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Should you want to see the original Japanese, here's a 5mb zip of the files for The Rose Bride (eps 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 14, 15, 22, & 23), and a 4mb one for The Rose Crest (eps 25, 26, 30, 34, 37, 38, & 39.)
This book is Enokido's scripts up to the last arc, and the next book, The Rose Crest comes next!
Thank you so so much to Nagumo for translating this incredible meta, and Ayu Ohseki for proofreading the translation!!!
The Rose Bride
Revolutionary Girl Utena Script Collection Part 1
(少女革命ウテナ脚本集 上 薔薇の花嫁, Published April 1, 1998, ISBN 4-19-900050-X)
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Enokido Youji
A member of the creative group Be-Papas; involved since the planning stage of Revolutionary Girl Utena. Not only contributed to the story but also had a hand in the world-building and constructing the setting. The uniquely sensitive, adolescent mood of this work is also a signature of his. He’s been friends with director Ikuhara Kunihiko since their school days.
Other works besides Utena: Neon Genesis Evangelion (Script), Sailor Moon S (Script), Sailor Moon SuperS (Series Composition). His elegant artful storytelling in Sailor Moon S particularly captivated many anime fans.
Born September 27, 1963, Shiga Prefecture. Blood Type AB.
Cover Illustration: Hasegawa Shinya
Note: Hasegawa Shinya, also a member of the Be-Papas and worked with Enokido on various anime including Utena.
Cover Design: Netsu Norihiko
Note: Netsu Norihiko, worked on Evangelion previously. Probably worked with Enokido during that time too.
(Inner Sleeve Summary)
I digress, but when Touga said, “Anyone who truly believes in friendship is a fool,” in the last scene, lots of my friends started calling me up and asking me if that’s how I really feel. Um… Revolutionary Girl Utena is fiction (laugh).
(Page 1)
Personal Commentary on Episodes Written by
Enokido Youji
Student Council Saga
Episode 1: The Rose Bride
It was during the last summer of my teens when my friend took me to an "Outdoor Movie Night."
Yes, as I recall, it was the day after Tanabata*.
* Note: Tanabata is a Japanese star festival celebrating the meeting of the gods Orihime and Hikoboshi (the stars Vega and Altair). Held on July 7.
We waited for the late sunset of the just recently passed summer solstice to enjoy a movie with the starry sky as a roof and the walls of the school as a screen.
Blessed with a 'perfect' starry night, we watched Terayama Shuji's "Pastoral: To Die in the Country" on the campus turned improvised cinema.
Before the screening, the art director Awazu* gave a short lecture on the zeitgeist of when the film was made.
*Note: They're possibly referriong to Kiyoshi Awazu.
― At the time of the film's production, there was a unidirectional focus on the 'urban.' It was an era brimming with the assumption that to have culture is to be more urban. Terayama thus chose the countryside as his visual motif to rebel against the mood of those times.
This was the first time I saw a Terayama film and heard Seazer's music. As you can imagine, my first experience of this 'otherness' left me astonished.
“What’d you think? Fascinating, right?”
So asked my friend, who’d brought me to the movie screening and saw me in that state, after it was over. I tried to be nonchalant and said it was okay, but the look on his face told me he could see through my pretense. When he, Ikuhara Kunihiko, was still a student, he had an audacious smile.
―Thinking back, many years have passed since then. I’m very fortunate to have been able to create this work as I had promised back then.
To step into the unknown is the soul of creativity.
To rebel against the mood of the times.
And by rebelling, bring forth and create a new zeitgeist.
Yet the very act of rebelling means we are walking in accord with the era.
So for this, we first created a young girl character named Tenjou Utena.
We entrusted her with showing the nature of humans to defy their own instincts and norms, because that brilliance is what we wanted to depict. Whether or not we succeeded in this endeavour remains to be seen. (…… This doesn’t really “explain” anything at all, does it?)
