Star Crossed Anime

There seem to be an aweful lot of recycled scenes in this season: the car scene at the beginning, the bed scene, the student council scene, the second-car scene, the yaoi-ness of Touga and Akio (>.<), the weird-girl’s scene, the battle opening, the cars again, the defeat scene, and I probably missed a few. It’s a good thing that these cells are used perfectly, and are either full of elegance or brilliance (most often a combination of those two), I can just stare forever at Utena and Himemiya lying down simultaniously and symmetrically. The cars also seem a bit weird, but they do work.

This show follows a clear path for each serious episode. You can always predict this will happen, except in a filler episode. We get an introduction, the person who will fight gets a bit explored, and that person and Utena fight, Utena wins. With in between Utena and Himemya talking while in bed, the student council having a talk, the two weird girls being weird and every recycled cell mentioned above.

The beautiful thing is that outside of these rules mentioned above, that you definately will never be able to predict what will happen. It’s sort of like a human body. We have the skeleton, but around the skeleton happens so much more. I really enjoy this. So many tiny pieces are hidden in this show, it’s impossible to notice all of them.

It’s also great to see that the student council, while discussing, is always busy with something else (mostly just unimportant to pass the time). This time Nanami was exploring a massaging chair. The overall effect was brilliant. My favourite up till now is when Touga is practicing his knife-throwing.

The walking ducky also was a nice touch, and I was startled a bit when the car was suddenly driving on one side, with people in it…

Overall, this has been an awesome episode. I’m really looking forward to the next one.

Like I said before: it’s been a long time since I saw the last episode of this. I believed that I’d seen up to number twenty-three. Just now I realize that I made a slight error in my calculations, making me miss the twenty-third one. It would probably have featured the downfall of the boys of the black rose. (note to self: track that episode down)

Anyway, this episode featured the start of a new season. If you’d ask me to describe it in just one word, I’d reply with "refreshing". The boys from the black rose were good in order to show some in-depth character development of some of the major an minor characters. It really felt like I got to know the personages more and more. However, it also felt a bit empty. The black rose had nothing to do with the main story and I also felt like some important characters were neglected a bit.

Therefore it was nice to see that this season will revolve around the members of the student counsel again. Sayonji and Touga are back, in all of their bishounen-ness. We also get some very obvious hints that Akio is some sort of bad guy. In what ways and how, when, why which and where are still a mystery. The recycled cells are replaced with old ones, Utena gets a new sword, the music gets even more awesome, and the shadow-play-girls are back against the walls where they were in the first season.

The story certainly takes a twist in the good direction this time. I liked the overall plot twists. I’m really curious now who End-of-the-world might be. It also seems that Anthy finally acts beyond her role of the rose bride, the student counsel meetings are just as awesome as ever (this time with baseball!) and the shadow-play-girls are as weird as ever. The stairs also seemed to have made way for a modern elevator (don’t you love the modern-day sciende?). All the desks and body outlines shown on the battlefield also got their modernization, as they were repaced by red sport cars, sticking out of the arena, literally (do NOT ask me why). My only complaint is that I almost couldn’t take yaoi-scented scenes.