Oh noes! A Random Encounter!

The Absolute Destiny Apocalypse: Duncan reviews Revolutionary Girl Utena

Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a little princess, and she was very sad, for her mother and father had died. Before the princess appeared a traveling prince, riding upon a white horse. He had a regal bearing and a kind smile. The prince wrapped the princess in a rose-scented embrace and gently wiped the tears from her eyes.

"Little one," he said, "who bears up alone in such deep sorrow, never lose that strength or nobility, even when you grow up. I give you this to remember this day. We will meet again. This ring will lead you to me one day." Perhaps the ring the prince gave her was an engagement ring.

This was all well and good, but so impressed was she by him that the princess vowed to become a prince herself one day. But was that really such a good idea?

In a quest to find another TV series as open to interpretation as The Prisoner, I have turned to Japanese anime, where there is no shortage of the incomprehensible symbolic - Neon Genesis Evangelion springs immediately to mind. But I don't want to review that series for... reasons. Besides which, I hadn't seen Revolutionary Girl Utena before, so was coming to it fresh and (relatively) spoiler-free.

Revolutionary Girl Utena is a 39-episode series from 1997. TV Tropes describes (unless it gets edited, in which case: described) it as "the Neon Genesis Evangelion of the Shoujo category," that is to say it is a deconstruction of that genre. Now I'm not knowledgeable about shoujo anime as a genre, but that's not the point. Because hand-in-hand with the "deconstruction" label goes "symbolism" and "open to interpretation" and this series has both. Lots of both.

Part One - "The Student Council Saga"

Roses. Roses everywhere.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The quote I opened this review with opens several of the episodes, giving the backstory of Utena Tenjou and a key to her motivation: although a girl, she seeks to assume the - traditionally male - role of a fairytale prince, coming to the rescue of princesses and maidens in distress just like the prince who once came to her in her time of need.

In the first episode Utena encounters such a maiden in distress when she becomes involved in the duels for the "Rose Bride." Utena's ring, given to her by the prince, entitles her to enter these duels and her challenging the senior student Saionji to a fight for humiliating her friend Wakaba is interpreted as such.

Upon defeating Saionji, Utena discovers that, under the rules of the duels, she is now engaged to Anthy Himemiya "the Rose Bride" who, in an instant, drops her abusive relationship with Saionji and moves in with Utena.

While this wouldn't be the first series I've seen with issues in the translating/subtitling, the use of the word "engaged" (and thus connotations of heterosexual marriage) seems deliberate because it parallels Anthy's status as a "Bride." And while it is in keeping with Utena's self-chosen 'male' role to be engaged to a girl, none of the other duelists object to or comment on this unusual arrangement - to them, Utena is now "the Engaged." Also, there was already one other female duelist involved - Jury. More on her later.

It's probably worth commenting on the most obvious weirdness to manifest at this early stage: the dueling arena itself, which is a platform accessible by a secret door that only opens to the wearers of the rose rings and then up a ridiculously long spiral staircase. Above it is an enormous, upside-down fairytale castle:

As Utena ascends to the dueling arena the 'Absolute Destiny Apocalypse' song plays. Get used to this song if you're watching the series, because you're going to hear it a lot. There are a couple of versions of it, and the accompanying visuals do change twice during the series, but it's still a lot of repetition. I never got bored of hearing it, because I found that it helps build anticipation of the duel to follow.

Utena faces, over the course of the episodes that make up the first story arc, a series of duels against opponents who are all, like Saionji, members of the Student Council - an elite body made up of all the overachievers: student vice-president and captain of the school kendo team Saionji (who gets a rematch that he also loses), and then:

Miki - a genius pianist who has already composed a famous song.

Jury - captain of the school fencing team.

Nanami - younger sister of the student president and the school bully.

Touga - president of the Student Council.

One of the things I like best about the series is the way the duels themselves are shown. They are all quite short, considering the importance placed on them by the narrative, and I think there are two reasons for this.

The first is practical: for all that the designs in Revolutionary Girl Utena are amazing (if obsessed with roses), the animation is obviously comparatively cheap - no opportunity to reuse an existing sequence is passed up - and I imagine that the fight sequences must have been relatively expensive (I've seen cheap fight scenes in other anime series - they usually consist of lines and  lines).

The other reason, the 'in story' reason, is that victory in the duels is determined in advance by the confidence of the duelists backed up by the righteousness of their cause, and not by their skill. Thus it is what happens in the build-up to a duel that is important, not the action in the duel itself.