(Pages 246-247)
Episode 2: For Whom The Rose Smiles
―If it cannot break its egg’s shell, the chick will die without ever truly being born. We are the chick; the world is our egg.……
The entire southern wall is a gigantic stained glass window. The lights and shadows of that richly pigmented rose crest dyes the faces and uniforms of all in the room in scarlet and pale blue.
The few men and women encircling a table are the members of Ohtori Academy’s Student Council.
This is a group of model students bearing both superior grades and alluring personalities.
Yet, these boys and girls have another side to them that the regular students don’t know about.
Look closely, and you’ll see each one wears a rose crest on their left ring finger.
For all of the Student Council members had received the ring and letters from a mysterious person who calls themselves “The Ends of the World.”
The letters told them there exists a miracle that can revolutionize the world: the power of Dios. If they desire it, then they must become engaged to the Rose Bride Himemiya Anthy, fight challengers, and remain victorious. They are qualified for this—so it was written.
What actually interests them in this foolish game of gaining miraculous power and whatnot is that the letters’ contents seized on a kind of believability for each of them.
All of the members here are realists; there’s not a single one who fritters away time on romantic illusions. They have a genius that looks head-on at reality and so never loses sight of the chance to seize even greater power.
After all, their reality is controlled by the principle of competition. They fully understand that power is not meant for controlling others, but is in truth for “not being controlled by others.”
To be engaged to the Rose Bride, Himemiya Anthy. That is the game, the sole way to gain the power of miracles. Though what we call “engagement” is a pledge between those involved, here, it’s more akin to ownership. In other words, this game is one that ignores the personhood of the individual called Himemiya Anthy.
From the moment that they accepted this, they became “duelists” who fight with their positions at stake.
The Student Council of Ohtori Academy carries that duality of being a duelist club.
Student Council President Kiryuu Touga states, “If we don’t break the world’s shell, we will die without truly being born. Smash the world’s shell!
“–For the Revolution of the World!”
(Animage. Published April, 1997. “The Duelists in Full Bloom*.” This section is an edit of this translation of the Animage article by Wish I Lived There.)
*Note: This can also be translated as ‘blooming’, ‘blossoming’ or ‘flowering’ in profusion and abundance.
The six Student Council members who received a Rose Crest ring from “Ends of the World” are Kiryuu Touga, Saionji Kyouichi, Tsuchiya Ruka, Arisugawa Juri, Kaoru Miki and Kiryuu Nanami.
Of these members, Ruka is absent from school for medical treatment. Nanami received her Rose Crest ring but has zero interest in the contents of the letters (to be blunt, she thinks they’re ridiculous) and won’t go along with them.
Please forgive me. This is the introductory episode establishing the setting, so it’s full of in-universe terms. The Rose Bride. Ends of the World. Duelists… But, in the end, I ended up dodging out of any explanation (laugh).
It’s said to be a show full of mysteries, but truly beautiful mysteries retain their beauty even if they remain unsolved.
(Page 247-249)
Episode 4: The Sunlit Garden ~ Prelude
I’m often been asked why so many brother-and-sister relationships appear in this work. Well, it’s mainly because it’s a taboo sexual behaviour. To expand on that explanation,
I felt it would make it easier to understand the ‘interpersonal relationship prior to the antagonism.’
The Duelists are all adamant realists, but they all share one weakness: they have a part of them that cannot fully accept reality. Because of this weakness, they seek the Power of Dios. For Kaoru Miki, "The Sunlit Garden" symbolizes his “obsession with the past.”
The sought-after Power of Dios is named differently depending on the character’s motif. For Saionji Kyouichi, it is ‘eternity’; for Kaoru Miki, it is a ‘shining thing’; and for Arisugawa Juri, it is ‘miracles.’
By the way, Nanami’s ‘Operation’ gag is a sequence mainly based on Ikuhara’s ideas; the results are nothing like a typical Enokido script. Yup, treading into unexplored territory might just be what creativity is all about (laugh).
(Page 249-250)
Episode 5: The Sunlit Garden • Finale
The loss of non-antagonistic relationships is a rite of passage that we all experience at least once in our childhood, which is why I symbolically used “measles” as the illness of young Miki.
