RGU DUMP

Just realised that young Touga and Saionji being at the church where Utena was hiding in her coffin, trying to get her out of it before the prince came, means that even before they knew it they were trying to pull her away from Anthy

RGU handles the topics of grooming and sexual abuse well imo, in particular I think that Utena being groomed by Akio was scarily realistic. The way she misinterprets her own feelings of uncomfortableness and fear as being in love, how she begins losing sight of her identity, how she loses her appetite and hesitates to share what's going on with her friends, the way it portrays the very real feeling of "I feel uncomfortable and scared around this person, but I don't know why because they're just so nice to me, they care about me, it's not like they're hurting me" and as a former victim of grooming its just. OUGH. It's simultaneously scary to feel so seen but also very cathartic

actually wait let’s talk about miki and nanami in sunlit garden: prologue cause they are so funny. nanami seemingly breaks into the piano room (how did she do that) to interrupt miki’s angsty teenager time and very obviously tries to flirt with him. either he doesn’t notice this or he cares so little he just ignores her. he just starts yapping. she’s like “oh what made you like piano so much?” and he goes off on this whole spiel about how he doesn’t even LIKE playing the piano he just misses his childhood and proceeds to literally recite the intro lyrics as nanami just kind of tunes him out while flipping through his music notes. she’s just pretending to listen while internally going “wowww he’s so nice and unthreatening i feel such a connection rn” and then she finds a picture of anthy in there and immediately forgets all about miki in favor of harassing this poor girl (anthy returns the favor dw about it)

honestly the relationship between miki and nanami is so interesting to me. even though they don't seem particularly fond of each other they hang out pretty frequently. they're together in this episode, and she mentions that he played piano at the kiryuu party, and nanami also talks to him about her problems in episode 5 and in nanami's egg episode. they're the same age so they probably take some of the same classes, but they come across as more than just classmates? and i am inclined to believe it is because they are in the same social class as each other (like both the kiryuus and the kaorus live in fancy houses instead of in campus dorms for example. though with the kiryuus slightly above the kaorus).