Revolutionary Girl Utena S1E8: "Beware, Nanami-sama!"

More elephants? I hope not more elephants. Begin!

The OP is followed by Nanami walking alone down a nighttime street. She's nervous and jumpy, as you'd expect for a teenage girl walking alone at night, even moreso one who has just spent a week being terrorized by elephants. She thinks she hears something behind her, and turns to stare into the darkness at the base of the little side-street she's on. The sound of approaching footsteps rises over the tense, foreboding music. Nanami sees who or what is approaching her, and turns to flee in terror. We don't get to see it, but her own reaction to seeing it is telling.

It's an elephant, isn't it?

She flees onto a main street, and runs into a tunnel. Panting and huffing, she finally trips and falls in the middle of a lane, where she just narrowly avoids being sent on a one-way trip to some insipid MMORPG world. Thank god. Even Nanami doesn't deserve that.

She pushes herself halfway back up and looks over her shoulder. Outside the tunnel behind her, silhouetted against the night sky, her pursuer looms. Surprisingly, it's human. Or humanoid, at least. I'm not sure if he really is supposed to be a faceless, grey-skinned phantom, or if he's just supposed to be hidden in shadows and backlights, but in either case he makes an intimidating first impression. He doesn't even need the scare cord that accompanies the shot, honestly.

He does appear to be wearing a normal-ish outfit, so it's probably just a guy in the shadows being drawn in a weird art style. There's really no telling in this show, though.

Fortunately for Nanami, the car that almost hit her pulls over and the driver gets out to ask if she's okay. The car's lights illuminate the tunnel, and the sound and presence of the driver and/or passengers seem to push the threat back away into the darkness. Nanami still keeps her eyes locked on the figure until he slowly backs away from the tunnel and turns around to leave, unnoticed by the concerned motorist standing over Nanami.

Title card. Well, Nanami definitely seems to have someone to beware of in this episode. Of course, it could just as easily be a total subversion, with the stalker figure being harmless. And, of course, with Nanami being herself, the stalker could very well be in the right even if he is a danger to her, heh.

Hmm. I thiiiink the stalker's silhouette looked kinda like the "prince" who gave Utena her ring? Maybe not. It's been a long time, I could be forgetting his profile.

Ater the title, we have an external shot of the school. Which makes me realize that this little stalker scene with Nanami is probably the longest look the show has provided so far of the world outside the school, bizarre India sequences notwithstanding. Frankly, I was starting to suspect the show would just go all-in on making the high school a metaphor for the entire human world and just stop acknowledging anything outside of it except as occasional gag material, but I guess not! Anyway. We flash over to the student council meeting room. Or...their meeting balcony? Gazebo? The weird palatial environment that they're always sitting around and conspiring in. Or wait, no, it's a different place I think. Similar-looking, but different. Nanami has invited herself in and is beseeching Touga to help her, because she's sure someone is trying to kill her. When asked WTF she's talking about, she explains that she's seen someone stalking her after dark, two different heavy objects have randomly fallen onto a spot right next to her, and she mysteriously tripped down some stairs, all within the same short period of time. Also, she's so smart and popular and good looking it's only natural someone's envy would drive them to attempt murder.

Meanwhile, the soundtrack plays her leitmotif cutesy rendition of Motzart's sonata 11, lol.

Touga tells her that she's just psyching herself out with all the stupid mystery novels she's been reading, and that she should get a grip and let him do his important student council work. Work which mostly consists of having sex with underaged girls who aren't Nanami, as opposed to the incestuous statutory rape he does to her on his own time. Nanami tries her best, but he just shrugs her off, sure she's just imagining things.

A bit later, Nanami is sulking on the steps overlooking the sportsball field, accompanied by Miki and the three nameless bitches. Nanami can't believe her brother isn't taking her predicament seriously. One of the bitches comments snidely on how "sibling relationships can be complex," which naturally prompts a defensive glare from Nanami that has her quickly backing down and murmuring that she didn't mean anything by that.

