Image Restored/Edited by abbysayswords for The Empty Movement, 2018.
In my review of the first chapter of the 20th anniversary Revolutionary Girl Utena manga, we discussed Touga and Saionji and how they regained some memory of Anthy and Utena after 20 years had passed.
Today, before I begin discussing the 2nd chapter of the 20th anniversary Revolutionary Girl Utena manga by Saitou Chiho and Be-Papas, which ran in the March 2018 issue of Flowers magazine, I ask you to take a moment to think back on high school. For most of my readers, that will be long enough ago for memories to have begun to fade. Think back 20 years ago. Who were you then? What did you want? I remember little of high school and even less of myself in my early 30s. It’s a long time ago.
Arisugawa Jyuri (we have an official transliteration of her name at last) also remembers little of the past. On the eve of a photo shoot, she dreams of drowning.
Jyuri is an accomplished famous fencer. In her mid-30s, there’s no reason to assume her skill is any less now than it had been. In the final match for the World Title, her opponent appears….it’s a man, who wears a rose ring! They fight, but the electrical system shorts out due to a lightning strike and the match will have to be postponed. She wonders who that man was and Miki, who had attended the match to cheer Jyuri on, comments, confused, “What are you talking about? Your opponents were all women.”
As we might have expected, beautiful, long-limbed and graceful, Jyuri is also a professional model. And, as we watch, our eyebrows crawling ever higher, she does a photoshoot…is that fucking Ohtori?! Yes, it is Ohtori, and she stands in the greenhouse, or sprawls across the chairs with signs that literally point to the waiting room, while our skin crawls.
Jyuri is also with Shiori. I have a lot of conflicted feelings about this. I hate series that act like the only possible pairing is among the characters in the story. But bear with me here, because it’ll get even more conflicted. Shiori is Jyuri’s agent and manager. She rejects a costume that shows too much cleavage. “We have to protect Jyuri’s image as a dashing fencer.” Which leads Jyuri to talk about something on her mind – she’s thinking of leaving fencing. Shiori says, well I have to tell you something, too. And standing there is the man who Jyuri fought in the fencing match! Wearing a Rose Seal ring. And, as the Jyuri watches, he poaches her manager. Shiori leaves Jyuri, on the arms of Ruka. Jyuri breaks down crying that she needs Shiori.
We see Jyuri in those days before she took up the uniform of the Student Council. Just another female Ohtori student, as she sees a little Shiori, looking like a princess. A princess, she reasons, needs a prince. So, when Shiori arrives at Ohtori and comments she finds the fencers admirable, Jyuri took up fencing and managed to obtain Shiori’s admiration. She would be this princess’s prince. One day, Ruka find Jyuri on her hands and knees, desperately searching for her locket in a field where she thought she dropped it. Ruka and Jyuri fight. She is unable to defeat him in this informal bout, but he gives her the locket she has been missing….he knows. He knows what she is.
Ruka and Jyuri face off again. This time he brings them to the dueling ground where Shiori is the Rose Bride. Pushed to her limits, Jyuri has a vision of a young woman, (we recognize Utena,) who floats down from the castle and gives her the “Power to Revolutionize the World.”
Jyuri sees Shiori sitting by the river, slipping in, and jumps in to save her. She is drowning….she is being left to drown…she is being drowned. We know this scene. We recognize that bench. We can hear the music. We know it and we know that it never happened to Jyuri.
Young Jyuri wakes in a hospital, where Shiori tells her Ruka died saving her. Jyuri wanders down a hallway and finds herself in a chapel, where child Utena sleeps in a coffin full of roses. The child calls her a goddess of battle and Jyuri remembers that Ruka had called her his “Goddess of Battle, Lily.” The child begins to walk away, Jyuri asks, “where are you going?” The girls replies, “I want to see that girl again.”
Back in the present, Juri finishes the fencing match and fingers the locket, still around her neck. Her opponent removes their mask and it is indeed not Ruka whom she fought, but a woman, (who looks rather put out.)
In the locker room after receiving the championship cup, Jyuri tells Shiori that she’s done. Shiori begins to cry – are you really not going to fence anymore? “No,” Jyuri says, I’m not going to fight for you anymore. I’ve been fighting to be your prince, to protect you.” She accepts that she really just loves fighting and will do it now for herself.
Shiori seems to understand. She tells Jyuri that she had had a dream of Ruka walking away from her, with a smile telling her that Jyuri has found the thing she was looking for.
Jyuri opens up the locket and we see that it still contains that old picture of Shiori. Carved by hand into the metal of the inside cover it says “Fight Jyuri!” in English.
The last page shows Ruka and Jyuri walking away from one another. The page says 「戦え樹璃」with furigana that reads “Fight Jyuri”.
Phew.
So many feels. But what actually happened?
Jyuri experienced three things in this chapter that never actually happened to her. We know that. She did not fight Ruka in the championship bout, she did not see Shiori drown, and…Shiori did not leave her for Ruka. Not 20 years ago. Not now.
It calls into question everything we know about her. What if Shiori never did any of the things we thought she did? The Black Rose arc was clearly feeding off of participants’ dark fantasies. What if Shiori wasn’t ever a master manipulator and was – and always has been – Jyuri’s closest friend who wants what was best for her? We may never truly know.
As I have been saying repeatedly, Saitou-sensei’s art has really grown in 20 years. The aesthetic here is even more gorgeous than we remember it. And I’d be okay with an artbook of Jyuri playing dressup. ^_^
Ratings:
Art – 9 Gorgeous
Story – 9 I’m re-reading every word trying to pull out more meaning. Sometimes doing that is ridiculous, but here, it’s always worth the effort.
Characters – 9
Yuri – 4 I don’t know if Shiori and Jyuri are a couple, but they are certainly a partnership
Service – 5 – Jyuri playing dressup as a swordswoman and a lesbian. ^_^
Overall – 9
I am 100% in favor of Jyuri finding herself at the end of this chapter. I am 100% in favor of Utena looking for Anthy.
The next chapter will have to be Miki.
Tune back in two months from now when the next chapter is released in the May issue of Flowers magazine!
