Revolutionary Girl Utena S1E9: "The Castle Said to Hold Eternity"

Ooh, are we going to advance the actual plot? The title suggests that we'll be learning more about it, if nothing else. I'm optimistic about this episode, because all of the above is just a long way of saying "not Nanami." I hope.

Roll OP!

It's noon sharp, and students - female students in particular - are rushing to the gymnasium to watch a spectacular fencing duel. Well, they think it's spectacular. Most of them don't know about the magic sky arena and the crazy shit that goes on in it. The duel turns out to be between Touga and Saiyonji, which...I feel like these two must have fenced enough times - both as part of the official fencing team practice and outside of that - for everyone to be used to it by now, but I guess not. A big audience assembles, and they both have a lot of female admirers cheerleading for them.

You just know there's some particularly deranged fangirl in the crowd holding up a sign that says "Batter ME Saiyonji!" who the others do their best to ignore.

It's a short duel. In fact, it's barely even a duel at all. Saiyonji immediately goes for an aggressive lunge, and Touga doesn't even bother parrying. He just counts on what he seems to know very well is his own superior speed to poke Saiyonji first. There's no back and forth. No clash of blades. Barely a second after the battle has started, it's over.

Damn. Either Saiyonji was just having a bad day (well...okay, he's been having a bad month or two, frankly. The more I think about it, yeah, the more likely he just isn't in good enough psychological shape to fight effectively at this point...), or Touga is considerably faster than I expected. And I expected him to be pretty dang fast, just because of all the buildup he's been getting that suggests a hard boss fight.

So, Touga is at least as dangerous in battle as he is politically, to a greater degree than I anticipated. Noted.

Anyway, Touga's cheerleaders celebrate, and Saiyonji's mope. Someone refers to Touga as a "prince," which causes Utena - who shortly reveals herself in the crowd - to repeat the word aloud to herself and stare at him appraisingly. Oh, we're still doing the thing where every time Utena hears someone called a "prince" she wonders if that person might be the one from her childhood? Meh. I get the symbolism, with her trying to find a real world role model who embodies her (deeply flawed) ideal, but like...at this point she should know that Touga and his cronies are all pricks and that they're deeply entangled in the system she's declared to be her enemy. And heck, I think we've already gone through exactly this question regarding Touga specifically before now.

It's just one of those things that makes Utena more of an anthropomorphic metaphor than a character, which makes it harder for me to stay invested in her. Not a new problem of mine with this series, just a continuing one.

After the lightning-fast duel, Touga does some performative magnanimity, acting all friendly toward Saiyonji, which prompts the latter to blow up at him.

I feel like this is a translation hiccup, heh. He already did lose to him at least once, no?​

Despite Touga's claim that the two of them are "old friends," Saiyonji loudly declares that he doesn't consider him a friend of any stripe. Sheesh. Is this just more unhinged lashing out in the wake of losing his pseudo-legal ownership of Anthy, or is there actually more to it in this case? Saiyonji might not be a reliable source of information, especially when it comes to grievances, but on the other hand Touga is exactly the sort of guy who would keep people in a situation where they're forced to stay "friends" with him despite having very good reason to loathe him. So, we'll see.

Title card drops. I wonder if Saiyonji's (real or imagined) grudge relates to something we're about to learn about Castlevania? Have he and Touga actually been inside of that inverted aerocitadel, briefly, perhaps? I doubt it, but maybe. We then open on Anthy's birdcage-greenhouse thing. Anthy is taking care of the roses, which I'm starting to think might actually be a physiological need for her. Chu-chu is tormenting some adorable pillbugs, because he's a monster. A frog happens to eat the pillbug out from under him, sending Anthy's little hellspawn into a frenzied rage at his victim being granted the sweet release of death when he wasn't done torturing it. As he throws himself at the heroic amphibian, Saiyonji approaches.

Go frog! Go frog! Go frog!​

Saiyonji bitterly asks why "you" are always getting between him and Anthy, and since it's a moment before the camera reveals Utena's presence it really looks like he's talking to the animals.

