Nanami's humorous "filler" episodes remind me a lot of the role of a Shakespearean fool. They're there to relieve the tension of otherwise very intense and dramatic episodes (e.g. the cow episode appearing in the middle of the Black Rose arc starting to get serious), but these episodes also exist to sneak in important ideas throughout the rest of the show -- sometimes as a preview, sometimes as a fully realized idea. From an idealized "big brother" as an "ideal man", to her fear of being consumed and forgotten while she's being left in self-aggrandizing ignorance to transform into a cow. She is the royalty digging herself into a path from which she may not be able to escape, and her episodes are the porter rambling about equivocating oneself into Hell.
I just watched ep. 24, the Nanami recap episode; it's notable to me that it only covers the seemingly "funny" moments, and not the moments that give those context, until the song about a calf lead to the slaughter plays at the end. Not the creeping realization that her irritating, mean, spiteful, and frequently outright malicious behaviour is encouraged on all sides by people like Touga and Tsuwabuki who, maliciously or not, want her to be blinded to her actions and attached to them. It leaves a lingering question of why is she like this? What's missing? throughout the recap. Also interesting is that Nanami, Utena, and Anthy spend most of the episode as shadows semi-gossiping behind a curtain, which is very reminiscent of the shadow-parable girls -- the same means by which ideas are distilled -- and it's only when she becomes angry that Nanami pushes out of the curtain and becomes real again. And of course, the position of weakness Nanami is in throughout the episode is actually one of Tsuwabuki's presumptuous imaginings, and at the very end Nanami wrests control of the situation into her own hands. Not even in a healthy way, but also by using the language of control and threats.
I don't know. All that feels like foreshadowing, or a hint thrown in the viewer's face, disguised as tension-relieving humour. It's hard to know what to take seriously with Nanami, but I'd rather err on the side of "everything".
