Utena - episode titles

I list the episode titles with some notes. Some of the references were a bit of work to turn up, and I’m sure there are more that I haven’t found yet.

With the text of the titles, I can often look up what they refer back to. It’s not so easy with visual references or parallel events. The number of references in the titles tells me that there are many references of other kinds that I do not know about. And there are sure to be references in the episode titles that I did not find yet. Some of them smell of it.

Episode 3, “On the night of the ball”. There is a short story by Kawabata Yasunari (Wikipedia) called “The night of the dance” (without “on”—butoukai no yoru without ni). It seems to be little-known story and I didn’t find a satisfying description of it. So I’m not certain that the episode title refers to it. But from what I did find out, I feel it’s likely. This article from Medium places Kawabata as an early influence, or a co-initiator, of the yuri genre and class S (Wikipedia). The story is apparently about a high-society event with few participants and many spectators, so maybe it was more a performance than a party? I couldn’t tell. The point of view characters are not of high society, so there is at least a point of correspondence with the episode.

Episode 6, “Take care, miss Nanami!” It looks like a reference to the 1978 song “akazukin-chan goyoujin” (Take care, Little Red Riding Hood) (Japanese Wikipedia) by the band LAZY. It’s a conventional love song, “choose me, not that wolf,” complete with a Japanese Industrial Standard “I’ll protect you” line. It’s fluffy to the point of being silly, and very 1970s, and can be found on Youtube. Apart from 1970s-ness, all the points fit with the episode. For the episode, the title says that Nanami is Little Red Riding Hood and Mitsuru is the “safe” suitor who will protect her—although Touga’s wolfness is invisible to Mitsuru as well as Nanami. In the wider Student Council arc, Touga is the wolf and Utena is Little Red Riding Hood, and nobody protects Utena—which is how the original version of the fairy tale (Wikipedia) goes. In the series as a whole, Akio is the wolf.

Episode 13, “Tracing a path”. Kiseki written 軌跡 as it is, means a track or trace—signs left behind that show a path followed. “Tracing a path” is a good translation. But kiseki written differently means miracle. Reading the homophone instead, you might translate it as “Delineating a miracle”. The pun can only be intentional.

Episode 17, “The thorns of death”. It is the title of a 1960 Shimao Toshio novel (Japanese Wikipedia), which won prizes. The Japanese Wikipedia article traces the title to the Bible line “O death, where is thy sting?” And in fact, the book’s English translation makes the title The Sting of Death (while the Nozomi translation is literal). In 1990 it was made into a film with the same title (Wikipedia). A husband has an affair, the wife is distraught, the couple falls into crisis but tries to save their marriage. For the episode, Shiori corresponds to the husband; she goes with the unnamed boy, but returns afterward.

For Utena as a whole, there is more. Utena and Anthy fall into crisis due to infidelity on both sides, but in the end recover their relationship. The word translated in English as “sting” means “sharp point” (Bible Hub), such as for example a thorn or a sword. The Bible says “the sting of death is sin,” and implies that there is no sting to death because Jesus has taken it. And Utena as prince corresponds to Jesus. It is a sign of her ultimate victory. I don’t know why it comes up in episode 17 in particular, but the drooping Student Council platform implies that he takes a major step forward in his plot in this episode. As so often, the signs point both ways.

Episode 18, “Mitsuru’s Impatience”. Mitsuru’s name is spelled ambiguously so that it can also be the verb mitsuru, to become emaciated, as by exhaustion. The grammatically-natural reading is closer to, as I translated it, “worn-out impatience”. My translation seems too mild. More like “worn to a nub”.

Episode 20, “Wakaba Flourishing” or wakaba shigereru must be a reference to to the 1973 novel Aoba Shigereru by Inoue Hisashi, and/or the 1974 TV miniseries, which was in turn made into a movie. Both titles mean lush spring vegetation, and “Wakaba” and “Aoba” have nearly the same meaning. In Utena, the title is an ironic allusion to Anthy’s cultivation of the students. In Aoba Shigereru, I guess it is the Aoba ward of Sendai city. I found only vague descriptions of the story, but it is apparently about a group of mischievous high school students with unfulfilled loves. As I write, the book is still in print on paper, and the movie can be ordered on DVD, so it must be somewhat popular.

Episode 25, “Their eternal apocalypse”. The Japanese means “the eternal apocalypse of the two of them.” The translation is ambiguous about who “they” are, but the original implies that it is Akio and Anthy. Akio’s plot against Utena is one more way that he harms Anthy, and he seems to run similar plots over and over.

Episode 27, “Nanami’s egg”. The episode is about Nanami’s immaturity, and “egg” in Japanese can mean that, metaphorically. For example, “the egg of a lawyer” means a lawyer in training, or a lawyer to be. We can read “the egg of Nanami” as “the fledgling Nanami”. It suggests that she will mature with time.

Episode 28, “Whispers in the dark”. The episode title is the same as the Japanese title of the 1930 H.P. Lovecraft novella The Whisperer in Darkness (Wikipedia). It fits with Akio and Anthy (corresponding to the extraterrestrials) controlling Ruka, who is in effect already dead.

Episode 29, “Azure paler than the sky”. The word for “azure” means the color of lapis lazuli. It is related to Juri’s name, and shares one of the characters.

Episode 30, “The barefoot girl”. A reference to Cinderella: Akio injures Utena’s foot (symbolically taking away her freedom) and then steals her shoe in the Cinderella scene. At the same time, a reference to the 1935 Czechoslovakian film Maryša (Wikipedia), which has the same Japanese title. See other references - Maryša for analysis.

There is a well-known Picasso painting with the same title, made when Picasso was about Utena’s age, but I can’t find a connection with it.

Episode 36, “And thus opens the doorway of night”. It is the episode of the Second Seduction, when Utena stops making moral decisions. Akio is associated with night and darkness and the color black, as Dios is with day and light and white. With no morality to slow Utena down, the door to Akio’s dark night of unending oppression is open. The Routine Date happens at night.

Specifically, the doorway of night can be the Rose Gate if Akio opens it. After the Second Seduction, he seems to feel confident that he will. When he attacks it with Utena’s sword, he calls it a door to a new world. Akio’s “revolutionized” world would certainly be a dark world where Akio’s night rules.

Episode 39, “Someday, together, we’ll shine”. The Japanese word order is unnatural in English. Natural is “Someday, we’ll shine together.” But the Nozomi translation retains the original word order for a good reason: At the end, with the framed photo of Utena and Anthy on the screen, we hear Utena say “Someday, together....”

Jay Scott <jay@satirist.org>
first posted 8 August 2023
updated 24 November 2023