Bonus: The backing song is telling the story of the sack of Troy, specifically the bit where Pyrrhus, the hotblooded son of Achilles, kills the aged king Priam of Troy. The death is particularly terrible because it supposedly occurred at an altar of the gods and in front of all of Priam’s female family members and grandchildren. Not sure if it has any particular relevance here but it’s nice to be able to recognise it.
I’m back 5 years later with an interpretation! The song follows Pyrrhus as he chases the king to the altar, hesitates at the horror and sacrilege of it all, then finally goes through with killing him.
Is Pyrrhus mapped to Wakaba, so full of rage? She’s had her chance to kill both Anthy and Utena and looked ready to go through with it without holding back from any sense of love or mercy.
Or maybe we can see Utena as a reversal of Pyrrhus. She is the more skilled and powerful fighter, she had a chance to take up her sword and end the fight easily. But she stays her hand from love and mercy: instead of bringing down the bloody sword, she only exerts the minimum necessary force to end the conflict.
d'ya know that the song is just a rough translation of hamlet act 2 scene 2 lines 471-484 (ish)? it’s originally from a version of the play seazer put on, as is kanae’s duel song.
I did not know that! That is kind of fascinating. The Pyrrhus/Priam story is obviously very thematically relevant for Hamlet, which makes it seem a bit overblown here. Here’s a link for the curious, scroll to line 477.
(I got nerdsniped a bit by this because Hamlet said “It’s the tale told by Aeneas to Dido”, to which I thought “Ah, this must be in the Aeneid!” Which it isn’t in exactly that form, I have since discovered, in Hamlet it is said to come from another play. But you can imagine why I might think that right: Narrative from Greek mythology, written in Latin by Vergil, translated into English by Shakespeare, translated into Japanese by Seazer (?), translated back into English for the subtitles. That’s exactly the kind of nonsense this show would pull.)
