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 15: “The Landscape Framed by Kozue.” Directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. Character designs by Chiho Saito. Be-Papas, 1997 (Nozomi Entertainment, 2011). Approx. 24 minutes. Rated “16+.”
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The second arc of Revolutionary Girl Utena is like a variation of the first: it repeats the previous arc’s themes, but alters and develops them. The first arc focused on the members of the student council, dealing in turn with each of them and their psychological issues. The second arc focuses in on second-tier characters related to the council members, thereby further developing the characters we have already met.
This episode, “The Landscape Framed by Kozue,” is a variation of “The Sunlit Garden,” a two-parter that introduced the character of Miki.
Deep in their underground lair, Mikage and Mamiya, after the failure of the previous episode, hatch a new plan to install Mamiya in Anthy’s place as the Rose Bride. Since their “makeshift” duelists lack sufficient power to defeat Utena, they decide to tap the fighting skills of student council members: according to Mamiya, the council members have “swords” that have “crystalized” in their hearts, and which can potentially be extracted and used by others.
Meanwhile, the student council still exists, but is in a sort of standby state: Touga is still sitting in his room and wallowing in depression because his voice actor went to another anime Utena defeated him in the arena. His spoiled sister Nanami, with her banana-colored uniform, is now the acting president. But the council has received no new letters from World’s End, and no letters means no duels.
Miki, you may recall, is a boy genius from the middle school who is a championship fencer as well as a virtuoso on the piano, and who has a troubled relationship with his twin sister. He carries a stopwatch that he clicks compulsively, apparently representative of a desire to stop time or leave time entirely, and find his “shining thing,” an idyllic eternity he believes is waiting for him in the hovering castle above the dueling arena.
The present episode focuses in on his sister Kozue. It was already hinted in the previous arc, and is now made explicit, that Kozue is like the town bicycle: everybody gets a ride. They call Kozue “the street sign,” because you can find her on every corner. She’s known as “AM radio station,” because she’s easy to pick up at night. The professors even call her into class as a living example of Marxism, since every worker gets a share. In fact, we used to call them “jumpolines”—until Kozue got on one.
Sorry about that. We should get off Kozue. After all, I just did.
Although Miki seems to be better balanced since Utena smacked him around some, he is still infatuated with Anthy and comes by Utena and Anthy’s dorm occasionally to ask her to play piano with him. Wanting Anthy to get out of her shell, Utena encourages him, but Kozue is clearly jealous.
This episode moves rapidly, and although it’s an exploration of Kozue’s character, much of what motivates her remains murky and ambiguous. She runs around with all the boys she can find and brags about having several boyfriends, and she’s apparently doing it to provoke Miki’s jealousy or get his attention. Why exactly is unclear: there’s a sort of love-hate between the two of them that is partly sibling affection, partly sibling rivalry, and partly incestuous.
While waiting for Anthy, Miki falls asleep at the piano in the music room. A metronome ticks loudly, interspersed with the sound of a wind chime. A rapid series of flashback images, reminiscent of Miki’s idealized memories of playing piano in the garden with Kozue, flickers across the screen as Kozue slowly walks toward him, bends down, and kisses him on the cheek.
In another context, of course, a girl lightly kissing her sleeping brother would be innocuous, but in Utena, all the characters are really screwed-up people, so Kozue is embarrassed when Anthy walks in. Kozue gets angry, insisting that Anthy make some kind of snide comment, and Anthy merely replies with her customary good-natured smile.
As always, Anthy is the catalyst for the other characters’ breakdowns. Kozue immediately heads to the Black Rose Circle for an “interview.” Her monologue in the elevator-confessional is brief, perhaps too brief, and reveals less than we might expect. She doesn’t directly mention jealousy or explain herself, but instead puts all the blame on her brother: she claims that he is deeply affected whenever she is hurt in anyway, so she runs around with boys she knows he won’t like, just to provoke him. The closest she gets to admitting what’s really going on is when she hugs several sheets of music to her chest and says that she can’t stand seeing his affections moving to another girl.
After she has received her black rose and her signet, she confronts Miki. A sword leaps out of Miki’s chest, and Utena finds a letter of challenge pinned to a wall.
In the dueling arena, a milkshake is sitting on each of the desks. Milkshakes are referred to a few times in the episode, another representation of Miki and Kozue’s childhood. Also, as a side note, she really rocks that uniform she’s in. Where are the duelists getting all these uniforms?
Utena finds Kozue more formidable than Kanae had been, since she’s able to fight with Miki’s power. Utena ends up calling on two of her finishing moves instead of just one, letting Anthy enhance her sword and also combining with the princely figure from the castle. Nonetheless, she wins, and another of the dead duelists drops into the furnace.
When it is all over, Kozue doesn’t remember what happened, but there is a hint of some reconciliation between her and Miki. Keeping the brother-sister theme going, the episode ends with Anthy once again visiting Akio in his combination apartment and planetarium, with some further hints of what exactly is going on there.
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