's not the only thing one would go to that room for. When she finally lets him past, Micki finds Kiryuu in there. Half dressed. The first words out of his mouth are that Micki's sister is "every bit as cute as (Micki) is," followed by some other creepy, barely-veiled sexual threats.

I'm surprised I haven't seen more memes featuring Kiryuu. He has all the characteristics that lead anime characters to appear in those. Maybe he was just before my time.

After a final spooky comment about how even if the student council were to vanish tomorrow it wouldn't change Anthy's situation or the power she grants to the one who possesses her, Anthy comes in and Kiryuu leaves. She sits down and starts playing, and - probably in an effort to get recent disturbing sights and sounds out of his head - Micki starts asking her how and when she learned to play. Anthy responds that she doesn't know where she learned to play the piano; as far as she can recall, she's always been able to do it.

This kind of brings me back to my question about what Anthy is, exactly. Does she have a family? Was she ever "born?" How human is she, exactly?

Missing the implications of what she just said in the context of who she is, Micki blithely comments that she must have been "as cute as an angel" when she was a kid. He...may be more right than he realizes.

Pictured above: Anthy as a young child.​

He then asks her if she'd like to meet him for more piano-playing sessions throughout the week. She responds that she'd be happy to, as long as Utena permits it. I'm surprised that Utena hasn't just given her indefinite remit to spend as much time with Micki as she wants by this point, but maybe Anthy just hasn't had to bug her about it quite enough times yet. Micki is put off by Anthy's repeated assertion that her having a friendship of any kind with him is contingent on not just Utena's approval, but her active encouragement. He then asks Anthy if she would stop playing music altogether, forever, if Utena told her to. Anthy stops playing for a moment and seems to freeze for a moment before putting her docile smile back on and answering that yes, of course, she'd be happy to follow her husband's instructions.

Cue a montage of Micki being haunted by Kiryuu's creepy comments. "If you don't fight for what you want, other people will take it from you." They seem to have what I suspect was Kiryuu's intended effect, as the next day Micki marches up to Utena during homeroom (to the delight of all the other girls present, who all seem to crave the barely pubescant kid. It's...kind of uncomfortable, to be honest) and gives her a serious look. Utena cheerfully thanks him for helping her with algebra, which she's now much better at thanks to him, and asks him if he's looking for Anthy.

He hands her a white rose, and tells her to meet him at the place after class.

I guess Micki's one of those spineless "moderates" whose politics just change to mirror those of the last person they talked to. Which is forgivable at his age, but still annoying.

Anyway, on one hand, this would be a perfect opportunity for Utena to put this whole Rose Bride insanity behind her. Anthy likes spending time with Micki at least as much as she does with Utena, and he cares more about his relationship with her than Utena does. He's also apparently a really good fencer, so he'd be able to keep Anthy from future challengers as well as Utena can. So, Utena might be planning to go through with what she said she was planning to do with Saiyonji, and just throw the match.

On the other hand, if Micki is this malleable, Utena might not be able to trust him to not abuse Anthy once he has power over her. And, as a student council member, he might be vulnerable to certain manipulations by the others that Utena isn't that could lead to him being defeated by someone much worse. So, maybe she'd rather not take the chance on Micki even if it would improve all three of their situations in the short term.

Jump ahead to after class, with Utena putting ring to gate. I'm pretty sure the footage of her entering the garden and scaling the Castlevania staircase is reused from previous episodes, but it's still more fun to watch (and listen to) than most scenes of this show, so I'm not complaining.

She gets to the place, where Anthy is wearing the outfit. She does the thing to produce the item from the person. The pre-duel dialogue is the same as the teaser for the previous episode, all the way down to Jury watching through her telescope and tut tutting over Micki doing this. That wasn't a daydream of Micki's then, it was a flashforward/preview. Gotcha.

The battle begins, and it quickly becomes clear that Utena does not have any intention of throwing this one either. She and Micki are going all out against each other, and it's not a short duel.

It seems like Utena is tiring faster than Micki is, though, and he might start gaining the upper hand. He thinks to himself about how he's going to do this. He's going to protect Anthy from anyone who could ever even possibly threaten her autonomy and ability to pursue her own interests. Just then, Anthy speaks up from the sidelines, and doesn't say what he wanted to hear.

