324 The Minbari are a standoffish people who like to remind others that their civilization has been in continuous, if not terribly productive, existence since well before most of the current players in galactic politics worked out that whole "fire" thing. They discourage the wide dissemination of their traditional arts on the presumption that most younger species wouldn't really understand them anyway.

376 Now this is a Durandal message more in the mold of classic Durandal messages (it even has the "polygon" signal junk at the bottom, cadged straight out of in-game text), single-character errors, superior tone and all.

415 It's a shame nobody in the art department has drawn Aunt Urd's version.

That's only because we haven't come up with an appropriate context for it... yet. PJM

427 Hiroshi and Mirai are originally from the anime series Moldiver. Their younger brother Nozomu does not appear in UF.

470 This version has been immortalized in artwork by Dave Menard.

484 QumwI'wIj vItu'IaHbe', qaH - Klingonese for "I have lost my communicator, sir."

495 Mac's rather creepy telecrush on Kate was one of the several developments that weren't planned for and didn't have a spot in the outline chart, as it were.

499 Tribble Chow is very expensive, since it's specially formulated to meet the creatures' nutritional needs without triggering their extremely aggressive autoreproductive systems.

536 From an actual incident in a calc class I took during my year at WPI. Prof. Farr regarded the board for a few moments, realized he'd made an error all the way back near the start someplace that made everything else he'd been doing worthless, and called off class for the day, promising to have the whole thing re-done right so that we could start in on it the next day.

566 Wakaba used to do this all the time in the original Utena series, so we felt it was appropriate for her to make her triumphant return to Utena in this manner. PJM

634 Like the fact that the Extension to the Psi Act just recently passed.

711 Anthy was in the habit of calling Utena "Utena-sama" back in the day - part of the subservient role of the Rose Bride.

720 Prince Dios dubbed Utena "Knight of the Rose" years ago, when she was just a little girl. Her memories of that meeting are sketchy at best, though they did spur her to go to Ohtori Academy in the first place.

790 A number of things came back to Wakaba during her encounter with Akio on the platform, not all of which fit neatly into the narration; one of them is her experience as a Black Rose Duelist, which was partly made possible by her jealousy of Utena's developing friendship with Anthy.

808 Similar advice was given to Agent J by Agent K in 1997 film Men in Black. PJM

857 Despite the fact that it deals with all manner of motorsports today, the campus club Keiichi Morisato belonged to as a student and advises as a faculty member still bears its original name: Nekomi Institute of Technology Motor Cycle Club.

868 Mitsubishi's Lancer Evolution line remains one of the galaxy's premier platforms for international motor rallying.

870 "Your other left - !"

922 This is a novelty shirt she bought in France, and does not refer to an actual school.

945 It appears they've touched on the works of Nietzsche in one of Utena's liberal-arts classes.

1023 In the old days, the motorcycle was Touga's and Saionji was always the passenger, just as the plans were always Touga's and Saionji was always the follower. This is another small way in which Saionji is, at last, becoming the person he should have been all along.

1031 At the end of the first of Revolutionary Girl Utena's three main story arcs, Saionji was expelled from Ohtori Academy. In the second arc it was revealed that he was living illicitly in Wakaba's dorm room, using her as part of an elaborate scheme to get back into the Deputy Chairman's good graces and back into the Academy - and all the while, Akio was really using him as part of an elaborate scheme to involve Wakaba in the Lost Tournament. Both schemes eventually worked, leaving Wakaba heartbroken and Saionji even further embittered - and only now that she's seen Akio's true face does Wakaba really understand what happened to them both.

1250 And a song by Rush.

1272 Saionji's sporting a reproduction of a World War II bomber crewman's sheepskin flying suit.

1298 Here's that line from The Tempest again.

1313 "Crashing another scene, of course. You'd better get used to it, 'cause I plan on doing it a lot, even when my own contributing author would rather I didn't."

1372 Kate's Strat originally belonged to her father, in his guise as Don Griffin, lead guitarist of Vision's band, the Revengers (not to be confused with Don Griffin the Time Lord). He left it behind when he left New Japan; Nene Romanova looked after it until her death in 2389. Gryphon got it back at her funeral and eventually passed it on to Kate.

