No, but what I love about the Cantarella scene (aside from, you know, everything) is how they are just so essentially themselves during it:
Anthy: Have you heard about this poison before? Oh, by the way, how are the cookies? Those two things are not related at all, of course :)) I’m just making conversation :))))
Utena: YEAH I POISONED YOUR TEA TOO WHAT ABOUT IT.
I know I have talked about the roof scene one million times but the tea scene immediately preceding it evokes new levels of unwell. The sickening uneasy looping animation and music. Anthy asking Utena where she will be in 10 years and Utena responding that she hopes she is still here, with Anthy. The hard cut to Anthy standing on the edge of the roof. The implication that being stuck in this loop for 10 more years, or of Utena being trapped here with her, is too much to bear.
The cantarella scene in Utena is so so so good and nearly every bit of it has been analyzed over the years (for good reason!). But can we take a moment to talk about how the music skips?
Right after Anthy suggests she poisoned Utena's cookies. The background music starts skipping. It's an obvious loop too, once you hear it, it's hard to unhear. The music doesn't pick back up until after Utena admits to poisoning the tea, AFTER the spinning red rose. It picks back up at "The tea is delicious".
At the most basic level, the skipping is just another method by which RGU creates emphasis.
But it just. It can't help but remind me of the most significant case of music skipping in the franchise. In Adolescence of Utena, right before E-Ko and F-Ko show the tape of Anthy's assault (another scene which has to do with something being put in Anthy's drink).
So then, the skipping could represent honesty. The brutal, uncomfortable bearing of the truth. Statements that ring in the ears and choices that maybe aren't the most delicate or harmless but had to convey the intended message somehow.
(If anyone else has watched seebeees' video essay on transfeminism in utena [which you should, it's really good], it reminds me of their point on the way Adolescence could be using static to represent Anthy's trauma. Records and CDs skip when something has dirtied them. Scratched them. Damaged them).
It could represent repetition obviously, but it could also represent the exact opposite. A breaking of the cycle, a momentary reprieve from the looping record that is Anthy and Utena's lives at Ohtori. When they confess their love for each other in that moment, in such an odd and uniquely utenanthy way, it catches the narrative off-guard. They are cracking the shell of their egg. Their love is forcing itself through the narrative.
[image description: two screencaps from revolutionary girl utena. in the first, a young utena is lying in her coffin, saying "why does everyone go on living if they all have to die someday?" in the second, utena and anthy are holding hands over the table in akio's tower. utena says "in 10 years, we'll be together, laughing and sipping tea." /end id]
[image description: text saying "revolution means gaining "the power to imagine the future."" /end id]
utena going from not believing life is even worth living to imagining a life with anthy,.. and ikuhara's commentary about what the power to revolutionize the world actually means.... in the finale utena helps anthy revolutionize her own world by showing her that there can be a life without suffering, that there can be hope for the future. and that's only possible because anthy has been doing the same for utena the whole time