Wait Why Is Utena Trending What Happened??

Wait why is Utena trending what happened??

Them after finishing the second arc: So there’s a ghost (Mikage), a genie (Anthy), and a vampire (Akio)?

Me: I mean…you’re not entirely wrong?

Making @oneanxiousace watch Utena for the first time.

Them after just finishing the first arc: Is Anthy a genie?

Me: No.

Them: Then why doesn’t she leave? Can she not leave?

Me: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

“You don’t really think about (the moon) and it doesn’t really serve any purpose. But still, from time to time, you look up at it, and it makes you feel better.” Problem is that eventually dawn will break, and you’ll be left alone, forced to face the things you did in the dark with no way to fix them or comfort yourself.

Every time I listen to We Don’t Talk About Bruno and remember that Camilo’s VA played Alex in Marvel’s Runaways I’m reminded of how absolutely ROBBED we were that we didn’t get a karaoke night episode in that show.

Nico and Karolina doing a romantic duet?

Gert and Alex doing a song together?

Chase singing a love ballad for Gert?

Molly rapping in Spanish?

We. Were. Robbed.

Shiori during the Black Rose arc has always greatly intrigued me because while all the others follow a fairly similar formula, she is the only one that completely diverges.

Kanae, Kozue, Mitsuru, Wakaba, and Keiko are all fairly similar in their motives; they love their respective members of the student council, but their love cannot be reciprocated (Akio’s distorted love being focused only on Anthy, Miki being her brother, Nanami seeing Mitsuru as a child, Saionji being a gay who is misogynistic and only really cares about Touga, and Touga being a misogynist who is probably gay and has Nanami chasing most girls away from her brother). All of their relationships are doomed to an unhappy ending.

Likewise, this is why Tatsuya (the onion prince) is turned away by Mikage. His and Wakaba’s story can have a happy ending if they’re honest with each other. Their story doesn’t have to be a tragedy.

Now, Shiori is different. For all of the brides, they have romantic feelings for their student council member (Kozue is a little bit of a slippery slope with this because she probably wants a normal sibling relationship but doesn’t realise it?) and want love from them that the member is incapable of giving.

For Shiori and Juri, if we take Shiori’s words as fact, their story is the opposite. Juri is the one with the doomed love that Shiori is incapable of reciprocating. Now, we as the audience know this is definitely not the case. Shiori very clearly has feelings for Juri, but she’s so caught up in her inferiority complex and the heteronormativity of the world they live in that she is unable to admit that to herself.

But again, this sets Shiori and Juri’s story apart. They both feel the same. Their story is not doomed be a tragedy from the start like all the others. Don’t get me wrong, they would have to do a lot of work to make their relationship work, but it’s not impossible.

I think this is why their ending during the finale is also so different. For all of the other Black Rose brides (save for Kanae because, you know, she’s presumed dead) they’ve gained space from the people they were so obsessed with. Mitsuru is hanging around Miki rather than sticking to and following the orders of Nanami; Kozue is letting someone else get close to her brother; we don’t see much of Keiko at the end, but presumably she’s no longer chasing after Touga or living under Nanami’s shadow as we see her with Aiko and Yuuko; and Wakaba has moved on to her onion prince.

But because Shiori and Juri’s relationship isn’t doomed to be a tragedy from the start, they seem to have actually gotten closer. While all the others grew apart to have a more healthy relationship, Juri and Shiori have grown closer to have a more healthy relationship.

I’d like to think that means that they’ll have a happy ending together once they work through their issues.

The Recloseted Lesbian. Lesbian Awakening 1