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What the hell. Not even once did I think that Nana was that ridiculously strong. And crazy? Cought up in the past? Obsessive? One of those. Her actually NOT singing in the ED also made sense. Since all she's interested in is the 99th Seisho festival with the Starlight performance of the 99th class. NOTHING elseappears to matter to her.

Those 2ish seconds Hikari and Mahiru were shown fencing annoyed the everliving shit out of me. That stage was clearly meant to represent the olympic games, yet that fencing part in particular was ALL kinds of wrong.

Their stance was wrong, mahiru was leaning forward to the point where she would've gotten a warning at least. Both of them were also in a stance that can only be described as catastrophic. Mahiru was standing in what was probably supposed to be a finished lunge, yet it looked more like she was somewhere in the middle of getting back to the default stance, while Hikari was shown in lunge properly DESPITE BEING ON THE DEFENCE. A lunge is a HEAVILY offense focused move. So much so that it's barely even used in epee fencing because it leaves your defense far too open. It makes NO sense for Hikari doing one here.

The weapons they were using were foils, yet the equipment they wore was that for epee fencing, which was further supported by mahiru aiming for Hikari's head, which isn't a legal hit zone in foil fencing. They were also using french grips, though that could just have been personal preference of them, but it's used rather rarely nowadays.

As for one last thing with this scene, the blades were seen crossed on Hikari's right side in the first shot, then on her left side in the second. Which was kinda confusing.

Welcome to the club. :)

And yes, that was totally a MM:FR nod near the end of the movie and it was glorious.

Episode 7 is the turn, of course, and yes, it's been signposted the entire way. Nana is the last in the sequence of walking girls in the intro, and she is clearly marked as the tallest, height being something the show points out as an unfair advantage for stage girls. She is in most of the scenes, just watching or taking photos. She says things like 'huh, that's new' when a character does something that they hadn't in a previous loop, and then sort of goes with it. It's not unlike some of Ni~Paa!'s reactions in Higurashi. She is kukugumi's de facto big sister, always there to take care of them (charming, until you know it's more like a game to her than genuine concern). There isn't just foreshadowing with Nana, it's all there and impossible to miss once you know.

With Kagura's arrival, the gears start to turn backwards. At the start of episode 1. She breaks the cycle. And I think the Giraffe lets her in to shake things up, or maybe the strength of Karen and Hikari's promise finally wins through. That one, I'm not sure about.

How awesome was that fourth wall break by the Giraffe near the end? We lost it. Fucker basically blamed us for the show and all the trauma it put them through, just so we could enjoy some singing, dancing and fighting. The Giraffe was definitely right.

Regarding the movie, in no real order: that massacre on the train. Good grief.

Tendo Maya vs Claudine Saijo was intensely satisfying because not only did it get the best animation, it was a HUGE gap in the original series. They had a lot of lesbian tension to deal with, and they dealt with it perfectly. 'For me, there is you.' *chef's kiss*

As for the fencing, put it down to everything else that's 'off' -- it's more a stage interpretation of fencing rather than the actual sport. That whole sequence just reinforced what we all already knew: Mahiru is fucking scary.

Junna FINALLY standing toe to toe with Nana. Yes. That one cut with her flying in WITH NANA'S SWORD...yes. Very yes.

And Wagamama Highway (Kaoruko and Futaba's revue) embraced a bunch of 'adult' scenes that tell us this is it. This is how they see themselves, five or ten years from now. Animation of KuroMaya's clash aside, that was probably my favourite revue.

As for the trains, well, characters become cars at the end of the Utena movie, so I guess there's that. I think we'd need to really sit back and think about what 'trains' mean in Japan, because this hardly the first time I've seen them used as a metaphor for confronting maturity in anime (see: O Maidens, but also Eva in a way). As Wild Screen Baroque says, the train WILL arrive at the next station without fail. In other words, you're going to grow up one way or another. So...what do you do? What's your next stage?


The entire movie had a maturity to it that neither the series nor the game allow, and that's why I think it was pretty much flawless as a tv series movie conclusion. There was no feeling of 'side story' or 'high quality filler'. You knew this was the end and that the girls had to deal with that. Had to face the conflicts and friction that the series really only sort of introduced. It couldn't have been better in that respect.


The ONLY stuff that wasn't blatantly mature were the flashbacks, and they were very deliberately done in a watercolour style, which slowly faded away as Karen got older. Probably one of the less subtle stylistic choices of the movie.

Something you'd only see on rewatches: virtually every scene in the entire show, series and movie, has a pink sparkle in it. It might just be a nice touch, but I think it's the brilliance of all the stage girls who've come before, dispersed throughout the world of Starlight.

Anyway, now you wakarimasu. Or do you wakarimasu? Wakarimasu.

I used be part of my school's theatre group back then. So certain things the giraffe said there, the audience demanding a continuation, the next stage arriving without fail and most of all the joy and sparkle, the brightness of the stage... Wakarimasu. And in a much more literal sense than most who watch it.