Revolutionary Girl Utena S1E7: "Unfulfilled Juri"

I spent a while clicking around around trying to figure out which episode I'm supposed to watch next; the one listed as E7, or the one listed as E9. 6 and 8 had their production numbers flipped, but then the true episode 6 looked like the first half of a two-parter, and there's nothing I could find about which one comes after it.

So, I started watching E9 and the first thing I saw was Saiyonji back in his own body without explanation, so I guess I'm supposed to watch E7 next. "Unfulfilled Juri." Time to flesh out the one student council member we've seen who has yet to receive any fleshing out. Maybe she'll play a role in unfucking the situation with Saiyonji and Brown Jenkin.

After the awesome OP, we open on Juri having an unseen female someone put a hand on her shoulder and advise her to give up, she knows she can't cut it. She'd need a miracle to succeed, and they both know there are no such thing as miracles. The framing makes me think that this might be her mother. Not a very encouraging home environment, it seems. Then we jump to Juri defeating a long succession of fencing opponents in the school gym (the normal one, not the eldritch sky-arena), and subsequently being praised for her swordfighting skill by Miki.

Maybe this is supposed to be set a little earlier? I recall him simping for Juri before Touga manipulated him into latching onto Anthy instead. Or maybe he still has some general simpery even for girls who aren't currently his milady.

Juri, for her part, is indifferent to the praise and recognition, and seemingly not just because they're coming from Miki. She produces an amulet from under her collar, and despairs at how - no matter how good she is - she'll never be able to break the shell of the world and lead a revolution.

The charm she's fondling miiiiight be another version of the rose rings that let you participate in the tournament, but it might also be something else. Is she, uniquely among the student councillors, lacking the Mark of Dios? Does she lack it because this necklace had already marked her for possession by a rival demon lord? Maybe.

Jump ahead to the student council getting praised by the teachers for how well they performed at the regional student government convention. I forgot there even were teachers at this school lol. Juri in particular is pulled aside by the vice principle after the meeting and told he wants to talk to her in particular about how to keep the student council great over lunch. She stiffly, but politely, tells him she'd be honored. Meanwhile, right across the quad, Utena is having a one-on-one conversation of her own with a different teacher. It's the same lady who whined about her custom uniform in the polite, but this time she has a much more understandable complaint that invites the audience's sympathy to her side.

...wait, is Saiyonji still in there? Is that Saiyonji (or at least, a simulucrum of Saiyonji's personality, if that's how it works?) in the Henenlotter movie practical effect, being strangled? It doesn't look like it. Utena isn't acting like it.

...

Okay, I checked around again. Apparently I forgot that *every* episode of Utena ends with the "To Be Continued" caption. The curry episode was a one off, and we're just supposed to forget about it. Probably for the best.

...

So, I guess that's the real chu-chu the teacher is reacting to. Bodyswith confusion aside, I'm glad at least one person at this school has some modicum of sense.

Utena protests that she wasn't the one who brought the gremlin here OR the one who fed it after midnight. She just took her lunch here, and it followed her. She can't be blamed for that, can she? Unfortunately, Utena just gets screamed at and menaced with a riding crop for her trouble. On the up side, at least someone is finally trying to do SOMETHING about that fucking creature, and Utena should not be getting in the way.

Utena and Juri make eye contact across the quad, while chu-chu escapes and leads the angry teacher on a chase. Juri sees the opportunity to...somehow?...get the vice principle and the teacher to go get lunch together and leave her and Utena alone for now. It involves some very brazen lies and some very ballsy conduct that I'm surprised she can get away with, but it works. After the adults are gone, Juri approaches Utena and says they need to talk. Utena, for her part, is glad that Anthy's little abomination was miraculously saved.

The word "miracle" feels very deliberate here, given the background blurb we got at the beginning with Juri. Hmm.

Juri asks Utena to tell her what she knows about her, and it turns out that this includes her being a star student councilor, the captain of the fencing team (granted, the fencing team and student council Venn diagram in this school is a circle, but still, she's the actual captain), and...rumored to have a Way with influence. An intimidating way. Supposedly, she can make a teacher resign from the school and never come back with just a glare.

Anyway, Juri says that what people say about her is true, at least in generalities. She doesn't let Utena ask for any details, though, before she changes subjects to start talking about Utena's growing reputation as a swordswoman. This, of course, prompts Utena to ask about Juri's role in the Rose Bride tournament, being as she's a school councillor, and Juri - without directly answering the question of her own participation in the duels - tells her that she thinks the entire Rose Bride thing is stupid.