1391 "Always With Me, Always With You" is a Joe Satriani song (from his 1987 breakthrough album Surfing with the Alien), which is why the UF version, written by Kate, is said to have been inspired by Joe Graf and his band.

1435 From the Big O soundtrack. R. Dorothy uses this prestissimo piano drill to awaken/annoy Roger Smith on several occasions in the TV series.

1541 "Man, It's So Loud In Here", from the 2001 They Might Be Giants album Mink Car.

1543 Joe Satriani's "One Big Rush" (Flying in a Blue Dream, 1989). The UF version was inspired by Kate's duel with Utena on the roof of the hotel in Toronto - which, in a nicely circular touch, had "One Big Rush" as its soundtrack.

1561 "I Think I Like It", done in the style of the cover by Boston on their 1986 album Third Stage, quickly became one of the UF Art's signature songs. Its complex, interlocking guitar and rhythm parts and vocal harmonies make it ideal as a track the band uses to challenge itself and get its mojo flowing.

1564 In 2001, Journey released the album Arrival. Both Gryphon and I got the album at about the same time, and ended up putting several tracks on nigh-infinite repeat, since they just fit so well with developments in the Symphony at the time. "To Be Alive Again" was one of them. PJM

1677 Corley Motors, the motorcycle company from the LucasArts video game Full Throttle, turns up in NXE as well.

1687 Savatage's "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24)", from Dead Winter Dead (1995).

1690 "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" is also traditionally in a minor key (A Minor).

1723 Derived from Goldfinger's cover of the 1983 Nena hit "99 Luftballons". Truss assembled a special extended bilingual version for me from the all-English cut on their 2000 album Stomping Ground and the version with one missing verse and one German verse used as BGM in Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec (hence the "Deutsche Turismo Edit" tag used in the closing credits playlist).

1814 Sometimes you can almost see the Gong Show hook come in and drag Mac off-camera.

1857 Psalm XXIII:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me in the path of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

1934 Also performed by the Benny Goodman Orchestra at their 1938 Carnegie Hall concert, and by Janis Siegel of the Manhattan Transfer for the soundtrack of the movie Swing Kids. "Bei mir bist Du schön / Please let me explain / Bei mir bist Du schön means that you're grand... "

1959 I like these quiet little moments, interspersed as they are in the frantic go-time that is my protagonists' general lot in life.

1979 Kris and I traded bodged-up MS Paint sketches derived from a planview of a Northrop YB-49 bomber for most of an evening until we eventually arrived at the final design of the One-Hit Wonder. A Forum user later made us some really lovely renders, which can be seen, along with the evolutionary sketches, in the Symphony image gallery.

1987 A one-hit wonder is a band that achieves remarkable success with a single song, and then is pretty much never heard from again. There is no really significant reason why it's the name of Corwin's ship; it's just a phrase I like the scansion of and decided would make a catchy ship name.

2009 Here we see that the One-Hit Wonder's class was an ancestor of the YT-1300 series, of which the Millennium Falcon and Daggerdisc are both famous examples. (Note also the YB-49 reference.)

2011 The One-Hit Wonder's spaceframe was built in 1935.

2087 Gamilon flightsuits employ a compression technology similar to that of Evangelion plug suits.

2127 Utena's student number is straightforward: she's the 123rd student (in order of enrollment, not class performance standing) in the graduating class of 2407. As she was one of the last to enroll, we may conclude that the Class of 2407 is no more than 130 or so students strong - or at least it was before Christmas break. Assuming that WPI has only the usual four high school grades, and that all four classes are of roughly the same size, the school has quite a small enrollment for the size of the campus.

2136 As we will later learn, this is a lie; Mr. Haineley was deliberately ousted by order of Earthgov, and Dean Wetherwell ordered to cover it up. You will note, later in this Symphony, that he is not among the WPI administrators who reappear after Hunted Rose.

2201 It's also a surveillance device.

2285 Here's confirmation of our calculations above. WPI is quite a small school for the extent of its facilities. The real-world college version has an undergraduate enrollment not far short of 3,000.

