LAST EDITED ON Apr-02-10 AT 01:30 PM (EDT)
1 Tired of side stories yet? Boy, we were, by the time we got to the end of this set of them. Roses in Springtime was complete or mostly complete for weeks before we were actually able to release it, because we had all these side pieces to do, threads to chase, and things to bring up to date before we could draw the whole cast back together and plunge on into the next piece of the main arc. Around the lab it became good-naturedly known as the entr'acte death march.9 In the pseudo-musical nomenclature of the Symphonies, an Intermezzo is a story that centers mostly or entirely around events in Cephiro. This was more relevant during the part of the story arc in which there was a mostly-impenetrable divide between Cephiro and Midgard.
20 The White Tower is naturally named for the campus's signature feature, the belltower, which contains, among other things, the offices of the Student Council and (in this era) Akio Ohtori's personal living quarters. The Tower will also be featured in Eiko and Bijou Kageshoujo's 2408 breakout comedy hit, Eiko and Bijou Go to the White Tower, which establishes the Kageshoujo sisters as Cephiro's hottest young filmmakers.
22 Here Tsuwabuki unintentionally echoes one of the common openings of the shadow play scenes that recurred throughout Revolutionary Girl Utena, in the middle of almost every episode and at the beginnings of some. Given that this episode takes place primarily in Cephiro, at Ohtori Academy, this was a subtle way of giving this part of the First Symphony a more RGU-like flavor. PJM
38 It didn't occur to us at first that, with members of the series cast disappearing one by one, people back in Cephiro were eventually bound to notice something, even if almost all of them had forgotten the Lost Tournament (and that Utena had ever existed).
63 Wakaba had a colossal crush on Saionji for most of the original series, and he treated her very badly at pretty much every turn - at times of his own accord, and at times because he was being manipulated by Akio and/or Touga.
88 As previously noted (and as will come up again and again in the next little while), the final episode of RGU contained an unsatisfactory montage in place of anything resembling actual resolution. In one of the vignettes of that montage, Wakaba is seen more or less taking Utena's place as the popular student underclassmen look up to. With Akio unable to grasp that the Lost Tournament is over and can't be repeated, it's only logical that he'd look to her as the next likely candidate.
132 So did Wakaba, kind of, for a little while, but at this point in the story she doesn't remember her time as a brainwashed thrall of the original Black Rose Order.
179 And so the dance begins once more, or so Akio thinks, anyway.
204 Akio's car is an oddity. As it appears in RGU, it's a carefully detailed 1957 Corvette, included in the show by an artist who had obviously done some research - except it has a back seat.
223 Ohtori Academy has four residence halls, one named after each cardinal direction. At this point in history, East Hall is abandoned.
311 Not until the Third Symphony will Wakaba overcome her inertia as regards her hairstyle.
409 What nobody realizes is that, with the exception of Nanami, all of this year's councilors were Black Rose thrall/duelists last year. Each has a particular piece of psychic baggage connected to a member of the previous year's council - Wakaba's doomed crush on Saionji, Kozue's love/hate relationship with her twin brother, Tsuwabuki's slavish devotion to Nanami, Keiko's unrequited desire for Touga. Apart from Kanae Ohtori (Akio's unfortunate fiancée) herself, only Shiori (with her star-crossed friendship with Juri) is missing - and she will eventually replace Wakaba.
431 Here Keiko, who was something of a cipher in the TV series, shows the beginnings of an arch sense of humor that will become my favorite feature of our version.
436 As seen in the you-didn't-really-need-a-finale-anyway montage in the final episode.
441 Soundwave superior; Constructicons inferior. (I should really have had Keiko snort at that point and remark, "No one would follow an uncharismatic boor like you.")
469 This may be the only time anyone has ever pictured Akio Ohtori as anybody's grandpa.
523 Nanami's not just whistling Dixie: she saw them at it toward the end of the TV series and nearly had a nervous breakdown.
550 Nanami seems to have some inkling of her eventual fate here. She counts herself among those already destroyed.
572 An attempt, in prose, to make a Shadow-Girl play. Which came out pretty well, if I do say so myself. PJM670 In their strangely prescient way, the Shadowplay Girls hint about the drive that leads to "The End of the World". PJM
676 The sound that a popped-off hubcap makes when it rolls free of a car wheel and spins to a stop. Onomatopoeia is your friend! PJM
688 Kunihiko Ikuhara, director of the Revolutionary Girl Utena TV series.
710 As Meat Loaf put it, two out of three ain't bad.
764 Phil probably knows the number and title of the episode this happened in. Its events were a major hinge point not only in the series, but also, thanks to the way it affected my thinking, in the way Utena's personal arc developed in the Symphonies. That was the day that comes back to haunt Utena and Corwin in Interlude at the Hotel Monolith.