There may be a third reason, though it's one I'm not sure of, and that would be to subvert other anime series that heavily feature extended, sometimes multiple-episode duration, fight sequences. Either way, I'd take a short and to-the-point scene over a drawn-out, set-piece combat any day.

Collectively the Student Council are presented as a sinister body who want to "revolutionize the world," as shown in the oft-repeated 'lift scene' where their ominous theme music plays and they chant their catchphrase speech:
"If the egg's shell does not break, the chick will die without being born. We are the chick; the egg is the world. If the world's shell does not break, we will die without being born. Break the world's shell! For the revolution of the world!"

(Any variations in the speech can be put down to translating/subtitling discrepancies.)

However, each member of the Student Council is an individual and they all have very different reasons for participating in the duels, rooted in their backstory and motivations that come out in the episodes prior to their dueling Utena. This helps to ensure that, with one exception, they do not appear villainous.

Miki is growing more distant from his twin sister Kozue as the two of them grow from children into adults, and he sees Anthy as a substitute for Kozue because Anthy shares his interest in the piano - an interest that Kozue has lost as she grows up. But Anthy is not his sister, so the relationship he seeks (by seeking to become engaged to the Rose Bride) is doomed to failure because what Miki really wants - a return to a lost childhood brother-sister relationship - is not possible with Anthy. This is why he loses to Utena.
It does not, however, stop him from growing into friendship with Utena and Anthy, beginning the process of subverting the Student Council's status as hostile antagonists to the two protagonists.

Jury's motivation is more complex than Miki's or Saionji's, and difficult for me to summarise, but it seems to be the case that, as the unrequited member of a love-triangle, she is also dueling for the enigmatic power of the Rose Bride to return her to a more innocent state, before adolescent emotions caused this love-triangle to complicate her life and lose the object of her affections. But winning the Rose Bride wouldn't accomplish that so, despite her greater skill with the sword, Jury loses to Utena by a "miracle" or a lucky fluke.

Nanami only becomes involved as a duelist once her brother Touga's plans are underway and require her involvement. She is jealous of anyone - any girl, that is - that could come between her and her brother, and when he begins to pay attention to Utena and Anthy then she sees dueling them as revenge. Nanami is easily defeated by Utena, since her motivation is so petty.

Touga, however, has been playing the long game compared to the other Student Council members (though not compared to other characters in the series) and has sown seeds of doubt in Utena's mind that he may be the prince she met when she was young. Because of the way Utena's amnesia works (as with the rules of the duels, it works how it needs to to serve the plot. To be fair to the series there is a certain amount of justification for this, though it does basically come down to "a wizard did it") he gets away with it, and with Utena conflicted between her goal to be a prince and the pressure on her to conform to her chromosomally assigned role as a princess, she loses to 'Prince' Touga despite his motivation being naked lust for power.

Utena loses a duel for the first and only time in the story, and responds by abandoning her 'prince' role immediately, even donning a girls' school uniform instead of her usual boys' uniform (as an aside - while Utena's usual outfit is a "boys' uniform" in that it has shorts instead of a skirt and lacks anything obviously girly like puffy sleeves, it is not a uniform that we see anyone else wear at all during the series. This is either a clever subversion or else just something they didn't think through, but I don't know which).

Like Saionji before her, Utena gets a rematch against the challenger that defeated her, and manages to sort herself out - with help from her friend Wakaba - in time to take advantage of this.

Touga, now wielding the mystic "Sword of Dios," a perk that comes with being engaged to the Rose Bride - it gets drawn out of her chest (symbolism!) by "the Engaged" prior to each duel - makes use of a power of the Bride and Blade, one that Utena didn't even know existed, to charge it up (another subversion of the usual form of these things, where power-escalation is the norm, is that Utena never makes use of this power in subsequent duels). Touga still loses, because Utena's motivation is so much purer than his.

The first story arc, 'The Student Council Saga,' closes with Utena and Anthy reunited. They make a perfect Yin-Yang pair as protagonists, with their complementary opposite qualities of Utena's active, fiery, aggressive (and, of course, traditionally masculine) Yang and Anthy's passive, shy, traditionally feminine Yin qualities that make her a victim and unable to defend herself.