Which, frankly, would only require Saiyonji's mental health to have declined very slightly more than it really has.

But no, Utena is here. She and Saiyonji fence words while the tiny battle between good and evil rages on around their feet. Saiyonji growls that he can and will defeat her the next time they duel, and Anthy will be his again, mark his words. Erm...how many times does each person have to duel each other person, exactly? Like, at what point has someone been eliminated from the running? The rules about this seem deliberately vague, so that the writers can have anyone duel anyone else over Anthy as many times as the plot requires, but I might be judging prematurely.

Utena is well passed being intimidated by this guy, though, especially since I don't think either of them quite realized that her second victory was down to divine(?) intervention rather than Utena actually being that good. On top of that, Utena currently has some extra verbal ammunition to fire at Saiyonji, pointing out that with the number of L's he seems to be taking in the fencing arena lately she's not sure if *anyone* should be afraid of him. Also, he kicks the fighting animals out of his way as he comes closer, which definitely makes him seem like a badass who should be taken seriously lol.

At the mention of his battle with Touga, a strange change comes over Saiyonji. He seems calmer. Almost smug. He suavely turns to leave, telling Utena over his shoulder that he's fought Touga hundreds of times over the decade he's known him, and trust him, today was a fluke. The way that Saiyonji delivers this makes me think he's telling the truth. Hmm, maybe Touga isn't actually as big a threat on the battlefield as he is in the office, then. Utena expresses surprise that the president and vp have actually known each other for that long, which prompts a momentary flashback of Saiyonji and Touga undergoing samurai training, complete with old timey flute music and gratuitous cherry blossoms.

Curiously, the swords they're holding in this curiously archaic aside are neither the rapiers used in fencing, nor traditional samurai weapons. They look like European longswords of some kind. Weird, and almost certainly deliberate. Wonder what that's meant to signify?

No explanation is forthcoming just yet, though. For now, Saiyonji just snaps himself out of it and continues his overconfident bluster and entitled rambling. When he starts waxing about how happy he and Anthy are going to be once they're reunited, Utena accuses him of not really loving Anthy. Which in turn prompts him to say that he and Anthy both desire "something eternal," which binds them together.

He also rambles about how they can only have their eternal somethings if Saiyonji can defeat "him." Considering what he thinks of Touga's swordsmanship, I don't think that's the him he's referring to here. Does he mean Dios? Dang, Saiyonji might actually know more about this stuff than it appeared. Utena asks him if he means Touga, seeming as confused as I am, and Saiyonji tells her that it's too complicated for him to explain to her.

Huh. What the heck does that mean?

Back into flashback mode! Middle school Saiyonji and middle school Touga finish their samurai practice, and we see Touga bandaging Saiyonji's other's hand where it got cut. Hmm. Saiyonji says that he typically out-fences Touga, but between him being the one who gets hurt in their childhood practice and him being the loser in their modern match I'm starting to think he might have been lying about that after all. Anyway, the two boys finish their fencing practice and get on their bike to start riding home, but get caught in a sudden rainstorm. While slowing down to maneuver the bike through the suddenly wet grass, they pass an incredibly spooky looking Gothic cathedral of the kind that anime would have you believe Japan is dotted with.

The church bell is ringing in a low, dolorous tone. Touga looks at the tower, and explains to Saiyonji that there seems to be a funeral going on. The fact that Touga instantly recognizes this while Saiyonji doesn't might indicate something about their religious affiliations, but - as noted - anime is weird enough about that stuff that it also could...oh, never mind lol. Saiyonji follows up Touga's pronouncement with the deep-cutting insight that "someone must have died." Okay, yeah, middle school Saiyonji is just even more of an airhead than his high school junior version, familiarity with Christian practice being irrelevant.

As they stand out in the rain and watch the definitely not haunted church, a gaggle of the absolutely creepiest looking people in animation history approaches them and asks if they've seen a runaway kid about their age.