Utena agrees, and is glad to finally meet someone who's on the same page as her about this. However, we have an internal memory/monologue thing from Juri about how stupid it is to believe in miracles and how doing so just makes you gullible, vulnerable, and weak. Juri does say out loud that there's no such thing as miracles here (body-switching curry doesn't count I guess), but I don't think Utena quite understands her angle when she repeats that they're of one mind on this.

Utena tends to assume that other people think the same way that she does, to the point of excessive charitability. Utena thinks the tournaments are stupid because you can't own another person. Juri thinks they're stupid because she doesn't believe owning Anthy will actually give anyone world-changing powers.

These are not the same belief. Not even superficially.

Utena gets called in to the office. Sounds like that teacher might have gotten wise to whatever weird deception Juri pulled and is now calling Utena in to continue scolding her over someone else's pet nightmare. Utena bids Juri goodbye and leaves. Then, just a minute later, Anthy (who had been down on the quad below waving high at Utena in the window last we saw) comes over. She starts to pass by Juri, before stopping and turning around.

Hmm.

Maybe I'm being paranoid about Anthy now, but the way this scene was shot...it looks like Anthy deliberately walked a certain distance passed her, waited a moment, and then turned to greet her. Very intentional looking movements at every step along the way. From Juri's perspective, though, it would seem like Anthy walked passed behind her and then did a double take when she realized she'd spotted her at the window there and turned to say hello on an impulse.

Like I said, maybe this is paranoia due to Anthy's colder, more manipulative actions in the previous episode, but it sure looks to me like she's trying to trick Juri into thinking this meeting was unplanned when it actually wasn't.

Anthy hands her a flower. It appears to just be a random act of kindness.

Juri glares at her in silence for a long moment before striking.

Knocking the flower across the hall, and Anthy onto her back on the floor, Juri warns her not to try getting friendly with her again. Then she turns and coldly marches away without another word.

Anthy, wear a damned helmet already. Or get Utena to switch bodies with you again, the part where someone tried to slap her was fun.

Next scene is another school council meeting, compete with creepy piano theme and cultic mantra recitation as the councillors enter. They've received notification from End-Of-The-World that the next duel is to take place in one week's time. According to the charts they have ready, the next match is supposed to be Touga versus Juri. I'm not sure what bearing that has on who marries Anthy, considering that she's still betrothed to Utena. Maybe the two of them are competing to see who gets to challenge Utena? Dunno how it works.

Miki is surprised to hear that Juri is competing. After all, for as long as he's known her, she's been sceptical if not outright contemptuous of this whole ritual. I'm not sure why she's still on the student council then, in that case, since that seems to be most of what they do, but it does explain why she's usually been so silent during the meeting scenes thus far. Touga explains that Juri's disbelief is exactly WHY she's invested in this. She wants to marry Anthy and thus prove once and for all that doing so won't give you any god powers and that everyone except Juri herself is stupid.

Juri concurs with Touga's assessment, and snarks that if Anthy can grant any powers after all then she'll just use them to ace her finals without studying, whatever. But then, pulling out some throwing knives and tossing them at an unseen target, Touga grins snidely and says that he isn't actually sure if Juri is being honest about her motives here.

Miki immediately starts begging Juri to tell him who she is or was in love with, because of course he does. We also, as the camera brings Miki into focus, see what Touga was using as a throwing knife target, and in so doing are able to empathize with Touga a little more than we could previously.

Also...hearing him talk, while seeing him throw knives rapidly, I had the weirdest fucking deja vu. So I checked, and yes. Touga shares a voice actor with Dio Brando. He also played the corporate 1984 box robot in "Deca-Dence," apparently. Takehito Koyasu seems to specialize in anime villains; it looks like his other best known role was as a major baddie in "One Piece." According to a coomer friend of mine, he's also in a lot of hentai. Heh, well, anyway.

Touga seems to have cracked Juri's armor, and Miki's continued Nice Guy Needling triggers her into suffering a fully animated expository flashback. A (slightly?) younger version of Juri is in a fencing match, while a purple haired girl watches from the sidelines. Juri defeats her opponent, who pulls off his visor to reveal an extremely pretty male face. For a moment, it looks like he might be the object of Juri's affections, but no. He's got a crush on her, but she's more interested in the purple haired girl in the audience. I begin to understand what Miki and Touga meant by Juri "not being able to speak her feelings" in the current social order.

That said, it turns out that there's more than just ambient homophobia keeping Juri from acting on her feelings. This is a full-circle love triangle. Juri likes the girl. The girl likes the boy. The boy likes Juri.

