the early trauma episode
Nov. 7th, 2024 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mikogalateaI love episode 9 of Revolutionary Girl Utena so much. I have about a million feelings about the coffin flashback alone.
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- 1: the brightest star in the sky (ocean?)
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Date: 2024-11-07 10:00 pm (UTC)And the hand grab when Utena pulls Anthy from the coffin...actually, that whole scene is such excellent foreshadowing to the final episode.
[CW: suicidal ideation, CSA]
Date: 2024-11-07 10:45 pm (UTC)Right now I'm going nuts over the subtle hints at Touga's backstory. Just the fact his apparent thought process after the adults walked away was "if that girl's missing, she must be in one of those coffins I happened to see" says an awful lot; he understood suicidal feelings before even seeing Utena. Just as Utena sounded as miserable and tired of living as she was, Touga looked similarly miserable and tired of living, and I feel like he might've been dissociating through much of that scene; his eyes seemed glazed over, the shadowing on his face in some shots made it look like he had bags under his eyes, and he kept stroking his thumb over the lock of Utena's hair he picked up. His behaviour here makes a lot of sense for a CSA victim who was almost certainly suicidally depressed as a result.
Saionji and Utena do actually have an interesting dynamic, and I ought to think about their parallels some more. (For now I've been rotating the Anthy-Touga and Touga-Miki dynamics in my head. There's actually quite a lot of overlooked and underrated dynamics in this show.) The link between this episode and the finale is good, too. That contrast between Utena grabbing a completely passive Anthy's hand here and Anthy choosing to reach for Utena's hand in the finale...
Re: [CW: suicidal ideation, CSA]
Date: 2024-11-07 10:55 pm (UTC)OH MY GOD, YES. Lexi made a comment when we watched that episode about how Touga didn't want to go home because it meant being molested again, and in my first fic about him and Saionji I had him not look both ways and Saionji go WTF MORON YOU ALMOST GOT RUN OVER. His appearance and behavior definitely track for suicidal.
Yeah. Anthy was both their "something eternal" in different senses, and both of them are pretty awful to her in different ways (Saionji physically abusing her while Utena tries to force her to be something she's not, then later admitting she just wanted to save her for her own ego).
Re: [CW: suicidal ideation, CSA]
Date: 2024-11-09 01:22 pm (UTC)I remember you saying Lexi said that back then, and I also remember that fic of yours; in fact, I was rereading it not all that long ago. I can certainly see it, if Touga doing way more kendo matches with Saionji than planned was a way of staying away from home as long as he could...
Those are good points about who and what Anthy is to both Saionji and Utena. (Sheesh, Utena really is kind of awful to her in her own way in the first arc. Telling her to her face she'd lose the second duel against Saionji in ep 2, outright forcing her to socialise at a party she herself wouldn't have otherwise attended in ep 3, getting arrogant about her in ep 11 and saying she'd turn her into a "normal" girl even when the only thing Anthy actually admitted to was wanting more friends, generally deciding Anthy's feelings for her and doing similar shit to Miki in acting like what she wants for Anthy must be what Anthy herself wants too... honestly, I couldn't help finding her a bit frustrating at times.)
Re: [CW: suicidal ideation, CSA]
Date: 2024-11-09 01:30 pm (UTC)Aww! :D I still love that fic. I just really love slotting Touga's movie backstory into the series, and imagining other people in his life being mostly clueless but wondering WHY Touga does certain things.
GOD, SHE IS. Touga was a dick in episode 11, but no matter who would've beaten Utena she still would have been forced to learn a harsh lesson about Anthy and how in the end her wishes for her were no different from other Duelists'. The whole first arc makes Utena's admission of her selfishness in ep 38 even more meaningful, because you know she's referring to those instances in addition to everything else.
Re: [CW: suicidal ideation, CSA]
Date: 2024-11-10 12:55 am (UTC)I don't even think of it as slotting Touga's movie backstory into the series anymore; I've long since accepted it that thoroughly as also being series canon, thanks in great part to Enokido's commentary. His character just makes so much sense if he's a childhood rape victim.
Yeah, Touga isn't any less of a prick in ep 11 just because Utena's being a self-righteous hypocrite, and she was going to get a nasty wake-up call in one way or another. Utena admitting to how she'd wronged Anthy really does have its full impact because we can see in the first arc how she wronged Anthy; the series doesn't just tell us she fucked up, it showed us how she fucked up. It annoys me when fandom sometimes likes to cheapen one of the most powerful moments in the show by acting like Utena never actually did anything wrong and totally had full respect for Anthy as a three-dimensional autonomous human being from the very very beginning. Utena's a good protagonist because she's flawed and makes mistakes and has to learn from them -- and she does!
Re: [CW: suicidal ideation, CSA]
Date: 2024-11-10 02:09 am (UTC)Good point. Yeah, that's actually how I see it too. Not wanting to go home until very late, letting Akio have his way with him, stomping down all his empathy because feeling was just too painful.
YES. Both sides were the asshole there, and when you learn Anthy's backstory and how she's been suffering all this time it makes both of them look even WORSE in hindsight. Yet at the same time they had no idea, and it was meant to be that way until Akio stepped up his game to manipulate Utena even further.
It's because they're an official yuri couple and people want it to be pure romance and wholesomeness. Which...no, the entire point of them is their Official Couple Ordeal Syndrome in which it's not JUST outside forces fucking them over - it's Utena herself!