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shadow: Now then, gentlemen. Things are only impossible because you think they're impossible.
shadow: Take this egg for instance. I bet you think that eggs can't stand upright.
shadow: However! If we support it with chopsticks this way, we can...
shadow: Pardon me! Wouldn't it be faster to simply break the bottom?
shadow: No, that is not correct!
shadow: If we support it with chopsticks like so...
shadow: I guess it wasn't an egg.
Kunihiko Ikuhara, the director of Utena, says that the shadow plays are short summaries of
each episode - however, a few of them mean absolutely nothing. I have a sneaking suspicion
that this is true with this episode, but I'm going to go ahead and over-analyse this anyway.
This episode is about trying to do something though all your efforts are in vain, because
the thing you were working on is not what you thought it was. The shadow-girl tries to set
the egg on its end with break-apart chopsticks, but in the end it turned out not to be an
egg at all. Her friend advised her to stand the egg on its end by cracking the end - a
rather more practical way.
Nanami is trying to take care of this egg to make it hatch (I suppose) but she is under
some gross misconceptions about where this egg came from. ;) Nobody really gets that
Nanami thinks she laid the egg, and she keeps misconstruing what others are saying. In her
eyes, they are telling her (like the second shadow girl) to "break apart the egg" and do it
their way - which generally means to eat it. :P
But in the end it was neither a normal egg nor an egg that Nanami laid - and though it
probably wasn't a space alien, the general consensus is that it is another of Anthy's weird
pranks, with ChuChu as her messenger.
At the beginning of the play, the shadow girl says that "things are impossible only because
we think they're impossible". Once Nanami believes that the egg was laid by her, no matter
how absurd the situation is, it makes sense to her. It is possible because she thinks it is
possible.
Maybe I'm reading too deeply into the next one, but I think that the line about
impossibility is a commentary on the whole show, as well. Each character is stuck in their
coffin because they don't believe they will ever get out. Anthy is the prime example of
this. Right up until the end, when she (literally) stabs Utena in the back, she says
"You can never be my prince." Anthy doesn't believe that she can be saved, therefore, she
makes it so that she cannnot be.
Which brings us back to what I think is one of the main themes of Utena - nobody can
change you, or "save" you, you must chose to save yourself. All the characters are in
their coffins of their own volition. Anthy especially. As Akio said, "She enjoys being a
witch." She now has nothing but her pain, and she clings to it - like Juri clings to her
obssession with Shiori (though she complains about wanting to be free of it), as Saionji
obssessively compares himself to Touga, as Miki clings to his childhood illusions, as
Touga clings to power he deludes himself into thinking Akio can grant him.
To add even another layer onto this play - The goal of all the duelists is often described
as "smashing the world's shell", a la Touga's Egg Speech. The truth is that even though
breaking the bottom of the egg would balance the egg/balance their problems the best, all
the characters are afraid of breaking their shells, and they try to support themselves with
chopsticks, which doesn't really work - they'll only fall over. And all the characters do
fall over, one by one.
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