Recap / Revolutionary Girl Utena E 34 The Rose Signet

Utena, Akio, and Anthy take photos together, then attend a drama club performance put on by the Shadow Play Girls titled the "Tale of the Rose." Afterwards, Utena dreams about what really happened to her when she met first met her prince, which turns out to be a markedly different version of the story from the play.

"The Rose Signet" provides examples of:

• Almost Kiss: Akio and Utena come close to kissing, although Utena is uncomfortable with the situation and pulls away.
• Broken Tears: Utena was horrified when she saw Anthy's eternal agony.
• Children Are Innocent: As a child, Utena saw Anthy's suffering and her only thought afterwards was "I need to do something to help this poor girl."
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Dios's desire to save people gradually destroyed his health, leaving his sister to cover for him at the cost of her being stabbed by the world's hatred and Dios losing his faith in humanity.
• Dramatic Spotlight: During the Tale of the Rose performance, a spotlight shines on Akio when the Witch/sister says "the Rose Prince," and another one shines on Anthy when she says "younger sister." The show is being remarkably up-front about equating the characters in the play with the characters in the wider narrative. The usual shadow plays never draw parallels so blatantly.
• Eyedscreen: The sexy discretion technique for Akio and Anthy's tryst at the start of the episode is very skinny letterboxing, almost as if the audience is watching them put their clothes back on through drawn blinds.
• Foreshadowing: The Tale of the Rose has a Downer Ending and concludes with a warning that the Witch is still out there, "seeking the young and noble, to sacrifice them anew." And this warning is prophetic — the witch is right there watching the play, and she is indeed preparing young and noble souls for sacrifice. But the Witch in the play does this out of selfishness — why the actual witch does it is one of the primary questions of the series.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In-Universe. "The Tale of the Rose" portrays the Rose Prince as the victim of an evil witch who turned out to be his little sister. In the play, she became bitter because she's the only girl her brother couldn't turn into a princess, so she locked him up as a witch. The play fails to mention that Anthy "sealed" her brother away because he was at the brink of death from yielding to the demands of an uncaring society.
• Holding Out for a Hero: In Dios's flashback, the people of the world were overly reliant on him, basically exploiting his altruism and demanding that he continue to rescue their daughters with no regard for, or seeming awareness of, how it harmed him. The flashback suggests that Dios would have kept at it until he died, too. Only Anthy showed concern for his well-being.
• Humans Are Bastards: Dios and Anthy are implied to be something beyond human, and Dios in particular used his powers in service of the world. Human society, however, took Dios's heroics for granted and began demanding he save their children (daughters especially) and were more willing to take up weaponry to get him and then stab Anthy for supposedly sealing him away instead of protecting their children themselves.
• Interrupted Bath: After the production, the shadow play girls do one of their regularly scheduled shadow plays. A-ko and B-ko are relaxing in a bubble bath together, congratulating themselves on a play well-played (to an audience of three) and are interrupted by C-ko, who's doing their parts of the play, rather than hers.
• Last-Second Photo Failure:
  • When Utena, Akio and Anthy pose for a photo together, Akio is about to put his hand on Utena's shoulder, but starts when Anthy scolds Chu-Chu for (very conveniently) climbing on the camera. After Anthy collects Chu-Chu and goes back to posing, she inserts herself between Akio and Utena, splitting them up.
  • Once the timed shutter finally fires, the screen goes black and Anthy says, "sorry, I closed my eyes." It's unclear if she messed up the picture; the scene ends without showing the what it looks like.
• Loss of Identity: One interpretation of Utena's dream is that it represents the last gasp of princeliness in Dios. He morns for Anthy's suffering wipes away Utena's tears, but when Utena declares that she will become a prince for Anthy, he becomes distant and doubtful.
• Metaphoric Metamorphosis: In Utena's dream, Dios is not the same age in every scene. When Utena first sees him, he looks like a young adult. When he tells Utena about Anthy, he is the same age he is in his flashback: about middle school-aged. And when he thanks Utena for her kindness and tells her that she will forget their meeting when she becomes a woman, he is back to being a young adult.
• Photo Memento: Wakaba offers to make Utena some copies of some photos of their classmates, and Utena remarks that there aren't any of Anthy. Wakaba's excuse is that Anthy doesn't get involved at school so there aren't opportunities to photograph her. In the next scene, Utena has evidently asked Akio to take pictures of her and Anthy, and the three of them together.
  Akio: You really treasure your memories, don't you?
  Utena: Well, that's not quite it, but...
• Purely Aesthetic Era: The "real" Tale of the Rose seems to be set in a pre-modern, fairytale-appropriate point in time, but it's so loaded with anachronism that it may as well have been yesterday (or at least the 90s.) The angry adults demanding help from Dios are wearing button-downs and ties, if not business suits, and they may remind the viewer of their own parents. In the barn where Dios and Anthy are holed up there is a fax machine sending them non-stop messages, emphasizing how Dios' work is never done.
• The Scapegoat: Anthy protected her brother by stating she locked him away so no one could find him, and the people of the world responded by directing all of their hatred at her for stealing their savior.
• Seamless Scenery: Used as a gradual transition into a dream sequence. Utena is reminded of her meeting with her prince, and the focus of the scene shifts to a space in the distance where her coffin appears, and little Touga and Saionji are in the middle of opening it. Present-day Utena's out-of-focus silhouette goes dark, and before long, the scene is entirely a flashback/dream of the past. The episode does not show Utena falling asleep, but it does show her waking up afterward.
• School Play: The drama club play that Utena, Anthy and Akio go see is a student production done on the cheap, with characteristic bits like the title card drawn on a chalkboard. Their subject matter, "The Tale of the Rose," is a highly skewed version of Akio and Anthy's backstory and how the Duels came to be; Anthy's facial expression doesn't change once as they watch it. Akio specifically draws attention to its amateurish qualities and the inaccuracy of its story. And he would know, since it's his story.
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: Akio uses a False Dichotomy example of this when he, Utena and Anthy are waiting for the play to start.
  Akio: All life's a stage, and all people are either actors or spectators.
• Treacherous Quest Giver: The plot of the Tale of the Rose hinges on the chronically heroic Prince being told about an evil Witch by an old woman, predictably going to face her, and being imprisoned by his quest-giver who, unbeknownst to him, is the Witch the sought to defeat. There are shades of the Old Beggar Test and The Farmer and the Viper in this plot, except that the nested reveal that the Witch is the Prince's sister in disguise turns the story on it's ear.
• Visual Pun: At one point in the Tale of the Rose, the Prince is Milking the Giant Cow in surprise over the reveal that the Old Woman is actually the Witch, and when the Witch says, "YOU are the light!" a giant lightbulb drops into his outstretched arms. That gag makes the Prince literally a light, and also emphasizes one of the important elements of the allegory: all the things the main characters have been seeking^note That which is eternal, that which shines, the power of miracles, the power to revolutionize the world over the course of the show have their origin in the Prince. (Granted, the series starts subverting the Tale of the Rose almost immediately and this plot point is a lie... but much of the plot is built on this lie.)