Revolutionary Girl Utena S1E8: "Beware, Nanami-sama!" (continued)
The kangaroo, still wearing its boxing mitts, is leaping toward them at breakneck speed. Knowing that Nanami has to be the creature's target, because of course she is, Utena and Miki dash away from her in different directions. Utena might see herself as a princess, but clearly she's decided that Nanami is no damsel. It's hard to blame her at this point, ngl.
Nanami, despite her many years of experience at handling exactly this type of situation, freezes up and whimpers in helpless fear. She's just that used to Touga being around to punch the beasts to death, I guess? How the hell much of his time does he spend defending her while still having time for school, fencing, Rose Bride bullshit, and sleeping with everyone's underaged siblings (in addition to his own)? The kangaroo closes the distance and pulls back its fist, but Mitsuru - who Nanami had just been held back from trying to strangle - jumps in front and takes the punch for her.
I'd assume that he and the kangaroo planned this ahead of time, and that therefore it was pulling its punches, but the timing doesn't work out for that. Then again, the timing of this sequence in general has been incomprehensible, so that doesn't mean anything. Regardless, I think this was a genuine random encounter though I could be wrong.
Mitsuru did beat up three older teenagers singlehandedly, so I thought he had a decent chance against this thing. And, maybe if he was still fresh, he would. In the wake of his previous battle though, without having had time to properly recover, he just isn't up to it.
Not that I'm particularly invested in the wellbeing of that little psychopath or anything, but Mitsuru is lucky they trained that kangaroo in traditional boxing rather than kickboxing. Can you imagine how much worse it would be if that thing was using its legs instead of its arms? Red kangaroos kick people to death just with their natural leg strength, imagine what a trained martial artist one could do with leg attacks.
It's also possible that the kangaroo was using its weaker limbs here because the target was Nanami, and the sheer depths of the hatred the animal kingdom feels for her compelled the kangaroo to go for a slow, torturous death instead of a quick kill.
With Mitsuru on the ground trying unsuccessfully to pick himself up again, the kangaroo flexes its arms, punches the air a few times to keep itself warmed up, and then tries to close the distance with the (now finally fleeing) Nanami again. As Mitsuru struggles to get his battered body between Nanami and the animal again, Utena steps up to the plate. Utena, seriously, just let Nanami die, you'll be saving yourself and Anthy so much pain and aggravation. It doesn't even work anyway; Utena doesn't have a sword with her, so she's forced to grab a nearby janitors' broom instead, and the kangaroo splinters the wooden shaft and sends Utena flying with contemptuous ease. Miki leans over her, but he doesn't have time to do much. They've now provoked the marsupial enough that it's decided it needs to deal with them first if it ever wants a chance at ridding the world of the Hated One.
For all his selfishness though, Mitsuru is ultimately driven by a saviour complex. So, despite knowing what it will likely mean for him, he picks up a flowerpot similar to the one he dropped on Nanami during his stalking campaign (and which he can seemingly summon out of the ether) and stands up just straight enough to hurl it at the kangaroo. Which...actually knocks it down, for a moment, but not long enough for Utena to get up and grab another broom or anything. As the kangaroo doubles back toward Mitsuru, he shouts for the others to flee and leave the fight to him, staggers into a fighting pose, and manifests a pair of boxing gloves of his own.
While repeating endlessly to himself that he WILL be Nanami's new brother, no matter what. Even if it kills him.
I think the kangaroo might actually be angry enough to use its feet this time.
Utena and Miki cry out in dread as they think they're about to watch an eleven year old get his spinal cord kicked out through his back. But then, there's yet another sudden third party rescue! It's Nanami this time! Not that she's brave enough to actually try to attack the thing, but she does grab Mitsuru and start running away and dragging him after her to safety.
She can run faster than the kangaroo now, apparently. Either Mitsuru grants a speed boost to anyone who picks him up that offsets his own body weight and then some, or that flowerpot actually inflicted some brain damage and the kangaroo is now hobbled.
Mitsuru is, of course, outraged that Nanami would put herself in danger for him rather than the reverse. However, Nanami has done some maturing over the course of this episode, and now understands her own relationship with power, agency, and gender roles.
Specifically, that it's worth taking a little risk in the name of keeping her new servant. He's just so convenient, she can already hardly imagine life without him!
