12 Days of Aniblogging, Day 9Major Revolutionary Girl Utena spoilers, as per usualThe orange rose… it symbolizes grit, passion, obsession, and unrequited feelings. These are the kinds of strongly developed emotions that bubble up after years of trying to keep them hidden. Juri bears this rose with a certain dangerous resolve. She knows that it’s poison for her. Hell, she knows that the entire rose duelist system is poison. But she can’t do anything about it. She can’t be the one to revolutionize the world and break some coffins and torch the academy. She’s far too compromised under her rose’s qualities, and even with all the cold rationality she projects, she can’t shake the forbidden love that burns within her.if you can’t leave the academy behind yourself, you can at least let off steam by steering hopeful young girls away from your fateThat would have been a really good topic to truly sink my teeth into! However, I instead spent my preparation days starting up a run of Pokemon Platinum. I haven’t played Sinnoh in about a decade, and there was a tiny corner of my brain that just kept yelling at me it’s time again. I finally gave in to that urge and pulled out my dusty Platinum cartridge and my newfangled metallic pink DS Lite and deleted my old self.GIRL GIRL GIRL GIRL GIRL GIRL IM GIRLJuri has a big ol’ miracles complex, and it’s pretty easy to see where that comes from. Long ago, a girl offered her a rose and told her “believe in miracles and they will know your feelings”. This gesture is complicated because a) this is the girl that Juri likes, b) she knows that Juri likes her, and c) she’s a sociopath. Juri can’t shake her feelings no matter how hard she tries, and she’s not daft: she knows this love would be impossible, because Shiori would just endlessly use her, and also it’s 1997 and Ohtori Academy so being an open lesbian is not an option. This is what she means when she clutches her locket and wishes for a miracle – some magical way to cleanly resolve her feelings, or if it’s a particularly strong miracle, for them to be reciprocated. cuttingOf course, this has all just been analysis based off of Episode 7, Juri’s first duel in the show. This is an episode I’m rather familiar with, having gone back and watched it individually because it’s just so damn good. But her world gets even more gnarled later down the line. We get to see Shiori’s side of the situation during the Black Rose arc, where we learn just how much she cares about Juri. Instead of romance, though, it’s this maddening cocktail of jealousy and paranoia and obsession that sends her down the elevator rather easily. In the third arc, Juri’s old fencing senpai Ruka comes back, providing the third vertex in the world’s most distressing love triangle. the mirror is of course the scariest part of the black rose arcIn preparation for this section, I was planning on rewatching the Black Rose Shiori episode and the two Ruka/Juri episodes, because they’re a bit fuzzy in my head at this point. However, I didn’t succeed in that endeavor because I had already committed my night to Pokemon Platinum. After one hour and eighteen minutes of internal and external debate, I finally decided on my character’s name (the hardest part of any game, of course). And so, Anna set out on her Pokemon adventure, alongside her friend-turned-rival Carlyle. She picked Turtwig, because that’s the one Gen IV starter I’ve never used. The route to Jubilife City was long and arduous, but she made a new friend along the way….One thing I do remember pretty freshly, though, is Movie Juri. She’s fairly unshackled on screen, as Shiori spends most of her time hanging out with Touga. While characters like Miki and Nanami hardly appear at all, Juri does manage to snag the big spectacle duel of the film. I like her portrayal in Adolescence of Utena a lot – while Show Juri’s facade gets torn apart within her first duel and she never really shakes the vulnerability, Movie Juri gets to relish in the image of herself she tries to project. Instead of bitter and compromised, she’s cocky and composed. She engages femininity on her own terms, really getting to show off her ‘princely’ side as she chides Utena for only playing the role halfway. She really does project that “I am better than you” aura, even if she does still get trounced in the end by an Utena who manages to out-prince her.just step around her! what a tauntOne display of Juri’s raw talent in the show is the way she never really loses a duel. In her first duel, she straight up deflects Utena’s power of Dios through the sheer determination of declaring that “there are no such things as miracles.” What a sweet lie she tells herself to keep Shiori mentally at bay. The duel is famously concluded by Utena getting disarmed, her sword flying into the air and dramatically slicing through Juri’s rose. 20 episodes later, she gets her rematch. After her locket with Shiori’s picture gets shattered in her final duel, she flat-out forfeits. Losing her precious symbol object finally gave her the motivation to give up dueling and accept that there could be no such thing as miracles for a girl like her.Uhh in conclusion pokemon platinum! Here’s my team so far

Floating Catacombs