Episode 33, "The Prince Who Runs in the Night". PJM
781 One of the running jokes in the original Magic Knight Rayearth is that everyone of significance in Cephiro is named after a kind of car. Sonett Beach carries on that tradition; it's named for a previous Pillar of Cephiro, who was in turn named after the Saab Sonett.
820 Cinematically, this is one of those moments where the camera zooms in and pulls back at the same time (or vice versa, I can never remember which does what), so that the background seems to become vast and yawning while the focus of the shot (in this case Wakaba) remains the same relative size. In the trade this is called a dolly zoom or "the Vertigo shot" (as Alfred Hitchcock made it famous by using it in that film).
864 Strictly speaking, Akio never was a student, but Dios was, and Akio remembers. Dios's vice-president - and his best friend - was Zagato, who would go on to become High Priest of Cephiro... and one of Akio's many victims.
915 She'll know why in the next movement.
956 The Secret Forest is more correctly called the Forest of Secrets - the forest itself is clearly not secret, it's right there for everyone to see, but it contains secrets.
983 This is not always the case - we saw the platform at night at least once in the original series - but then, it is a place of high magic.
1022 Clef gets this a lot.
1038 Oh ye of little faith!
1127 It's never specified in the source material what Akio's family name was before he was adopted by the Ohtori family. It seems unlikely that it was "Himemiya", Anthy's stated surname, as that's Japanese for "shrine maiden", and is probably an artifact of her Rose Bride status.
1172 Wakaba didn't do Nanami any favors with this line...
1175 How does it feel?
How should I feel?
How does it feel
To treat me like you do?
1201 A nod to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons spell, which, it must be said, doesn't do anything nearly this impressive.
1213 The original Black Rose Duelists fought with the stolen heartswords - and the fighting styles - of those with whom they had the emotional entanglements that made them susceptible to the Black Rose Order's influence in the first place. It's never noted in the original that the transfer is permanent, but then, it's never noted that it isn't either, so.
1232 Wakaba's arc in Revolutionary Girl Utena is about the agony of being second-best. She admires Utena in large part because Utena has that undefinable spark that makes a person stand out, makes her indomitable, and Wakaba doesn't. Her desperate yearning to feel that herself - to be special, a woman of action, a leader, a hero - leaves her open to manipulation, exploitation, and crushing disappointment. And that's not right. So in this story, and most of all in this moment, we set out to light that flame within her... and just for good measure, burn Akio's fingers with it.
1270 "Hey buddy - did you jus' see a real bright light?"
1277 Unlike Rina Dragonaar.
>1 Tired of side stories yet? Boy, we were, by the time we got
>to the end of this set of them. Roses in Springtime was
>complete or mostly complete for weeks before we were actually able to
>release it, because we had all these side pieces to do, threads to
>chase, and things to bring up to date before we could draw the whole
>cast back together and plunge on into the next piece of the main arc.
>Around the lab it became good-naturedly known as the entr'acte death
>march. A peril of having a story already planned out, of course. Not being motivated to finish it feels terrible, I know, especially when you have all these forum-goers champing at the bit for the next installment. But then, its the words of encouragement and praise that must convince you to go on. I hadn't thought of the dual-edged sword nature of this kind of thing before, but is there anything we should be doing to minimize the pressure? I'm not sure how possible that is, with excitement being what it is.
>
>20 The White Tower is naturally named for the campus's
>signature feature, the belltower, which contains, among other things,
>the offices of the Student Council and (in this era) Akio Ohtori's
>personal living quarters. The Tower will also be featured in Eiko and
>Bijou Kageshoujo's 2408 breakout comedy hit, Eiko and Bijou Go to
>the White Tower, which establishes the Kageshoujo sisters as
>Cephiro's hottest young filmmakers.
OH GOD. Well, they're sure to be a hell of a lot easier to look at than Harold and Kumar. Then again, I have no idea, since we never see anything but their shadows. (And I'd just as soon forget about C-Ko too; not one of RGU's more popular design decisions.)