Sounds like Babby Utena ran away from her parents' funeral when these custodians looked away for a moment. Gee, I wonder what might have scared her away? :V

The boys tell the bespectacled child protective service demon-shadows that they haven't seen anyone, and the phantoms - mercifully - leave them with their souls in place. Having apparently never seen a horror movie in their lives, Saiyonji and Touga wait for Reflecting Shades of Doom to be out of sight and then sneak into the creepy church.

Touga explains that he know he saw three coffins through the church's open door a few minutes ago, and so it seemed very strange to him when the glasses demon told them there was only a double funeral going on. Suspicious. Suspicious enough for Touga to pick a coffin at random and push its heavy lid open.

-____-

Why would anyone's reaction to this situation be to do that?

Saiyonji, who apparently has seen one or two horror movies in his life after all, gets cold feet and urges Touga not to do it. Touga ignores him. He also ignores the eerie light growing around him as he pushes the lid. And the enormous compound blast of miscolored lightning that fills the sky at the very instant he gets it open.

Kiryuu "lich treat" Touga.

Regardless of why Touga does all this, he does it. And, because this show takes place within a surrealistic hell dimension, the coffin is full of rose blossoms and a very much alive Babby Utena.

Utena is hiding from the horrifying CPS apparitions after sneaking away from them, obviously. Why there was a third coffin full of rose blossoms sitting around at her parents' funeral in the first place, of course, is much harder to explain. Likewise the opening of that coffin seeming to antagonize the weather.

When told that everyone is looking for her (erm...where the hell IS everyone, in that case?) she begs them not to tell anyone. Her parents are dead. Her life is over almost as soon as it began; it was a mistake of fate that caused her to even be born at all, if this was going to happen so soon. Just let her be buried alongside her parents. It's better this way.

Notably, Touga DOES ask her why there was a third coffin here, and she replies that she has no idea. She also doesn't seem to know anything about where the flowers came from; she declares that the third coffin must be "meant" for her, since she has nothing to live for now, but there's nothing about why it's actually there. So, the characters are acknowledging this as weird in-universe. Which means the audience is meant to wonder about it.

Hmm. I begin to suspect something. Let's see if Babby Utena is already wearing that ring or not.

Also, when Saiyonji asks Touga why he's still engaging with her after she told him to leave, he tells him that it's because he is an ally to all females and cannot leave one in distress. And, as Utena explains why she wants to die and be buried with her parents, and how if someone stops her she'll just find another coffin to lay in, he just sort of fondles her hair in his hands.

She goes on about how life is fruitless and it's better to get it over with, how there's nothing eternal anyway so why pretend anything has meaning, how the thought of continued existence makes her literally sick, etc. He just keeps running her hair between his fingers with an enchanted look on his face.

After creepily playing with her hair while she waxes suicidal for a while, Touga...gets up and leaves. Saiyonji asks if they're really just going to leave her back there, and Touga says that unless he can think of something eternal to show her there isn't much they can do.

There's a final shot of the bandage falling off of Saiyonji's hand where he hurt it earlier. I thought I was going to see a ring hidden under it, but no. We also didn't get a good look at Utena's hands during this scene, and there wasn't ever a point where it looked like Touga could have given her one.

Hmmmmmm.

The next day, Saiyonji recalls seeing the girl again at the final burial service in the churchyard outside. She still looks miserable, of course, but there's a major difference. She looks sad, but determined. The hopelessness is gone. Her body is being held high and proud, rather than the deathly limpness from the night before. Most critically, there's a fire in her eyes that wasn't there before. It's a downright transformational change.

Touga denied having gone back and interacted with the girl again, when Saiyonji asked him. Saiyonji wasn't convinced, though. He remains sure, to this day, that Touga with that ineffible intelligence and insight of his must have done something he wants to keep secret from Saiyonji.

We still don't see Utena's hand clearly in the graveyard scene. No telling if she has the ring now, or if she already had it when Saiyonji saw her the night before.

From there, we cut to Saiyonji being whispered a sweet nothing by Anthy around the time he won her in combat. As the two of them stood on the sky arena, looking up at the inverted castle, Anthy told Saiyonji that she'd like to get into that castle someday; there's something eternal in it, and she desires that thing.

