I'm Sorry I Wiggled Your Skinny Boyfriend Like A Sheet Of Metal. Weeop Womp Weeoop Womp Weeeoop Womp

OK BUT SOMEONE NEEDS TO TALK ABOUT THIS

IT ABSOLUTELY DROPPED MY JAW THE SECOND HE SAID THAT OH MY GOOOODDD

“You can’t cure this,” said the Prince. “It’s spirit shit … possession. You can ward people so they don’t get grabbed—if you’re really good—but otherwise, chop them up and burn the bits. That’s the cure. Civilian or Edenite or House, it makes no difference.”

I recently discovered laundry stripping and y’all, no matter how much of a crock of shit you think fast fashion is, you’re underestimating.

Oh no, he got hot!

What do you think of Docholligay’s take on Ruka, that being that he’s a projection of Juri’s dark side and that, in shattering the locket, she overcomes?

Man, it is a good-ass take that I love a lot.

It really fixes the one big issue with the otherwise amazing two-parter of episodes 28 and 29 wrapping up Juri’s issues. Which is of interloper Ruka. Personal feelings about Ruka as a character aside (which is really kind of tied up in the ‘men of Utena’ as a whole, that he seemingly gets to waltz in, fuck shit up, and leave with relatively little consequence to himself), it is profoundly weird that this issue of Juri and Shiori’s relationship is only ‘solved’ when this random guy who we have never heard of before and never will again shows up. But that ends up only SUPPORTING Doc’s read.

I had previously read the whole thing of Ruka not being spoken of before and after his time to be more of a function of the insular space-time weirdness of Ohtori where anything that isn’t there might as well not exist to those within it. But that’s just the thing - space and time does weird things in Ohtori and that manifests in odd ways - SEE MIKAGE. Which only grows more relevant as both Mikage’s final episodes and Ruka’s episodes are some of the most blatant foreshadowing of the ending of the show (where Utena ‘leaves’ the school and Anthy frees herself). If Mikage is a ghost, then why isn’t Ruka as well?

I don’t think that Juri necessarily invented Ruka wholecloth. With Doc’s reading in mind I do read him as a combination of Juri’s dark side manifest AND a ghost (that at some point in Juri’s past there was a ‘Ruka’ who mentored her but he’s long dead, hence why everyone else is so confused when the ‘old’ fencing captain shows up). Much like most of the cast, Juri has trapped herself in a toxic pattern regarding her inability to move on from her feelings for Shiori and imagine a happy future for herself (something she thinks would take ‘a miracle’ so mired she is in self-loathing). We see her try to break the cycle before and fail miserably - in episode 17 she throws away the locket, a good and healthy thing, but the moment it reappears in front of her she cannot reject it again. Juri must be aware on a subconscious level that she needs SOMETHING to break through this, but she isn’t prepared to do it on a conscious level - she is tied up in the idea that she can only be happy if Shiori returns her feelings, so to reject Shiori would to be giving up any hope, thus she chases her tail over and over for ‘a miracle’. So the idea of an influential man in her life (and that it is a MAN who is able to, briefly, have a ‘normal’ heterosexual relationship with Shiori is a big part of that) becoming the avatar of all the things she feels she can’t surpass or are holding her back - that sounds like just the kind of thing that can manifest as a ghost in Ohtori’s weird space-time-ness.

Which really only makes the foreshadowing of the end of the series only more potent. I used to bristle at this idea of Ruka being ‘a prince who saved Juri because of his man-love bleh’ since he ‘dies’ after Juri is freed, comparable to the young man in her story about her sister nearly drowning (and comparable to Utena disappearing after opening the coffin). BUT this changes it significantly - much like how Anthy cannot be pulled out of the coffin and must choose to reach back to Utena, Juri ultimately frees herself. Ruka is her manifestation and he ‘dies’ like a prince because ‘princes’ are fuck-all useless - at the end of the day the true ideal of ‘the prince’ never existed, and pursuing that ideal only leads to failure. We are supposed to read Akio and Dios as denigrating Utena in the final episodes when they say she’s ‘just a girl’ - but a nonexistent prince can’t help anyone. Only by reaching out to Anthy as a human being, as a GIRL, can Utena help break this cycle of abuse and loathing that Anthy has mired herself in. By giving herself someone to struggle against, Juri can throw away the rose and forfeit the duel, finally abandoning the endless and futile search for ‘a miracle.’ So really when you read Ruka not as an actual dude who suddenly dies after inserting himself into the drama of these two girls, but as the ghost-simulacrum of who Juri both wants and fears to become, Ruka suddenly makes much more sense in regards to not only Juri’s arc but to the overall themes of RGU.