I don't know if Anthy actually would prefer Utena over Micki, or if she's just cheering for her because she's her current fiance. She didn't cheer for Saiyonji during his first match with Utena, though, so she evidently has *some* degree of choice in how energetically she cheerleads for the incumbent.

In any case, this distracts and demoralizes Micki for the critical moment that Utena needs to get under his defenses and slice the Sword of Dios against his chest, cutting off his flower. No Rose Prince possession hax required, this time.

Utena tells him that she hopes this is the last she'll hear about this nonsense. Anthy sweetly tells him that she'll be happy to continue their study and music sessions. And Micki...has the most incriminating inner monologue that he possibly could, proving that Utena was totally right to take this fight seriously.

Yeah. Those are some big fucking alarm sirens you're hearing right now. It may be that he's just being corrupted by Kiryuu, and that he was a much better and more innocently motivated person until just now, but...

Oh.

So.

Next scene has his sister and a friend of hers in the music room. The friend is playing the piano, and asking Micki's sister if she wants a turn as well. She insists that she doesn't. Sure, she used to play all the time as a kid, but she only started to because a neighbor boy who she had a childish crush on said he liked it when she played, and only continued to play because it was her brother's favorite sibling activity.

She always felt a little like a third wheel when the music stuff got really serious, and when he got sick and left her to handle a concert all by herself she just decided things had gone too far and stopped bothering with it. She has other hobbies she enjoys much more nowadays.

Micki completely misrepresented the situation to everyone. In a way that made his sister's abandonment of music all his fault for not being there for her, rather than the result of her own agency.

So, it looks like the male student council members have given us the full trifecta now. The macho wife beater, the manipulative stalker creep, and the Nice Guy. I wonder what role Jury is going to play? The English origins of her name might be meaningful, or might not be.

...

I do have some complaints about how Micki's characterization was handled, though. For most of this two-parter, he came across as the kind of person who knows how to communicate. Who asks questions, and really listens to the answers. It's kind of hard for me to reconcile that with the Nice Guyism he ultimately condemns himself with.

Like, he asked Anthy for her feelings about her relationships with him and Utena before. He was totally comfortable asking Utena about personal things. Why wouldn't he have, like, sat down with both of them and tried to talk this over before challenging Utena to the duel?

Why would someone with his general disposition have not asked his sister what was really going on in the years since the concert incident? Are we supposed to infer that he just ignored her answers to all his questions and brushed off all her insistences that she was fine and really never liked music that much in favor of substituting his own self-centered angst narrative? That seems to be the intent. But I feel like Micki wasn't really written as the kind of person who would make those mistakes up until the end.

So, like a lot of stuff in this show, I feel like this was a good arc with a flawed delivery.

...

The episode ends with dissonantly inspiring music playing as Micki approaches Utena and Anthy in the hall and all but repeats one of Saiyonji's lines word for word.

The uplifting music made me think that maybe he meant this in a "I was careless in letting President Molesto manipulate me" way, but Utena's reaction of frustration and dread suggests that no, he's just planning to fight her again. End episode.


This two-parter was a bit more interesting than the pair of episodes that preceded it, thanks to Micki being a much more nuanced antagonist (though, to be ruthlessly fair, this was mostly because he had nonsensical Mean Girls caricature Nanami to play red herring villain for him in the first half). But even without the issues I pointed out in the last few paragraphs, I had most of the same issues with this story arc that I did with the rest of the RGU episodes I've seen up to now.

So, I'm going to have to say that the School Sword Magic Lesbian Flower Show is not my thing. I don't hate it. I'm not really sure that I can even say I dislike it, all things considered. But for me to really get invested in a story, I need to be able to engage with it first and foremost as a story with characters who feel like they might have an existence of their own. Unless it's a really short piece. Utena is just too ham-fistedly didactic to keep me going for longer than the pilot. I think I'd have loved this if it was trying to create a story that demonstrated its politics rather than just dressing its politics up as a story, but the show as it exists isn't for me.

Well, probably. @AKuz just commissioned a bunch more episodes, so I'll have my chance to come around on it.