The Great Curry High Trip… that title explains it all, doesn’t it? I was prepared to go all smarmy lit critic and discuss how the episode’s a discussion on duality between the roles women are given, but then they flew Nanami to Africa and the whole episode became stupid. It’s a fun kind of stupid, with some parts that make the episode almost worth the experience of a naked Saionji eating a banana, but this outing feels hollow compared to…

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Before I watched the show, I got a brief glimpse of which characters the fans loved the most, and I saw a lot of people choose Juri as their favorite of the cast. I had that in mind for the past few episodes, as her role in the student council seemed more brooding than any of Touga’s attempts at leading their plans. She resonated with a more mature feel than her cohorts, not partaking in Touga’s womanizing, Saionji’s abrasions, Nanami’s…

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As the show has previously shown, Nanami is the school bitch. She has her own posse, makes plans to humiliate Anthy, and really wants to get in the most popular guy’s pants. She’s like Libby from Sabrina, but with 20% more incest. Even in moments of seeming kindness, Nanami makes a point to ruin it within a second, and this episode is her moment to shine in that regard. Sure, the school bitch trope has become a tired cliché in…

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Back to what I said about desire, desire does not always have to come from wicked or even merely questionable intentions in order to be a destructive force. Here, Miki’s fight with Utena is driven out of a desire to free Anthy from the shackles of being a Rose Bride. Abolition? That ranks highly among noble goals, but good will doesn’t immediately translate into good actions. This seems to be what Ikuhara’s doing in this two-parter by showing that someone…

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I’m reading a book right now called Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann, a re-imagining of the Faustian legend by making the person who sells their soul for more power a piano composer instead of a sorcerer. It goes further into the concept of sacrificing one’s essence for talent, and showing that we wish for can disrupt what we already have, like relationships with other people. The change that Mann makes by replacing Faustus’ alchemic circles with Leverkühn’s piano keys begs…

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I remember citing repetition as the chief reason why I dropped this show a few years ago, of the opinion that marathon viewing doesn’t combine well with scenes that appear every other episode such as the story of the orphaned Utena. Then again, the show was made before producers knew about marathon viewing. The DVD market wasn’t even alive, and it seemed impractical for a decent amount of people to buy a crateful of videotapes just to watch all of…

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Last time, Utena beat Saionji, attaining a position as a leading student as well as a love interest within Anthy. On this episode, she has to do this all over again. Duality 101 strikes, where Utena becomes the princely upstart all the girls swoon over and Saionji swings his sword alone when nobody but Touga can console him. But that difference in status clouds their similar treatment of the woman in front of them. Sure, Utena may not slap Anthy…

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Yes, I’ve looked through this current anime season. No, I wasn’t interested in blogging most of them. So in this case, it’s time to dig up an old show and light it anew. Utena has been argued over for over a decade and a half with little consensus on what the imagery symbolized or which characters were in the right, not helped by the creator’s refusal to answer any questions with a coherent response. This show stands alongside Evangelion, Lain,…

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