Utena - cookie catalog

Cookies appear on four occasions. Two of them are important. Three of the occasions involve eating cookies. Cake means sweet love, and cookies should have a similar meaning. After looking, I think cookies are associated with tea, which is tied to friendship (see Anthy’s teacup of opening the heart). Friendship is a small sweet, and love is a large one. In most scenes with tea, the friendship of tea is subverted, and cookies seem much the same.

Cookies appear when the characters do not know each other. In episode 2, Anthy and Utena are just getting to know each other. In episode 11, Anthy has not realized how strongly Touga will oppress her, and she likes Utena relatively speaking but has not yet seen her as similar to Dios. In episode 14, Utena is meeting Akio and Kanae for the first time. In episode 37, Anthy and Utena misunderstand each other, but agree to meet in ten years. Cookies seem to mean making friends.

As Utena mentions in episode 23, Chu-Chu gets cookie crumbs everywhere (though to me Chu-Chu’s food usually looks like crackers, which may have a different meaning). Does it suggest that Chu-Chu gets to know everyone, spying on them? I think it only means that Chu-Chu is undisciplined, the opposite of Anthy.

Utena draws a distinction between long male cookies and round female cookies.

We meet Chu-Chu for the first time—eating a cookie.
Episode 2, Chu-Chu

When Utena meets Chu-Chu for the first time, Chu-Chu is hiding and eating a cookie. Here, Utena has removed the teapot that Chu-Chu was hiding behind. (Or appeared behind. As the teapot flipped around to point to whoever had the conversational initiative, Chu-Chu was not in view.) It looks like a chocolate chip cookie. The cookie is round—actually, it is chewed into a heart shape. The cookie seems to predict Anthy’s love of Utena. Unusually, crumbs are not flying. For the bananas, see spinning roses - banana frame.

Chu-Chu’s behavior is interesting. Chu-Chu reflects Anthy’s feelings, hiding out of sight. Chu-Chu is suspicious at first, but Utena is kind to Chu-Chu and the two quickly get along, a hint that Anthy will come to like Utena too. Here Chu-Chu predicts the future rather than reflecting the present. Chu-Chu is complicated.

Chu-Chu is eating a cookie, as seen through opera glasses.
Episode 11, Chu-Chu

Utena, Wakaba and Anthy picnic on the grass. Chu-Chu is eating a cookie and sending crumbs flying. It’s a round frosted cookie. The cookie may mean that Anthy is tasting the sweetness of having friends. But the black frosting with green sprinkles is ominous. Black is Akio’s color, and green is for control. Akio wants Anthy and Utena to be friends so that he can observe and control Utena through Anthy. Chu-Chu is looking up happily; in the following episode, eating a cracker, Chu-Chu looks down unhappily.

The view is from Touga, who is watching through opera glasses. Observers from a distance use opera glasses. Everything is a performance.

The picnic is the only cookie scene without tea. Later in the episode is an extremely brief view of cookies as Anthy and Utena drink tea in the dorm room.

Facing toward Utena and Anthy, the cookies are round.
Episode 14, Utena and Anthy
Facing toward Kanae and Akio, the cookies are long.
Episode 14, Kanae and Akio

This is Utena meeting Akio for the first time (that she knows of). She’s embarrassed because Akio and Kanae were smooching, but gets over the embarrassment quickly. The same basket of cookies looks different depending on which direction we see it from. One way, it is lined with pink for Utena and the cookies are a mix of round and long. Utena is female and male, and at the moment is in a closed, defensive girlish pose. The other way, it is lined with white for the prince—in this case Akio—and the cookies are long. Akio is male and sitting in a confident and commanding open pose, despite his light speech. Akio is the center; Kanae and Utena are leaning toward him. According to their poses, neither feels close to him at the moment.

Akio is making a show of being with Kanae (covering her hand), though he does away with her in episode 32. Anthy is making a show of not being with Utena; she is sitting apart, though they are emotionally close. It’s friendship all around, but not open and honest friendship.

Akio tries to lure Utena into a lie, saying that students here don’t fight. She sidesteps it neatly.

Utena is eating a long cookie.
Episode 37, poisoned cookie

Anthy and Utena talk about poisoning each other. Anthy brings the cookies, Utena pours the tea—they are working together. Utena is eating a long cookie, which Anthy implies that she poisoned. I interpret the poison as a warning from Anthy, “I might kill you” (it’s literal future poison). It is not Anthy admitting “I poisoned our relationship” (figurative past poison), because she feels that Utena poisoned their relationship; see when Anthy’s glasses shine. The long cookie says that the real source of the poison is Akio. He made both of them poison their relationship. Anthy has betrayed Utena from the start, and Utena has betrayed Anthy starting in episode 25, the very episode where she promised they would work together.

Jay Scott <jay@satirist.org>
first posted 10 March 2022
updated 5 February 2025