gorgeousshutin wrote:

My take is that Touga's movie death is symbolic of his being "emotionally" dead after having gone though traumatic childhood events.

I disagree. If his childhood trauma left him emotionally dead, why does Utena remember him so fondly? He overcame his trauma and became a true prince. Then he died.

I don't think Touga's childhood trauma would leave him "emotionally dead." He had plenty of charisma and personality (granted, illusions, but they were still true to him) in his "interactions." I don't think how well either Shiori or Utena remembered Touga has anything to do with the overcoming, but it shows that Touga didn't let crap stop him from self-actualization. As Atropos stated, he overcame them, either way, and became prince material. But then he kicked the bucket.


Touga, NO! The kitten's not in the water anymore, that was a long time ago! Don't dive in! Don't!

Episode 36 is up.

Lurv wrote:
Hmm, he doesn't seem to care for the coffin-metaphor much (but it's so fairy tale-ish! ;_; ), hopefully he won't be disappointed by the ending. emot-tongue

I got the feeling that he doesn't care much for most metaphors scattered throughout the eps, and that he'd much prefer the implicitly explained "deep stuff" ala NGE over the open-to-interpretation elements of SKU.

Well, he's finished Madoka, so the FINAL THREE episodes are next.


Also, Mark is doing the series at some point.

Last edited by Atropos (10-21-2012 03:57:58 PM)

I think he's making a surface-level assessment right now, but with people giving him in-depth explanations that aren't matching up with what he's concluded. SKU is a show that gives you something new everytime  you watch it, so what he's getting on cursory glances at character depth right now may not be how he feels after he takes a few days to marinate on what he watched, let alone if he decides to watch it again.

Also, I don't think watching Madoka is helping. The two shows are similar, but watching one while in the mindset of the other can be confusing and a bit misleading.

How is he being dense?    I think he's doing at least as well as I was at that point.  He's shocked by how Ep 38 ends, but so was I.  In hindsight it makes perfect sense and it couldn't have happened any other way, but that's hindsight.  Utena had been hitting all the right notes in rejecting Akio up to that point, as our newbie noted approvingly.  Our emotions likened the scene to every other big climactic scene like this one -- Return of the Jedi, say -- where the villain is all "join me" and the hero is all "never!" and the villain is all "then die!" and the antihero is like "THERE IS GOOD IN ME AFTER ALL" and joins the hero.  That was the emotional logic of the run-up to the end of episode 38, and that's what we expected to happen.

Yeah, we were wrong.    And that is part of why SKU is genius.

Atropos wrote:

Oh, shit, he just watched the finale.

Wow, how do you know?  And how long until he posts about it? 

Satyr...you're right. I spent three months reading and loving what this guy had to say about one of my favorite shows. If he finds the events of the last two episodes confusing, it's because they are. Hopefully he at least feels the series had an appropriate thematic conclusion.

I hope so too!  It took me a little while to come around, myself.  The first time I saw Ep 39 I didn't realize I had just seen a happy ending.  I thought it was terribly sad and terribly confusing.  But then I started thinking about it and talking about it, and the less confused I got, the less sad I got.  Now I feel exuberant when I watch that episode.  In Ep 39, SKU keeps all its promises.

Well, almost all its promises.  There are things that are never quite cleared up, and a few plot threads left hanging.  Certainly we never get more than a symbolic explanation of what revolution or apocalypse means.  I'm willing to accept that, but it's easy for me to understand a viewer feeling differently.

Atropos wrote:

Certainly we never get more than a symbolic explanation of what revolution or apocalypse means.

"You see that door? Beyond it lies the power to do anything. You could save her from that fate...but I suppose you're just a girl."

Mmm hmm, exactly!  Dios says that, and then Utena opens the door, and behind the door is... Anthy.  How is that "the power to do anything?"  That can only be interpreted symbolically: Utena's heroism is what pulls Anthy at last into an awareness of her own agency, and that's why Anthy is behind the door, in the show's last coffin.

Which leads to all kinds of questions outside the scope of this thread.  Does Anthy emblemize the power to do anything?  Was Anthy always behind the door?  If Juri had opened the door, would Anthy have been behind it, or would it have been Shiori, or some nebulous "power of miracles?"  (Is the door magic?  Where did it come from?)  Why is Akio unable to open the door?  What did the soul-swords have to do with it?  And what happened to Utena at the end?  Even after all this time, I only have tentative answers to any of these questions, which are all related to the nature of revolution.  That's why it's very easy for me to understand someone feeling frustrated by the ending.  Maybe Shay Guy will like it and maybe he won't, but the only way he's going to frustrate me is if he's not even trying to get it.

Last edited by satyreyes (11-21-2012 06:53:02 PM)

Oh my god, he's finished. Go, look at it. I'm telling you, just look at it.

EDIT: Since someone's bound to introduce him to EM, and he'll surely find the forums soon after, should we get rid of this thread?

Last edited by Atropos (11-30-2012 04:28:32 AM)

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

Atropos wrote:

EDIT: Since someone's bound to introduce him to EM, and he'll surely find the forums soon after, should we get rid of this thread?

Why? No one's been especially cruel or untruthful, and he is writing on a public forum about the thing which this forum is intended to primarily discuss.

We do the same to everyone else who talks Utena substantially. And we do it to each other. It's, at this point, what we do.

I quite agree.  We haven't said anything to be ashamed of.  And presumably Mr. Guy chose to blog his Utena viewing (as opposed to watching the series privately) because he wanted to generate discussion and involve and amuse people.  I think he certainly succeeded!    That said, if he comes along and says "please take down the thread," we can do that.

I liked this last post.  He's paying attention to the symbolic level more than the literal one, which is correct and appropriate for the last episode; the point isn't how the plot gets resolved but how the themes get resolved.  And he does better than I did: he figured out it was a happy ending after only one viewing.  There's so much more he could unpack, but it sounds like on balance he just wasn't a huge fan of the show, and that's okay.  He gave it a fair shot and appreciated it for what it was.  And I enjoyed watching him do it. 

Whew, I finally got around to reading his last recaps. He did seem to get a lot more than I did the first time I watched it.

I was kinda sad that some of the stuff in the opening (like Anthy and Utena on flying horses) never happened, but except for that I don't think I ever knew what to expect in the first place, so in the end I wasn't that disappointed. Mostly confused.