I changed my mind and split four and five up, because I wanted to post something tonight.

= = = = =

Shoujo Kakumei Utena
Duel Four: The Sunlit Garden ~ Prelude


Part One

We're opening in the middle of the action, atop the Dueling Erection. Utena's challenger is Miki, and both are looking very solemn indeed as they contemplate the fucked up nature of their current situation. In silent attendance is the Rose Bride, framed by two symmetrical towers, black against a brilliant blue sky. Observing the stage from one of these towers, opera glasses at the ready, Juri smiles to herself.

Utena:
So, this is what it all comes down to, Miki.

Miki:
Yes. I have to get that music back. And for that I need the Bride, no matter what.

Utena:
I think being seated at the piano suited you much more.

Miki:
I'll make the Rose Bride mine. Even if... even if it means hurting you!

So. Neither particularly want to fight, but neither are going to be the first to blink...

Dissolve to an Ohtori music room, where we see that the BGM is in fact being played by Miki, sat at the aforementioned piano. A female student approaches and he stops playing, his eyes flickering away from the newcomer and then down at his hands; his rose seal is prominent as he lifts them from the keys. Hello Nanami. She applauds and compliments his playing. Thanks to his performance, that party the other day turned out wonderfully - she can't mean the ball, can she? That was a crap party, the expensive fizz ended up all over some girl. Trés gangsta but pretty dull if you only have one bottle.

She wants to know why he dropped out of the competition. I have trouble picturing Ohtori being part of the world, but later dialogue seems to suggest that yes, it is. That means that either every single school in the SKU 'verse is like this, or kids from the other schools are convinced that the Ohtori students are Venusian Pod People (from Venus). In answer, Miki plays a single note, but selfishly doesn't launch into the rest of Life on Mars.

Miki:
This piano's a little off key.

Nanami:
Really? It was tuned just recently.

Miki:
Then maybe I'm the one who needs tuning.

Thirteen, folks. This guy is thirteen. Looks like he really doesn't want to talk to Nanami. I'm not especially fond of her since that shaming ritual she instigated but I do feel a little bad for her here. Well, unless this is just part of a plan to throw someone else to the darkness, in which case fuck her.

Nanami:
You always play this song when you're alone.

Miki:
The truth is, this is the only song for the piano that means anything to me. Because, if I keep playing, I hope that she will hear it.

Oho! Nanami, flicking through one of Miki's notebooks, seems very pleased at this juncture - at least, until she finds the photograph of Anthy that Miki keeps in his notebook. Oh, Nanami. That must have stung. Well, at least your clothes didn't disintegrate, eh? That would have been awful. Miki's song is about how he can't express the eternal beauty he feels inside, and it's called The Sunlit Garden. Cue title drop.

That was unexpected. I can't see this going brilliantly for Anthy.

In class, Wakaba is lamenting her test scores while Utena stares out of the window, unwilling to work up the effort to even look bothered. She autopilots something about Wakaba cultivating a sense of logic to improve her scores and Wakaba, apparently also on autopilot, strikes a pose and delivers some of her mother's wisdom: a real woman can force her logic onto any man. Hmm. Wakaba, was it really your test score you were worried about? Well, genius is supposedly the ability to discern connections where others cannot, and you do have a big forehead, which means you have a big brain. (It is prov'n.) Utena isn't doing much better - she got 38.

Wakaba:
No way... You don't usually do that bad at at.

Utena:
I got a little lazy [...] I'll have to take a make-up exam with this score.

Wakaba very neatly turns the conversation back around on her boyfriend while, down in the courtyard, Anthy sings a happy tune to herself as she fills a watering can. All's right with the world.

SLAP

Damn it all. That's four for four. The idiot brigade are back, and it's made abundantly clear that they take their orders from Nanami, who lurks in the shadows while they accuse Anthy of ruining 'their' Miki. Nanami's involvement makes me wonder if there isn't a longer game being played here - she was quite sneaky last time, even if the ends weren't exactly subtle. Given what happened at the end of the last episode - even though doing so might give her brigade the life expectancy of a glass drum - shouldn't she be setting them on Utena?

Stopwatch:
00:39:05

Let's feed the troll. Miki's associated with his stopwatch, and this Miki-centric episode seems to be playing with the passage of time. When Miki angrily confronts the idiot brigade, we don't actually see them retreat, they just vanish during the cut. Maybe there're thirty-nine missing seconds behind that cut? Hmm. Is the stopwatch counting up or down? Is Miki perpetually being reminded that he's never on time, or was he particularly ahead of the curve on this occasion?