2297 The P-scale, like the Psi Corps itself, is adapted from Babylon 5. In the source show, telepaths are rated according to their psionic strength - how hard it is to block their attempts to probe one's mind, etc. - on a scale starting at 1. The highest-level telepaths usually featured on the show were the Psi Cops, who were rated P12, and who inspired dread and fear in almost everyone. Psi Corps instructors were said to be rated P10. Commercial telepaths, who are usually employed for such tasks as monitoring business negotiations for duplicity, are commonly rated around P5 - strong enough to monitor the thoughts of untrained normal people, but not much of a threat to someone trained in telepathic combat or a more powerful esper discipline.

2312 In the 25th century, Raytheon remains an influential defense contractor.

2317 Quartectic fever is a recurring derangement of the metabolism caused by genetic damage from exposure to exotic radiations. It's a common affliction of space navy enlisted personnel, who are often exposed to damaged engine cores, unshielded weapons, and other hazards in the course of space combat - sort of a 25th-century spacer's malaria.

2333 In K-ryuu, ki and the Force are manifestations of the same form of energy. Ki comes from within and the Force from without; the Force is, if you will, the universal "background glow" produced by every lifeform's ki "shining" from within. K-ryuu's teachings hold that one cannot manipulate the Force without first mastering one's own ki.

2394 Of course, reporting her to Dean Wetherwell wouldn't help much, since he's well aware that that's what Miss LeClerq is here to do.

2547 A Dantrovian neurochemical; you can guess what state of mind it is a prime contributor to.

2585 There's "The Dance of the Soviet Sailors" again.

2599 The irony in Miss LeClercq's attitude toward Freespacers is epic.

2648 Ka-chow!

2718 Given that at Ohtori Academy, Juri had a reputation of not even taking guff from the teachers, being capable of sending them scurrying away with just a glance, Miss LeClercq pretty much didn't have a prayer. PJM

2737 Or so he appears; in fact, thanks to the way the Lost Tournament's Dueling Code mangled time in the general vicinity of Ohtori Academy, he and Anthy are both very much older.

2751 The beginning threads of evidence that Juri is slowly being influenced by her new social circle at WPI. PJM

2753 CRUSH ALL HU-MANS

2807 Dorothy's appraisal of her own value seems a bit low. Presumably it's based on an official valuation - perhaps for tax purposes - made by someone who didn't truly grasp the sophistication of what he was looking at.

2820 I think this is the first time Prof. Harris's religious affiliation's actually mentioned on screen.

2881 Mia's "Uncle Dave", real name Davonn, is a member of the Minbari warrior caste and an Anla'shok, and, as such, not somebody you want to get on the bad side of.

2962 Truss's first on-screen appearance since his movie theater cameo in UF3, I think.

3007 Not the last time we'll hear of Tau Ceti and its troubles with Earthgov.

3068 "Gin, yo."

3097 Kate's little-seen middle name, revealing the even less-known truth that Yuri Daniels's first name is properly Yuriko as well.

3099 Part of a common Dantrovese expletive which is usually shortened in one of several different ways. The full phrase, dvhil nazhai orzal la'zhalt, is sort of the Dantrovese equivalent of "Jesus H. jumping Christ on a unicycle!" - but they almost never get agitated enough to say the whole thing. Azalynn herself has only ever gotten as far as dvhil nazhai orzal in released material.

3116 Oh, sure, now she objects to the rodent label.

3126 During the plot that ended with Saionji betraying her to gain readmission to Ohtori Academy.

3183 jiH muDech qoH: roughly, "I'm surrounded by idiots."

3196 I was going to have Saionji get Wakaba a dress for the Formal, but she ended up wearing her uniform to facilitate the "council in exile" joke.

3205 More evidence of the Duelists' influence on Juri. PJM

3265 The Aud is a real building; it's across the street from the Worcester County Courthouse, which rejoices in the 2000 AD-esque motto "OBEDIENCE TO LAW IS LIBERTY" carved in the stone lintel above the portico.