They are so complementary, in fact, that this alone could make the audience see them as a natural couple and so root for Utena in the duels, without asking why Anthy is the Rose Bride and what exactly this means. Utena doesn't ask this important question either, which I find to be a minor niggle with the series - tempting as it is to assume Utena (and hence the audience) wouldn't get the answers even if she did ask, it is obviously a plot requirement that the answers don't come out too soon.

A few tantalising hints are thrown out in episode 13 (which consists principally of flashbacks to scenes we have already seen - an anime staple, I understand, allowing for a cheap 'filler' episode) where two men, one of whom appears to be the prince from Utena's backstory, discuss the story so far.

Continued in Part Two.

Some Blakes 7 Pictures Posted Without Comment

Sleeps and Sweeps

Hello. I have not posted for a while because I have been having lots of important sleeps. I will be back with more of the Doctor Who Books Project soon, and I will tell you all about other TV programmes I have been watching as well.

In the meantime, here is a picture of Sweep.

Sweep is a famous doggy, because he is the star of The Sooty Show.

He is one of Puppy's heroes and Puppy says Sweep is the doggy equivalent of Avon in Blakes 7, because he is the best character even if he is not the title character.

Menace on Metalupiter

The Doctor Who books' stories have certainly taken a turn for the stranger since I have reached the ones with Tom Baker as the Doctor, but Menace on Metalupiter is possibly the strangest yet. It is another story with the Doctor, Sarah and Harry, but even though this is a picture story the artist seems to want to draw Sarah as little as possible. Given how unlike Ian Marter all the pictures of Harry look, this may be a lucky break for Sarah.

Metalupiter is "a small planet rich in minerals." From the name I would have assumed it was like Jupiter only made of metal.

The Doctor shows Sarah a picture of a Metalupiter robot. He says "their appearance is most appealing" but the picture is very unclear as to why. Maybe we will find out later.

It is so hard to follow what happens on this page that they have included arrows to try and help us. Even with the arrows I still don't know why they need to run away "back to the TARDIS!"

It turns out the robots look like cats! No wonder the Doctor said "their appearance is most appealing" - this is a plot twist I like a lot. Purr.

They capture a robot and the Doctor is surprised that "his whole brain is made of rubber!" That is a surprise. I didn't know that robot cats could have brains made of rubber.

That isn't the most confusing thing that happens on this page, though. That is when things seem to happen in the wrong order - the box text tells us how the Doctor finds things out from the robot, and then in the next panel he says "Right! Now to switch him on..." and then the robot wakes up and begins to tell the Doctor the things we already know from the box text.

The baddy aliens want to turn Metalupiter into a "giant crystal" that "can be used to build spaceships" - this sounds a bit like the plan the Daleks used when they invaded Earth, because the Daleks wanted to turn the Earth into a giant spaceship that they could then fly around in.

When Harry says "Today!?" he looks a bit like Michael Jayston, so maybe he was substituting for Ian Marter when they made this story.

This story needs some action, so the Doctor, Harry and Sarah get shot at and go "Aagh!" and "Umf! Doctor! My Brain! I can't move!" and "I can't move! That creature is scrambling our brains!"

This is getting quite exciting. Our heroes are in peril and the stakes are high, as is emphasised by the next panel, when the Doctor says "Got to reach... gasp!... can't move! The planet will explode!"

How can they possible escape? All seems lost.

It turns out that Puskeet is able to ignore "the awesome firepower of the four-armed creature" (it's a good thing that box text tells us the creature is "four-armed" because the pictures certainly don't make that clear), which is handy.

"Yaarg!" lol.

Puskeet saves the day with the help of what looks like a big stick. I am torn between thinking this is yet another cop-out ending, which would make me a sad cat, and thinking how great cat robots are that they can be immune to weapons and save the day, which would make me a happy cat.

Naturally cat robots are great and I am a happy cat, but this is still a cop-out ending. The last two lines confirm it by drawing attention to the fact:
"What I'd like to know is how Puskeet managed to do it." (says Harry, looking as much like himself as he gets to in this story.)
"So would I. But it's like I said - Metalupitrons have many fine qualities." (the Doctor - who, to be fair, has managed to look quite a bit like Tom Baker throughout - replies.)

I'm only going to let them off because I like the word "Metalupitrons." And because cat robots are great!

The Time Snatch

This story's title sounds rude, lol.

It starts with a manny called Ben Hunter who sees a flying saucer land in front of him.

"He straightened his stooped back. "Holy smoke! It must be one of them U.F.O.s," he muttered."