>
>22 Here Tsuwabuki unintentionally echoes
>one of the common openings of the shadow play scenes that recurred
>throughout Revolutionary Girl Utena, in the middle of almost
>every episode and at the beginnings of some. Given that this episode
>takes place primarily in Cephiro, at Ohtori Academy, this was a subtle
>way of giving this part of the First Symphony a more RGU-like flavor.
>PJM
I have no idea why I didn't pick up on this.
>
>38 It didn't occur to us at first that, with members of the
>series cast disappearing one by one, people back in Cephiro were
>eventually bound to notice something, even if almost all of
>them had forgotten the Lost Tournament (and that Utena had ever
>existed).
"Why are there three of us? Shouldn't the council president have been here by now?" "...Council who?"
>
>63 Wakaba had a colossal crush on Saionji for most of the
>original series, and he treated her very badly at pretty much every
>turn - at times of his own accord, and at times because he was being
>manipulated by Akio and/or Touga.
When we read UF, or really any piece of fiction, part of the reason is to break away from mundane reality and live in a world where we can feel like take-charge people, who whether through magic or technology or just plain cussedness have the tools to forge their own destinies and not feel helpless. Sometimes, though, having helpless people to compare the heroes to is necessary to point out just how exceptional and rare that viewpoint is.
>
>88 As previously noted (and as will come up again and again in
>the next little while), the final episode of RGU contained an
>unsatisfactory montage in place of anything resembling actual
>resolution. In one of the vignettes of that montage, Wakaba is seen
>more or less taking Utena's place as the popular student underclassmen
>look up to. With Akio unable to grasp that the Lost Tournament is
>over and can't be repeated, it's only logical that he'd look to her as
>the next likely candidate.
A strong indication of what becomes clear later in the piece--Wakaba doesn't go back to normalcy, instead, she remembers Utena and learns the lesson of independence from her.
>
>132 So did Wakaba, kind of, for a little while, but at this
>point in the story she doesn't remember her time as a brainwashed
>thrall of the original Black Rose Order.
Good thing she keeps Saionji's kendo skill, though, even if she has no idea. I think they tried to imply that went away with Mikage's defeat, but like so many other things in RGU, they never come out and say it--which means it can be reimagined for UF without straying from canon. Convenient, that.
>
>179 And so the dance begins once more, or so Akio thinks,
>anyway.
I was imagining Akio's slime trail resembling Baalzebul's from D&D at this point. (And he's a feces-ridden giant slug, right now. Apt comparison.)
>223 Ohtori Academy has four residence halls, one named after
>each cardinal direction. At this point in history, West Hall is
>abandoned.
The whole point of West Hall was to have Utena and Anthy be alone together for the whole first half of the series. To this day I have no idea why Utena's suspicions weren't raised a lot higher than they were.
>
>311 Not until the Third Symphony will Wakaba overcome her
>inertia as regards her hairstyle.
I always hated this hairstyle, but it served a purpose: Like Nanami's henchwomen (of which Keiko was one), girls with bad hairstyles were forever relegated to the 'ordinary non-hero' sect of the populace, no matter how much screen time they got. That was the whole point of Wakaba's Black Rose episodes, of course, as Gryphon points out in one of these annotations. Keiko's episode is similar.
>
>409 What nobody realizes is that, with the exception of Nanami,
>all of this year's councilors were Black Rose thrall/duelists last
>year. Each has a particular piece of psychic baggage connected to a
>member of the previous year's council - Wakaba's doomed crush on
>Saionji, Kozue's love/hate relationship with her twin brother,
>Tsuwabuki's slavish devotion to Nanami, Keiko's unrequited desire for
>Touga. Apart from Kanae Ohtori (Akio's unfortunate fiancée) herself,
>only Shiori (with her star-crossed friendship with Juri) is missing -
>and she will eventually replace Wakaba.
>
>431 Here Keiko, who was something of a cipher in the TV series,
>shows the beginnings of an arch sense of humor that will become my
>favorite feature of our version.
Keiko was excessively one-dimensional in the show, but they couldn't exactly expand on her any earlier than the Black Rose section because of her two fellow henchwomen, Aiko and Yuuko. If they'd focused on Keiko it'd have been both awkward and obviously a tie-in to later plans.
>441 Soundwave superior; Constructicons inferior. (I should
>really have had Keiko snort at that point and remark, "No one would
>follow an uncharismatic boor like you.")
What Keiko says pretty much conveys that opinion anyway. =)
>
>469 This may be the only time anyone has ever pictured Akio
>Ohtori as anybody's grandpa.