Whatever. Miki helps Anthy gather up her scattered notebooks, and shows a great deal of compassion as he apologizes for the situation Anthy got caught up in. Very noble, given he's not especially responsible for their actions, but doesn't nobility look like a hindrance in this show? Anthy smiles and thanks him, and there's a brief shot of musical notation with a little piano sting. Miki looks a little breathless as he shyly brushes off her thanks, saying one thing, no doubt thinking something else.

In the shadows, Nanami smiles and slips away.

Back in the classroom, Utena and Wakaba spy Anthy and Miki taking a walk. Wakaba exposits for us - Miki's the handsome boy genius who fences and plays piano at the national level and studies the college curriculum, despite having only just entered middle school. He's really popular, even with the older girls, and Mitsuko and the others are just in love with him. Is Mitsuko somebody I've missed? Wakaba seems to know everybody, if only by reputation. (Utena seems a little clueless by comparison, though of course less likely to uncritically repeat rumours.)

Wakaba:
But... what would be be doing with Anthy Himemiya?

What, indeed? (The BGM in this section is gorgeous by the way. Ticks all my boxes for mid-nineties Squaresoft-esque dreaminess.) Cut to the Ohtori library, into which Juri descends to find Miki sat alone, hunched over his papers. His stopwatch reads 00:00:58. Assuming that last is in centiseconds, his stopwatch reads half a second. Is Juri just in the nick of time, or just too late? (Ugh, I hope Ikuhara's happy.) Despite the age gap they appear to be good friends, or are those 'master and apprentice' vibes?

Miki:
Happiness can sometimes be surprisingly close by, can't it?

Juri is nonplussed, and remarks that the paper he's marking is really something. Whose is it? Cut to the dorms, where Miki is showing Anthy his handiwork. Utena laments that she doesn't have a boy genius to help her with her test, and speculates on obtaining a logical boyfriend of her own. Meanwhile, Chuchu eats her eraser, showing that one cannot undo one's mistakes in the reahaha no, he's just a fuzzy little dolt. So dear.

Miki introduces himself to Utena (he didn't do that when he arrived at the dorm?), and she expresses surprise that he knows who she is. Always eager to assist, Miki engraves the word 'HINT' upon his rose seal and drops it on her from a great height; she clues on, most displeased at this new development, but he assures her that he has no intention of fighting any kind of duel to make Anthy his bride. What a suspiciously specific denial.

Anthy smiles and thanks him for his assistance, and he looks even more flustered this time. Utena notices, remarking that it looks like Miki thinks about Anthy a lot. At this point that Chuchu appears to gain a bump on his head and to start sulking, presumably because Utena's trying to replace him again. Both Utena and Miki seem to be talking over Anthy's head a lot in this scene, so it looks like she's still trying to make decisions for her.

Miki:
Miss Himemiya reminds me a bit of a girl I know. That's all! I'm not going to fight a duel with you!

Curiouser and curiouser. He seems sincere, and not like a duplicitious sort of guy at all - if anything it seems like he ought to work on developing a little guile. So how do they end up fighting? Utena chews him out a little further. Because of the council's stupid games, their dueling or whatever, they've both been lumbered with make-up exams! Miki asks if that means Utena is behind too, and...


Snnrk- (I think I got mildly spoiled finding this image but I don't care. Utena, you massive fucking dork. )


Part Two

Dissolve once more to the music room. Miki is playing a warmer, more lively version of The Sunlit Garden while Touga watches on.

Touga:
You're playing well today. Your technique's intensity isn't as overpowering as it tends to be. There's a richness to the sound. Could you have found that "shining thing" you told me about once?

Miki:
Yes, I may just have. I may finally be regaining what I lost so long ago...

We cut briefly to a pan of the score for The Sunlit Garden, and then fade to a very strange scene indeed. It seems to be a memory. The actors are both stylized, as they are in Utena's fairy tale memories, and appear to represent a younger Miki and a little girl, playing piano together in a sunlit garden. The whole is bordered with an intense white light, lending the garden the appearance of a slide or an old photograph. At the close, two butterflies meander across the whole thing, above the border, and there is a sound like... birds singing, but really distorted and scratchy. As we fade back in, Miki is gazing at his photograph of Anthy.

What. What? Okay. The visual language is clearly meant to link this to Utena's visions of the prince. The OP lyrics reference a sunlit garden too, so, a metaphor for nostalgia? The passage of time turning the everyday into the sublime? Or our habit of projecting our current situation onto our past - "I'm miserable now; by comparison I was happy then, therefore that time was the happiest of my life"? Has he put Anthy on that level? Oh, Miki. (Also, what did I say about guile? Don't fill Touga in, he's slippery as fuck.)

