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.
