Wow I never thought I'd run into Juri hate but fandoms are surprising that way. I understand if you didn't care much for Juri's story but calling her character and story boring??? Thats. What.
Juri's story arc is my personal favorite because I find the dynamic between Juri, Shiori and later Ruka super fascinating. I also like Juri's struggles to understand her emotions and her coming to terms with being a lesbian. The story is also about how not communicating with your friend and/or lover is not a good idea and communicating your feelings to people you care about is important. People find her relatable because of her struggles. As for Shiori she struggles with low self esteem and jealously towards her friend/crush. And Ruka who is slowly dying decides to pull something desperate and cruel because he believes its the only way to save the person he loves, even though she doesn't love him back. The struggle with these three is what makes the story interesting.
And if by seduce you mean sexually assaults then yeah he does that. 8T
Oh and the Nameless Boy, Juri was not dating him and she even says she did not have any romanic interest in him. She was only hurt because Shiori was with someone else and it sucks to see the person you're in love with with someone else.
Another thing is Juri does believe in miracles or else she would not be dueling, she is just trying to convince herself that they don't so she won't be hurt again.
As for Juri as a character she actually has a lot and you see it not just in her episodes. We know she is a very cool imposing person that even the teachers at the school feel intimated by. She is a very good fencer and expects the best out of the club members around her. She is also very responsible as Nanami says in episode 29 that there is nothing to worry about when Juri is in charge. She has a friendship with Miki and shows that she isn't above teasing him. She thinks Utena's idealism is ridiculous as shown in episode 7 when she attacks her after hearing Utena's really idealistic dream. Anthy makes her uncomfortable and that causes her to reject Anthy's Rose Bride projection. Also according to Kozue and Touga Juri is very good at gathering information around the school implying that she has a network of people finding out information for her. She also bowls and has been bowling for a long time. Also Juri is the only person who can deflect the power of Dios no problem. I'm confused on how someone could say there isn't a character when there are all these episodes of an anime that has the character in it interacting with others. She isn't as in your face as Touga or Nanami but that does not mean a character isn't there. The strength of this show is how is constructs deep and well thought out characters, even the minor ones! Subtly is frequent in Utena hence why it is so good for a rewatch cause you learn new things about the show and the characters in it each time!

Oh and I typed up a character analysis on Shiori very recently so give it a read if you wanna learn more about or understand her character. Read it if interested! http://utena-explained.tumblr.com/post/ … gs-to-say.

Aelanie wrote:

Let's be honest...don't we usually make our own pain?

Too exhausted to comprehend most of the arguments right now, but I saw when you first made that post and I've been wanting to say this ever since:

Thank you so much for sharing that with me. It must be very painful. I wish there was something I could do that would help.



I promise I'll come back and address the other posts/aspects after some much-needed sleep.

Aelanie wrote:

Unlike almost all the other duelists, she has no flaw or vice to be exploited. Her only weakness is an inability to let go of a tragic, hopeless love, and such an honest and sincere fault is not something Akio could successfully twist to his uses.

While I agree she was the strongest duelist, she's also the hilarious proof right from the start that the duels themselves mean nothing. Juri kicks ass in the arena and yet never wins. That's because the game is totally rigged.

But I don't actually think it's her inability to let go alone that defeats her. It's definitely a huge part of it, but Juri is also defeated by her skepticism. 'There's no such thing as miracles.' Okay, Mr. Dawkins, but what else do you have? 'THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS GOD DAMN MIRACLES AND IF YOU DON'T AGREE YOU'RE A MORON AND REALLY THAT'S ALL THE ARGUMENT I FEEL I NEED TO PRESENT BECAUSE ANYONE WITH ANY FAITH IN ANYTHING AT ALL IS A DELUDED RETARD WITH NOTHING RELEVANT TO CONTRIBUTE OR SAY'

