Ooh, are people going to be turning into cars soon?

Anthy giggling at Wakaba and Utena playing off each other and then Akio doing the dramatic eyes closeup is pretty choice.

I feel like there's something that could be said about the student council room's liminal nature; it has a lot of weird effects but it's not clear exactly why or if it has a connection to anything in particular.

I do wonder why Saionji was so keen to get back and is back in the student council if he really doesn't want to duel any more.

This cut does imply that Akio is End of the World, which makes sense because I think this is the last season. That does make the stuff Mikage said about being close to the End of the World seem strange, though, unless he was talking about being at Ōtori in general rather than being in the subbasement specifically.

Akio being confirmed for both Venus and Lucifer is pretty on the nose, isn't it?

Ominous Glasses Anthy reminds me of those guys from the movie Ink.

This Anthy prince flashback is amazingly interesting. Does that mean that Akio wasn't originally her brother and that's tied in with the whole Rose Bride role? Akio having been recruiting chess pieces for a decade does seem quite plausible. (I sorta still want Dios to have been Utena's prince but I'm not sure how that works out if he's been where he is since at least Mikage's day.)

Touga back in action but not at the student council meeting? It's still not really clear what kept him out of the action in Season 2 diegetically.

Apparently cars are so cool people's shirts fly off?

I guess maybe Touga was legitimately depressed in Season 2 and his newfound energy is because Akio has done a conversion sort of thing to him, same as he's doing to Saionji now?

Hmm, the shadow play is explicitly casting these duels as similar to the Season 1 duels and different from the black rose duels. That combined with no one interacting with the shadow play here does feel like it heightens the illusory or phantasmagorical framing of the black rose duels.

Anthy leaving behind a rose bush just makes me think again of the whole SEED program in Chuubo's. Definitely a bit tempted to try something that really highlights the Utena elements in Chuubo's sometime.

Hmm, I feel like their could be something about taking a sword from someone else being fundamentally different than producing a sword together, related to Anthy being more active now and the student council folks being so passive in the black rose duels leading to their swords being underwhelming. Does this sword get a new name, though?

The whole Akio dynamic just gets more uncomfortable/creepy the more we look at it, eugh.

A lot of emphasis on nakedness, what with the Akio stuff and also the magical girl-style transformation gondola bit. I'm sure something could be said comparing and contrasting those.

This show feels very spiral-like, variations on theme iterating through the same basic roster of duelists. It's a very satisfying structure. I wonder how much it's going to be played straight vs subverted this season.