3293 Grand Admiral Noriko R. Takaya, Olaf Petersson, Kris Overstreet, Hanson Davion, and Nadia Davion, respectively.

3313 As she would later learn, Liza's artistic talent leans more toward storytelling and poetry - activities discouraged as effete by her father's standards.

3351 The Hoffman anvil bells remain one of my favorites of Kris Overstreet's many contributions to the background tapestry of the UF universe.

3389 It is, perhaps, unsurprising that themes of suffering and vindication feature strongly in Kate's musical stylings at this point in her life.

3419 On the first Revolutionary Girl Utena soundtrack, "Scarlet of the Campus" is, in fact, subtitled "Utena's Theme".

3435 Juri's friendship with Miki in the original series, and her habit of watching him play the piano, were just the prelude to the full-bodied realization that she has here. PJM

3444 I feel Devlin's pain every spring.

3517 It's like 3D chess from Star Trek, plus Knightmare Chess cards. I haven't tried it, but I suppose it would work. Combining games like this used to be something of a tradition in GweepCo circles. Most of the really popular variations involved combining Steve Jackson Games' Nuclear War with something else - Nuclear Sorry! ("50 megatons! Sorry!"), Nuclear Bonkers, Nuclear Monopoly, and Nuclear Illuminati were all attempted, as well as Illumonopoly (and possibly even Nuclear Illumonopoly). If memory serves, the most horrible permutation of names we ever came up with - no one even attempted to devise the actual game - was Call of Illuminuclear Civonoporisk Encounter Wars for Hackers in Cars: 1889punk, a combination of Call of Cthulhu, Illuminati, Nuclear War, Civilization, Monopoly, Risk, Cosmic Encounter, West End Games' Star Wars RPG, Hackers, Car Wars, Space: 1889, and Cyberpunk.

3569 In UF, the type of communicator seen in the original Star Trek.

3577 Lore, naturally.

3588 In one of the earliest episodes of the TV series. Might even have been the second one.

3634 The IP Space Force everyday duty uniform is based on the one from the later seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but with the semi-turtleneck undershirts from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and IPSF markings instead of Starfleet ones.

3650 Challenger is named for two previous ships: the Miranda-class light cruiser that was Gryphon's first command during his time in the Star Trek-themed parallel universe he visited during the Exile, and of course the lost STS orbiter (OV-99).

3661 A visual effect borrowed from Star Trek II.

3684 The IPSF dress uniform is drawn, again, from Star Trek II, though the colors (and the pants/shoes) are different.

3708 It took a while for the nomenclature of the IPO and IPSF to settle into a fixed form. Here Corwin refers to the whole organization as the Experts of Justice, which, as things took their final form, is wrong; the Experts are a special high-level division of the IPO. Elsewhere, in these early stories, are references in which the Space Force's full name is given as "International Police Organization Space Force" and abbreviated "IPO-SF". Not long after Challenger finished trials and became fully operational, the full name of the force was shortened to "International Police Space Force", abbreviated "IPSF".

3731 Unlike the IPSF uniforms, the Valkyrie dress uniform is not based on any particular uniform from fiction, though without the cloak and tabard they do rather unnervingly resemble Nazi SS uniforms. (It's actually the other way around, but.) At least they dropped the Totenkopf from their uniform badges after the Ragnarok.

3816 Amanda's imperial gown does rather resemble the Rose Bride's traditional costume, albeit in a different color.

3826 Based on a picture of Kaolla Suu, the Love Hina character from whose visual design Azalynn's look was derived.

3839 Orichalcum, a magic-sensitive metal commonly used as both currency and a mystic focus material in places like Barsaive.

3840 This dagger, made of obsidian, is Sky's token of membership in the Ishkarat aropagoi. He always has it on his person somewhere, though it is usually concealed.

3973 G'Kron approaches quoting the last line of the Revolutionary Girl Utena opening theme, which is usually translated, "I swear to you, I will change the world."

3979 Spoken at the beginning of every Rose Duel during the Lost Tournament.

4010 Corwin was taught by experts, too - specifically his Aunt Urd and Brunnhilde Silverspear, the Valkyrior's resident expert in courtly manners.

