Episode 29 Analysis

This episode opens with Ruka breaking it off with Shiori in the courtyard of the school. Ruka acts completely aloof to Shiori’s pleas.

Lots of students gather around to watch the very public display and then later we hear students talking about how Shiori isn’t in class. Shiori asks Ruka to believe, but when he asks her what she wants him to believe in, she has no answer. Her lack of an answer to his question demonstrates how little thought she’s really put into this idea of a relationship, further underlying the idea that she only wanted to be with Ruka to split him from Juri. Going out with Ruka was just another part of her petty spite against Juri whom she is poisonously jealous of.

Utena can’t stand to see someone in pain if she can help it, or if she notices ;). So she goes to Juri because she thinks that Shiori is Juri’s friend, and wants Juri to go and talk to her, because that’s what Utena would do if it were her friend. Utena just doesn’t understand what Juri feels for Shiori, because Utena is Utena and she misses such subtle interplay, just as she misses such subtle interplay between Anthy and Akio, and this is one of the things I love about Utena. Juri knows that she disgusts Shiori and so she has very little contact with her. Juri has deluded herself into believing that so long as Shiori can be happy, she can be happy.

However, Juri knows that Shiori isn’t happy right now and despite her better judgement she goes to see Shiori to see if there’s anything she can do to help.

Shiori reacts in the worst way possible, assuming that Juri came just to gloat over the breakup, because Shiori can’t see past her own jealousies. Just as Juri can’t see past her love for Shiori to see how petty, selfish, and rotten Shiori really is. Ruka is trying to change that. By breaking up with her in the most dramatic way that he possibly could, Ruka is forcing Juri to see the worst side of Shiori and is forcing her to see Shiori for what she really is. Some think that this is because Ruka loves Juri and wants to ‘rescue’ her from her ‘delusions’. I disagree. I agree that he’s doing all this to force Juri to see through her love for Shiori, but I believe that he’s doing it because he wants Juri. Maybe he does love her, but he’s certainly not acting solely in Juri’s best interests, those interests serve interests of his own.

Juri, ridiculously selfless again, asks Ruka to take Shiori back. He refuses and assualts Juri, forcing a kiss. This is his defining moment. After forcing a kiss on Juri, who hits him for it, it becomes clear that he desires Juri and is orchestrating all of this in order to ‘win’ her. Being rotten might have worked for Richard III, but it doesn’t work for Ruka. Juri challenges him to a duel in order to force him to make Shiori happy again. Ruka knows that he’ll win and so accepts. Juri is in such an emotional state that she can’t possibly beat Ruka. This duel mirrors the duel between Touga and Utena when Touga has completely gotten inside her head and causes Utena to lose. The actual physical duel is a foregone conclusion, the victors were decided before the matches began.

And things start to fall into place. Juri is one of the few people who rides in the car but isn’t taken in by the whole thing. Miki is overwhelmed when he rides in the car, though he doesn’t get molested. But just about everyone else has some kind of sexual encounter in the car. Juri is the one person at Ohtori that Akio seems to have designated as an impossible conquest. She’s the only one who doesn’t get his attention. It is most likely that Akio realizes that he has nothing to gain by getting Juri into bed, or at the very least it wouldn’t be worth the huge fight and struggle that it would take to do it. Juri is, first a lesbian, and second, completely blind to anyone but Shiori, who she knows that she can never have.

Juri realizes that Ruka’s been setting the whole thing up. Ruka’s gotten the whole thing wrong. He’s trying to win the power of miracles so that Juri can have Shiori, and Juri corrects him. All she wants is to free Shiori from all their machinations so that she can be free. Having lost the first duel Juri agrees to duel Utena again in order to keep Ruka from ever hurting Shiori again.

In the duel, which Utena nearly loses, demonstrating Juri’s incredible skill, Utena’s sword is deflected and breaks the chain on Juri’s locket. This second ‘miracle’ seems to, to borrow a metaphor, drive the last nail into the coffin. Juri’s illusions are finally, like her locket, shattered.

And then Ruka vanishes. Juri is later in the hospital with a fencer who hurt her leg and she overhears the shadow girls talking about someone who has died, which is obviously Ruka. From their conversation it seems that Ruka overstressed himself and died, "trying to free the one he loved".

However, it’s much more likely that Ruka, knowing how ill he was, and that he was going to die, decided to try one last time to get the girl who had always eluded him. He resulted to manipulation, lying, and deceit and then assaulted Juri in order to get what he wanted. While his actions did result in Juri’s ‘freedom’ from her self destructive illusions, and Ruka was directly responsible for it, his intentions were far from noble. He didn’t give Juri the Power of Miracles, as that’s impossible to begin with, but Ruka was able to shatter Juri’s illusions along with her locket.