Since then, he's known it was destiny. He also has completely failed, in all of this time, to realize that the little girl from back then was Utena. Batting zero for two, and totally confident that he's got it all figured out. Saiyonji, never change.

Okay then. Well. Anthy and her counterpart/alter ego/overlord/whatever Dios are being painted in an ever more sinister light. How sinister, exactly, depends on whether or not there really was just a random flower-filled coffin there, or if Dios put it there himself. The flowers make me suspect the latter. It almost seems like...hmm, well, I guess it might depend on how much prescience Dios has. Did he deliberately arrange things so that Utena and/or Saiyonji and/or Touga would think that Touga was the prince who saved her, by appearing to her just after Touga and Saiyonji left so that her memories would blur them? Like I said, that would take some real prophecy hax, but we don't know that that's beyond him.

Utena's repeated wondering about whether or not Touga is the Rose Prince has now been justified, even if I wish the show had done more to make that seem reasonable from the outset (just making Dios' silhouette look slightly more like Touga's would have helped). Thing is, thinking about Saiyonji's suspicions that Touga later went back and said/did something else to Utena, and about the powers we've seen Dios display so far...what if Dios possessed Touga later that night and made him come back to the church? The one time we've seen him do that it was to someone holding his sword, in a way that implied he needed his host to be holding the sword in order to take over, but it's possible he has methods. If that's what happened, then the person who gave Utena the ring might have looked and sounded just like middle school Touga, but Touga might have no memory of it. It would definitely work thematically, what with Dios being the masculine ideal that everyone is misguidedly trying to embody; he possesses people because that's just what meme complexes do.

In any case, I'm pretty sure the Rose Prince lured Utena into that flower-filled coffin, and even more sure that he appeared and "saved" her from suicidal ideation shortly after the two boys left.

As for Anthy wording her desire to enter the castle in juuuust such a way as to string Saiyonji along? Well, I suppose it *could* be coincidence, but that's very unlikely. Now, did Dios somehow put her up to that, or did she do it intentionally (obviously that's a meaningless question if Anthy actually IS Dios)? Either way, creepy.

...

I still don't really like the twist of "the battered girlfriend was actually the secret villain in control of the whole situation all along," so I hope it's not that. Or at least, not *just* that.

...

Back to the present. It's made immediately clear that Saiyonji wasn't narrating that whole thing to Utena, because if he was she'd probably inform him that the pink haired girl in the coffin and the pink haired girl who stole his gf are one and the same, and she doesn't. Instead, Saiyoji just mumbles that eternity resides in the skycastle, and he will be the one who claims it. Not her. Not smug-ass secret-keeping fucking Touga. Him. He was chosen by Anthy, and by fate. While pressing his fist against the greenhouse so hard that one of the glass panels cracks. Utena just stares at him like the lunatic that he is until he finally leaves.

There's a brief interlude showing a student council meeting, in which Juri shares the anecdote Utena told her about a couple episodes ago. Including the part where coming to this school was motivated at least in part by the hope that she can find and/or emulate the Prince here.

Touga is bemused by the story. She remembers a "prince" from her childhood, does she? How fascinating. Hmm. Has he managed to put her together with the girl in the coffin, now, and (rightly or wrongly) decided that he must be the person she mistook(?) for the Rose Prince who she's sought ever since? He definitely is smarter than Saiyonji, not that that's an accomplishment or anything, so it's possible. Anyway, he seems to be plotting something now. Probably a scheme for getting into Utena's pants by leveraging her traumatic childhood memories, but that's just my guess.

Later that day, Utena is hanging out by herself trying to figure out how her prince fits into this whole skycastle weirdness with the ring and so forth. Suddenly, Touga creeps up behind her and jams a can of cold ice tea into the crook of her neck. Then, when she leaps away and asks him what the actual fuck, he starts really creepily hitting on her. Not that there's a non-creepy way in which Touga can hit on someone. Touga's can make you need a shower with his gaze alone, and his mere touch can transform water into rohypnol.

Utena tries to change the subject and ask him more about the skycastle, suspecting that he might know something that the other councilers don't.