"Believe in miracles," the girl - who she was friends with, if nothing else - often told her, "and they will know your feelings." The miracles never happened, though. And...the girl that Juri was crushing on ends up doing what she thought was a betrayal. Telling the boy that Juri has a crush on someone else (true, but I don't think the girl herself knew that) but that she herself would do anything for him.

So, she "sabotaged" Juri's chances with the boy, and later told Juri (either to her face or by letter, it's not clear) that she has no regrets over this because she just loved the dude that much. For her, this IS the miracle.

Juri just took this in silence. Drifting away from what had been her two closest friends, and giving up on the massive crush she had had on one of them, feeling more alienated and alone than ever before. As far as her (former?) crush knows, Juri drifted away out of envy for her and bitterness for the boy. It was actually the other way around, but it's not like Juri was inclined to explain this to either of them.

Back to the present, the night after the council meeting, we see Juri's dorm. Juri is reading a letter she just received from her (ex?) crush who thinks she betrayed her but actually just rejected her. It's...cordial, but treads lightly. After reading it, Juri starts formulating her own. Despite everything, she plans to write back, she still thinks that her time being close-nit friends with her and the boy was the happiest she's ever been. She looks back on that little social group with wistful nostalgia. She looks at the other two's smiling faces today with...no, not jealousy.

Envy.

There's a difference.

She knocks everything off of her table, letter included, and stumbles outside in a silent, white hot rage.

Outside, Utena is jogging around the school grounds trying to get chu-chu to go to sleep and stop getting her in trouble all the time when she runs into Juri again. She almost doesn't recognize her at first; Juri never leaves her room without her school uniform on, but tonight she's wearing a frilly nightdress thing that Utena couldn't have even imagined her owning.

After exchanging greetings, Utena comments on the dress. She finds it extremely flattering on Juri; in her own words, she looks like a supermodel or something. Juri is...surprised, and sort of wary, at the complement, but stays cordial. Keeping on the topic of clothes, Juri asks Utena what's up with that custom boys' uniform she wears all the time; it's cool looking, but it's also weird. What's the story behind it? Utena tells her the story behind it. It's a story we've already heard several times, of course, but the delivery here has a different vibe. This tense, but enchanting, keyboard theme rises and falls in the background. The night sky presses in over the empty grounds. Utena tells the resplendent Juri about the prince who inspired her to keep living, and who she's dedicated her life since then to becoming like. She hopes the ring he gave her will really let her find him again, one day. And that, when she does, he will find her worthy.

The way she tells it, she makes it clear that she's not after him in any romantic sense, but more...like a child seeking the approval of a parent. Which makes sense, if he appeared to her shortly after she was orphaned. Like he's a surrogate father to her. A mentor, and an aspirational model of adulthood.

Juri listens to all this raptly. The music increasing the tension while staying low key and sensual, like a small, elegantly crafted steel spring compressing tighter and tighter.

Utena finishes the story by saying that, while she really isn't sure about that skycastle holding the power to break the eggshell of the world or whatever herself, she knows that her destiny is nonetheless connected to it. If these rings are the key to the arena tower, then that means she needs to go there if she wants to meet Dios again. If part of that process involves Anthy for whatever reason, then she supposes that fate has linked the two of their futures.

Juri stands up, and walks over in front of Utena. Staring at her in wonderment. No internal monologues are necessary for us to understand what she's thinking. Another one like herself, but brave enough to come out and say it, and steely enough to be what she herself has only ever felt. And, well. She's been openly checking Juri out ever since this conversation started, complementing her outfit, telling her how beautiful she is. She leans forward, reaching out with her hands. Taking Utena's arm to test the waters.

Utena's eyes go wide. She takes Juri's hand back and cranes her head upward, inviting her lips. Their faces draw closer.

It's a good thing Utena's reflexes are fast. She intercepts the blow just inches from her face, preventing it from driving her off the edge of the pond and backward into the water. We all knew it was coming, of course, but Utena didn't, so that was all reflexes.

When Juri starts trying to pry the rose ring off of the hand that blocked her, screaming almost incoherently about how Utena is a stupid dumb idiot who was tricked by some creep as a kid, and how she's a hypocrite for thinking the Rose Bride tournament is dumb while still holding to magical thinking about her destiny or what the fuck ever. This proceeds until Utena kicks her in the stomach and sends her sprawling back onto the pavement. The music decays into a mess of discordant piano mashes as the grapple becomes a brawl.

When they break apart again, Juri - the weird charm around her neck that I *think* is a variant of the rose ring flashing as if electrical - challenges Utena to a duel atop the tower.

