radio414

←Previous Post -- Next Post Duel 24 -- The Secret Nanami Diary Or: Three Elephant Transformations And At Least One More Cow One interesting thing the manga does to continue to reinforce its floral theme is the chapter titles. The prolog is just titled that, and the side stories have their own name scheme, but the five main chapters are all plant-based in some way. Today’s topic, chapter one, for example, is titled “To Till”, and as we continue along, the flower will continue to grow. I’ve mentioned this before, but the story starts in basically the same way every time, no matter the medium. Utena challenges Saionji to a duel and is swept into the dueling game. I don’t mean to make assumptions about the anime’s development process, but that may have been a factor in the similarities in this instance. The earlier plot points were more set in stone, I mean, and some of the lines are, if not word-for-word identical, at least very similar. Saionji even makes the same passing comment about the castle in the sky being more like a mirage. That doesn’t mean it’s all the same, though. A lot of this is in the aesthetics -- Utena still wears her rose-pink uniform, for example, and the student council meets not in the ivory tower above the school but in a building with more religious aesthetics, or at least a building with a lot of stained glass -- but there’s also a sense of abridgment to the manga. In my opinion, fair enough, like, you wouldn’t expect a five-chapter manga to cover all thirty-nine episodes of the show in perfect synchronicity, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t noticeable effects. Overall, this chapter covers not only the events of Episode One, but also parts of Episode Three and Episode Eight; I would call this the “Saionji” chapter. But the biggest abridgment continues to be in theme. The anime has had its moments of wearing its heart on its sleeve, but the manga continues to say it outright. Utena wants to be a prince, not a princess, because she wants to be the one doing the protecting. There’s a moment during the first duel that even says this outright. “Man or woman, it doesn’t matter. One of strength and nobility is always a prince.” And it’s this sort of melodramatic opinion that Utena is going to have to grow out of, at least on the anime side of things. I guess that leads into a discussion on at least a little of the publishing process. According to vague sources, Saito had to go through multiple (I’ve read up to five?) editors, which then led into arguably a watering down of the basic Utena theme of bringing revolution to outdated gender roles. Some of this, I imagine, is apologetics for Saito initially being against the main relationship being anything more than ambiguous (the movie manga is much better in this regard; Utena was an established property by then). Because of this, the themes are going to diverge rather quickly, so that statement above is going to mean something different soon. The episode ends on a cliffhanger, as Saionji comes out of nowhere to get his revenge. We can get an idea of what happens next from the anime, but I’ll talk about it more next week. I made a joke about this last week too, but one of the higher-up Youtube comments remarks upon how instead of recapping and finalizing the theme of the previous arc, this clip show instead focuses on Nanami, specifically through the lens of Tsuwabuki’s obsession with her. He’s injured by a runaway horse, and his diary is found and read by Utena, Anthy, and Nanami, which in turn leads to the recap of Nanami’s escapades. First, though I do want to focus for a moment on the horse. In the discussion for Episode Six, I made a comment about the symbology of the horse in relating it to princeliness. Tsuwabuki continues to want to be Nanami’s quote-unquote “prince”, and that, combined with the mirror of his initial savior moment in Six, makes this a rather significant choice. The majority of this episode, though, like I said, is a recap of Nanami’s escapades, and we find out that Tsuwabuki’s obsession continues even outside of the episodes he’s visually been a part of. He witnessed Nanami’s initial revenge plots against Anthy, followed her to India during the curry episode (as well as the three identical triplets, who had their minds swapped with elephants while we weren’t looking, apparently), and even snuck into the Student Council meeting room to get a closer look at Touga. What’s important to note here, and this will apply to upcoming Nanami episodes, is that while the audience has always had this information, a lot of it was outside of Utena’s awareness (it’s implied Anthy has known since the beginning, though she tends to feign ignorance as well). In those initial revenge plots, Nanami still had that veneer of kindness; it was only when Touga got too close that Nanami began revealing her true