He just chuckles, and tells her that all she needs to know about that castle is that she will find her Prince in it. Utena glares at him defensively, and asks who the hell told him about that. He responds by grabbing her, pulling her face toward his, and announcing that rather than Utena giving her first kiss to Juri, or Anthy, it will be taken by HE! TOUGA! Fortunately, Utena's reflexes are significantly better than those of certain other Takehito Koyasu sexual assault victims, and is able to get free before the kiss instead of having to look for a mud puddle afterward.

Rebuffed, and resisted, Touga does his best to seem unfazed as Utena backs away from him and warns him to never touch her again. She stomps away. He takes a sip of ice-cold canned tea and chuckles to make sure she knows how unbothered he is by her reaction and how much of a big deal she's making over nothing.

Maybe I've been brain poisoned by doing FMA and K6BD back to back, but it just occurred to me that I might be looking at yet another instance of the "seven sins as villain ensemble" trope. We have Saiyonji, perpetually aggrieved, who can't go a scene without hitting, kicking, or at least yelling at something. Juri, who tries to destroy anyone who enjoys the thing she's convinced herself she can't. Miki, the main character of the entire universe. Touga, the rape elemental. We're just still waiting on greed, sloth, and gluttony (I don't think Nanami counts; if she ever picks up a sword I'll reconsider).

Cut to Saiyonji in his dorm room, receiving a letter. He's surprised to see that its a missive from End Of The World; normally those are sent to the student council office, not to specific people. As he opens the envelope, the camera focuses on a framed photo he keeps on his desk.

However much he's come to resent Touga, Saiyonji does still yearn for the friendship they had before.

Anyway, he reads the letter, and for a moment his eyes go wide in shock. After a moment though, his expression lightens, and he lets out a sinister chuckle. Whatever End Of The World told him about, he apparently thinks he can use it to his own advantage.

Next, we have Anthy's puppet show for the episode. This time, she has her shadow puppets argue about whether UFO's, Santa Clause, etc really exist. Thier conclusion being that, no, you might have convinced yourself you've seen such mythical things as a kid, but once you get older you understand that there are no UFO's, there is no Santa Clause, there are no wizards, there are no shining princes on white horses, there are no genuine friends, and there are no actually good people in the world.

There's also a visual pun here, where Anthy literally tips her hand when she delivers this part.

We got our first real look at the puppetmaster. How she really feels. What actually motivates her. Anthy is not a happy entity, whatever the hell she is.

EDIT: or not? It's been pointed out to me that those hands are way too pale to be Anthy's. Looking at them side by side with her, yeah. Okay, take this passage with a grain of salt.

More importantly, her cynical, misanthropic worldview seems to be a product of experience rather than it just being her Rose Bride nature or whatever. She was turned into this by outside forces.

*OWWWWW*

FUCK

I thought we were FUCKING DONE WITH THIS SHIT!

Okay, sorry, anvil really caught me by surprise that time, full-on skull fracture. Anyway, the sticky note attached to this one says "Another destructive component of traditional femininity comes down to ingrained social defence mechanisms against the threat of toxic masculine aggressions."

Yes, show, I completely agree. I just wish you didn't have to drop those from so damned high.

Flash forward to evening, either that night or a later one. Utena comes back to the nuptial dorm at the end of her school day and finds it abandoned save for the rat-goblin. This is unusual; Anthy is normally back long before this hour, and she always notifies Utena before going literally anywhere besides dorm, greenhouse, and classes. As Utena tries to figure out where Anthy could have gone, she gets a phone call.

Hmm. Saiyonji? Touga? That fucked up little kid who Nanami adopted? Patterns of behaviour point to the third option, but that would be a bit of an eleventh hour curveball in this episode. Most likely it's one of the first two, or else Anthy wasn't actually kidnapped and there's something wackier afoot.

Then the voice on the phone tells Utena to go to the dueling arena if she wants to rescue Anthy, and we see the grinning face on the other end of the call.

Touga hangs up without answering any of her questions. Utena, for want of a better option, heads out.