Juri, like many atheists, makes the mistake of trying to prove her point from within the sphere of the opposition. She engages it and tries to disprove it within its own rule set. That's why she loses. If she truly believed there were no miracles, of course, she'd just leave, because there's nothing there to offer her. But she doesn't, because she isn't sure, and needs people to see her evidence and agree with her. Every duelist, without fail, faces some sort of lack of self-esteem. This is hers. She places her reasoning about the world around her on a pedestal, but from up there it's hard to tell if her beliefs are supported by anyone else, or if she's truly alone. That fear that she's alone in the world drives her pining for Shiori as much as any affection does. Shiori was, as far as we can tell, the closest thing she had to a friend, and she lost her. Part of the delusion for her is that she, on some level, thinks Shoiri can satisfy this need for a confidant in the world. Us as spectators from a distance know very well Shiori, even if she were to return Juri's romantic feelings, could never fill that role.

I think sometimes my feeling that Juri is kind of underdeveloped comes from a sense I've always had that she changes the least. I know this isn't necessarily true, as her development is a bit more internal, but it's contrasted to radical changes like Saionji's. Juri asks for a picture of Utena for her locket--which implies a lot of progress as far as her taste in women, but it still shows her to not really believe she's as strong as she thinks she is. She's sort of headlined in the show as this INDEPENDENT WOMAN butnotreally. That doesn't change, and it's up to the viewer to decide whether that's because a person alone, no matter how confident, is not really complete*, or if it's because Juri can't escape her self-abusive circle of secrecy about her own feelings.

*I go with this one, because it's consistent with Utena and Anthy's story. Anthy doesn't stomp off like I'M AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN AND FUCK YOU, she leaves and exclaims she's looking for Utena. Whether or not Utena is dead doesn't matter here, I took that to mean Anthy is able to be alone, but doesn't want to be. That's not the 'natural' state of things. The progress, again, is the improvement in her taste.

I dunno. Ultimately I feel like Yasha does, a lot of Juri is kind of lost of me because I don't relate to her at all. I also think she's probably a lot more relevant in Japanese society as far as a role model (flawed though she may be) for women there. Whether she can be alone or not, she's definitely in an extreme not a submissive snowflake. In that she does mirror Utena as Ikuhara pointed out. She's an example of a strong female character breaking a lot of lame expectations the Japanese have placed on her gender. It takes a lot longer for Anthy to join that party, Juri and Utena are your inspirations from the start.

As for Shiori, well...O GEE GOTTA GO FINISH SOME CARAMEL excuse me

Giovanna wrote:

While I agree she was the strongest duelist, she's also the hilarious proof right from the start that the duels themselves mean nothing. Juri kicks ass in the arena and yet never wins. That's because the game is totally rigged.

But the thing is, she never actually loses either. Unlike all the other duelists, Juri is never cleanly defeated. In her first duel with Utena, she won the duel decisively. Her roses got skewered by a fluke - or a miracle, if you prefer - but Utena did not defeat her. And again, in the second duel, Juri does not lose, she forfeits of her own accord.

So while I think your atheism analogy is fair reasoning, I disagree as to the level of Juri's investment in "proving" her stance on miracles. To be honest, for all the play that it gets early on, I never really considered that a major factor of her character. An atheist can indeed have that argument with cultists, but I think it would be rare that the atheist's own beliefs are at stake in such discussions. It's more probably a detached exercise in cynical self-amusement. That's how I view Juri's involvement in the duels.

As I've said, the duels are really battles of will with each competitor's worldview on the line. But Juri never suffers a mental "defeat" from the first duel, because she wasn't defeated. She doesn't feel threatened by what happened, merely intrigued. Her own beliefs were not vulnerable, and that's why she could never be beaten. And...

If she truly believed there were no miracles, of course, she'd just leave, because there's nothing there to offer her.

That is what she does in the second duel. She just drops it because she knows there's no meaning in it.

Indeed, both times, Utena didn't defeat her, but that doesn't mean she didn't lose, IMO.

It only means she was defeated by herself.