Touga:
I envy you. If you do regain that "shining thing" be sure to tell me what it is.

Oh dear. Outside, Nanami asks the universe at large what they could possibly mean by "shining thing". And as if in answer, it's time for a shadowplay!

Heh. Um, this is about putting people on pedestals. The guy thought he was in love with her but was actually in love with what she represented to him, the idea of love. On actually getting to know her, he was affronted by and terrified of her humanity and ran for the hills. That fits in with Miki's general naivity and not knowing what to do with his feelings for Anthy - she's become the sunlit garden, not a human being with her own autonomy and personality. (Can this also be tied to the Saionji- and Miki-worship from the idiot brigade or is that too obtuse? If it can be, it's interesting to see who lashes out at whom once the illusion is broken, though the play seems to be about Man putting Woman on a pedestal, not just uncritical adoration.)

Miki returns to the dorms at sunset, and how gorgeous is this show, folks? The lighting is just beautiful. He's come to tutor our heroines, who have been expecting him, but not his guest - hello, Nanami. Aren't you just a ray of sunshine this evening? Miki looks a little reluctant about this, but then he seems to be the kind of person who'd have trouble saying no to anything.

(Also, just 'cause: Nanami desu~!)

In the girls' room, Miki and Nanami trot out the old line about the dorm being haunted. No, only by Anthy, who scrubs her fingers to the bone to keep it clean and tidy. Miki and Nanami are impressed! But oh dear, Nanami seems very invested in ruining Anthy's good graces in Miki's eyes.

Miki:
You're in luck, Miss Tenjou, getting to live with such a feminine girl.

Awkwardly-phrased backhanded compliment of the year from Miki while Nanami surreptitiously reaches into her bag for... a snail?

Operation: Oh! Anthy Himemiya is a weirdo who keeps a snail in her pencil box!

Idiot, don't say stuff like that out loud! Well, whatever, Nanami sets her plan in motion, asking to borrow Anthy's eraser. She reaches for the pencil box and... it's full of snails. Nanami reacts like a person, but the others brush it off; Miki thinks it's cute, and Utena tuts and reminds Anthy that she'd told her not to keep them in there.

Mission Failed. Bitches love snails.

Studying continues as before, and now Nanami is left with no choice. She reaches into her bag, and this time...

Operation: Oh! Anthy Himemiya is a weirdo who keeps a garter snake in her desk drawer!

Idiot, don't say stuff like that out loud! As Miki talks everyone through a problem, Nanami leaps to her feet, tippy-toes over to the desk and...

Mission Failed. Underestimated resident mongoose population.

And once again, subdued reactions from the others. Nanami demands to know if everybody there really thinks that's okay, but to no avail.

Anthy:
We're studying now so I'll have to see you later. Did you like eating that mean old snake?

Heh. I think that one gave Nanami palpitations. Again our cast resume their studying, while a distinctly troubled Nanami runs through her next plan. Reaches for her bag -

Operation: Oh! Anthy Himemiya is a total weirdo who keeps a live octopus in her closet!

- don't say it out loud -

Mission Failed. Have run out of ideas.

Utena:
It's dangerous to just go and open that closet up.

Nanami:
This can't be real! This all has to be some terrible dream! How can this huge octopus be here? All these octopus tentacles!

Miki:
That's the ad balloon they had for last year's school festival.

Anthy:
I felt so sorry for it after it was thrown away, I brought it back here.

Utena:
Didn't you say you were sick of it and it should be thrown away?

Miki:
I think it's cute! It's just like Miss Himemiya to do that.

Nanami:
(Dies a little inside.)

So. Anthy loves animals, even feeling empathy for an inanimate octopus mascot that was getting thrown out. Either Miki is sucking up or that intersects perfectly with his idea of Anthy - his "shining thing" has bottomless reserves of love. Utena, well, it's hard to see why she wouldn't tell Anthy not to keep snails in her pencil box or a live mongoose in her desk drawer, and interesting to see that Anthy ignored her orders. Oh, and Anthy definitely knows what Nanami is up to.

Time has passed. Anthy is concentrating intently on something she's writing while Miki sums up for Utena and shows her how to apply what she's learned to the problems she's been set. She gets it, and the two share a moment of hard-work-and-guts positivity before being interrupted by Anthy giggling at a flipbook animation she's made of a little elephant dude doing elephant stuff.