Alright, looks like it was my second guess. I assume he wants to teach Utena something about princely conduct that he thinks will make her more receptive to him, or something. Now, as for how Saiyonji's letter from End Of The World plays into this...hmm. Could be related, or could be another subplot that'll just sort of cross its wires with this one.

Then we cut to the gate at the foot of the arena staircase, where Anthy is being manhandled by Saiyonji. Who appears to be acting alone. So...my first guess was the correct one, heh.

Hmm. Touga must have seen Saiyonji do this, or somehow anticipated it? I guess so. He's probably going to follow a little bit behind Utena and intervene to back her up when the going against Saiyonji gets rough. Trying to earn points with her by fighting to save a fair maiden side by side like princes ought to, or whatever.

Anthy tries to get Saiyonji to see reason, reminding him that bringing her to the arena when there isn't a duel scheduled isn't going to do anything, and also that it's strictly forbidden for anyone besides her current betrothed to escort her there. Saiyonji insists that the castle will be lowering itself down to the arena tonight, and he and her are going to enter it together; he has End Of The World's own word on this. Anthy tells him that that's impossible, and he beats her to the ground.

He needs to stop Anthy from stopping the two of them from being happy together. That's part of what love is, after all.

I half expected the gate to just not open when there isn't a duel about to happen, but no, looks like anyone with a ring can open it at will. Saiyonji pulls Utena in. Then we cut to Utena hurrying to the gate, but stopping when she spots Saiyonji laying unconscious in the fountain just before it.

Heh. Dios has definitely lost patience with Saiyonji's shit.

Utena pulls him out of the water, and...he was just unconscious.

...

Okay, show, you have to understand this. Showing someone laying facedown in water - unless that someone is a merman or something - is a universal telegraphing of "this character is dead." Even a Mob Psycho-like show would be escalating well beyond its usual unclearness if it did this and then had the person just get up again.

Consequently, I'm just going to infer that Saiyonji is part rainbow trout and treat that inference as fact when analysing his character henceforth.

...

In an appropriately karmic turn, Utena throws Saiyonji on the ground and violently slaps his face until he wakes up.

He doesn't seem to have any memory of how he ended up here. When Utena tells him that Anthy was kidnapped, he doesn't put it together with his own actions (either because he doesn't remember them, or, because in his own mind what he did wasn't kidnapping and it never occured to him that anyone else would see it as such). Rather, he shakes himself fully awake, gets his bearings, and tells Utena that if Anthy has been kidnapped he needs to go save her at once!

We actually get a brief Saiyonji POV here, and it makes it clear that no, really, he actually thinks that someone else must have captured Anthy and that she needs him to rescue her. This isn't him quickly coming up with a lie to hide his culpability. He even has a flashback to Babby Utena in her coffin and how this time it needs to be HIM who rescues the damsel in distress.

Is Saiyonji a terrible person? Yes. Is it, nonetheless, impossible to not feel at least a little bit sorry for the poor dumbass idiot moron? Also yes.

In any case, he seems to legitimately not remember opening the gate. So, either his memory loss extends back that far, or he never actually got to open the gate himself even though it looked like he was starting to. In the latter case, that would mean that the person who beat him unconscious and left him in the pool was probably Anthy. Anyway, he races up the stairs, with Utena struggling to keep up with him. Naturally, he isn't putting any stock in the idea of teamwork. No awesome music during the ascent this time, since there isn't actually a duel coming up and it would sort of ruin the atmosphere of this scene.

They reach the arena, where...it's broad daylight. I guess it's just always bright and sunny here, regardless of what time of day it is anyplace else. At the side of the arena, where the Rose Bride normally stands to await the victor, there's a gigantic rose blossom, and inside of the blossom there's a coffin identical to the ones Utena's parents were buried in.

Oh Dios. You're just trying to traumatize Saiyonji and/or Utena as much as possible now, aren't you?

Utena and Saiyonji both recognize the appearance of the coffin on sight, of course. Both of them have silently shocked reactions, and neither of them notice the other's silently shocked reaction and put their shared history together. The music gets creepier, with the high notes being joined by discordant piano key-mashing, as the coffin slowly opens by itself and reveals Anthy curled up inside. In the same position Utena had been curled up in, in stark defiance of gravity.

