The bird is fighting its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wishes to be born must destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The god is named Abraxas.
—Herman Hesse, Demian
Revolutionary Girl Utena, episode 11: “Carefully Cruel – The One Who Picks That Flower.” Directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. Character designs by Chiho Saito. Be-Papas, 1997 (Nozomi Entertainment, 2011). Approx. 24 minutes. Rated “16+.”
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We have now reached the penultimate episode of the first arc, the “Student Council Saga.” This is the third (fourth?) time I’ve watched this series, and I remain impressed by how well-constructed this first arc is. Although the ideas stay interesting, the animation and editing will take a hit in the next arc, and then the grand finale will be so dang goofy that mileage will vary, but this first arc, in spite of some flaws, is unquestionably good.
Since this is the second-to-last episode, it’s only fair to throw out a spoiler warning, though we have not, of course, been spoiler-free before now.
I feel I should point out something that hasn’t been clear from my slow-walk reviews, and that’s just how subtle some of the content is. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Anthy’s passive-aggressive manipulation of the other characters, but let me emphasize again that this is the third time I’ve watched the show. The first time, I didn’t even pick up on it, or if I did, I interpreted it as a series of unfortunate coincidences. Even though Revolutionary Girl Utena is at times absurdly melodramatic, it at other times exhibits ingeniously well-deployed understatement. Anthy is a master manipulator, and she’s so subtle about it that even the audience can miss it.
Again, too, note that Anthy has been slapped silly by most of the rest of the cast (episode 11 is one of three this season, if I’ve counted correctly, without slapping). She knows, or ought to know, that the duelists are unstable enough to respond to her manipulations with violence, but she keeps doing it anyway.
Why? That’s one of the many questions still before us as we approach the end of this first arc. We still do not know what purpose the duels serve, who End of the World is, what it means to revolutionize the world, or what compels Anthy to be the Rose Bride, though we do have some hints: if nothing else, these characters, with their vague and frustrated desires, are trying to find God and get to heaven, as represented by the unattainable fairy castle floating over the arena.
There is an old saying, one that can be misleading without a sufficient background in Christian metaphysics, that the man knocking on the door of the brothel is looking for God. That seems to be the case with the duelists, who are mired in any number of neurotic tendencies and are willing to enslave a girl to reach their ends, but who underneath it all are hunting desperately for eternity, or a shining thing, or some other not-quite-identified something that they equate with happiness.
Even though we might not know what Anthy is doing, we have one mystery that is solved—or appears to be. In this episode, Utena becomes fully convinced that Touga, the playboy student council president, is the long-lost prince who rescued her when she was a child. We know that Touga found her in a coffin after the death of her parents, and we know Saionji is convinced that Touga somehow showed Utena eternity. Touga himself now confirms it.
And after revealing himself to be Utena’s prince, he challenges her to a duel.
Although Utena had been frustrated with Anthy and the student council’s shenanigans in the first episode, she has now grown attached to Anthy. She is indignant that Anthy is forced to be the Rose Bride, believes Anthy wants to break out of her role and make friends, and is determined to protect her. Anthy seems to confirm that her own desires are in accord with Utena’s.
Touga, on the other hand, expresses distaste at Utena’s attempt to get Anthy a social life and says that she’s better off simply tending the roses in her birdcage-shaped garden. Whether he actually believes this (or why) or simply says it to get under Utena’s skin, isn’t clear.
Naturally, when Utena enters the arena, she faces a conflict between her desire to save Anthy and her feelings for Touga.
By this episode, something we’d already suspected is now clear: Touga’s been playing a long game. He used Saionji and then even used his sister Nanami to position himself to face Utena. Because she has the Power of Dios that descends out of the castle during her duels, he knows he can’t beat her fair and square, so he’s maneuvered himself into a place where he can beat her in more underhanded fashion. Since she believes him to be her prince, she can’t quite strike the finishing blow, and he wins the match.
And after he’s won, he seeks to give her an emotional blow from which she can’t recover. Just as Saionji got a shock when Utena won Anthy from him and he discovered that Anthy no longer loved him, so Utena gets a shock when Anthy tells her, at Touga’s prompting, that she doesn’t need friends and is perfectly content being the Rose Bride.
As Touga explains, Anthy had merely done and said what Utena wanted. Now that she is Touga’s, she does what he wants instead.
And that leaves open the question—what exactly is Anthy, and does she have any will of her own?