‘aight, mate, we’re done! Looking like a proper little punk now, eh?

I finally finished my Utena re-watch yesterday, binging the last three episodes and Adolescence in one evening, and I am Having Thoughts. Mostly about the story from Akio's perspective, surprisingly.

I don't know if I've ever read anyone's exploration of the story from his pov, so I'm going to brain-vomit about it.

From his pov, he's the one who's trapped. The Rose Bride sealed Dios away from the world, whether for his own good or to keep her brother to herself, or both. The princely part of him, Dios, is trapped, leaving only the human part of him, Akio, out in the world, trying to regain what he's lost and cope without what he sees as his 'real' power. 'The power to revolutionise the world' is, for him, the regaining of his heroic princely aspect that made him something close to a god among mortals, a natural leader, the greatest warrior.

So what is he left with? What does a regular human man have with which to find his place in the world? What is his role, if not a prince? Is he a ladies' man? An intellectual? A fighter? A logical realist who denies the 'miracles' the prince could perform to keep people safe?

It's clear from the Black Rose arc, and from the final scenes, that Akio has repeated the duels in some form many times, assuming that he needs the right sword to open the Rose Gate and access his old power. He holds this 'might makes right' belief that physical strength or a warrior's weapon is the key to power. When Utena, just a girl, succeeds as the winner of the duels, at first he tries to persuade her to stand down, because how could a girl's sword possibly be strong enough to open the Gate? I wondered, during this watch, if this cycle was the first time that any girls had taken part in the duels, and whether that was by design or accidental. In the Black Rose arc, it's 100 boys who are drawn in to find the power or the eternal something. In this latest cycle, it's the student council, a power structure that represents intellectual masculinity: Juri, as a lesbian in a uniform closer to her male counterparts than to the other female students, might possibly have been the first girl to join the duels, an unintentional outcome perhaps inspired by Mikage, who was more easily tempted by a boy than by that boy's older sister. She still represented an aspect of masculinity in her own way, as the logical realist who denies miracles. Likewise, Nanami joins the duels initially to stand in for her brother, and leaves when she is confronted by how damaging the system is to the very people it's supposed to protect.

I wondered if perhaps Utena was never meant to join the duels. If Dios had meant to find Touga and Saionji on that particular day, and stumbled on Utena because they did. If Utena joining and winning the duels was never part of Akio's plan, and that's why he, and all the others, are so perplexed by her and never figure out how to get the better of her. Akio tries to force her into the role of 'Girl' because all he knows is playing the role of 'Man', and what else is a man supposed to do with a girl besides protect her or seduce her?

Utena succeeds because, for all her talk about wanting to be a prince to rescue girls, she gives up that roleplay and acts of of genuine love and compassion. She succeeds in besting the Rose Bride's curse because she doesn't approach it like a man, trying to seduce, fight, or logic her way through, but by loving Anthy and by having the compassion to want to end her pain.

Utena is still very much about smashing the patriarchy (literally in the case of Adolescence), but in its own way it also artfully deconstructs the ways in which patriarchy hurts men too, by limiting the roles available to them. Utena offers an alternative to the masculine roles of warrior, lover, intellectual and cynic, as well as to the feminine role of princess. The student council recognise it in the end, but Akio never does, because he is so utterly stuck in his role. That's why Anthy gets to leave at the end, telling him he's the one that's trapped, because Utena showed her that she, and we, can choose our own roles.