My favorite Utena song is “Virtual Star Embryology”. I had to write a parody; it was as inevitable as tectonic plates colliding. I had fun with the language sounds. Left column for English speakers, right column for original sin. There’s another copy among my other poems.
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freight train, ball game, seeing the final scene cookie, hot tea, tenth anniversary a weird coffin girlfriend hiding here cheerless chosen and intent bird cage, ball game, reticent bride to gain rose ring, backswing, what is the prince’s name a weird lively girlfriend fighting here cheerful chosen and unsure then the tsukiten suiseiten seizaten taiyaten kage’eten mousouten douseiten koseiten genzaiten sayonara endless looping, here is the key just a little stab to drop the girlfriend just a little way to seize her power (just a little J.A. Seazer power) so-o pseudo-sorry sorta pseudo-sorry sooooooorryyyyy |
freight train, ball game, seeing the final scene cookie, hot tea, tenth anniversary a weird coffin girlfriend hiding here cheerless chosen and intent bird cage, ball game, reticent bride to gain rose ring, backswing, what is the prince’s name a weird lively girlfriend fighting here cheerful chosen and unsure then the 突き店 彗星店 星座店 タイヤ店 影絵店 妄想店 同性店 個性店 原罪店 sayonara endless looping, here is the key just a little stab to drop the girlfriend just a little way to seize her power (just a little J.A. Seazer power) so-o pseudo-sorry sorta pseudo-sorry sooooooorryyyyy |
Why are the two sides misaligned in some browsers and not others? Nice HTML “standard” we have here.
You can sing along with the duel song in episode 25. The version of the song in the ending credits is trimmed; to sing along, I suggest leaving out the first five lines here. The line in parentheses is an extra. Drop it, or if you have two voices, sing it together with the line above. Or stretch the music to fit. Whatever.
If so many Japanese songs have English inserts, then surely an English parody should have a Japanese insert. The Japanese, in so far as it makes sense at all, can be translated sort of like this. What I translated as “sword-thrust” is a more general word, but context counts. kage’e literally means shadow pictures, good for the shadow girls and Utena’s use of silhouettes. You might also want to know that the word meaning original sin has a homonym meaning the present, now.
sword-thrust store, comet store, constellation store
tire store, shadow store, delusion store
same-sex store, individuality store, original sin store
Jay Scott <jay@satirist.org>
first posted 2 January 2022
updated 9 January 2022