“If something is really important to you, seize it and protect it with your own hands,” Touga says. There is no “self” without opposition.
The Duel in this episode clearly illustrates the protagonist Utena's attitude toward relationships.
Utena thinks it’d be great if Miki and Anthy got together. She even supports Miki’s attempts to court Anthy. You’d think in that case she’d lose her Duel with him on purpose, but she doesn’t. Utena will not tolerate him trying to own Anthy and getting her to do what he wants rather than treating her as an equal.
Note: This text is part of Enokido’s notes in Oh my Utena, page 46.
But the tragedy of Miki's attempt to make Anthy happy through his own assumptions is also a reflection of Utena's tragedy to come.
(Page 250-251)
Episode 7: Unfulfilled Juri
Although Juri is particularly eccentric among the cast, the audience seemed to empathize with her in one respect: her hidden feelings.
Juri knows her true self is weak, and so she struggles to be strong. But that is exactly why she is such a strong person--perhaps even more so than she thinks.
Some people may be confused by the slight differences between what's in the script and what's on screen. However, the animation reconfirmed for me that what is on film according to a script is not necessarily what the script is truly revealing.
If we insist on focusing on individual contributions, we will be swept to the farthest horizon away from the richness that we originally aimed for. What we, the staff, are truly aiming for is not the story, the art, the expressions, or even the themes, but creating something that integrates all of these things so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. (Even so, Katsuyo Hashimoto is a formidable director (laugh)).
(Page 251)
Episode 9: The Castle Said to Hold Eternity
The episode depicts Touga and Saionji's childhood. The girl who lost her parents and hid in a coffin is, of course, Utena, but when they meet again at Ohtori Academy, the two are unaware of this.
Speaking of which, it’s a common children’s story trope to have a protagonist who has lost both parents.
I wondered why a protagonist with such a background can so easily get children who haven’t lost their parents in real life to empathize with them.
When we are young, our parents who protect us are absolute beings, almost like God. However, as we grow older and understand the world, we begin to realize that our parents are not Gods but are separate individuals with flaws.
At this point, the parent as absolute God dies in the child's mind.
In fact, in a sense, we all lost our parents when we were children.
We experience the moment when we have to face the world alone after a life of dependence on our parents.
(I talked about this on the phone with Saito-sensei some time ago.) In many cases, it is that lost, non-antagonistic (undifferentiated) relationship that people seek in love.
I digress, but when Touga said, “Anyone who truly believes in friendship is a fool,” in the last scene, lots of my friends started calling me up and asking me if that’s how I really feel.
Um… Revolutionary Girl Utena is fiction (laugh).
(Page 251-252)
The Black Rose Saga
Episode 14: The Boys of the Black Rose
"You know, Mamiya, I believe you deserve to be the Rose Bride."
"Surely you mean Rose Groom. I'm a boy."
"Bride suits you much more."
Setting aside Mamiya’s true identity, which is revealed later, the reason why shoujo manga tends to depict homosexuality more often is because it’s easier to depict pure love that way. With the love between a parent and child, or between a man and a woman, we can’t help but feel it’s for a “genetic advantage.” Someday, I’d like to write a story focusing directly on the battle between genetics and humanity, or the theme of subjugation.
The 100 boys buried alive at Nemuro Memorial Hall were members of a mysterious research organization called Class D at the time. After the incident, Class D started getting skipped. Even now at Ohtori Academy High School, the classroom next to Class C is still called Class E.
Currently, the only people with a Class D student ID number are all located in the basement of the Nemuro Memorial Hall.
D is an abbreviation for ‘des’ (death)...... That’s a bit of unmentioned backstory*.
In addition, I'll note the Duel names of the Black Rose arc here.
*Note: 裏設定: a fun tidbit of the setting, not mentioned anywhere in the story.