It's a little odd from my perspective, and in a strange way she mirrors Anthy here, in that she fights to preserve a status quo that isn't necessarily a nice one, and isn't an idealized one. Saionji and Miki, for example have an idealized concept of their youth they want to recapture, so they're fighting to change things for the better, just, mistakenly, in the wrong direction. Anthy maintains a status quo at great cost to her wellbeing that isn't the ideal of her past--but Anthy is both more cynical than the Saionji and Miki and more honest about the 'ideal' her previous life probably wasn't.

Juri seems to remember her childhood fondly enough, but she isn't trying to recapture it. She's simply trying to arrest her development, which is a sad choice to make, given that while she probably thinks this is as good as it'll get, we as viewers are likely to think that's not the case. Some remember their adolescence as the best time of their lives, but you don't often hear that from people struggling with gender identity or sexual preference. It's not hard to imagine that, LOL, in college, Juri may come to happier place by finding kindred spirits to help set her guilt and self-abasement aside. As it stands, these are part of her self-identity, and she seems to me to cling to them past any reasonable lifespan simply for that reason. So...why? At one point, Touga seems to rather unsubtly imply that everyone (on the student council anyway) knows she's a lesbian. Not that he needs to say so, by not trying to fuck her he demonstrates this knowledge well enough. I feel like it's too easy to reduce this down to 'If I come out of the closet, my popularity and goddess-like status may be compromised, or even brought down to disgrace and hatred therefore crushing self-hatred and guilt.' She seems to internalize her trauma more than this, and in other ways demonstrates well enough giving zero fucks what others think about her. (The reason she's popular in no small part.) So what digs away at her so much about this? I honestly don't know.

Giovanna wrote:

Juri seems to remember her childhood fondly enough, but she isn't trying to recapture it.

I'm not entirely sure that Juri wouldn't want to go back to the way things used to be between her and Shiori. But unlike Miki, she is very skeptical of whether that is possible. If Miki manages to recapture that sound and feeling, he believes he can go back to the innocence he used to have. Miracles could be Juri's ticket to go back to the way things used to be. But Juri, because she doesn't quite believe in miracles and doesn't quite believe Shiori and her can go back to the way things used to be, wants the power of miracles... to disprove them? Which is a little silly, because if you use the power of miracles to disprove miracles, have you really disproved them? Perhaps Juri is okay with this, because it creates a circle, which allows her to never resolve the situation.

Why would that suit her? Perhaps because she doesn't want to acknowledge what the real problem is. It's not that she has a crush on a girl. It's not the possibility of others shunning her for it. Maybe it's not even that Shiori would shun her for it. (In the Black Rose duels Shiori does find out, but the scene in which Juri realizes that Shiori knows doesn't seem all that dramatic. Juri isn't shocked. Instead, the emphasis is on how Shiori is hurting Juri.) I would venture a guess that it's the fact that Juri doesn't want to acknowledge that Shiori is being very shitty towards her. Does Juri ever call Shiori out on all the behavior that is clearly designed to hurt her? Juri is quite perceptive, but this one thing eludes her? Come on. You might say it's because she's obsessively in love. Or... you could say that she doesn't want to accept the truth, because then Shiori isn't a very nice person and that goes against how Juri remembers her in the past / imagines her in her mind ('cruelly innocent').

She doesn't want to let go of that, so she continues to make up excuses for Shiori, though she is aware how dumb it is. She doesn't want to let go of that, because she wants to keep a connection between herself and Shiori, even if it's pining over her in secret. Which makes the secret bigger and more important, to a point where Juri was cutting ties with actual Shiori (when she was cold and dismissive towards her in episode 17, when she asked Ruka to get back with Shiori in episode 29). But again, why? Because she wanted to preserve the image of a nice Shiori. Of the Shiori she fell in love with. Fell in love with so much, that she is willing to do everything to preserve the image of that Shiori in her mind, even when faced with the obvious. The symbolism of a locket with a second Shiori, a fake Shiori, that only Juri can see and look at, that she made and put away, fits the assumption. And when that locket broke, it showed that Ruka's words came through to Juri. That Shiori was standing on Juri's sacrifices (fueled by the pain Juri so readily provided), that she had gotten everything she wanted, while Juri got nothing (she dated the random guy, she dated Ruka, while Juri hadn't dated Shiori) and that it was unfair (that Shiori's behavior towards her is not okay).