Also she's all grayscale, I guess.

Well, her color returns after a few seconds, but she's still unconscious, unmoving, and kinda levitating or something in order to be in that position while the coffin stands on its end. Also, she must have changed into the Rose Bride outfit at some point after Saiyonji dragged her to the gate and before her ending up in this situation.

Saiyonji runs toward her, but a stone column rises out of the floor under the giant flower and raises it, the coffin, and Anthy twenty meters out of his reach. Other columns then start shooting up out of the floor, one of them lifting up a startled Utena to the same height. Others pop up seemingly at random, but - due to either chance or (more likely) design - none of them happen lift Saiyonji. Then, up above, the castle starts slowly descending toward them, and its spires begin lighting up in a distinctly "Grand Moff Tarkin feels like making an example" sort of way.

As the castle glows and lowers itself, shuddering and bleeding bits of dust and loose stones as it does so, Saiyonji gazes skyward and cackles. He's forgotten all about Anthy, it seems. His "love" for her was, of course, only ever a means to an end; a process in which she was the tool and he its wielder. He might THINK that that's what love is, or at least that that's the kind of love a man feels for a woman is, but it was always obvious to everyone besides himself that there was zero real affection there.

Also, he seems to think that End Of The World made a promise to him personally.

Hmm. This could just be more of Saiyonji's delusional entitlement causing him to misinterpret the letter's contents. On the other hand, if that letter actually did tell him to bring Anthy here against her will, then this whole scenario was just a stratagem to break Saiyonji in body and spirit. Seems needlessly extravagant, but so is everything else about Dios/EotW.

Whether this was a deliberate trap or just yet another thuggish blunder on Saiyonji's part, the power behind the castle and duels has definitively had enough of his shenanigans. He got his first warning when Dios momentarily possessed Utena. He got his second warning when he was left unconscious floating in the pool. There is to be no third warning.

The pillars start crumbling. So too, more alarmingly, does the castle itself! Holy shit is this really happening? Just over this? Is this episode actually a giant turning point in the series, with the castle and arena no more and Anthy dead or MIA?

Utena does a Nintendo platforming sequence to get to Anthy before the columns all give way.

Saiyonji, meanwhile, gets crushed when the castle's main tower comes loose and crashes down into the arena, burying it and him under a pile of rubble.

Harsh, but the way the dude was going he wasn't going to survive long anyway.

Utena leaps onto Anthy's column, seemingly the last one standing, and takes her hand. The giant rose and the coffin both disappear in a cloud of petals, and then...everything is fine again.

The castle is still glowing and spinning like it might be the projector of a Rose Superlaser, but the crumbling and collapses are undone. The tower is still attached. Saiyonji is on the ground gasping, but uncrushed. Anthy, likewise, is unconscious, but also laying on the arena floor in a mundane position with no sign of her or Utena having just fallen off a disintegrating column. Saiyonji, not sure why he's alive, looks around and tries to figure out what the hell just happened. Utena doesn't seem to notice.

Shared hallucination, I think? Some sort of illusion that was projected into both of their minds. Or maybe just Saiyonji's, come to think of it, but I think it's more likely that they both experienced it. Utena is just too preoccupied with making sure Anthy is okay to notice that everything else just reset itself, whereas Saiyonji - for whom Anthy was only ever a tool for his own empowerment and satisfaction - has nothing to distract him.

Saiyonji watches Utena having rescued Anthy out from under him, or so he perceives it. Whether or not he's put Utena together with the girl in the cathedral from years ago, I'm not sure. If so, then that probably makes it even worse; even the princesses whose job it is to be helpless and pathetic until someone rescues them are better at rescuing princesses than he is. He stares in disbelief. Babbling. Body rising and then swaying in place like a drunken marrionette as Utena fusses over "his" key to patriarchal validation.

He draws his sword, and lurches toward them.