Is this in addition to the planned duel between herself and Touga? Or maybe I misunderstood earlier, and Touga meant that he and Juri were both up next *against Utena?* Not sure.

We cut to a classroom after hours, abandoned save for Anthy sitting alone by a window. As the bells of a distant clock strike off the hours, Anthy puts her hands on her desk and does a little finger-dance while singing a creepy nursery rhyme.

I looked up Japanese idioms about rabbits, and found several, but none that seem relevant here. The context, though, sounds a lot like "dance, puppets, dance."

Is this implying what it seems like it's implying?

Then, from there, we...

Oh.

We cut immediately to the shadow puppets.

This time doing a little skit about envy, spite, and sour grapes.

And that's when I realized that when Anthy was doing her little finger dance, she was very purposefully holding her hands against the slanted light of the sunset, so she could see the shadows her fingers were casting.

She's been putting on all the puppet shows in the interludes. Perfectly understanding what's going on in the minds of everyone around her, and mocking them.

Is this a villain reveal? I think this might actually be a villain reveal. I kind of want to go back and rewatch the previous episodes now, to see if any of her earlier actions seem much more sus when you stop assuming that she's a helpless shrinking violet and start and start looking for intent.

I also think it much more likely now that Anthy and Dios are actually the same being in different gender presentations, rather than just having a connection.

...

I kind of hope I'm just jumping to conclusions about at least some parts of this. Having the embodiment of traditional femininity who the system objectifies and abuses turn out to secretly be a master manipulator villain behind everything would be...not good.

I have my issues with Revolutionary Girl Utena, but gender politics is not one of them, so I'd be surprised if this all just leading up to the story playing a misogynistic victim-blaming cliche straight.

Yeah, there's got to be another layer to this. I just can't see the story doing that, after all the (often very heavyhanded, to the point where the anviliciousness has been one of my longrunning criticisms of the series) statements it's been making up until now. I guess we'll see where this is going.

For now though, even if Anthy isn't the big bad, she's not nearly as inoffensive or as helpless as she wants everyone to think, and she definitely takes a cruel pleasure in some of these deceptions.

...

Next thing we know, Utena is using her ring to unlock the physics malfunction in the campus park and initiate the time and animation saving - but fortunately very listenable - zettai unmei mokushiroku sequence.

After a pleasant minute-and-fifty-seconds of headbanging, we reach the arena. This duel is different from the previous ones. Very different.

The previous arena duels - Saiyonji, Saiyonji Rematch, and Miki - all played by more or less the same rules, because they had the same source of conflict. "Utena's desire to protect Anthy from the people who think they can own her" versus "the other person's desire to own Anthy." They differed from one another in degree of vehemence and risk (Saiyonji Rematch was a much more violent and dirty battle, due to Saiyonji's anger and aggrieved entitlement from his previous loss), but still, they were fighting for the same things each time, and they acted like that's what they were fighting for.

Juri is fighting because she wants to hurt Utena. Utena is fighting to protect herself. The Rose Bride tournament with its rules and format are only relevant insofar as they allow Juri to compel Utena to fight her and shield her from the social/legal consequences of Utena being killed or maimed. Were it not for that, Anthy might as well not even be here.

Utena spends the entire fight on the back foot, just struggling to stay out of stabbing distance, her parries seeming to exhaust her more than they exhaust the attacker. The duel song is all about blinding divine light, angels of destruction, biblical devastation. As Utena visibly tires, Juri calls out for Dios to come back and give Utena a miracle like he supposedly did for her second duel with Saiyonji. Come on, here's a fated hero with a whole destiny in front of her, isn't she going to get a miracle? Really? Not even a little one?

Anthy watches impassively. Unlike in previous duels, there are no real or affected signs of favoritism one way or the other. Maybe she just understands that this fight isn't about her, and thus she isn't about it.

Finally, Utena falls, the Sword of Dios knocked out of her hand. Surprisingly, Juri doesn't stab her while she's down. The defeat alone was clear enough for her, I suppose. Utena lost.

But then, just as Utena is opening her mouth to admit defeat (whatever that means in practice, considering Juri's lack of interest in the Bride), the sword that got knocked out of her hand comes falling back down. Point first. Directly through the rose pinned to Juri's vest.

Juri's mouth hangs open. Utena's mouth also hangs open. Anthy doesn't so much as blink.

Juri loudly insists that this was NOT a miracle. Just an accident. Just one of those whacky coincidences. Not a miracle. No destiny. No.

Anthy walks up to Juri, and - with an absolutely sickeningly sweet smile and gentle words of conciliation - offers her a consolation prize.

