Ah, yes, the "aha!" factor -- rewatching this ep after having seen the whole series and knowing child!Utena had something different in her eyes the next day because she decided she'd be a prince to save Anthy, and that gave her a reason to live. Excellent stuff.
Right now I'm going nuts over the subtle hints at Touga's backstory. Just the fact his apparent thought process after the adults walked away was "if that girl's missing, she must be in one of those coffins I happened to see" says an awful lot; he understood suicidal feelings before even seeing Utena. Just as Utena sounded as miserable and tired of living as she was, Touga looked similarly miserable and tired of living, and I feel like he might've been dissociating through much of that scene; his eyes seemed glazed over, the shadowing on his face in some shots made it look like he had bags under his eyes, and he kept stroking his thumb over the lock of Utena's hair he picked up. His behaviour here makes a lot of sense for a CSA victim who was almost certainly suicidally depressed as a result.
Saionji and Utena do actually have an interesting dynamic, and I ought to think about their parallels some more. (For now I've been rotating the Anthy-Touga and Touga-Miki dynamics in my head. There's actually quite a lot of overlooked and underrated dynamics in this show.) The link between this episode and the finale is good, too. That contrast between Utena grabbing a completely passive Anthy's hand here and Anthy choosing to reach for Utena's hand in the finale...
[CW: suicidal ideation, CSA]
Right now I'm going nuts over the subtle hints at Touga's backstory. Just the fact his apparent thought process after the adults walked away was "if that girl's missing, she must be in one of those coffins I happened to see" says an awful lot; he understood suicidal feelings before even seeing Utena. Just as Utena sounded as miserable and tired of living as she was, Touga looked similarly miserable and tired of living, and I feel like he might've been dissociating through much of that scene; his eyes seemed glazed over, the shadowing on his face in some shots made it look like he had bags under his eyes, and he kept stroking his thumb over the lock of Utena's hair he picked up. His behaviour here makes a lot of sense for a CSA victim who was almost certainly suicidally depressed as a result.
Saionji and Utena do actually have an interesting dynamic, and I ought to think about their parallels some more. (For now I've been rotating the Anthy-Touga and Touga-Miki dynamics in my head. There's actually quite a lot of overlooked and underrated dynamics in this show.) The link between this episode and the finale is good, too. That contrast between Utena grabbing a completely passive Anthy's hand here and Anthy choosing to reach for Utena's hand in the finale...