Ben tries to run away and hide from the aliens, but "some-thing red and jelly-like, pulsing with an inner fire, emerged from the spacecraft and came after him." Ben has a gun and he shoots the alien, but of course it does nothing (or else this would have been the shortest story yet).

"The red blob was undulating over his head. As he fired into the pulsing mass, he smelt the over-powering odour of musk. His voice managed a hoarse yell as he felt himself being drawn upwards. Then a merciful darkness descended upon him as he lost consciousness."

It seems to me that this is an odd time for sleeps, but maybe Ben was tired out by the excitement of shooting at an alien. While Ben has his sleeps the story changes scenes and the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith come into the story.

I think that is meant to be Sarah at the top of the picture in purple, though if so then she is being played by somebody other than Elisabeth Sladen, possibly Emma Watson?

The Doctor and Sarah are in a "top-security lab" with Dr Gustav Bhoul. The Doctor is looking at "a strange crystal, provisionally named Crystal Z." I don't know what Sarah is doing there - I think all the UNIT mannys now just accept that she can come and go at all their "top-security" places because she is the Doctor's friend.

Dr Bhoul demonstrates that he is being played by Richard Wilson when he says "I don't believe it!" as his first line of dialogue. He then asks the Doctor "Did you ever see a substance behave like this before?"

"The time-and-space traveller fingered his chin. "Very unusual, isn't it?" he agreed. Then he frowned thoughtfully."

If the Doctor is rubbing his chin then he is acting like Jon Pertwee's Doctor, but we will see pictures later showing that it is Tom Baker's Doctor in this story. Sarah sees Ben Hunter running towards the lab.

""Why don't they stop him? That fence is electrified!" rapped Dr Bhoul, who was staring out over the Doctor's shoulder."

This hardly seems like the time for rapping. Dr Bhoul is already coming across as an eccentric scientist. Ben Hunter runs through the fence without being electriced, and that is the first sign to the Doctor that something is up.

"The Doctor stiffened. He stepped quickly to the bench again, and picked up the small, lead-lined box in which Crystal Z had been brought from Cape Canaveral. "With your permission, Dr Bhoul, I shall put the Crystal in my pocket until we find out what our strange visitor is after," he said."

Ben Hunter walks through the wall into the laboratory.

""Where is the Crystal?" he asked. His gruff voice was flat and tone-less."

He has obviously been possessed, just like what happened to Sarah in the last story. This seems to be happening a lot in Doctor Who stories recently.

"The Doctor took a step towards him. "What crystal are you talking about?" he asked."

Silly Doctor, there has only been one Crystal mentioned in this story so far. The Law of Conservation of Detail insists that he must be talking about Crystal Z. Oh wait, I have just realised that the Doctor is attempting a clever bluff here.

""It belongs to us. We have come to take it back." The prospector raised a gnarled hand."

"The Doctor reeled back, and knew that the other was exerting a force-field."

The possessed Ben looks for the crystal but he does not find it, the Doctor has fooled him completely by putting it in his pocket. The alien then tries a very confusing plan to try and get the crystal - Ben takes "a small transparent cube from his pocket."

"He placed it on the bench next to the scientific instruments, then turned to leave. As he did so he spoke over his shoulder: "It is a device to hurl you into the Time Zone - and the Crystal with you.""

The Doctor tries to turn off this "Time Device" before he and Sarah and Dr Bhoul get hurled into the "Time Zone."

"But for all his efforts he moved like a man in a nightmare, with movements that were maddeningly slow. His hand was creeping slowly towards the plastic cube  when it seemed to melt away. In the same moment he was aware of an awful whirling sensation as he was drawn into the Vortex."

"That mind-searing journey through Time ended for the Doctor with a jolt that bruised every bone in his body."

I didn't know mannys could bruise every bone in their bodies. I am glad I am a cat made from socks because I don't have any bones. The description of this journey reminds me of when the Doctor, Steven and Sara were sent through space in Counter Plot. The Doctor wakes up first and he quickly finds Sarah.

""Travelling through Time was easy with the Tardis, but without it - well, we're lucky to have survived.""

They go to look for Dr Bhoul because he is nowhere to be seen.

"Suddenly his foot kicked against something that tinkled. He bent down with an exclamation. "What luck! It's the Time Cube," he said, and held it up for Sarah to see.
"Will it be any good to us?" she wondered."