Basically just a trollface with extra steps.​

On one hand, Anthy is pretty damned unnerving. On the other, I don't think anyone can blame her for this. Even if she did somehow intentionally trigger Juri back in the hallway scene (which is hardly guaranteed), she didn't force her to fucking beat her to the ground for no reason. So yeah. "Miracles DO exist, but only for the specific purpose of fucking with you personally, now take this flower you still don't want and go to hell" is pretty well deserved.

Juri weakly tells her, once again, that she's not interested in getting friendly. This repetition of it sounds hollow, compared to the previous. Brittle. Powerless.

There's a little epilogue that shows Juri having a little chat with Touga out on the lawn. Touga asks her if she's still such a skeptic about the mystical forces they're playing with here. Juri replies that she's less certain than she was before, but even if the power of Dios is real she doesn't want it. She'd rather solve her problems on her own, like she should be able to.

She opens that locket on her necklace, and no, it's not a rose ring variant. It's got a photo of her crush in it. She wishes, silently, that she had the courage and character to tell her how she actually feels. How she actually felt all along. Unfortunately, she can't do that.

She's tough. She's fearsome. Everyone thinks she's an invincible battlewagon of a woman with nerves of steel who takes shit from no one and always gets what she wants. She is, indeed, strong. Unfortunately though, she's not strong in that way. She's not Utena.

End episode.

After the incomprehensible fever dream that was the previous episode, this episode was a return to form: introduce new antagonist to Utena and/or Anthy, creepy instigation from Touga, duel. It would get formulaic fast if *every* episode followed that structure, but after whatever the hell that curry episode was supposed to be it's a needed palette cleanser.

Talking about the episode's own merits, the intricate little interactions and relationships between some of the characters felt more human, less like a tract and more like a normal story about relatable characters, than most of the earlier eps. Which means that I can confidently say that this is my favourite episode of RGU so far.

Part of this is also down to Juri just being a more interesting antagonist than the previous ones. Miki's heel turn was a fun twist that gave me a lot to talk about, but once the twist was revealed he was kind of played out. Saiyonji has been retroactively given a liiiittle more nuance by these last couple episodes, but he's still more of an anthropomorphic embodiment of toxic masculinity than a character you can relate to (though that could continue to change as we learn more about him). Nanami...the less said, the better. I think what sold Juri better than the others is that, rather than being sure she's in the right (Saiyonji and Miki) or being too immature to see beyond her own nose (Nanami), Juri actually has an inner conflict. She could stop being bitter and repressed and come out of the closet, if only she could learn to stand as strongly against systemic pressures as she does against personal ones. She's just afraid to, and ashamed of being afraid, and angry about being ashamed. She *knows* what she needs to do, but she can't pluck up the courage to do it, and she's stuck in the rogues' gallery until that changes.

I also really appreciated that we got to see more of Utena's natural sexuality without all the Rose Bride stuff being forced on her or it being tangled up in her chivalrous principles. It was a short, abortive scene, but when it seemed like Juri was going to kiss her it seemed like, just for once, Utena was being allowed to do what she wanted instead of reacting to injustice and/or weirdness. It's also a helpful reminder that no, Utena is not in love with Anthy. She did not ask for Anthy. She does not like the circumstances that forced her and Anthy together. If it was up to her, she'd be spending all that time and energy hitting on fellow evening joggers instead. If anything in the previous episode is actually supposed to mean anything persistent about the characters, then I think the passive aggression Utena showed toward Saiyonji there might also be a sign of how much all this frustration and entrapment is effecting her. That incident with Juri must have made things ever worse.

Speaking of Anthy...well, I'll need to learn more about what she is exactly before I can judge, but even at best she is NOT to be trusted. I wonder if she and Juri can see a little of themselves in each other, just like Juri does with Utena. They're both trapped by the social role they inhabit, but they're also both complicit in staying trapped, and they both seem to lash out at other people (either with overt violence in Juri's case, or subtle manipulative fuckery in Anthy's) instead of helping themselves.

Hmm. I might be anthropomorphizing Anthy a little here. Her reasons for doing what she does may or may not be as human as my last paragraph suggests.

I don't know what's going on with Touga. More information needed. He's a very bad, very dangerous person, as skilled at manipulating people as Anthy, as bold and unapologetic as Utena, as strong as Saiyonji, and as smart as Juri. He's definitely being set up as the disc one boss, but in terms of his internal world, what makes him tick...mostly a mystery for now.

I still can't say that I like Revolutionary Girl Utena, exactly, but a couple more episodes like this one could change that.