The Duel called Alienation (aliénation) [Ep. 14 ●vs Ohtori Kanae]
The Duel called Attachment (attache) [Ep. 15 ●vs Kaoru Kozue]
The Duel called Jealousy (jalousie) [Ep. 17 ●vs Takatsuki Shiori]
The Duel called Impatience (impatience) [Ep. 18 ●vs Tsuwabuki Mitsuru]
The Duel called Limits (limite) [Ep. 20 ●vs Shinohara Wakaba]
The Duel called Dependency (dépendance) [Ep. 21 ●vs Sonoda Keiko]
The Duel called Awareness (conscience) [Ep. 23 ●vs Mikage Souji]
Perhaps the reason Kanae feels uneasy about Anthy's presence is because she is instinctively aware of her "relationship" with Akio. And Kanae's father must have been poisoned by his wife because of Akio's scheming.
(Page 253-254)
Episode 15: The Landscape Framed by Kozue
I think when you really love someone, you can't help but get warped... I wonder though, did Kozue really get all that warped from it? Then again, she is beautiful in her own twisted way (laugh).
In the story, she was obsessed with “being loved” and was taken advantage of.
She eliminates girls and others (laugh) who approach Miki by any means necessary. However, she seems to allow Arisugawa Juri’s constant presence around Miki as an exception. She even shares her hidden feelings with Juri.
Juri also seems to understand Kozue well. She says there are things she doesn't know, but it's obvious that she “knows what to ask.” Juri may have a better insight into her true nature than Kozue's friends.
If Miki understood his sister as well as Juri does, maybe she wouldn’t have become so twisted.
It’s Kozue herself, not Miki, who suffers the most from the gap between his image of her and who she really is. In truth, Kozue probably also wishes they could play the piano together.
No, the siblings are alike in that they don't understand each other.
I like Hasegawa's drawing of them on the jacket of the video/LD[2]. I like their pose with their left and right hands pressed together. They are twins, but they are also mirror images of each other.
I used the milkshakes as a symbol of “relationships before the antagonism.”
It always seems to be just a little too sweet.
(Page 254)
Episode 22: Nemuro Memorial Hall
Those one hundred boys immured in the basement of the Nemuro Memorial Hall are revealed as the one hundred Duelists. They have neither names nor individuality, and were engaged in an unknown project.
Sure enough, Akio is the “Ends of the World” who pulls the strings on them all.
It seems that Ohtori Academy is governed by a special principle that is unbound by time and space.
So, what is it? What is the principle that rules this school?
The key is weakness.
There are many things in common between mental images – such as dreams, memories, etc. - and visual works. They may share similar grammar. (I believe that if we decipher their formula, we’d surprise ourselves by being able to dismantle reality.)
There is an unsuccessful Duelist who, though once chosen by the “Ends of the World,” was ultimately unable to reach the castle where eternity exists and has yet to acquire the Power of Dios. That Duelist who faltered is Mikage Souji.
A young man who prides himself on being perfect, yet cannot surpass Tenjou Utena.
A Faust seduced by a Mephistopheles named Ohtori Akio.
Mikage Souji is not his real name. Woven into that false name is his lingering love for Tokiko*.
*Note: The character 時 (“time”) is shared between Tokiko and Souji. Souji borrowed the character from Tokiko’s name to incorporate it into his false name.
He is unaware of his weakness.
The stage called Ohtori Academy is an imaginary backdrop in which everything revolves around weakness.
(That being said, there are symbols that often appear in the story that are unknown even to the scriptwriter.
Just what on earth is this “finger icon”? (laugh))
"My sister was called away by the Board. I imagine she probably won't be back until evening."
Chida Mamiya must have known about the “relationship” between his sister Tokiko and Akio.
"I'll be sure to tell my sister that you are worried about me."
On top of that, Mamiya sees right through Professor Nemuro's feelings and weakness and gives a spiteful response.
Or perhaps holding himself aloof from his much admired Professor Nemuro is the flip side of his feelings*.
Note: The flip side of love.
Even here, the Rose Bride is a symbol for when the cruelty of reality is known.
(Page
254-255)
Episode 23: Qualifications of a Duelist
To the one who wrote a letter saying the Duelists are all pushing their own biases and assuming a bunch of things.
That's right.