colors. So this episode just about breaks that barrier of trust entirely. It’s out in the open now. Just in time for other aspects of Nanami’s persona to start breaking down as well. It’s not all for the worse. Nanami and Tsuwabuki’s general relationship has maintained its improvements since Episode Eighteen, and we see Nanami thank Tsuwabuki for his help at one point. One can hope that this Nanami will continue to make this an area of improvement as she matures as a character. But there are still some barriers that need to be broken. Things are going to get worse before they get better. -r Next time: The start of the spookily-named Apocalypse arc, complete with a new living space and a fancy car. ←Previous Post -- Link to Episode -- Next Post→

All anyone had ordered so far was ducks and Chris was already concerned that the table was going to collapse under the weight of future orders. Or maybe finding a cook who could get their ducks in a row was what feasting meant now; it wasn’t like he’d been paying attention to culinary trends in the last year or so (not that he’d really done so before that either). Whichever, it didn’t matter. Now he had to focus on integrating himself into the conversation. “We were just talking about how we learned to do what we do.” “Yes, do tell, Chris! The ease with which you handle a blade must not have come easily.” It was a reasonable enough topic, Chris thought, especially if everyone planned to venture into the dungeon together again, but he still instinctively hesitated at the suggestion of talking about his past. Wasn’t that, like, the reason he’d left Julian at the bar in the first place? At the same time, though, he also had kind of skimped on saying much of anything when similar discussions had come up after that kobold fight. It probably wouldn’t hurt to say a little bit more. He glanced over at the bar where Julian was alternating between idly chewing her pen and scribbling in her notepad. There wasn’t really a way to tell if she was paying attention or not more than that, not that Chris wanted her living in his head any longer than necessary, so he started answering. “‘Had,’ I guess. Not ‘have,’” he said, as his hand drifted to rest on the hilt of his sword. “Dunno where they are now. But yeah, I learned some of the basics growing up.” The other parts of thievery, those he’d had to pick up on the go or adapt from ideas he’d learned in his youth. But fencing was something his parents had found a mentor for, and it was something he’d hated then. When he said he’d learned the basics, it was because that was all he had cared to learn, and no form of discipline could force him to learn otherwise. “Once you know where the squishy bits are, it’s really just about making sure you hit those.” Maybe he relied too much on raw speed? Not that he was willing to admit that out loud, and besides, he was still alive, wasn’t he? His hand wandered from his sword to another blade on his person. “Daggers, though, I first picked those up at a fair, actually. Someone was doing a performance where they were hitting fruit balanced on people’s heads, and the fruit got progressively smaller as the act went on, like, watermelon all the way down to grape, if you can believe that. I know I couldn’t, and I saw it happen! So I got” -- begged, more like -- “them to give me at least a little instruction. Probably couldn’t knock anything off anyone’s head but I can make the pointy side go into a rat consistently enough.” He paused to take a sip from his drink. “Or, I guess, whatever we find on the next few dungeon floors, if it’s not those.”

Chris had gotten worried after Julian had started rattling off facts about whoever else was in the bar, but the fact that the elf, Joan, hadn’t immediately capitulated to Julian’s badgering either allowed Chris to start feeling a bit better about his choices. It also made him a little curious about the people he’d pointed to as well, but he kept that to himself; he wasn’t about to become just like Julian right after he pushed her away. “Well, I’d wish you luck,” Chris said, “but I’m pretty sure I never want to see you again, so.” He stood up from his spot at the bar, grabbed his drink, and followed Hector back over to the rest of the group. Hector, for his part, was prompting everyone as to exactly what sort of war crime they were expecting the kitchen to perform. “They’re ready for whatever you want,” he said, even including a brag about the food’s quality. Chris couldn’t vouch for the “head-family-ness” of it -- it had been too long for that -- but he was at least confident enough to place an order. “One whole duck,” he said as he slid into his chair. “After that, I dunno, what did you two want?” After Hector had left with everyone’s orders, Chris added, “Sorry, didn’t think that would take as long as it did. What’s the discussion been like over here?”