I used to do stuff like that to demonstrate that I didn't care about my education, but then, I always was an irritating little shit. Is that what Anthy's doing too? She apologizes through her laughter, and Miki doesn't see fit to label this as cute this time.

Actual, reliable clock:
19:00:00

How time flies! They begin to discuss food (apropos of nothing I swear I heard a 'Mik-kun' from Utena) and ask Nanami if she's down for eats. She just about manages to come back to reality from her horrified reverie and announces that she made a bento for everyone! Only... aw, Chuchu. You fuzzy little jerk. A bomb-happy Nanami halteringly enquires if he's another of Anthy's friends, and Anthy scolds him for his behaviour.

No matter, Anthy will cook!

Shaved ice for all!

It's really good when you mix the lemon and the strawberry.

Miki and Utena dig in with reasonable enthusiasm, but Nanami eyes hers like it might explode. It doesn't, of course. She does. She lays into the whole situation she's found herself in, animals, shaved ice and all, capping it off with an impassioned query as to why everyone likes Anthy. I quite dislike Nanami at this juncture, but she's got a point, of sorts. It is unusual to keep snails in your pencil box. It is unusual to keep a mongoose in your desk drawer. It is unusual to rescue a gigantic inflatable octopus and keep it in your wardrobe. On the other hand, all she's seeing is that her schemes wouldn't have led Miki or Utena to hate Anthy.

What's really happening here? We're seeing that Anthy has unusual reactions, and what do we know about Anthy? She's been knocked about by Saionji and is seemingly comfortable with that being an okay thing to do. She isn't going to behave in the most usual fashion, as we saw with her flipbook. She may have been throwing Miki's attempts to help her back in his face, or she may have just gotten distracted and thought of something fun to do. Doesn't matter. From our point of view, she's a strange individual.

And in the end, it doesn't matter how she behaves, Nanami really hates her guts - for getting the attention of her brother or of Miki, it's all the same. The only way she can win in that situation, if you can even call it a win, is getting Nanami so frazzled that it defeats the object of her plans - Anthy remains untroubled, Nanami gets steamed and freaks out. That's exactly what she's done.

In the chaos of shaved ice, accusations and octopodi, no one noticed Anthy slip away until she was long gone. She finds her way to a room with a piano - musing that perhaps she should have made takoyaki - and finds the piano. Chuchu hops over with a presumably-stolen piece of sheet music, his whole pose screaming 'play this!', and back in the girls' room, we hear the faint opening bars of The Sunlit Garden. The song slowly fills the silence of the empty dorm, and our cast follow it to find Anthy.

Also, Chuchu is a metronome now.

Utena:
Wow. I didn't know she could play the piano.

Miki isn't listening to her. We see the sunlit garden bloom in his memory, as bright and as stark and as beautiful as we saw it before.

Miki:
The same tone as my little sister's... That sunlit garden... I've found it. My shining thing.

And Miki's whole world, centred on Anthy, takes on the glowing sepia tones of the sunlit garden.

...

...

His little sister?

To be continued...

= = = = =

Sorry I've been away! Gio and I were sick and concentrating on consuming gigantic amounts of salabat and wondering what the hell kind of demon cursed us to violently eject nourishment. Salabat, however, is delicious and everyone should have some.

Okay, so, Episode 3 -

Old Stuff: OH GOD STOP MAKING THAT FACE TOUGA you look awful and your attempts to be cool are awful and you are awful how the hell did you become my favorite character HOW

Spoilering this shit because I want someone else to read it over just in case I'm revealing too much. I think I've stuck strictly to what's been shown so far, but I want to be absolutely sure. Someone let me know!

CAVEAT 1: This is not meant to represent or refer to anything more than the events in these first few episodes. The behaviors I'm referring to may or may not be present in the rest of the series.

However. A lot of Touga's behavior here is stereotypically "cool" for a Japanese guy in the 90's. Using English words, being generous with gifts and compliments, generally not treating women as if they are obviously inferior. That sort of treatment is an actual thing that still exists in Japan; even the language that women use is far more polite and deferential than men's language. It's hard to articulate, but it's the sort of culture where women are expected to do jobs that are hard and inconvenient for men just by default. It permeates everything to the point where women are still expected to walk behind their boyfriends, carry the heavy things, and serve at meals. The assumption is that because they are women, they are subservient and inferior.

In this sense, Saionji is, so far, more traditionally Japanese in outlook than Touga is. He treats Anthy as if she's there to embody his desires, as if by saying they are "lovebirds" he expects her just to uncomplainingly carry out that role. Her position as the Rose Bride reinforces that-- but within the context of Japanese society, she is simply filling the traditional, accepted, conservative female role when she is with him.