Lol.

Miki asks if Nanami has any enemies, and they all assure him that no, of course not, Nanami is always careful not to get her own hands dirty when she's ruining people's lives, there's no way anyone could ever trace something back to her.

Lmao.

Just as they're all being very sure that none of Nanami's victims could know who they wanted revenge on, a baseball flies across the field and hits Nanami so hard in the face that it actually gets wedged there. Like, it's fused to her face and embedded too deeply to pull off. But like, Loony Toons style, not splatterpunk b-horror style. As Nanami groans in muffled pain and tries to wedge the ball out of her face, Utena comes running up from the field with a smile and apologizes, she threw that ball harder than she meant to.

Utena and Anthy were the two people who Nanami most recently tried to fuck with, so it's an awfully suspicious coincidence. Although, to be fair, I'm not sure why Utena would start being so obvious now after so many covert assassination attempts, if it was her.

Which...hmm. A couple episodes ago, I'd have said that if Utena decided to murder someone, she wouldn't even start with sneaky tricks and arranged accidents to begin with, she'd immediately march up to them in broad daylight and stab them in the face. After the thing with the diary though, I'm less sure.

So, anyway, Nanami starts gurgling out accusations through the baseball, while her companions try to point out the unlikeliness of it being Utena. Utena herself, meanwhile stands there in utter confusion. Looks like she meant it when she said it was an accident.

She probably is afraid the ball hit her hard enough to cause brain damage or something, with the incoherent babbling and accusations Nanami is throwing out there. Mostly though, she just wants her baseball back, though presumably she'll have to spend a while washing bits of face off of it, because like...her patience for Nanami cannot be high after recent events.

Cut ahead a little bit, to Nanami having had the ball excised from her skull and her and Miki tailing after an increasingly annoyed Utena. Nanami is still accusing her of trying to kill her, but like...she's not actually acting like her life is in danger, tbh? Utena is physically bigger and stronger than she is, and while Miki could protect her there's no guarantee that he'd react fast enough if Utena suddenly drew a knife or something. It feels less like she thinks Utena is trying to kill her, and more like she's trying to get Utena to confess to cheating with her boyfriend or something, with the whining and personal-space-invading and such.

Hmm. Yeah, I don't think she actually thinks it's Utena; her actions just don't fit that at all. She might not even sure if there is someone after her at all, at this point. She's just stressed and frustrated and humiliated, and Utena is someone she's already annoyed at who she thinks she can take it out on while playing the victim.

Miki, to his credit, seems like he's trying to be rational and conciliatory. Which is annoying, but less annoying than usual for him. Maybe there's hope for him, just as it's been vaguely implied that there might be hope for Saiyonji (not that Miki's offenses were ever as great as Saiyonji's, of course).

As Nanami whines, Miki bothsides, and Utena exhibits impressive emotional control, they happen to pass by Anthy's little birdcage-symbolism greenhouse. It has a "keep out" sign posted on the door, but there are clearly people inside of it. The trio stealthily approach. It turns out that the two people inside are Anthy and Touga, having a private conversation.

I think the pronoun "them" here might be more ambiguous in Japanese, because Nanami thinks he's trying to get Anthy to go through with murdering her, presumably in the wake of her string of embarrassments and provocations in the mindfuck curry episode. The English sub makes it sound more like he's trying to convince her to exterminate some literal vermin and she's just too squeamish to set out the traps or spray the poison or whatever. Nanami is sure they're talking about her, though, and Miki and even Utena seem to be taking that possibility at least somewhat seriously themselves. So yeah, translation hiccup.

That said, I'll bet you anything that they really are just talking about caterpillars or aphids or something and it'll be a big false alarm, heh.

Nanami has this paranoid fantasy about Anthy secretly dating her brother and the two of them deciding to kill her so Anthy doesn't have to compete with her unfair reverse-Westermarck advantage. Prompting her to burst in the door and loudly demand that her brother explain how he could possibly do this to her.

