I don’t think I used shoujo overtones as a damning criticism or a pejorative, and if you’re planning on accusing me of being blessed with excess testosterone then I’m planning on LOLing soon.

Magical Girl Transformation Syndrome, on the other hand, yes, I mean that negatively — what I’m referring to is blatant, transparently cheap recycling of footage once per episode or two. Like I said, the resemblance is slight here, and it just “feels” different, since everything in Utena seems to be executed very purposefully, even if in this case it may have been born from budgetary concerns.

And (in contrast with Kadian) I think the duels had some of the best moments of the series–the duels are fairly meaningless without the events that surround them, but the duels are always where the events of the current mini-arc come to a head. That’s not to say that some of the duels aren’t utterly pointless (and you’ll see some of them soom). In terms of them being “hacked in”, well, Utena was hilariously low-budget.

Also I still don’t know why “shoujo overtones” or “magical girl transformation” is some kind of damning criticism or pejorative term but I’m not blessed with excess testosterone.

As for dreamlike logic, I find it interesting that it’s still true a few episodes in. Things are becoming less hazy, but only gradually so, and as they become more real they only become more weird…

To speak seriously for a bit, I think the duels were my least favorite parts of Utena. You’ve seen just one week, but they’re really samey and repetitive. Some people say they’re “ritualistic”, but I think they were just hacked in every week to eat time. To me the real meat were the things before and after the duels.