like a star, like a firefly

Episodes 31 and 32 still hurt. Poor Nanami.

I want to throw more bricks at Akio. I've got ep 33 next, so I'll want even more bricks for that. Bastard.

I just got to episode 25 in my Utena rewatch, and it's made me glad I decided to watch it on its own, because it's fucking me up right now. ;.;

Just two points among many:

1. I'm having feelings about Anthy, just as I'm pretty sure this is the episode where Anthy herself caught real feelings for Utena.

2. I want to throw a fucking brick at Akio. There are two major reasons why and other reasons besides those.

There's several episodes from the Black Rose arc I have a lot of feelings on, too.

I've been watching Star Driver recently -- aiming to finish it off tonight just finished it, in fact -- and it's got me thinking about something.

After they both worked on Utena together with the rest of Be-PaPas, Ikuhara has since worked on other things (e.g. Mawaru Penguindrum, Yuri Kuma Arashi, Sarazanmai) and Enokido has also since worked on other things (e.g. Melody of Oblivion, the abovementioned Star Driver, Captain Earth).

There's been speculation before in Utena fandom, particularly in response to people acting like Ikuhara made the show singlehandedly, about how much Enokido's writing may have contributed to Utena being as good as it was. I recall that this speculation involved discussing the flaws in Penguindrum and YKA (Sarazanmai hadn't aired yet at the time) and thus what strengths and weaknesses Ikuhara has as a director. That said, I don't think there was much if any discussion of Enokido's post-Utena work or his strengths and weaknesses as a writer for anime based on that.

Basically, I'm wondering what people think of Ikuhara's post-Utena works versus Enokido's post-Utena works, what people prefer and why, and what credit we should assign to whom for Utena being what it was. Right now I suspect the specific combination of Ikuhara and Enokido did the trick to a big extent, and I think the influence of other project members like Saito probably helped as well.

To anyone who's watched any of the shows I mentioned here: what do you think?

No story spoilers for the new Sarazanmai episode under the cut, but I'm using it anyway in case anyone who reads this doesn't want to know anything at all about it beforehand.

( This actually has more to do with Utena fandom, but was inspired by Sarazanmai, as you'll see )

Good ep today. I'm honestly liking this show quite a bit so far.

Here's one of my favourite bits of meta about the balcony scene from episode 17 of Utena, from around two years ago.

( Three paragraphs, still under a cut anyway )

Around 4 years ago, at Gaston's prompting, I posted a long list of pet peeves I had from the Utena fandom. Among many other things, one of the peeves I mentioned was fans acting like the Anthy/Utena pairing is a completely perfect love-at-first-sight affair with no problems to be overcome whatsoever.

I got an anon ask soon afterwards that sympathised with the pet peeve and also brought up how some fans think she got into the first duel to save Anthy as opposed to just getting back at Saionji over the incident with Wakaba's love letter. In response, I ended up writing a couple of paragraphs on how Anthy/Utena did not get off to a flawless start in-series.

( Only two paragraphs, yet I'm still using the cut! )

Another anon ask I once got on Tumblr in response to my Shiori defences lamented how a lot of fans disregard her implied character development and act like she'd just being a creepy stalker to Juri in her last few scenes, even in her appearance at the end where she's considerably happier. I shared that lament and wrote a response discussing the hints of development in question; this is from around 4 years ago.

( End-of-series spoilers for a show that's over 20 years old now? Also, only three paragraphs again )

Here's a particularly old one from around 6 years ago, written when I reblogged a gifset of Wakaba's Black Rose duel -- which I still think is one of the most gutwrenching duels in the series with one of the saddest songs.

( All these old reposts get cuts even when they're only a few paragraphs )

Around 5 years ago, someone made a submission to Revolutionary Confessions on Tumblr wondering what might have happened to Shiori to make her have such an awful image of herself. Here's the speculation I added at the time.

( Not particularly long, but has mentions of bullying (naturally) and internalised homophobia )

With all the defences and analysis I wrote about Shiori on Tumblr, it was fairly inevitable that I would get an ask about how I felt about her movie incarnation. Here's the response I made to it about 5 years ago.

( Cut for length, obviously has spoilers for the movie )

It might be worth noting at this point that I'm not reposting these things in any kind of chronological order.

Kanae is one of the characters I feel most sorry for in Utena, so unsurprisingly, there have been times where I've thought about the crappy deal she got and realised she had it even worse than I'd previously believed. I made a couple of posts about it on Tumblr, and since they're both fairly short, I'm reposting them both here together.

( Cut for combined length; also contains allusions to bullying, death threats, and murder via poison )

I might try getting more old meta I still like over here in the next few days, so apologies in advance if I end up making a bunch of posts like this in relatively quick succession!

Because however the new Utena manga chapter that literally just came out in Japan turns out, it's great to see beautiful new official art that includes my much-maligned favourite character. ♥