#duel 20

WAKABA ARC LET'S GO

i've really been loving utena thus far, and these two episodes somehow find a new height. this show fucking rules. how do they do it?

right from the intro it's clear something special is going to happen, as the typical prelude is replaced with a version centering wakaba. much like with utena, she awaits the arrival of her prince, and yet it's a little hollow - no conversation, no promise, no ring - she simply waits. in the meantime, she has her prince surrogate, utena, to dote upon, and the two enjoy another picnic on the lawn until they're approached by tatsuya, the auspicious onion prince.

wakaba's childhood friend and ostensible defender, tatsuya has come to confess to utena, who gently rebuffs him. wakaba stirs up and cautions utena against him, slowly revealing that she has a special place in her heart for him - a fond memory that has grown fainter by the year. hearing wakaba call him a prince, utena infers what's going on and sagely advises her friend to consider the role of fate in all this. wakaba disagrees as a lamppost suddenly illuminates the scene - a happy coincidence.

meanwhile, the student council members discuss their own desires and longing, which remain constant and unfulfilled. miki thinks of anthy whenever he plays the piano, touga remains the sun in nanami's sky, and though her name doesn't escape juri's lips, shiori echoes in her musing on one's inability to choose who they love. this prolonged, unrequited pining atmosphere will return…

utena seeks advice from her weekly akio session, wondering what to do about wakaba and tatsuya, who she feels aren't being honest with each other. akio posits that people's hearts are "veiled with thin silk" and that it's impossible to read their true desires. utena takes this at face value, unaware of how relevant his words are, sitting innocently across from anthy. akio's advice so far has made an interesting contrast to the silhouettes - while the silhouettes seem to obliquely hint at the episode's dramatic thread (prompting utena's skepticism), akio is more straight-to-the-point, and utena usually sees his words as wise guidance (when she can understand his metaphors). there's something to be said here about the voice of a male authority figure taking precedence over the shadowy plays of the feminine silhouettes, especially given akio's apparent menace. the silhouettes seem to grasp at something, possibly as misguided as the teenagers they accompany and often seem to be peers of. what is a tire, anyway?

utena, beleagueredly sipping her tea with a sage air, parrots akio's advice, prompting wakaba to confess her true feelings for tatsuya, which she continues to deny. utena's words do have the desired effect on tatsuya, and he pursues wakaba to a picturesque hill overlooking a burnt orange sunset. he asks wakaba to be honest with him, and there's a smooth bit of animation as wakaba kicks the ground, saying "i'm always honest." typically, the more fluid animations happen during the duels, so it's always intriguing to me to see when they're used otherwise - here, it seems like a potent emphasis of her flustered ambivalence. the rug is pulled and wakaba realizes she needs to embrace her prince, leaving tatsuya in the lurch. fortunately, they say the memorial hall can give guidance to those lost and confused…

just as tatsuya has re-entered wakaba's life too late, he enters the hall without an appointment, begging to be counseled. souji welcomes him, and tatsuya pours forth his anxieties - his love for wakaba, his grief that she doesn't return it, his anger that someone else will take his place and tarnish her, and his eternal hope that love will prevail and bring her back to him. and for the first time, the black rose rejects an interviewee. there's so much to wonder about here: souji claims tatsuya is a truly good person and that this is no place for him. something about how calculated souji is makes me feel like he wouldn't lie unnecessarily, but i also wonder if he simply sees tatsuya as a poor candidate for a duelist, especially when compared to saionji. tatsuya's rant isn't exactly free of incel sentiment, though i'm open to the thought that the elevator provokes a certain raw, unfiltered psyche vomit that doesn't necessarily define the interviewee. maybe it's tatsuya's lingering belief that wakaba will return to him that disqualifies him - he's heartbroken but not hopeless in the way that the other black rose duelists have been.

returning to wakaba, i truly thought she would run into utena's arms, but the fact that she used "him" to describe her prince did plant a seed of doubt in my mind. how naive i was. the ending of this episode was the shock of my life.

unable to wait, i continued. the warm, hazy light from the sunset returns and suffuses the air of this episode, gently accompanying wakaba as she descends into the town to shop and then returns to her dorm, to saionji. what a contrast to the other episodes - in place of miki's golden memories, nanami's noir imagination, and juri's preserved photographs, wakaba floats in a heavenly summer aura. her reality has become better than her dreams, and though her fate seems bent towards sorrow, for these few days, weeks, she has attained what every other character longs for. she has found her shining thing, her miracle.

removed from the influence of touga, the council, and ohtori, saionji has become remarkably docile and emotional, tearfully thanking wakaba for hiding him after his expulsion. stripped of the pressures and rituals of the school, he has a chance to reforge himself, exchanging his kendo sword for a whittling knife and paint. yet, his uniform hangs on the wall, a reminder of all he lost and might regain.

