Trying to avoid Utena spoilers as much as possible...

     "Hmm... I don't know," she said, glancing down at a few papers in
front of her.  "Do you know the magazine it first appeared in?
Or--wait!"  She shuffled through the pile.  "Here's something.  We do have a
few volumes of Hiwatari Saki's 'Mirai no Utena' upstairs.  Could that be it?"

Is this a real title?  What *is* it about?

Juri,
Touga, and Miki sat around a table with cards arrayed in a ten by ten
square, with a fourth chair lying vacant.

They drew a lot fewer than 100 cards during this scene....

      [Speculations:  "Sekai no Hate" must have easy access to the campus
and its surroundings.  He/she/they has access to considerable resources,
possibly magical or highly advanced technology.]  Skyler paused to
sharpen his pencil.  [Ends likes playing games.  Secretive, but with a
strong flamboyant streak.  May or may not have actually brought me here,
if not then certainly knew of it in advance enough to take advantage of
my visit.  Ends is probably older, possibly in a position of power within
the school.  Ends cannot be considered to be "on my side."

"Good heavens, Holmes, what a remarkable deduction!"  If Skyler's
able to figure out this much about the Ends of the Earth, the
answers will be practically obvious the moment he first meets *you-
know-who-or-maybe-you-don't*.  Maybe Skyler would come off a little
more realistically flawed if some part of his hypothesis was
genuinely wrong (other than suspecting the unnamed Duellist.)  For
example, I don't think he has much justification for saying that
Ends is "probably older".  Would it make sense for him to be
suspicious of somebody on the Council, since they're all the
information he has to work with so far?  OTOH, Skyler isn't
paranoid enough by nature to make his thought process *really*
interesting.

     In the tree, the figure reached out for the bunch of bananas
dangling from a branch.  He leaned back with simian grace and balance,
peeling his prize while keeping a firm grip on the tree with his feet.
     "Chu."
     And with every sign of quiet enjoyment, Saionji Kyoichi began to eat.

This punchline was better in the anime when we also had Chuchu with
the kendo uniform, the bokken and Saionji's hair to balance it out.
But since this story is told tightly from Skyler's POV, he'd need
to be in a position to see Chuchu and Saionji at the same time.

Ma Vie et Roses is definitely grabbing my interest.  I'm eagerly
looking forward to seeing more.

--
Julian Fong  |  fong_jh@hotmail.com  |  http://jhfong.dragonfire.net/
 00001000111110000100010000000011111111100001000100001111100010000
"I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know
most faults." - William Shakespeare, _As You Like It_, Act 3, Scene 2



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