Sarah is not the first manny to wonder if the Time Cube is of any use, lol. But the Doctor examines the Time Cube:
""Amazing!" he murmured. "A miniature Tardis!" He straightened and nodded encouragingly. "Yes. I believe I might be able to reverse the journey, and get us back to the lab," he said."

They still need to find Dr Bhoul first though. And before they find him, a "Cave Man" finds them.

"He was a squat, powerful figure, ape-like in many ways, and naked save for an animal skin."

So not naked then, because all mannys are naked except for their clothes. The Doctor has a fight with the Cave Man. Sarah is about to join in armed with a stone (which is more the Doctor's fighting style when up against Cave Mannys) when she hears a loud noise.

"She turned to see the towering, long-haired figure of a Mammoth appearing from behind the rocks."

The Cave Man runs away from the Mammoth. The Doctor and Sarah are about to run away too when Dr Bhoul arrives. He sees the Doctor and Sarah but does not see the Mammoth.

"The Doctor sprang to meet him, waving a warning: "Look out! Behind you!""

"The Doctor's fingers were working frantically at the Time Cube. In the second before Dr Bhoul would have been crushed beneath the thundering feet, the trio were snatched upwards into the Vortex...."

They are returned to their own time and find Ben Hunter unconscious. Sarah thinks he's an alien, forgetting how common possession by aliens is these days.

"But the Doctor shook his head slowly. "I think not, my friends. The aliens - whoever they were - merely drugged him and used his body. But he seems to be all right, poor old fellow." He broke off, and checked his pocket for the lead box. With a smile he held it up: "And the Crystal is all right, too," he added."

That is the very end of the story. Which means either the aliens have just given up trying to get their crystal back after one attempt, and using the most pointless plan ever at that, or else I have not understood this story at all. While the story is quite exciting, and full of moments that made me lol (from the title on), that ending makes about as much sense to me as the Time Cube.

Double Trouble!

Double Trouble! is the next story after Drum Beat In Space, and it is not much better. It is longer though, because it is four pages long. The Doctor, Harry, the Brigadier and Sarah are all in this story, but they don't do much except for Sarah who gets possessed by an alien.

The Doctor and Sarah arrive in the TARDIS back from the planet Dumok and Sarah is acting oddly because she has been possessed by Theon, though we don't find this out until page 3. The trouble with this story is that everybody acts oddly, even if they're not possessed.

"Turning to see who or what she was looking at, Harry saw a young soldier, sitting alone at a table. He seemed a perfectly normal chap, and nothing that Harry could see accounted for Sarah's behaviour.
"Not your type," he said."

This is an example of Harry acting out-of-character when he says "Not your type," to Sarah. He then talks to the Doctor about Sarah, and it is the Doctor's turn to say uncharacteristic things:

"Harry had a word with the Doctor about Sarah's strange behaviour, but that worthy man was so wrapped up with his formulae that he only lent half an ear to what Harry was saying. "Women are notoriously moody," he said, "and Sarah Jane Smith is no exception!" With that, he returned to his calculations, leaving Harry to hope that he was right."

Harry decides to follow Sarah around until he sees her go to the communications block and "sitting at the controls of the main transmitter, obviously preparing to send a message into space."
Harry confronts Sarah and she knocks him out with her electric hands.

The Doctor wakes Harry up and then the Brigadier comes in.

""Thank goodness, I've found you!" he gasped. "Come quickly Doctor, Sarah is fighting one of my men!"
"My money is definitely on Sarah," said the Doctor"

Hang on, that picture of the Doctor looks familiar.

It is the same pose as in the picture from A New Life. And that picture was already familiar to me:

Anyway, Sarah fights with the soldier until the aliens possessing them come out of their bodies and the Doctor recognises them as being from Dumok. The goody alien is Theon and he beats the baddy alien and then gives the Doctor all the exposition about why they were both on Earth possessing mannys and fighting.

Theon apologies to Harry for electricing him and then a spaceship comes and takes the aliens away. That is just about the end of the story, except for Sarah asking for help:
""Don't just stand there, you lot! Come and help me up!"
"Did you hear something, Harry?" asked the Doctor with a grin.
"I do believe I heard a slight squeak," replied Harry.
But the Brigadier was acting the prefect gentleman, and had beaten them both to it."

At least this little bit at the end gives the Doctor and Harry a chance to be properly in-character, because they tease Sarah when the real danger is passed. I don't think this is a very good story overall though, because the Doctor and Harry don't really do anything to solve the mystery except for see the aliens.