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lol I was wondering about that too! When Saionji said "I saw" I was like "you mean you saw his bare chest?"

and lol@Utena finally getting to use the elevator.

If I read this right the duel's setting was reversed. Utena no longer used the borrowed dream of being a noble prince. Her own ideal has developed into something more individual and different and that's why she could pull her own sword and sword of Dios itself wasn't usable. Dios still manifests because she has the conviction to try to make her memory eternal.

On the other hand Saionji's conviction changed to the other direction. He was a duelist because he can't let go of the dream of eternal friendship. Now Akio gave him a truth to protect that is similar enough to so that he doesn't 'grow up' and disappear from the academy. The car is a superficial, externally borrowed ideal and confidence just like Utena's image of the prince. I'm not sure what it is, it's something about understanding the truth about the world, but he still hasn't grown up. Like the power to superficially maintain relationships, but he still deep down inside holds the hope of friendships OR it is a pure motivation for a misguided approach.

And that stuff about Lucifer and what not. Akio probably used to chase a dream like the duelists, but grew bitter and took this manipulative approach. In the 'corrupted route' he is the strongest, but the brilliance of a pure dream still makes him unable to appear on the night sky. That's why he needs to make it so that the sun doesn't appear.

I'm sure all this will be proven wrong by the end but just some thoughts :D

This episode was weird haha and posts on this thread are making me laugh lol
Indeed, it's good that Utena finally gets to take an elevator.

Lol what the heck, I laughed at the new transformation sequence. As soon as the elevator reached the correct level, the car came out and I just could't hold myself

Lol at this thread and the homoerotic tones of the episode - the bare chests, the throbbing engines, and whatnot. That stuff aside, though, I liked this episode and the new entrance sequence for the duels. I guess when you level up enough you get to take the elevator.

Also, Utena is not too genre savvy is she? I mean, when a mysterious authority figure tells you that his namesake stems from the Morning Star/Lucifer then odds are he's the evil mastermind.

Haha, yeh, Akio jumping to the front of the car with a bare chest was hilarious. The excess of bare chests wasnt hilarious though :/

Also, the "gondola" just turned out to be an elevator.. I thought it might be some sort of pathway to the upside down castle in the sky! Loving the new battle animations...

Hate Akio. I hate schemer-types like him and I hope the Prince isn't him.. I was hoping it'd be Dios, i.e. the guy that Akio was talking to in that first recap episode.

The car was kinda funny how it was just showing up everywhere, and I loved the baseball bit going on in the background during the council meeting.. always entertaining when they do that sort of stuff..

I love the "Extra! Extra!" bits, but it was nice to have a throwback to the old scenes. I loved the new battle sequence as well.

I wonder if the guys realize how odd they seemed, with their shirts flapping open every five seconds while talking about throbbing engines.

This. The new ending sucks, too. But at least the episode had a high pacing to it?

Yeah, I'm not digging the new ending :C

Ah well, I'm getting more intrigued about Utena x Anthy and I'm hoping Anthy doesn't do anything too unforgivable to Utena... I'm really hoping they can overcome Akio's scheming and Anthy can break away from it as well. Here's also hoping that Anthy doesn't really like being a pawn to manipulate Utena ;o;

Akio has such a delicious body. I wish I could enter in the world this anime takes place, just to touch him. :c Anyways, Anthy protecting Utena in the fight was great. I loved when her pulled the Dios' sword Utena instead of the usual opposite. The surreality of the said fight was beautiful. Lovely episode.

So things were kind of poised up until now and without a lot of budget, but looks like they finally decided it was time to rev it up.

Great episode with lots of references: Rebel without a Cause, and maybe even Lost Highway (released on February 97 while this episode aired around September 97). Rebel points to Satan, Satan the star is described as Venus, whose name is the Goddess of Love, which in turn points to the omni-sexuality of Akio. Also I've thought this before, but the glass thing of Himemiya feels like NGE. Other similarities can be found between Himemiya and Rei.

Character development all around, even if I'm still not sure how to link all that with the dark duelists arc (where Akio draws a parallel between Himemiya and Nemuro).

I just hope they can keep up this level of quality/density for the rest of the episodes.