when the stars fall you will be the first to burn

As of this morning I was reluctantly looking for jobs because I love my job and don't want to leave it, but see: $10k raise problem solver.

As of noon today this was no longer an issue, because my boss called me with the news that I was getting a $10K merit raise.

I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. This is roughly $200 extra per paycheck. Enough to pay off debt faster, rebuild my savings, and spend a weekend a month in Milwaukee getting obscenely laid. The sex I'm going to have on $200 extra per paycheck. You can't even.

Anthy Himemiya & Nanami Kiryuu - Utena la fillette révolutionnaire

GET in line

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The Sunlit Garden is a place that cannot be returned to because it never really existed. It’s an idealized, fantasy locale that represents the idea of something that was lost because it never truly was.

For example, expanding on the analysis of Miki: For him, the song represents his lost childhood. He’s growing up and doesn’t want to, partly because as a child prodigy, he never had a childhood to begin with. So he has this idyllic invention of a childhood, the fantasy childhood, symbolized by the song.

(Later in the series, when Utena and Anthy visit the Kaoru household, Utena wonders if the garden is the garden of the song, and Anthy asks if such a place ever existed – it didn’t.)

In many ways, the Sunlit Garden (as a place) is the unhemliech of Freud. It’s a place that’s like home but not, and cannot be returned to. The idea of going back to that place is disturbing and frightening (in Freudian terms, this would be similar to the idea of being reincorporated back into the mother).

The song itself is very nostalgic and sweet-sounding, but it has sinister and disturbing undertones, if using this Freudian framework especially. (As a side note, part of nostalgia is the misremembering of the past, not just a longing for the past.)

So when the song is used, it connotes an idyllic past that never existed, a fantasy version of that time and place. Or a false, fantasy version of a person and their role, such as Dios/Akio. It’s what should have been, not what was, but that perception of the should then becomes that person’s reality. 

So to apply this to Utena’s prince fantasy and the flashbacks at the start of the episodes: What we see is what should have been, according to very specific narrative convention. The prince should ride up on a white horse and save the princess. They should get engaged. But where this goes astray from narrative convention is that Utena then decides to become the prince – but a fantasy version of that prince, not interrogating what “prince” means as a role and identity (which is where she then goes wrong, eventually admitting that she wanted to save Anthy for the sake of herself and not for Anthy’s sake). (See also: Utena’s constant insistence that she is a “normal girl,” playing into the prince/princess fantasy)

Later on when we find out the “truth” of what happened (Utena being shown the Rose Bride and deciding to save her), even that ends up falling into what should be according to narrative convention, only here, the prince is shown to be false, and Utena takes up the role of prince to become the savior of the damsel in distress (Anthy in this case). But this isn’t the capital-T-Truth of what happened, either. One of the major themes of this show is that the Truth (objective, all-knowing, concrete Truth) is unknowable, and/or does not exist.

“The Sunlit Garden” still plays during the flashbacks after we find out the “actual” story. It’s still false, a fantasy version.

I also don’t entirely believe the story of why Anthy is the Rose Bride, mostly because the Shadow Girls are unreliable narrators, but we can never really know that for sure, either.

Honestly, from the start, I was never really sure if Utena ever existed (or if she was dead the whole time), and after finishing the series (and movie!) I still don’t know. I think that’s an open question.

I haven’t gone back through the series to analyze every scene where “The Sunlit Garden” plays, but I would bet that this analysis holds up for most of the scenes. Almost all of the issues that the characters in Utena have come from not being able to let go of an idealized version of the past (not counting the overarching issues of gender and of narrative posed by the series, but the smaller-scale problems of the characters themselves – Miki, Saionji’s hangups about “true friendship,” Juri’s issues with Shiori, etc.), and the issue of time is a major structuring problem throughout the series.

tl;dr: yes, the song “The Sunlit Garden” is often used to connote a false, fantasy version of the past, including during the flashback scenes with the prince.

Yeah I very much like the idea that there was no real, physical garden, and that it’s meant to be a metaphor or symbolic of something in Miki’s mind. And now I’m wondering if there’s some weird Garden of Eden metaphor going on there, especially given all of the purity/temptation themes that go with Miki and Kozue.