O...kay. I don't even know what's going through her head at this point. Her inner monologue and paranoid dream sequence suggest that she really does think her brother and Anthy are conspiring to murder her, but once again her actions aren't consistent with that belief.

Touga asks her if she's gone completely insane, where the hell is this even coming from? Nanami insists that she heard them talking about killing someone, which prompts Anthy to turn around and HAH I KNEW IT.

Let me guess now; there's going to be a double-subversion here where this was a quick save on Anthy's part and Touga actually was trying to pressure Anthy to help him murder someone, but it's someone other than Nanami. Probably Utena or Miki, if anyone. They're the people Anthy has more access to than Touga himself does and who Touga might want to be rid of...although, wait, no, Touga wants to add Utena to his bedpost notches, so he wouldn't want to kill her. Okay, yeah, if this IS a double subversion then the victim being conspired against is most likely Miki. After all, we've literally seen Touga throw knives at him lol.

Unfortunately, Nanami has already turned away and fled, in tears, into the school's main building. Apparently determined to think her brother is trying to murder her. But reacting in like, sadness, rather than fear. No apparent concern about her immediate safety at all, or attempts to go to the teachers, or anything like that. Still just treating this like a "people are being mean to me and it's not fair >:(" thing rather than, you know, life and death. What the fuck even if this girl's deal? At this point I think the sibling incest and penchant for smuggled zoo animals might actually be the least weird things about her.

As she runs, teary-eyed, through the hall, she hears a commotion from up ahead. Students running and screaming, warning each other to stand back. You see, a...what the FUCK is it with this show and large grazing mammals?...a feral horse has found its way into the building and is charging down the main corridor with madness in its eyes.

I guess that's just a thing that happens sometimes.

Much like the car that almost ran her over earlier in the episode, the horse bears right down on Nanami. She looks like she's about to get trampled into an unusually self-absorbed pancake when suddenly someone yanks her out of the way. Pressing her to the floor after tackling her clear. The horse runs on past, leaving a swarm of chickens in its wake.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? All these years, and it turns out that was a trick question. It was a horse.

...

Let me guess, those elephants were leaving flocks of freshly created peacocks behind them?

...

Nanami looks up at the person who saved her. We don't see his face, and his voice is unfamiliar, but he seems nice.

After the event, there's gossip all around the school that Nanami was rescued by a "prince" who swooped in at the nick of time. Holy shit, was that actually Dios? Rescuing Nanami of all fucking people, now? Hmm, no, we saw the rescuer's arm and shoulder, and he was wearing a school uniform. Don't think Dios would bother with that, going by his previous portrayals (well...unless he and Anthy actually are the same person, of course, in which case they wear one pretty often, but you know what I mean). A bit later, we see that Nanami is reading a name off of a note or handkerchief or something that he left her with. If this actually was the Rose Prince, then he was going by the alias of Tsuwabuki Mitsuru.

In the gossip of Nanami's classmates, though, her saviour is getting built up as an increasingly mysterious and impressive figure.

Which implies that none of them already knew Mitsuru. Which could mean that he didn't exist until just now and that this actually is a supernatural being using a new alias, but on the other hand we've had really weird character introductions of this kind before in the show, so maybe not.

The focus narrows in on Utena and Miki tailing Nanami some time after the fact. The two of them seem surprisingly friendly with one another, considering. Maybe the trials and tribulations of the body-switch incident helped pave over their antipathy from the Sunlit Garden arc, at least for now.

...

Heh, funny thing. This scene of Utena and Miki acting like friends again is one of the things that first tipped me off to the episode order switch. But, unless you read a lot into the unseen fallout of the curry episode, that doesn't actually explain it at all. Utena and Miki are just chill now, apparently. I was correct about the order being off, but for the wrong reason.

Ironic.

...

