gorgeousshutin wrote:

The original NGE had blatant rip-offs of Utena too?  And in the opening credits?  I didn't know that

References to classic science fiction and mecha anime.

The episode with the computer virus Angel was basically The Andromeda Strain WITH A COMPUTER! the Human Instrumentality Project is named after a pseudo-medieval organization in Cordwainer Smith short stories and the details are based on Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End, the gory finale is derived from Space Runaway Ideon, Shinji is a gender-flipped version of Nadia from one of Anno's earlier shows, Rei is named after Rei Hino, the backstory is basically every ancient astronauts conspiracy out there...it's a mess of references and allusions to earlier works, and I love the shit out of it.

From the insecure kid with control issues at work: "I'm not the president, I'm the vice president!"

I just stood there and laughed like a maniac.

Also, some of mom's essential oils spilled on my towel in the bathroom.  Now I smell like roses.  Eugh.

That is... terrifying.

Maybe that's what was in Nanami's egg?

Like I said before, it's all about teen pregnancy.

Here's an essay on The Catcher in the Rye that reminded me of SKU. (Found it in my first year of high school, just recently found it in my old bookmarks...wow!)

Plasterwork on the side of an old house I stumbled upon.
Yeah, pretty much everything with roses reminds me of SKU. I'm easy to please

Kita, I know what you mean. I compare every anime I see now to SKU, which means I don't see many of them. It's a tough act to follow.

Has anyone ever brought up the parallels between Miki and Kozue and Mozart and his sister?

'Cause, y'know.

Nice picture, Kiseki.  That reminds me of a particularly incongruous connection I made to Utena when I visited the National World War I Museum in Kansas City.  At the front of the museum there's a glass bridge that leads over a garden of poppies.  There are nine thousand of them, each representing a thousand deaths in the war.  (That's military deaths only, and a conservative estimate.)  They don't look a thing like roses, but I had a momentary vision of the movie's rose garden anyway.

Roses are such ambiguous symbols in the movie.  They don't exactly symbolize death, but they sure do grow over the body of a dead prince.  Maybe it would be better to say that they represent a pleasant gloss over unhappy realities.  Much like, say, looking at nine thousand poppies instead of nine million dead soldiers.  Maybe my reaction wasn't so incongruous after all.

This very conversation we're having about flowers reminds me of episode 35 in which Akio was talking about poppies... Tidbits on native habitat and a legend that poppies grew on a burial site of some figure. Akio was about to talk further about poppies in the language of flowers but the conversation or scene got sidetracked.


Also later in that episode Akio removed a petal of a poppy with his mouth? What does it mean...

Akio would have explained, but Utena interrupted Goddamnit, Utena.

I wonder if I should move this to the symbolism thread but... Continuing the discussion on poppies, I found a page about poppy symbolism.
http://www.whats-your-sign.com/poppy-symbolism.html
In particular, this info on poppies symbolizing Morpheus stood out to me:

Morpheus lived in his own world - a world of dreams, fantasy and complete nonadherence to traditional reality. He was destined to live here and rule the realms of dreams - it was in his genes. He was born from "night" - his mother is Nix, the goddess of night and dark creations. Morpheus' dad is Hypnos the deific governor of sleep.

To me, this speaks of the potential found in unconventional reality and messages wafting up through our dreams like a sweet fragrance - waiting to be recognized.

The description of Morpheus reminded me of Akio and his rule over the fantastical Ohtori as End of the World.
"Messages wafting up through our dreams like a sweet fragrance - waiting to be recognized" made me recall Utena in the final episodes beginning to recall her real childhood vision that included the suffering Anthy.. that we, the viewer, first saw in her dream in episode 34.

"I kinda feel like I saw a familiar landscape in a dream... I just can't remember."

I swear.. all the meanings people put to flowers.. the things expressed...
Oh! I dug through the forum and found this thread, which also mentioned the poppies! http://forums.ohtori.nu/viewtopic.php?pid=21388
This show continues to be so deep... I can't comprehend how the creators dished out all this information in the show's symbolic imagery in such a relatively short amount of time. So captivating.

Today I was randomly thinking about eggs which these days often leads me to thinking about the Nanami's Egg episode. But I also recalled a very old episode of Pokemon I watched when I was a child in which Meowth was raising an egg that would eventually hatch to become Togepi. How parental Meowth was in his short time with the egg reminded me of Nanami... and like Nanami, Meowth always had the egg with him..

Bathing with egg...



Sleeping with egg...



Becoming offended when someone suggests the idea of eating eggs...



"What have you done?! How could you eat eggs like that!"

"You brute, brute brute brute brute!!"

Last edited by Kiseki (09-02-2014 10:27:53 AM)