The bird is fighting its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wishes to be born must destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The god is named Abraxas.
—Herman Hesse, Demian
Revolutionary Girl Utena, episode 10: “Nanami’s Precious Thing.” Directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. Character designs by Chiho Saito. Be-Papas, 1997 (Nozomi Entertainment, 2011). Approx. 24 minutes. Rated “16+.”
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I think it’s been almost a year since we’ve had one of these blow-by-blow reviews of the most ambitious epic in mahou shoujo history, but I have an excuse. It’s been a roller-coaster year for me. Also, I’m easily distracted. Speaking of which, squirrel.
Anyway, as I discussed last time, episode 9 delivered some big reveals, though their exact meaning remains mysterious. Touga, the rakish president of the student council, is conniving with World’s End and appears to be up to no good. He’s all but convinced Utena that he’s her mysterious prince, and he’s callously destroyed his childhood friend Saionji in the process.
Now, in episode 10, his little sister Nanami once again sweeps in. This time, however, she isn’t here to derail the plot. Instead, she actually delivers some important backstory that gives us a nice setup for the next two episodes, which will finish off the Student Council Saga, first of Utena’s three story arcs. Episode 9 is quite simple, but it is well executed and is one of the best episodes of this arc, possibly second to “Unfulfilled Jury.”
For violating the rules of the Rose Duel, Saionji has been expelled from the academy. Meanwhile, Touga, although his wound is not so serious that it prevents him from bedding two nubile young ladies at once, is playing it up for sympathy points.
This episode switches things up a bit: both Utena and Anthy get slapped at some point. Anyway, knowing that Tougha got his injury on her account, Utena is decidedly despondent and begins to doubt her life’s goal of becoming a prince.
In my previous reviews, I’ve poked fun at Utena’s many failures to live up to her own ideals, but here at last, she recognizes that she has failed to live up to those ideals. Instead of going into training as some characters might, she shuts down and starts moping.
Meanwhile, Touga reveals to the other council members that he has a new letter from World’s End ordering a new duel. It’s Touga’s turn to go up against Utena, but because he’s injured, Juri and Miki offer to take his place. He then reveals to them that World’s End has chosen a fresh duelist.
Utena visits Touga to thank him for saving her from Saionji, and just happens to discover that it is his birthday. Some flashbacks to an earlier birthday tell the story of how his sister Nanami once got him a kitten as a present, a kitten that led to some subsequent turmoil.
Always the master manipulator, Anthy now brings Touga a kitten for his present birthday—and once again, she does it with seeming innocence. The appearance of this new cat sets Nanami off. Jealous for her brother’s affections, she challenges Utena to a duel, revealing that she is the new duelist.
This episode is the first in which we see Nanami in her military-style school council uniform, which she will now wear more-or-less constantly. Like the other duelists, she is color-coded, and her color is yellow.
Nanami fights with a combination of a dagger and a curved sabre. Utena quickly defeats her, but Nanami, against the rules, keeps pressing the attack, apparently intent on killing Utena out of jealousy. Interwoven with the fight are flashback sequences revealing what had been strongly hinted before: after she had brought Touga a kitten as a present, Nanami later drowned the kitten because it was taking up her brother’s attention, and the guilt from that act is still gnawing at her.
Touga takes advantage of Nanami’s emotional turmoil, once again positioning himself as a heroic savior and further convincing Utena that he might be her prince. That completes the setup for the first arc’s finale.