They secretly tail Nanami for a while. Utena needs to see her chivalrous new bf, because she heard the gossip about the mysterious prince who saves girls in need and is hoping for a reunion with Dios. Miki needs to see her chivalrous new bf, because the private life and relationships of any female who Miki knows is necessarily his business. They have a few comedic false alarms when they see Nanami have mundane interactions with some male students (and a teacher :p) on her way to meet the mystery prince. Then, she finally makes it out to the gardens to meet him, and it turns out that "bf" might not be an appropriate description of Nanami's relationship with this boy. At least, I really hope it isn't.

He's from their school's junior high subdivision. And seemingly on the younger end of even that. Dude has clearly not yet hit puberty; just unusually strong for his age, as demonstrated by him managing to pull Nanami out of the inexplicable chicken-horse's way.

Heh, well, Utena and Miki are surprised, but they can appreciate the wholesomeness. Nanami is just out here to thank the kid again and return the handkerchief he lent her to bind her abrasion. She kneels next to the kid, and oh god no why

I could still read this innocently, since I don't think Nanami is supposed to be that much older than him. But, considering what's been implied about her relationship with her brother, I don't think she's innocent enough to mean this innocently.

Mitsuru gasps in shock and confusion. From their perch behind the bushes, Utena and Miki gasp in considerably greater and more disturbed shock and confusion. So too do Nanami's bitches, who apparently were also independently sneaking after her and were watching from right behind the other two.

Cue Anthy's shadow puppets. This time, their skit is about cooking curry over a campfire, which...okay, yeah, no, Anthy ABSOLUTELY did that body switch thing on purpose lol. The puppets boil their curry, and then complain about how the rice is undercooked and there wasn't enough water in there. I agree, Anthy's shadow puppets. The rice definitely needed to cook longer before it was ready.

Next, we see Miki and Utena having lunch together discussing what they saw. They both comfort themselves with the notion that Nanami isn't actually serious about this; it's just a cry for mercy/attention/whatever from her brother. Okay seriously, DOES she actually suspect someone of trying to kill her or not? Well, anyway, Miki also slips up and tells Utena more than he should about Nanami and Touga; Nanami isn't seriously going to do anything with this kid, because she has the eyes for no one but her brother.

Utena stares at the camera for several seconds, blinking once or twice.

Yeah, that's about right.

Honestly, Miki says, this experience of having distrust in her brother over something might be good for her, in context. Holy shit Miki might actually have made a good point about something, incredible. Utena grants that. Nanami overreacts to literally everything, but in this case the overreaction might lead to some positive development.

Just as Utena and Miki are deciding where this creepy thing with Nanami and Mitsuru might go and how serious it is, they spot Nanami and Mitsuru sitting on the lawn just outside the cafeteria, engaged in seemingly very intimate and energetic conversation. If Nanami is faking this, she's doing a pretty good job.

Miki says that they look more like a pair of siblings than a couple, but Utena isn't at all sure about that. I don't know if Miki is either.

Also, like. As we just acknowledged. What is Nanami's model for sibling relationships, again?

Well, that model does turn out to be predictive, though fortunately not in the exact way I had feared. What follows is a montage of Nanami using Mitsuru as basically her personal slave. Bringing her things. Helping her cheat at tests. Being a fucking drawing stand for her to sketch against when she forgets to bring her easel for art class. Etc.

All while that music-box-Mozart theme of Nanami's plays. I swear to god those notes are going to haunt my nightmares after this episode and the curry one.

Watching some of these exploitative proceedings from distant vantages, Utena and Miki grimly discuss what a contemptible creature Nanami really is. This kid did her a favor, and she'll make sure he never knows a moment's peace for it. Suddenly, another voice from behind them pipes in and says that Mitsuru chose this suffering, and it must therefore be respected. Love is, after all, suffering, for the true gentleman who treats a woman as she deserves to be treated.

They turn around It's Saiyonji.

Oh god I fucking lol'd.

What Mitsuru endures in the name of true love, Saiyonji says, is but a shadow of the tribulations he himself has suffered - faithfully, perseveringly - in the name of his own. Such is the way of the world, and such is the essence of what it means to be a man. He then solemnly marches away, cradling that stupid message-diary under his shirt.