←Previous Post -- Next Post→ Duel 23 -- The Terms of a Duelist Or: Amazing… Everything You Just Saw Last Episode Was Wrong As promised, we’re going to start talking about Chiho Saito’s manga today, starting with the prolog. By the second page, we’ve already run into a point of separation from the anime, in this case, Utena’s rose-colored uniform. I mentioned this before when talking about the initial steps of the show’s creation, how Utena’s design was always in flux, and this is potentially one such indicator of that. The manga doesn’t comment on Utena’s hair color, though it would not surprise me if the initial pages were drawn with blonde hair in mind. Still, announcing the unconventional color of Utena’s outfit along with the rose-scented letter from her prince does a good job setting up the motif just as well as the prolog for the anime did. I suppose I should talk about how I’m approaching this discussion because it’s a little different from how I’ve been referring to the anime. The anime is free to watch, of course, and there have been two links to the episode in question in each of these posts, so it is easier for me to assume someone is watching along and experiencing Utena for the first time. The manga, meanwhile, is something you need to purchase (or at least you should; I admit I didn’t dig too hard into online versions) so access is slightly more limited. So that’s one effect, and will perhaps lead to a bit more recap than normal. The other is that because I’m starting this so late in this blog series, it’s not going to assume the manga is one’s first foray into Utena. It did technically come first, but most people’s first experience is with the show (though it should be noted there’s a not-insignificant number of people who have only seen the movie), including myself, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to distance myself from that enough, so I decided not to, a decision that will likely lead to more comparative analysis. Of course, thinking like this also leads to one of the biggest criticisms I’ve seen of the prolog: that it is utterly ancillary to the main plot and could just as easily be cut from the story entirely. And, well, it’s a fair point. If you’ve already accepted Utena being removed from all mentor figures in her search for some mythical prince, taking over seventy pages of manga to reestablish these facts might not be the best use of space. But also remember that the anime accomplished this by using a story so fantastic that one assumes it to be an allegory on initial viewing. The remaining thirty-eight episodes of that show have this undercurrent of learning just which parts of that opening did and did not happen. The manga is significantly less ambiguous. In a similar fashion, the manga is quicker to get to a story that appears in all three of Revolutionary Girl Utena’s canons: the story of a girl drowning until a boy saves her. Like with most things spanning the three mediums, the details differ, but it is always significant in some way (I should note that it hasn’t appeared in the anime yet -- you haven’t missed it). In this case, it is Utena’s first encounter with her prince and the reason for her obsession with the one she calls “Mister Licky-Lick.” And yeah, that’s a dumb name. I won’t say that it is redeemed by Utena’s young age -- remember, she’s fourteen in the show, and even younger here -- but I will try to give a more charitable read here: The whole prolog, especially her interactions with the two male characters Aoi Wakaoji and Kaido, serve to repeatedly establish that, although Utena at this point in her life is very “prince-sexual”, she has no idea who that prince is or what he looks like. She is attracted to Aoi’s “kind, gentle eyes”, for example, but rejects the rest of him when she realizes that he cannot be her prince. We’ve already seen in the anime how this will only go terribly for her in her interactions with Touga. The last major point that I want to bring up is this mention of the meaning of Utena’s name. It means “flower calyx”, or the leaves that protect a bud before it blooms. This is significant enough in all versions of Utena, but this is the place where it is remarked upon. Oh, and there’s also a slap. Can’t have Utena without someone getting slapped, apparently. If one were to rank the episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena from most confusing to least confusing, this one would almost certainly be near the top of the list. Which is weird, because it also features Souji Mikage basically explaining the plot, not just of the arc, but of the whole show. “Everyone here is holding onto a memory,” he says. I’ve actually touched on this before, though I called it “reconciling with the past”. The reason the episode is confusing is because of all the other stuff. The reason for the confusion, in my estimation, is that both the previous episode and this one are told largely through Souji’s perspective, and Souji, as we find out, is a very unreliable narrator. Tokiko wasn’t the object of Mikage’s affections, Mamiya was (yikes). Mamiya didn’t burn down that building, Mikage did. The reason that Souji is the exact same age as he