wakaba is in bloom. in an arc of secrets, hers is one to treasure, and in keeping it, she has become, for the first time, special. she excels at school, at sports, and though she loses touch with her friends, she can go home every day to her prince, acting out a quaint domestic life not unlike anthy and utena. utena knows something's changed, and consults her advisor, akio, who spins a tale of two kinds of people: those with special destinies, like utena, and those without, like wakaba. the latter, he explains, may become special - but only temporarily. utena is confused by akio's words, which he cites as proof of her specialness, but it all certainly smacks of any number of hierarchical -isms and -archies. that said, he may be right that utena's uncertainty at her own "specialness" is a component of her success - her humility, chivalry, and nobility are the rare qualities that bring her good fortune, popularity, and victory, while her rivals, such as touga, who see themselves as superior to others, consign themselves to defeat. it of course remains to be seen how akio's ostensible sense of superiority will affect his fate.

meanwhile, saionji presents the leaf clip to wakaba, and she sheds a tear. "it's perfect," she says. her life can soar no higher.

leaving only one direction.

as wakaba cheerfully recounts the goings-on of the council, she just so happens to omit one of their members, prompting saionji to ask the fateful question: "how is anthy doing?" and so an unignorable crack forms in wakaba's perfect life. touga's cruel words from long ago echo: "your feelings will betray you as deeply as you feel them." saionji hasn't let go of his feelings for anthy, and wakaba fears she can't compete with her, relegating her back to obscurity and unspecialness. as her heart begins to cloud, souji strikes.

"no secret escapes the notice of the black rose circle," he tells saionji, once again bringing the arc's themes into stark relief and following it up with another knockout line: "how will you escape this purgatory?" i thought, "of course!" the lovesick pining, the endless fealty to end of the world, wakaba's earlier comments that nothing ever happens at ohtori - all reflections of the purgatorial nature of the show's world. everyone is waiting, unchanging - saionji waits to return to school, tsuwabuki waits to grow up, utena and wakaba wait for their princes, juri waits for a miracle, miki waits for his shining thing to return, nanami waits for touga to reciprocate her love, and touga now waits for a resurrection. what is high school but the long wait before "adulthood" - a wait that we fear may be both far too short and unending? in this atmosphere, the duels stand out as rare moments of action, as characters finally move to seize their desires. and all along, the prince's castle hangs in the stars above, while the fires of the memorial hall's incinerator burn below.

i can't wait to finish the show and read what other people have made of it - i feel i'm barely scratching the surfaces with moments like this.

souji's moves are keen as a razor, and he dangles exactly the right bait for saionji: the reversal of his expulsion. "i'll need something of yours," he says, rich with dramatic irony. everything falls into place. anthy wears the leaf clip in front of wakaba, shattering her into pieces. she returns home and seizes the sword from saionji with frightening speed and violence. utena ascends to the arena and is rendered speechless. "utena, the sword!" anthy pleads, but utena can't raise it against her closest friend. wakaba delivers some truly heartrending plaints (huge props to her VA), cursing utena and the school's elites for trampling her life into the dirt. all she wanted was what they want - love, and a place in the sun. so utena provides as best she can, reassuring wakaba of her love for her, and yet… and yet… "i'll save you."

because she needs saving. just as utena once saw herself as anthy's savior, she now sees herself as the savior of wakaba. and, as nobly as she means this, it creates a distinction, a hierarchy between them. and so it's utena who makes the calls. wakaba's rose is cut. saionji returns to ohtori, rumors swirling about whether he'll try to rejoin the student council, his star once more ascendant among the school. and wakaba goes home to an empty room.

just like normal.

stray thoughts:

the silhouettes discuss purchasing tires and fox weddings, a legend i remember from akira kurosawa's dreams collection. been meaning to rewatch that sometime soon, i think i'd get a lot more out of it now.

hard to think of something scummier than akio telling anthy "i hope you find your own prince soon."

love that wakaba's home life with saionji is so funny - him scampering away to hide and then wiggling out from under the bed like some kind of giant insect, and meanwhile she's pretending to be a religious devotee to cover for him.

interesting that saionji frames his return to school as like, being part of a mission to space. "launch!" maybe he'd been spending time with akio before this? ever since akio's fixation on the stars was introduced, i've wondered if the show will somehow eventually go to space, continually expanding in scope a la gurren lagann.

anthy's cries to utena to draw the sword reminded me of another of my favorite desperate shouts: "chan! we need fire! bring the fire!" from the tunnel fight scene in snowpiercer (happens at 3:10 in the clip)