Heck if I know why, he's probably got great-great-great grandchildren running around by now. He's -centuries- old and can't keep his pants on.
>
>523 Nanami's not just whistling Dixie: she saw them at it
>toward the end of the TV series and nearly had a nervous breakdown.
This was the moment in the series, IMHO, that crystalized the subtle sense of horrific wrongness the whole show had. I don't remember the later episodes too well, but it struck me at the time that it was too forward for the subtle hinting the show usually did.
>
>550 Nanami seems to have some inkling of her eventual fate
>here. She counts herself among those already destroyed.
I missed this one, too. Not what she said, but I thought she was talking about her crush on her brother and some sense of remorse for the queen bitch she'd been the whole show...not that she knew that warning Wakaba would seal her fate.
>
>572 An attempt, in prose, to make a
>Shadow-Girl play. Which came out pretty well, if I do say so myself.
>PJM I appreciated it immensely. =P
>
>670 In their strangely prescient way, the Shadowplay Girls hint
>about the drive that leads to "The End of the World". PJM
Missed this reference. Why, I have no idea.
>
>676 The sound that a popped-off hubcap makes when it rolls free
>of a car wheel and spins to a stop. Onomatopoeia is your friend!
>PJM
This, on the other hand, I understood immediately.
>
>688 Kunihiko Ikuhara, director of the Revolutionary Girl
>Utena TV series.
Got this one.
>
>710 As Meat Loaf put it, two out of three ain't bad.
-Ouch.- And so, so true.
>
>781 One of the running jokes in the original Magic Knight
>Rayearth is that everyone of significance in Cephiro is named
>after a kind of car. Sonett Beach carries on that tradition; it's
>named for a previous Pillar of Cephiro, who was in turn named after
>the Saab Sonett.
I've seen part of MKR (in fact, the last ep I saw was the first half of the fight with Lafarga), but I never got the car reference until these notes.
>
>820 Cinematically, this is one of those moments where the
>camera zooms in and pulls back at the same time (or vice versa, I can
>never remember which does what), so that the background seems to
>become vast and yawning while the focus of the shot (in this case
>Wakaba) remains the same relative size. In the trade this is called a
>dolly zoom or "the Vertigo shot" (as Alfred Hitchcock made it
>famous by using it in that film).
This is the moment in the story where I stopped cringing, anticipating Wakaba's horrible fate (in the In Nomine sense!), and started reading like a demon.
>956 The Secret Forest is more correctly called the Forest of
>Secrets - the forest itself is clearly not secret, it's right
>there for everyone to see, but it contains secrets.
Perils of Japanese translation, no doubt.
>
>1172 Wakaba didn't do Nanami any favors with this line...
I winced -terribly- when I saw this; as I had been thinking that Wakaba had better not say anything about how she knew what she knew for the whole second half of the story.
>
>1201 A nod to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons spell,
>which, it must be said, doesn't do anything nearly this impressive.
Indeed. I'm a D&D buff, but since the spells are mostly from Slayers (since the few MKR spells listed fit very nicely in that paradigm), I can see why you'd have to go elsewhere for any utilitarian magic. You'd think the most commonly used spells among sorcerers would be the ones that made your bed in the morning. That's surely what I'd do with a lot of that, were I in that enviable position.
>
>1213 The original Black Rose Duelists fought with the stolen
>heartswords - and the fighting styles - of those with whom they had
>the emotional entanglements that made them susceptible to the Black
>Rose Order's influence in the first place. It's never noted in the
>original that the transfer is permanent, but then, it's never noted
>that it isn't either, so.
No wonder I made this comment, I'd already read these comments once.
>
>1232 Wakaba's arc in Revolutionary Girl Utena is about
>the agony of being second-best. She admires Utena in large part
>because Utena has that undefinable spark that makes a person stand
>out, makes her indomitable, and Wakaba doesn't. Her desperate
>yearning to feel that herself - to be special, a woman of
>action, a leader, a hero - leaves her open to manipulation,
>exploitation, and crushing disappointment. And that's not right. So
>in this story, and most of all in this moment, we set out to light
>that flame within her... and just for good measure, burn Akio's
>fingers with it.
Hey, I was being a broken record here, too. Ahwell.
>1277 Unlike Rina Dragonaar.
I wondered how that happened.
"They say one should not speak unkindly of the dead, so I say, 'nice try'." --Lezard