#rgu 19

[pdaliceliveblogs]

I mean, to be fair, without the context a viewer has he seems like a decent dude. And it’s cool that Utena’s being friendly with her sorta-brother-in-law. But the dude creeps me out so much that I feel like I’m watching a horror movie and I can hear the dramatic music but the characters can’t, you know?

[pdaliceliveblogs]

their fucking faces

[pdaliceliveblogs]

I like how we switch quickly from Wakaba’s pretty chocolate roses (which, I note, are new for this ep) to the white roses indicating the Prince of the Moment, to the pink roses of Utena the confused observer.

[pdaliceliveblogs]

god, what a RELIEF this must be

after weeks of periodically opening your locker to find someone challenging you to a duel for the life of your sorta-girlfriend

to open your locker and find a note from your bff on heart stationery making fun of you.

[pdaliceliveblogs]

WOOO WE’RE PICKING IT RIGHT UP NEXT WEEK

[pdaliceliveblogs]

I know this is played for laughs but that fucker does not deserve her devotion and every time this comes up it hurts

[pdaliceliveblogs]

Lemme ramble for a sec about how much I love subverting expectations you have yourself carefully set up.

To someone who hadn’t been watching this show, seeing that little green curtain go up and reveal this image of a castle wouldn’t really mean anything. It’s a pretty frame, sure, but that’s it. But because every single time we’ve seen this curtain before it revealed the exact same flashback to Utena’s childhood, seeing it reveal something else is kind of shocking. It’s this kind of thing that hits the viewer really hard but is super difficult to explain to someone who isn’t already invested.

My favourite example of this is in Steven Universe, in which over the course of many seasons it was steadily established that all gems of the same type have the same VA; all Rubies are Charlyne Yi, all Amethysts are Michaela Dietz, all Jaspers are Kimberly Brooks, all Pearls are Deedee Magno Hall, etc. And then we meet White Diamond’s Pearl and... she isn’t Deedee. She has a different voice actor-- White Diamond’s VA, in fact, Christine Ebersole-- and because of the way the universe was set up, the way the audience sees a Pearl and expects to hear Deedee, the moment she opens her mouth you know something is very wrong.

Using your own worldbuilding-- or even, as here, your own little conventions-- to throw your audience a little, not to mock or annoy them but to let them know something is different here, something is changing? That’s beautiful.

[pdaliceliveblogs]

anD THEN HE PULLS THIS SHIT MOCKING HER AND I WANT TO PUNCH HIM IN THE FUCKING FACE