Contrast this to Touga, who gives compliments and gifts, who attempts to win Utena over (however clumsily, to our eyes) rather than acting as if she is submissive and there for his convenience simply because she is female. This is part of the reason his playboy act works; he doesn't treat women the way they are traditionally treated, and his actions suggest that they are valuable and valued, something of a novelty as far as expectations of women go.

CAVEAT 2: I am speaking of the surface reading and the cultural context only. I am not trying to argue that Touga treats women 'better' than Saionji; I will leave it to you to make that determination. Also, like I said, may or may not apply beyond the first couple of episodes.


hokay I need to stop talking about them, but they're just so damn fascinating

Anyway, Ep3 is one of my least favorites, probably the episode I dislike the most out of the entire series. It's still a goldmine of information about Anthy, and that's wonderful. The ages of the characters, should you still want them, are approximately thus:

Utena: 14
Anthy: 14
Wakaba: 14
Miki: 13
Nanami: 13
Keiko, Aiko, Yuuko (Nanami's goons): 13
Saionji: 16
Touga: 16
Juri: 15

And I think those are all we've seen so far. I'm pretty sure those are accurate at this point in the series but it can be a little hard to figure out just because we don't know the timing. Any inaccuracies should be excused by upcoming events/revelations.

Hey Thlayli, once you get past the first arc there's a link I can give you with more detailed information about characters and name meanings and such, but for now it is probably full of spoilers. Even after ep13 there's still going to be a couple characters in there you probably shouldn't look at. Is this something you would want, or would the names/information about unintroduced characters be too spoilery for you?

Also, Wakaba love! Normally she's one of my least favorite character types, but oh god. So much love.

Final note: After many years of comparing the architecture of Ohtori to penises, Gio and I have settled on calling it the cocktower. I like it, it's almost a word.

satyreyes wrote:

Thlayli wrote:

Let's feed the troll. Miki's associated with his stopwatch, and this Miki-centric episode seems to be playing with the passage of time. When Miki angrily confronts the idiot brigade, we don't actually see them retreat, they just vanish during the cut. Maybe there're thirty-nine missing seconds behind that cut? Hmm. Is the stopwatch counting up or down? Is Miki perpetually being reminded that he's never on time, or was he particularly ahead of the curve on this occasion?

For various reasons, I don't think it's a spoiler if I suggest you pretend for a moment that this is happening in real life.  Ordinarily, stopwatches count up, so if you see someone clicking a stopwatch, your mind goes to what they might have been timing.  When did Miki start his stopwatch?

Interesting point because we don't ever see Mikki starting his stopwatch.

So, was he perhaps watching Anthy get beat up for nearly a minute?
That sadist.

What differentiates revolutionary thinkers from non-revolutionary ones is almost never a greater knowledge of the facts.
    —Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel, 1996, p. 20

Even my coursework is reminding me of SKU now!

Last edited by YamPuff (01-31-2015 04:38:02 AM)

satyreyes wrote:

Yasha wrote:

Someone let me know!

Well, there is the very generalized spoiler [...]

[It's only a spoiler if you assume that their behavior continues in that direction, which I explicitly said may or may not apply as this is only meant to be a surface reading for the specific characteristics I'm examining-- should I reinforce that? Or is it just a lost cause and give it up already? Kita didn't think it was too spoilery... ]

As for Mitsuko, I forgot to mention this, but I honestly think that's just a throwaway name. I don't remember it ever being attached to a specific character, although it's totally my headcanon now that Mitsuko is the sassy brown haired girl.

Will watch ep4 tonight and report back.

You darling, I'm not upset! Just worried about breaking my own rules, is all.

Hello folks, sorry for the hold up - real life intervened. Back to SKU tomorrow.

Aw c'mon, don't tell me it's over...

I have yet to watch that ending without crying, and I stopped counting my watching this series.

crystalwren wrote:

Episode 3, things I never noticed before :

* [Chu Chu eats something that came in the box with the special dress that Nanami sent to Anthy. Looks like a mint but given Chu Chu's reaction to it, I suspect that it's some form of desiccant. Rather subtle foreshadowing of Nanami's nasty little trick?]

* [As Anthy becomes disorientated at the ball, surrounded by people, the noise of the crowd turns into laughter, then sniggers, and finally trails off to become a very, very creepy little scream. In-ter-es-ting.]

If there's two thing Utena killed at, it's the awesome foley and use of sound, and the subtle "shoulda seen it coming" bits.

Followed by the prettiness of everything and how gutwrenching the humiliations and embarrassments can be.