In episode 5, I happened to be struck by this mysterious image. Revolutionary Girl Utena has plenty of mysterious images, but for some reason this one kept after me.
This is the world’s most barren music room. It is decorated solely with light on the floor, shining in through the outside windows. What puzzles me is: Why are there two light sources outside the music room? It’s unusual for Earth to have more than one sun in the sky, even during the daytime. Is the planetarium projector shining in or something? None of the lights on the floor is due to specular reflection, or we’d see the bars between the window panes reflected too.
After Anthy arrives, the light shifts a couple more times. The weird person seems to make the light go back to normal.
The visual purpose of the light patterns seems clear enough, but is that all there is to it? I’m sure I could find meaning in it if I puzzled long enough. I might even find an intended meaning.
(From the angles, I’m pretty sure the lights are supposed to be sunlight on the floor plus specular reflections of the windows. The details of the specular reflections are not drawn in because they’d be visually distracting. It’s not realistic.)
Jay Scott <jay@satirist.org>
first posted 18 November 2021