Talent arises from one’s shortcomings.*
*Note: Talent is a lack. In sum, the idea that talent is acquired when someone is deficient or lacking in something. People find ways to compensate that deficiency. Talent is made, not born. Example: Einstein, who was not very good academically but came up with the theory of relativity.
Those boys and girls can live their school lives without compromising their uniqueness only when they are protected by the privilege of being Student Council members. Yet their much-admired talent can at any time be turned into a reason to be alienated.
They are like people who become human after being alienated from their surroundings, and it is precisely because they’re unable to fit in with others that, unlike ordinary students, they are able to become Duelists.
In terms of coexisting with others, Kozue can do better than Miki, and Shiori can do better than Juri. And they, in fact, do so. The Black Rose Saga is a story that depicts the process of an ordinary student becoming alienated from their surroundings and turning into a Duelist. (It is the story of how they encounter the “World”.)
The theme of the climax of this second arc is the contrast between Mikage Souji's karma as a Duelist and that of his foil, Tenjou Utena.
What is the reason for Souji’s defeat? Why can't he be like Utena? What is the reason why he has become trapped and stagnant?
Was he a Duelist of an imaginary world, living in a false timeline?
In other words― Souji was not living his true life from the beginning.
In a life governed by the principle of competition, there will always be times when you lose.
What’s important is to recognize when you lose that it is a loss. As long as you recognize it, losing can also become a situation that you can take advantage of. We can calmly consider the possibility of how we could have won.
Souji lived a “confined life.” He was always an onlooker, even when it came to his own personal experiences. He may have been an excellent critic, but at some point he forgot his role as a player and lost sight of any position other than that of a critic. Everything in the universe had become a thing that was on the other side, as though separated by a pane of glass.
The premise that experience would change him never occurred to him.
It is an easy way of life to fall into when you are naturally gifted.
An easy but dangerous way to live that ultimately results in losing all manner of prime opportunities.
However, Souji must have been aware of the negative effects of this. Even though in his head he was armed with the theory that he was a supreme being, somewhere in his heart he instinctively felt defeat.
That is why he was drawn to Tokiko and Utena.
That is why even though manipulating others was his modus operandi, he was actually pleased to personally visit the Dueling Arena.
He was truly happy to see himself shedding tears after Utena hit him. Regardless of whether he won or lost, in a sense, one could say that he was saved there. At that moment, he was finally able to graduate from that garden—from that school frozen in time.
What did the supremely talented Souji lack? Talent and “real ability” seem similar, but are really two different things. Talent is nothing more than the possibility of becoming reality. One’s actual abilities, on the other hand, are reality itself.
In the end, what is important is “integrity.”*
*Note: He's using the same word, isagiyosa from the opening line of Rondo-revolution, where it's instead translated as "Let's live our lives heroically".
.
To live heroically, with integrity. When you lose, admit that you lost.
How else can we open ourselves to the world?
If we don't open ourselves up to life, then it will pass us by and leave us frozen in time.
If it cannot break out of its shell, the chick will die without being born.
Those are also words to remember for me.
-Continued in the Ohtori Akio • Apocalypse Saga
(Page 256-259)
A collection of scripts for the TV anime series “Revolutionary Girl Utena,” which has created a sensation for its uniquely gorgeous world and surrealistic presentation. This collection contains 10 selected scripts written by Enokido Yoji, series director and member of the original creative group Be Papas.
Attired in masculine clothing, a girl named Tenjou Utena transfers to Ohtori Academy in search for the prince of her dreams, but gets caught up in a Duel game between Duelists for the “power to Revolutionize the World” and the Rose Bride. What sort of turbulent destiny awaits Utena? ......
(Inner Sleeve Back)
Shoujo Kakumei Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena) is © Kunihiko Ikuhara, Chiho Saito, Shogakukan and bePapas/TV Tokyo and/or their respective copyright holders. The US release of the Revolutionary Girl Utena series and movie was © Central Park Media and now belongs to Right Stuf. The US release of the Utena manga is © VIZ. The various sources used in this site are noted where their content is presented. Don't sue us, seriously. Blood. Stone.