Episode 29: Azure Paler than the Sky

Ruka forces Jury to duel Utena again, but maybe it's because he truly loves her.

This is a summary of episode 29 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.

Ruka dumps Shiori and she makes a loud public scene of begging him not to, in the middle of the quad with the entire school watching.  The next day she's absent from school, and there's much gossip.  Utena tells Jury she ought to intervene, but Jury angrily says it's no concern of hers.  Utena, mystified, discusses it with Himemiya, who says that sometimes people will do things that they normally would never do.  When Utena asks if she, Himemiya, ever does that, Himemiya seems like she's about to reveal something, but then stifles it.

Ruka rides with Touga and Akio and tells them that even though he failed this time, he's going to keep trying because it's important.  Meanwhile, Jury does try to talk to Shiori, but Shiori won't accept friendship, and then she goes to Ruka to ask him to take Shiori back.  He at first refuses, then forcefully kisses an unwilling Jury, they fight, he removes her locket and threatens to crush it, then he announces that he will take Shiori back after all - apparently in order to hurt Jury more.  She challenges him to a duel, saying she'll do whatever he wants if she loses, which she does.  It turns out that what he wants is to show her the End of the World.  Touga and Akio show up and follow the usual routine.

Jury challenges Utena, and they meet in the duelling arena with Ruka acting as Jury's second.  He pulls a sword from her bosom, which she uses to fight Utena.  This duel is intercut with flashbacks to the duel between Jury and Ruka, which we didn't see much of at the time.  Jury's fighting is wild, poorly controlled.  At the climactic moment, Utena's sword severs the chain of Jury's locket, which goes flying and smashes on the ground.  Jury removes her own rose and tosses it to the ground, conceding defeat, and rain begins pouring down.

Later, we see that Jury has re-assumed the role of fencing club captain.  Ruka has gone away, and the girls miss him.  At the end, two shadowy figures of nurses discuss a patient who just died in hospital; despite his critical illness, he'd insisted on going back to school to see a girl he loved in the fencing club, because he wanted to give her the power to grant miracles.  Jury walks off thinking that when she next sees him, she's going to want to ask him whom he had been trying to help.

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