was back then is because he’s dead, a ghost sustained only by imperfect memories and manipulated into doing End of the World’s bidding. This also can explain why, when Tokiko showed up at the end of last episode, she went unnoticed while Mikage instead fixated on Utena as a version of her. Because it was closer to what he remembered, and it was that version of Tokiko that Souji felt he had to overcome. All of that kind of begs the question, though, if Souji/Nemuro, whichever they are, is an unreliable narrator, how can we be sure this second version of events is the real one? Again, if we remember Tokiko’s appearance in the last episode, the second version seems to line up more with her version of events, with the premier example, Mamiya already being dead, also matching with information that we learn at the end of this episode, that Anthy has been impersonating Mamiya, seemingly at Akio’s behest, in order to manipulate him into following the will of End of the World. The final moments of the episode also demonstrate the kind of world Ohtori Academy is. When Akio tells Souji to graduate, Souji and all of his influence is erased from the world entirely. Nemuro Memorial Hall becomes a nameless ruin, and nobody remembers a thing about any of what happened. There are moments in this episode that aren’t from Souji’s perspective, though. Utena discovering Souji’s manipulations and then socking him in the mouth is one, for example. But perhaps the biggest example of this is in her considerations towards Anthy. The moment where Utena wakes up holding Anthy’s hand may be the closest these two have gotten so far, and it’s here that Utena again resolves to be Anthy’s protector. One might note that this is a decision made without Anthy’s consideration or input, especially since, again, Anthy is eventually revealed working with Akio (not to mention the number of times she’s implied to be sleeping with him), but it does still progress their relationship. Just in time for everything to start falling apart. -r Next time: Wow, what a weird arc! Thank goodness there’s a recap episode coming up to tie everything together. ←Previous Post -- Link to Episode -- Next Post→

whiplash you say?

Chris eyed the initial pen Julian produced with suspicion. But, then again, of course he did. Not only was he, well, in the suspicion business, it also seemed a bit convenient that she had the pen on her in the first place if she wasn’t intending on using it. He almost wanted to try and lift it from her just to get a better look at it -- he even tracked where it went as she slipped it back -- but he stopped himself and tried a more tactful approach, or tactful for him, at least. “How come I don’t deserve the special pen?” he said. “You can’t act like I’m all special and then give me a plain old pen.” “Teehee, that one's not for writing,” she answered. Okay, so it wasn’t a pen then (or was it? She just said it wasn’t for writing, but it still seemed like she thought of it as a pen…). Chris still kept an eye on the pocket it was in, though, even in his peripheral as he turned to take a drink. He did wonder if he was being too obvious, but he brushed the concerns aside. “Alright, here’s the story: You’re right. I was born in this big, fancy castle. Which one, I couldn’t tell you -- my memory is too hazy for that -- but you do have to trust that I remember that much. But after my birth, the first thing I remember was waking up in an alleyway, about six years old at that point, yeah? So that’s a third of my life I already don’t remember right there. And another six years were spent being gaslit. That one core memory of mine, that I do have a last name, that I do matter, that all got beaten out of me. “But I got some licks in too, eventually,” Chris said. “And I got smart. I learned not to talk about it much, that was why I was so hostile to you earlier, sorry. So now I just work as a --” oh, what was the word? “an ostler and a baster trying to get a glimpse of the castle that was once mine. The Spark, too, that could help just as much, that’s why I have my companions in that regard. “‘Now, why haven’t my parents searched for me?’ I hear you ask.” Chris lowered his voice and leaned in and gestured, trying to get Julian to do the same. “Well, first of all, who’s to say they haven’t? They won’t know what I look like anymore. But that ignores the more serious reason. I think -- you know, because I think about this a lot -- I think they’ve been hexed. I think they don’t even remember that they had a child. So only by their true love’s embrace -- that’s me, obviously -- will the spell be broken.” Julian nodded slowly. “Seems it won’t be so easy to figure you out. Well, that’s what investigation is for.” She smiled wide. “Honestly, it’s more fun that way.” Then why’d you ask? Chris thought. “I guess if we’re being honest with each other, you might as well ask her what her story is,” he said, gesturing first to the elf with the sword and then the waitress who had just served his companions drinks. “Or her what hers is. I don’t think they’d tell you either. Or maybe they would, but either way, I’m not that type of person. There’s something you can write down.”