She can outrun the enraged marsupial martial artist for a while, but it has better endurance than her, and soon it starts gaining. Where are Utena and Miki? I don't know, they're not carrying Mitsuru so maybe they just aren't fast enough to keep up with the other combatants and are still way behind. Things are looking grim when the final intervention arrives. The kangaroo's intended opponent who it was meant to spar with in the gym has been trying to catch it ever since it ran away, and he's finally closed into punching range.
It's Touga. He knocks the kangaroo out in seconds, to the cheers and applause of the massive audience that exists now.
Maybe they all ran along after him from the gym, idfk.
Just to break what's left of my brain into even smaller chunks, Chuchu is suddenly there ringing a little bell to count the kangaroo out.
Nanami, teary eyed, thanks her brother for saving her and apologizes for ever doubting him. Into a microphone. Touga tells her that this nonsense has gone on long enough, so he's glad to hear that. Just to make things extra clear, Anthy arrives - oh hey, remember her? - and proudly announces that she worked up the nerve to just do it. She's sprayed the aphids. Holy fuck I forgot that that's how this bullshit all started.
Nanami then breaks up with Mitsuru, and he says he's fine with that. He's learned his lesson about trying to put himself in a position where other people depend on him when he knows he can't actually meet their needs. However, he still loves Nanami, and admires Touga, and he wants to learn even more of their great wisdom. He asks to be adopted into their family, as their baby brother, and they accept.
Utena stares after the retreating family of serial-killers-in-the-making and wonders to herself what she should even make of Touga at this point. As if hearing her thoughts, Touga looks back over his shoulder, directly at Utena, and gives a quiet, sinister chuckle.
Is the implication supposed to be that Touga deliberately released the kangaroo he was fighting from the gym, so that it would attack Nanami and he could rescue her from it to prove to her that he didn't want her dead? I feel like that's what's being hinted at here. Mitsuru becoming their little brother and continuing to look up to his (approving) role models definitely squares with that, as he didn't realize he actually was imitating Touga's way of doing things even more than he realized all along.
End credits role. In my delirious state, I happened to notice that the outro image of Utena dancing with Dios really has her rocking that princess dress:
She looks awesome in her black custom uniform, but damn can she pull off the femme aesthetic when she chooses to. That's all. End episode.
So.
"Beware, Nanami-Sama" and "Curry High Trip" aren't completely without value or relevance to the broader series. There were some moments in both of them that revealed important things about the characters (Saiyonji's self-perception and Anthy's potential darker nature in particular), as well as hammered in some extra thematic touches that facilitate the show's message.
But, I still think I'd enjoy this show at least 20% more if these Nanami-centric episodes (and I have a feeling there are going to be more like them up ahead) weren't in it.
The way I see it at this point, the Nanami episodes are almost a show within a show. They follow different rules than most of the series. The characters (with the exception of Nanami herself) act different than in most of the series. In some ways it's all lighter and softer, with most of the antagonisms between the characters being watered down to minor tensions within a group of mostly friends (Miki and Saiyonji in particular were showing this, in "Beware Nanami-Sama"). I'd say that it feels like a high school AU of the normal series, if they weren't already in high school. The comedy logic also overrides the show's already very, very minimal amount of grounding, so even many of the jokes are hard for me to follow.
Now, if that was all, I could accept this as just "that lolrandum sideshow that RGU does sometimes" and be mostly apathetic about it. The problem is that Nanami is such a viscerally unpleasant nucleus that anything you hang off of her becomes unpleasant as well. Especially when we're putting her fucked up relationship with her brother at the center of everything. She's not just a loathsome character, but also one in a loathsome situation, so that you're constantly torn between disgust and pity for her. Sometimes it seems like the show wants me to feel catharsis when one of her idiotic schemes backfires and causes something bad to happen to her, but it has this gross victim-blaming aftertaste. Other times I feel like it wants me to be happy when she gets a reprieve, but then I just remember what a raging bitch she is to Utena and the others and am left wondering why I should care about her, let alone why those very characters keep helping her out.
I'm not happy when I see Nanami on the screen. I'm mad when she wins, and I'm sad when she loses. When the shit with her and Touga are in focus, I'm just uncomfortable in the bad way. Most of the "lol so randumz XD" gags wouldn't amuse me much to begin with, but when they're served up alongside Nanami they become actively painful.
The weirdness isn't the problem. I can enjoy "fever dream" media. These Nanami episodes are like actually having a fever; you have the whacky hallucinatory experience, but you're also coughing, shivering, and sick to your stomach.