Amazing. Seriously, that was probably the best executed (if also really uncomfortable) bit of comedy in this show so far.

The nature of Mitsuru's tribulations in the name of love start to get closer to that of Saiyonji's, though. The next thing we see is Nanami being cornered by these three weirdos who have been competing for Nanami's attention since before our introduction to her, and yet somehow are coordinated and united enough in purpose that they can finish each other's sentences.

They demand her to explain why she's interested in a preteen but not them. Guys, it's called pedophelia, just look it up it isn't hard. When they won't leave her alone, Nanami calls for Mitsuru to come back her up. When I say "back her up" she means she's going to turn around and walk the other way and leave him to make sure they can't get close enough to keep annoying her.

The three fit-looking teenagers pose in shonen battle team formation and make ridiculous warcries before launching themselves at this eleven year old. Nanami steps on outside and enjoys the weather while grunts, yelps, and the sounds of physical battery echo in the background.

Okay, I'm not going to pretend the outcome of this took me entirely by surprise. When we heard the fighting sounds I, knowing this show, mentally assigned something like a 33% probability that the kid was going to inexplicably win. I was still betting against it, sure, but it had occured to me as a large enough possibility that I wasn't able to be surprised or amused when it turned out to be the case.

What I didn't expect was this shot of the third older boy, floating facedown in a nearby pond. Unmoving.

It's not like we're ever going to come back to this or treat it like something that actually happened rather than just a dark visual gag, but still. Show. There was really no need for this.

Mitsuru isn't unscathed by his offscreen victory and possible homicide, though. He's clearly bruised and beaten all over, his uniform ripped, his breath uneven and exhausted. As the sunset approaches, Nanami returns to him and congratulates him on his victory, thanking him for defending her with an insincere smile and pseudo-flirtatious wink. However, that's when Utena - being trailed at a bit of length by Miki - makes it over and starts giving Nanami a piece of her mind.

Nanami replies that, under the circumstances, she is completely justified. Someone is trying to kill her. Her brother, who normally protects her, is very likely that someone. Therefore, she needs a new protector, a new "brother," shall we say, and this young man has volunteered for the position.

Nanami what.

Miki tries to explain to Nanami that her understanding of the situation might be just a wee bit off base, but she's not hearing it. Utena, meanwhile, just glares at Nanami contemptuously. It's not like they haven't just seen her make Mitsuru put himself in a possibly deadly situation and get himself hurt in a totally avoidable fight that had nothing to do with the danger Nanami thinks she's in, or anything. After Nanami insists that he's her boyfriend so she can abuse him as much as she wants and walks away in a huff, Utena kneels over the battered Mitsuru and tries to help him out of this.

He replies that his relationship with Nanami is a product of fate, and destiny compels him to be her protector and companion in whatever way he can. When Utena politely asks him what the actual fuck that's supposed to mean, Mitsuru reveals that he and Nanami actually met some years ago, before either of them were at this school, and that this childhood event gave him an ideal to strive for henceforth.

Oh boy, deja vu. Let's see what sort of commentary this situation is about to make about Utena's own quest to impress Dios.

When Nanami was a preteen and Mitsuru was a little kid, Mitsuru was playing in the sandbox after gradeschool when ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

Why do people even keep animals around in this world?

Well, to be fair...at this point it seems less like animals in this world are evil by default, and more like Nanami just has a Reverse Disney Princess aura that makes everything try to attack her and anyone near her.

That's...actually really fucking creepy. It's being played for comedy so far, but seriously, this is like one of THE archetypal warning signs that someone is a disguised monster in fantasy horror fiction.

The random bull charges Nanami, heedless of the innocent bystanders who happened to be between it and the hated enemy of all large herbivores. Seeing the girl in danger, Babby Mitsuru toddled out of the sandbox he'd been playing in and tried to run over and save her (though how he planned to do this, I really have no idea). Suddenly, early-teenaged Touga dashes in against the flow of the fleeing civilians and...knocks the bull unconscious with a single punch.