Apology Simon barely even perceived being dragged out of Dia’s temple. In one moment, he was in the temple’s inner sanctum, and in the next, he was being flung against the warm midday cobblestone of the Temple Square. He was panting a little, but he tried to conceal it to a degree; focusing his breathing through the nose allowed him some degree of control over his circumstances, even as the watchdog loomed large over him. “I don’t know what possessed you to do what you did, Simon,” the dog said, “but you will confess your sins to the people of Galatea before you die. Well, Simon thought, at least his death would not be a surprise. He tilted his head back to get an upside-down view of the gathering crowd. There were many gathered already, some clearly gathered by the guards and some arriving simply because the crowd was already there. Simon had to smile at what had been provided to him. An audience was an audience, no matter the reason they had gathered, and he pushed himself up to recline against his elbows; it was much less comfortable than when he normally performed it on his cot, but it still gave him an inkling of presentability and he was determined to have it. With that, Simon began his confession. “You must forgive me, my fellow citizens of Galatea, that I cannot rise to my own defense. My strength has failed me recently in these recent months,” he said. “Forgive me too, then, that you probably remember me as a singer, not this broken man who lies before you. And lastly, I ask that you forgive me for the unrehearsed and unrefined performance you are about to witness. I only wish it were not so.” He coughed. “I have been placed here today, and you have been gathered, at the behest of a representative of our many gods, to confess all of my sins to you now. I will do this freely, as should you, of course, should you be unfortunate enough to find yourself in a similar situation. Surely you all remember tales of a holy man -- some would even dare to call him a saint -- who could not help but admit how he and his friends stole fruit from an orchard in his younger years. If I may be so bold as to invoke him further, he proclaimed that it was not the desire for the fruit, nor the desire for friendship that drove him, but the desire to sin itself. That was what was intoxicating to the holy man. “But I am not a holy man, my dear Galateans. I have never claimed to be. I see some of my followers in the crowd among you; if you ask them, they will confirm what I say. Nor do I dare compare myself to a holy man in even the remotest sense. As I said, you probably remember me as a singer and nothing more. But I do bring up this anecdote to question the nature of my demanded confession itself. Am I supposed to be confessing to my sins? Or to my desires?” He looked out to the masses, and that was when he spotted something: a bristle of movement as the familiar face of Taros’ watchdog made his way through the crowd. It was not enough to cause him to stutter in his speech, but it was of note. “‘He is stalling!’” Simon said. “Yes, I can hear the murmurs among you. ‘He continues to speak yet refuses to confess!’ I am sure even this distinguished watchdog next to me is thinking these same thoughts you are.” He gestured to the dog in question. “This man would have me admit to heresy. Of blasphemy. All I am asking, then, is to-” “I see you’ve been busy, Watchdog of Hinder.” Taros’ dog breached the wall of people and stepped into the circle the crowd had provided Simon. “I wish for this not to end in bloodshed,” he said. “I’d ask if there was a better way, but the look in your eyes tells me otherwise.” “Ah,” Simon said. “Well, I would consider it bad form to interrupt a performance, but I will make an exception here.” Again, he addressed the crowd. “These are watchdogs, after all. What they do is the gods’ will. In fact, I might recommend stepping back quite a bit, in case the gods decide to be, ah, rather sloppy with their actions today.” OOC