I get two instant thoughts regarding the theme playing even during the “true” version of Utena’s past. It’s important to note that it starts when Dios kisses away Utena’s tears. Maybe the music is meant to remind us that since this is the only part Utena remembers, she thus constructed her memory around it to fit in with the conventional narrative of a prince/princess story, and that it’s false. Or it’s meant to enforce the idea that she idealises what she plans to do, and that her goal of becoming a Prince to save Anthy never comes to pass - at least in her mind. She forgets the true events and constructs a fantasy. But she also misunderstands that a Prince is not really and cannot truly exist. I’ve often wondered whether Dios himself (if he is/was also a person and not just a representation of a concept) understood the flawed nature of the Prince, because he talks about Anthy needing a Princ to save her and that he could not become that prince for her. Maybe the Sunlit Garden is meant to highlight that as well?

I like your point about the Sunlit Garden beginning to play only when Dios kisses Utena’s tears away during the ‘real’ flashback. I think I would go with the argument that this part is the only part that Utena really remembers. It is relevant here that the fairytale memory sequence is almost entirely in a different art style to that of the rest of the show - I’d call it a storybook style, seeing as it features sketchy backgrounds with two-dimensional figures layered over the top, mostly unmoving. I don’t know, I don’t really do art, but it’s definitely quite distinct from the normal animation. But there are two shots which are in the normal RGU art style - Dios kissing Utena’s tears away, and him placing the ring on her finger. These shots are very similar to the corresponding ones in the ‘real’ flashback sequence; as such, I think that Utena’s only specific memories of the event are those two, and presumably some of the words Dios used (’if you keep that strength and nobility even when you grow up, this will lead you back here one day’). Everything else was reconstructed by Utena at a later date, and so it appears in the colourful but flat storybook style. 

I think the reason that The Sunlit Garden starts playing as Dios kisses Utena is related to this. Dios expected that Utena would forget all about her encounter with him and Anthy, and indeed she might have if not for those two moments she remembers - the kiss and the ring. Alternately, she might have remembered the event accurately if not for those two occurrences, which are so heavy with generic implications. So it’s those moments which usher in the memory altering effect which left us with that fairytale opening, making it appropriate that The Sunlit Garden would start playing at that point. The song, I think, symbolises not that the ‘true’ version is wrong, but that it would become altered and twisted in the way Miki’s childhood memories were.

thinking about wakaba’s black rose episode and her mugs… how everything she wants really just boils down to this, a pair of his & hers mugs!! she wants to be loved and feel a sense of belonging!! someone to actively choose to share things like this w her! and she’s so convinced that she can only have that with a boy!! because it’s always his & hers.

there’s utena, but utena always acts as if she’s just playing along and indulging wakaba. after all, utena is a normal girl who wants a normal boy, and wakaba is a normal girl who will be a great wife someday. so it’s okay that utena doesn’t take their “dating” seriously, because they’re just girls playing around, right?

and then anthy comes along with her talk of being utena’s bride and suddenly utena is spending more and more time with her and less and less time with wakaba, and what does that mean? what does that mean about wakaba if it was never about them both being girls? that hurt and resentment starts building… and then what?

and then saionji comes back— saionji, who was that unattainable ideal of a man who, by loving her, would make her special and important. and now she is important because he needs her. she doesn’t have to be afraid anymore. she found the other half of her set. being acknowledged as an essential and irreplaceable part of someone else’s life suddenly makes her shine with confidence!! but it all hinges on something that was doomed from the start

because people are not ornamental. wakaba and saionji are not neatly manufactured for one another. their relationship relies on saionji being entirely dependent on wakaba, because as soon as he has the freedom to go back to school, she immediately becomes distressed about how he’s going to abandon her for anthy— anthy, who is special. anthy, who is engaged to utena.

and the saddest thing is that she’s absolutely right about saionji because he’s. y’know. saionji. and when he leaves, he doesn’t even take the mug. it stays behind as a reminder of the pattern she’s seemingly doomed to repeat.

except in her duel, the pattern is broken. utena never draws the sword of dios, and we never see wakaba fall into that body outline. we’re just left with that ambiguous shot of utena desperately grasping at wakaba’s hand to keep her from slipping away.