4026 Anthy, at the same formal ball that saw Utena's aforementioned one attempt at wearing a ballgown.

4046 The spelling of Fontainbleu Academy's name changes with the wind in the early going; I could never keep track of where the vowels all went. I'm fond of the nickname le Château Snootée, though.

4051 Liza's off-and-on "engagements" to various eligible society types was mainly to facilitate Utena's alarm at Kate's line in Wounded Rose, "If Liza Broadbank doesn't decide who she's engaged to, someone's gonna die," and once it served its purpose, the gag was quietly phased out. This is pretty much its last gasp.

4192 We'll see this situation again...

4196 "You present the appearance of a man with a problem." Dr. Leonard H. McCoy, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

4326 We see evidence of Phil's invisible hand in this scene.

4366 And here's Shiori at last. She has a... uniquely vehement... fandom that I'm not entirely sure I understand, but I hardly intended to leave her out of the Symphony, as some had accused me after we passed the fourth movement with nary a sign of her. I was just waiting for the right window, and here, Phil and I agreed, it was.

Hell, I'm a nominal member of that fandom, and even I don't get it at times. It's just better for everyone if you smile, nod, and move on. PJM

4373 Shiori and Juri had one of the messier arcs in Revolutionary Girl Utena, and that's saying something. Initially, we were led to believe that Juri hated Shiori because they'd been friends for years, and then Shiori had stolen Juri's boyfriend and run off with him. Later it came out that Juri hadn't really been into the guy that much - she was upset over that incident because she was, in fact, in love with Shiori. Things between them remained gruesomely unresolved in the standard RGU fashion for the rest of the series. This flashback - to a day very shortly before Juri disappeared from Cephiro, to appear in Worcester in Duelists of the Rose - shows the never-canonically-provided moment in which Juri finally just upped and told Shiori how she felt.

There was a hint of the seeds of resolution between the two, however: in the aforementioned closing not-really-an-ending-montage, there's a brief scene of Juri teaching a fencing class, and Shiori, among the students in fencing gear, stepping forward to be the next volunteer. That provided the seed that grew into this scene. PJM

4465 For all her many virtues, Juri just needs someone to say this to her once in a while.

AYYYMEN! Preach it, brother! PJM

4501 JuriOS - Pagefault. System restart (y/n)? PJM

4518 And so another step is taken by the two of them. PJM

4633 Certain Suspects have no joke, they just like saying "the yardstick of physical response." I admit it's a clunky-ass phrase.

4785 Or, as ordinary people call it, a "tent".

4798 Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, Apollo 11 lunar module pilot, July 21, 1969: "Beautiful. Beautiful. Magnificent desolation."

4813 Named for Russian scientist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskiy (1857-1935), an early proponent of rocket-powered space travel, the Tsiolkovskiy Sea is UF-Titan's largest body of water.

4940 Clearly, this night ended up being a turning point for Juri and Kate's growing friendship-relationship, on both sides of the equation. PJM

4970 And here he is - Roger Tremayne, aka Darth Venger, makes his first appearance, though it will be some time before it's revealed that he has much deeper allegiances than the obvious one to the Psi Corps.

5094 Again, major work on the development of Juri's plot arc was handled by me. Ditto in the following movement, Hunted Rose, though the credits list at that point was so damn unwieldy that everybody had trouble managing it. PJM

With something like that, all you need is a bed, a pose, and a come-hither expression. Note in the text that the camera was soon no longer necessary or wanted, and leave the rest to imagination.

--
Kokuten Daysleeper
RCW #13013
(Insert Witticism Here)

This passage, coupled with the fact that every character (*) who trained in K-ryuu so far has also shown Force sensibility, makes me wonder if hearing the Force is a prequisite for training in the art, or a side-effect of it.

(*) with the possible exception of Gryphon's Vulcan student whose name I can't remember

Wasn't that Kate and Utena? Unless this is meta-commentary and thus has no attached timetable to it. It's about 3AM now(I made the mistake of starting a new movement in an attempt to wait out my current insomnia. Curse your addictive prose! :) so I may be missing out on the obvious due to processing on less than a full stack at the moment.

-OM