Utena has her back turned, and is too preoccupied with Anthy to hear his footsteps. Anthy wakes up after a few moments, but is too dazed to see what's going on, just mumbling confusedly and wondering how she got here. I'm about 9:1 on Anthy faking this, but neither of the others have reason to suspect that. Then, Saiyonji comes within slashing range, and Anthy looks up in alarm and warns Utena. Utena looks up over her shoulder just in time to see a furious, howling Saiyonji bringing his sword down toward her neck.

Then, at the last possible second, someone interposes. I can't tell if he pushed Utena out of the way, knocked Saiyonji off-balance, or just jumped in front, but in any case Touga prevents the strike from connecting and takes a glancing blow himself in the process.

We can see that Touga was just barely scratched by the blade (I'm still not sure how he blocked Saiyonji, exactly, but somehow it cut his back in the process), but he *absolutely* plays it up. Collapsing in hilariously fake pain into Utena's arms and telling her that that's just the kind of guy he is, this is what it means to be a prince, while trying in vain to make his smile look pained and determined rather than just smug.

Saiyonji, meanwhile, just breaks down. Drops his sword. Whispers about the impossibility, the unfairness. Falls to his knees.

Cut to Touga in a hospital bed, with Nanami curled up on his ankles and cackling with admiration at her brother's cunning as he picks up a phone. Yes, Touga admits to End of the World, he will confess. He sent the letter, reusing one of EotW's own envelopes with their signature on it. Yeah, he knows, dick move. But hey, come on, they both know Saiyonji had to go, doesn't that justify the means?

It takes a LOT to actually get kicked out of their school, but attempted murder with multiple witnesses and ample material and medical evidence is enough. The student council VP office is now open, and the tourney of the Rose Bride has rid itself of a disrupting element. Yes, sir. I understand, sir, it won't happen again. Thank you, sir.

The call ends with Dios apparently being willing to overlook Touga's manipulations here in the interest of getting rid of Saiyonji (who, let's face it, would have eventually broken the rules of the tourney this badly anyway left to his own devices). Just before they hang up, Touga giggles to Dios about what a rube Saiyonji really was, and echoes Anthy's words from the puppet show earlier in the episode.

Nanami chuckles along with her brother, and presumably along with her brother's patron deity on the phone as well. End episode.

This one was something, alright.

The final line fell a little flat for me, because I don't see how Saiyonji was the kind of fool Touga describes. He hadn't been acting like a friend to Touga for some time, nor expecting Touga to treat him as one in return. I guess he could be talking about Utena, but I'm not sure why he would be talking about her, in context. I also wish I understood exactly how much of that trippy sequence Touga could have personally accounted for. I don't think he has the power to conjure those illusions himself, but it also doesn't seem like he and Dios were cooperating there, so I'm not sure how he could have judged what Saiyonji would do at each moment.

I guess he might have just tricked Saiyonji into shattering the rules of the tournament when he was already on thin ice with the referee, and then snuck after him and looked for opportunities. It's a pretty safe bet that whatever retaliation Dios enacted, it would result in Saiyonji flying into a homicidal rage. Still not sure why he needed Utena to be there, though. Hmm.

The revelation that Touga is actually having phone conversations with Dios instead of just receiving letters also recontextualizes things. Touga is not playing the same game as the other student councilers. Granted, he might also not be playing the same game that he thinks he is either; Dios might be tricking him just like he's having him trick the others.

Does Touga know what Anthy actually is, I wonder? And, IS she actually the same entity as EotW/Dios? Was she just sitting in her nuptial dorm having an innocuous-sounding phone conversation during that last scene while Utena sat on the other side of the room doing her homework? Possible. Not certain, but very much possible.

It also now seems like Touga and Utena were both being groomed for their roles in this ritual from at least that childhood incident onward. Whether or not Dios intended for Utena to become a wannabe-prince instead of a wannabe-princess, and whether or not he meant for Saiyonji to get roped in as well, is much less clear. Once again, the extent of this entity's prescience is still up in the air.

...this series is slowly morphing from psychedelic mindfuck drama into psychedelic mindfuck horror, isn't it? I mean, to the extent that it's anything besides allegory.