But I wonder how much of this interpretation is actually hinted at in the series, because we never get to see Juri upset with Shiori. Or see her call Shiori out on it. On the other hand, something should have shifted at the end of the series for Juri. Can we assume the shift is that she remained completely the same, the only difference being she's not secretly miserable anymore? I suppose we could, but that wouldn't be very satisfying.

In the sequence at the end, Shiori is on the fencing team. It's to show how Shiori is growing. But surely that wasn't the only way to make that point? I would like to think, since Shiori is in the club in which Juri is the captain, that it's meant to suggest that Juri and Shiori are still in each other's lives.

But in order for that to be the case - and to fit the sequence's theme of moving on and growing - they would have to have resolved some of their issues. Since those issues were so messy, they would require more than just Juri's private 'I've moved on' and Shiori's off-screen 'I need to learn to not feel threatened by people more skilled than me', which makes me assume that Juri and Shiori are talking beyond a polite 'hello'. And through that talking, the issue of Shiori hurting Juri on purpose would be addressed, as well as Juri's obsessive need to ignore it and instead pine over her in secret, which, finally, suggests more character growth from Juri that just moving on from a toxic crush.


Personally, I like Juri because she shows that you can be very perceptive and aware of a situation, but still stuck. She knows she's being stupid, but she does it anyway. I guess that doesn't inspire much sympathy, but I can relate to not being able to do what's best for yourself, because of Unresolved, Complicated Feelings, even though you have all the information obtained and analysed.

Yasha wrote:

aldeayeah wrote:

- Perhaps Juri wants Utena to win the whole thing. Maybe because in the bottom of her heart, Utena's success vicariously rekindles the fire of her own lost hope?

I think this is really on the mark. It seems to me like Juri wants Utena to win so that she can vicariously believe in the miracle, for a little while. And anyway, Touga certainly doesn't deserve it.

Yeah, this sounds about right to me. It's easier to believe the miracle another performs from a distance. If she's up close and personal, she won't create a miracle, nor would she believe it if she saw it--she'd find another way to explain it, just as she does with her own duel. She'll swear she saw the sleight of hand or the strings. Also, miracle or no, I think Juri realizes Utena has something on her side the rest of them don't. Miracles? No, but some other influence in play that makes her consistently a winner. Juri would put forth the duelist she thinks most likely to beat Touga, and that would be Utena.

Because yeah, I don't think Juri and Touga would be at constant odds, but if one's the victor, the other wouldn't think it's proper.

Resurrecting this thread to add my two cents.

I agree with dlaire that part of what makes Juri such  a popular character is that in a world where manipulation is the default means for gaining power she does no such thing. We know that Juri is intelligent enough to be more than able of using others and she is perceptive enough to know very well that such are at the root of what is going on around her. Which is not to say she will not use her authority with the teachers but she will not step all over others to get what she wants.

For all her flaws, and she does have plenty, Juri tries to stand on her strength.

I see her issues with Shiori a bit differently than most. I suspect that Juri views her love for Shiori as something inherently evil and wrong because they are both women. Juri probably thinks that longing for Shiori is disrespectful to her and that such love is tainted. Which is why Juri accepts all the vitriol Shiori throws at her and always justifies her actions, down deep Juri believes she deserves it all.

I suspect that even if Shiori came to love Juri, Juri would still not move the relationship to a more intimate level because she cannot bear to disgrace Shiori. Seeing Utena and Anthy's relationship is crucial to Juri because it shows her there is a way for women to love each other without an onus of shame.


This is the reason why I personally love the Juri/Shiori angle of SKU.