-_______-

I mean, he's definitely big for his age. He barely looks any different from his current self. But...it's a fucking bull.

Did he multiclass into Saitama?

I may have to take back what I said about Touga being built up as a "disc one boss." He seems like outright endgame material now, owing just to sheer combat ability.

As Babby Mitsuru watches, speechless, Touga makes sure that his little sister is okay before picking her up and giving her a piggy back ride home where she can calm down and recover from her latest near-mauling.

This seems to be pretty much a normal once-or-twice-a-week occurrence for Nanami and Touga. For Mitsuru though, it was a world shattering, life changing spectacle. From that day forth, Mitsuru has wanted to be exactly like Kiryuu Touga.

Hmm, well. That definitely IS a takedown of Utena's aspirations, at least on the surface level. At least in the sense of "Dios might not be what she's imagined him to be," which ties into the show's broader themes about gender roles and their relationships with power. On the other hand, there are three important differences between the two situations.

1) Utena experienced her "prince" from the perspective of the "maiden" before deciding she wanted to be one herself. She has the experience of being the victim who was rescued, and her desire to exercise power on others' behalf is born of that firsthand knowledge of powerlessness. For Mitsuru, it seems like it's more of a game, and his motivation seems to be a desire for the adulation he saw Touga recieve from Nanami rather than empathy for her.

2) Utena is definitely making the same mistake as Mitsuru to some extent, with regards to making assumptions about her princely role model. However, if only due to her much more limited exposure, she's only trying to imitate his heroic characteristics, not his entire (largely unknown) personality. Mitsuru wants to be "just like Touga," holistically, and he has Touga onhand to observe. Which is...not good. The prince/maiden power dynamics are flawed on their own, but this is all on top of that.

3) Being more favourable to the Kiryuu siblings now, Nanami and Touga had a preexisting relationship. That makes everything about what they do for each other fundamentally different from what happened with Utena and Dios.

Points one and two come together very, very unsubtly when Utena explains that she doesn't think Nanami is actually appreciating him at all, and Mitsuru shrugs and decides that the solution is to keep doing what he's been doing until the message sinks in properly.

He's been knocking things over on her, chasing her into traffic, all sorts of things, but circumstances kept aligning to save her without his intervention until the horse incident.

Well, he doesn't explicitly say it was him who chased the raging chicken-generating horse into the building. That could have just been an honest random encounter role that he was lucky enough to be there for.

So yeah. Just motivated by the attention and affection he can get from it, not from any desire to actually help. And he's learned to be as much of a manipulative, Machiavellian little slimeball as his role model, if not moreso.

Utena and Miki ask the little psycho kid what the hell he was even thinking, and he's totally open and nonchalant about it, only mentioning as an afterthought that he'd appreciate it if they didn't tell Nanami. Sure, kid, sure. Reasonable request to make.

It turns out Mitsuru needn't have bothered telling them, though, because somehow - in the thirty seconds since departing - Nanami made her way into a cold war vintage listening post and started watching and hearing them on telemetry.

She makes it back over to them in even less time than it took her to vanish to the spy bunker, an-wait what

but but but we saw her walking further away than that

even if the others could have all somehow failed to notice

when did she

Utena and Miki try to hold her back from Mitsuru, insisting that he's just a little kid, he doesn't know what he's doing. Yeah, sorry Utena and Miki, but I'm actually going to have to side with Nanami here. This is not normal preteen behavior. Speaking of abnormal behavior though, what Nanami is most outraged about isn't the kinda-sorta attempted murder, the stalking, or the manipulation. No no. She's mad at Mitsuru for, above all else, making her think her brother was trying to hurt her and leading her to sabotage her relationship with him.

Kill me.

Before the fight can go any further though, there's a cry of alarm from somewhere across campus. The red kangaroo that they keep locked up in the gym as a training opponent for the boxing team has broken free, and it's making a beeline across the lawn toward Nanami.

That's enough for me right now. I need to stop. Two parter.