Anthy was a magical girl whose one wish was to save the life of the Prince, Dios. Her wish was corrupted almost immediately by the villagers attacking out of fear that she had stolen him away, and she realized that so long as people depended upon him they could never be together. Her fall into despair gave birth to the witch known as The Rose Bride, and the labyrinth Ohtori Academy. Rather than drain the life of the people who enter, she has created a facsimile of the real world filled with people too weak to take her Prince away from her, so they may live forever together.
But in her despair the witch has forgotten why she had once wanted all of this, as Dios has been corrupted into the abusive, lecherous Akio.
The shreds of the witch’s memory and humanity have become entangled with her familiars, the Shadow Girls. They cannot be said to understand the world they are in, but by their very nature they communicate truths about it that cannot be seen when looked at directly, the truths the Rose Bride wishes to forget.
Magical girls Juri and Nanami, and would-be Princes Touga, Saionji, Mikki, and Mikage arrive, hoping to find and defeat the witch at the heart of the labyrinth, only to fall into competition with one another for the right to claim her power. As they, too, fall victim to the labyrinth’s effects, all they remember of soul gems is that they look like eggs, and to hold on to their purpose the only way they can, they remind themselves that they have come to this place to “Crack the world’s shell” for the “power to revolutionize the world.” Never do they realize that it is Akio orchestrating it all, for he alone knows that Anthy’s grief seed may be powerful enough to free him, if only he could defeat her.
Decades, perhaps centuries after Anthy became the Rose Bride, Utena Tenjou makes a contract wishing to “become a Prince, like the one who saved her from despair”, whereupon she gains a ring that houses her soul gem. This ring leads her to The Rose Bride’s labyrinth, where—by the power of her wish—she finds herself able to duel with Dios’s own sword and with skills she has never previously possessed. But without any true guidance as a magical girl, even Utena doesn’t realize she is in a labyrinth. Castles float, interiors are larger than exteriors, the dueling arena can’t be seen from outside the forest, Nemuro hall still stands, and no one seeks to explain any of it.
Because of her wish to be like her prince, Utena begins to fall in love with the witch she never knew she was supposed to destroy. But when The Rose Bride betrays her, Utena’s resolve falters, and she slides dangerously close to becoming a witch herself. Instead, she abandons her magical girl duty and casts aside her wish to be a prince, breaking the contract. The energy released allows her to break free of Ohtori Academy. This act shows Anthy that contracts can be broken, that there is hope for freedom.
Anthy, trapped in the house with a mortally wounded Dios, wishes for his salvation. Chu Chu grants the wish. The villagers burst down the door just in time to see Madoka disappear with Anthy.
Utena, waiting to die in her coffin, is rescued from her despair by a Prince. She contracts to become a Prince just like him someday. But with Anthy gone from existence, Utena cannot fall in love with her the way Dios had and cannot become a prince just like him. This time paradox propels Utena out of the timestream.
"Someday, Together, We’ll Shine"
Utena, now outside of time, sees all the timelines in which they met, in which they didn’t, in which her parents lived, in which they died, in which she fell in love with Akio, in which she watched Touga die as a child, in which Anthy killed Akio, in which she went to the castle in the sky, in which the castle in the sky had wheels, and she saw that every time Anthy wished to save the Prince, and every time she wished to be a Prince to save Anthy, the world drove them apart with disastrous consequences. They couldn’t save each other that way. She had to find a timeline where neither got caught up in idealizing princes and brides. And if one didn’t exist, she would have to make one.
Utena woke up as the lecture came to an end. Anthy was already packing up her notebook.
