Episode 14: The Boys of the Black Rose

The necromancers of the Black Rose Circle plot to destroy Utena and Himemiya.  We learn that Himemiya has a brother, Ohtori Akio, and the Black Rose people use his fiancee Kanae as a zombie Duellist.

This is a summary of episode 14 of the anime series Revolutionary Girl Utena.  You are welcome to link to it, but not to repost it elsewhere.  For more information, and other episode summaries, see the index.

Note that most of the episodes in the 13-episode "Black Rose" arc follow a very similar formula; I'll explain it in a fair bit of detail this time and then refer back for the repetitive bits in later episodes.

The episode starts by showing us, without much explanation, an ominous-looking building, a tank of blue liquid in the basement of the building, with a black rose growing in it, a purple-haired dark-skinned girl who looks a lot like Himemiya staring into the tank, and a pink-haired boy who sort of looks like Utena.  They're talking about how things have been quiet on campus since Touga has been absent.

Utena finds out that Himemiya has a brother who is chairman of the school, and goes to visit him every Saturday night.  Utena goes with her to his house, where he hangs out in a luxuriously appointed planetarium.  The chairman, Ohtori Akio (he's taken the Ohtori family name by adoption), introduces his fiance, Ohotori Kanae.  Her father is actually the chairman - Akio is only acting chairman while the father is ill.  Akio also seems to be the narrator character from Episode 13.  He's got pale purple hair in a ponytail, and brown skin matching Himemiya's.

They make small talk; Akio tells of his love for stargazing, and says the best thing about the students at Ohtori Academy is that they never fight - right?  Utena say, uh, right, no fighting here, nosiree.  Then as they're about to leave, we see a shot of a hand reaching into the tank and plucking the black rose, and then Kanae asks Himemiya to start calling her "sister" ("oneesan") - and, implicitly, use less formal speech.  Himemiya has generally been speaking to Kanae in formal Japanese, the same way she habitually speaks to pretty much everyone.

We're introduced to Mikage Souji, the pink-haired boy, who though only a high school student himself is sponsor of the "Mikage Seminar" high-IQ society, also known as the Black Rose Circle.  It seems to be a sort of academic yakuza.  Mikage does things like write papers for people to pass off as their own, in exchange for owing him an unspecified future "favour." Miki politely declines an invitation to join the organization.

Himemiya thanks Utena for not mentioning the rose duels, as they're passing the ominous building we saw before.  Miki comes out of it, implying that that's where he was meeting with Mikage, and tells them of the history of the building:  Nemuro Memorial Hall.  It's said to be haunted by the spirits of 100 boys who were buried alive in the basement.  Down in that spooky basement, Mikage is assuring the girl who looks like Himemiya that she, Mamiya, deserves to be the Rose Bride.  "Rose Groom - I'm a boy, remember?" she, er, he replies.  Mamiya sure looks and talks like a girl.  The two of them plot to defeat Utena, kill Himemiya, and install Mamiya in her place.

Ohtori Kanae goes to Nemuro Hall, and says at the front desk, to nobody there, that she has an interview scheduled.  She fills out a form with her name and age, walks down a corridor full of signs saying "this way," sits down in a strange room that seems to be an elevator, and as it takes her to the basement, she rants to an unseen interviewing voice about how much she hates Himemiya for being cold, insensitive, and alien.  She thinks Himemiya's presence is the reason for her father's illness.  Despite her best efforts, she can't bring herself to like Himemiya.

During the interview a butterfly mounted in a frame on the wall magically changes into a pupa, a caterpillar, and then a leaf.  In the basement, which is furnished with a hundred pairs of empty boots and slide-out coffins in the walls, Mikage tells Kanae that he understands her problem.  Her only choice is to revolutionize the world.  He and Mamiya forcibly replace Kanae's heart with the black rose plucked from the tank, give her a black rose signet ring to wear, taken from the corpse of one of the hundred dead boys, and send her back to the surface.

Utena receives a written duelling challenge.  When she gets to the arena, it contains a hundred school desks, each with a vase of lilies on it, a hundred painted silhouettes of fallen students on the floor, and Kanae.  She seems like a zombie; she's not expressing her normal personality, and she swears to not only defeat Utena, but kill Himemiya.  The duel doesn't last very long - Utena wins easily - and as Kanae loses, the desks slide magically into the corners of the arena to open up a space in the middle, the black ring dissolves off her finger, and she collapses unconscious, neatly onto one of the silhouettes on the floor.  Then we see the pulled-out coffin in the basement of Nemuro Hall, containing the body from which they'd removed the ring, slide back into and through the wall.  On the other side, it falls down into flames that rise up to meet it.  As the smoke from the cremation rises above Nemuro Hall, Mikage comments that Utena is a strong opponent, and they're going to have to work a lot harder than that to defeat her.

Later, Himemiya is about to leave to go visit her brother again.  She and Utena briefly discuss Kanae, who upon waking up from her collapse in the arena has no memory of making the challenge.  At Akio's house, Himemiya takes off her glasses, he says "Come here, Anthy," she says "Yes," and as the shutters come down over the windows and the planetarium projector lights up, he asks if she missed him and she says she did.  A final shot of Utena, slumped over asleep while waiting for Himemiya to come back, suggests that Himemiya may be staying out very late.

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