if you can't break the egg's shell...

That feeling when I watch what's ostensibly a comedy episode, yet the analysis notes I write down for it wind up going to incredibly depressing places. :(

Utena's comedy episodes are odd beasts, because when you rewatch them with knowledge of the whole show, they turn out to have a fair amount of unhappy subtext and/or foreshadowing that makes them hard to laugh at in hindsight. That said, I don't agree with the implicit notion that the show has no genuine comedy and that every single thing is actually secretly horrifying; then again, it's mostly little moments that I find funny, like the endings of some Shadow Girl plays or Juri wanting a turn in a massage chair Nanami was sitting in.

Next up for me is eps 28-29, which I'm not looking forward to all that much because ugh, Ruka. It's possible that I might end up not hating him as much as before, but I don't exactly expect my opinion on him to do a 180, and just seeing him in the episode preview had me cringing already. ~.~

I'll do it for Shiori, though! And for everything that comes after these episodes!