asks!
Are you sure about that?
Are you sure youāre sure?
(I imagine itās probably concept art for a design they decided not to go with. Alas, bc as yāall probably know by now I love long hair, but oh well. I was so fucking psyched when her hair came back with the transformation, oh my god)
oh my god, headcanon accepted
...or, if we want to get really depressing up in here, theyāre her motherās clothes that were left to her when she died
oof. Iām not surprised that happened but genuinely surprised it was animated, given that unless Iām really missing something there was no blood at all in the series. Even full on impalement didnāt draw a drop.
Oh, neat, I didnāt know there was a manga version of the movie! And yeah, people have told me both sides of the story re: Saitoās work and statements, so Iām probably going to read the manga but not blog it? I might make a big text post with My Thoughts afterwards or something but no promises.
...hmm. The only one of these that I see is that Anthyās bindi is more noticeable in the movie. Iāve been clicking back and forth between series and movie screencaps of the same characters, and the only difference I can really see is that Utenaās sometimes a little pinker in the series? But that much seems to depend a lot on lighting, and on the overall palette of the movie. All these characters came off definitely Japanese to me in the series, though admittedly thatās affected by them all having very Japanese names. Iām also curious about the lighter skin tone being āmore stereotypically Indianā to you-- Iām curious where youāre from, anon! Iām from California in the US, and if I were to try to imagine a Stereotypical Indian Person I would imagine a skin tone closer to series!Anthyās, probably.
I am not the be-all and end-all of this, and Iām genuinely bad at this kind of thing a lot of the time-- when I was a kid I thought Summer Glau was Chinese because she played River Tam-- so Iām by no means trying to tell you that youāre wrong. Iām just not seeing the same things youāre seeing, which is intriguing. Iām always open to listen and learn, and Iād love to hear more from you or anyone else who noticed things I might not have about character design changes like this.
...damn.
Iām never sure how canon you can count things that didnāt make their way into a story-- is it still canon if itās a deleted scene? If itās word of god? Gotta take it on a case-by-case basis, I think-- but I can see it. Thatās... painful. I guess it explains how he learnt to be a manipulator, as sad as that is, and having badly needed a rescue of some kind can also feed into that desire to pose oneself as the rescuer. Itās genuinely pretty horrifying.
That makes me worry about Nanami a lot, too-- was she ever aware of what was going on? Touga looked about seven or so in that flashback scene, and Nanamiās only a few years younger, but she didnāt remember that they were adopted-- I donāt really have memories from before I was about five, so I guess thatās plausible, but it also seems like the kind of thing that might be blocked out? I always saw her as a sort of āunfavourite childā while their parents doted on Touga, but this definitely contradicts that... hmm. A lot to think about.












