Arisugawa Juri: Withdrawal
Captain of the Fencing Club
Student Council Member

"However, I was well armed against the outside world. I was no longer afraid of people; even my fellow students had come to know this and treated me with a secret respect that often brought a smile to my lips. If I wanted to I could see through most of them and startled them occasionally. Only I rarely or never tried. I was always preoccupied with myself. And I longed desperately to really live for once, to give something of myself to the world, to enter into a relationship and battle with it." -- Demian, Hermann Hesse

Tarot Card: The High Priestess
Duel Rose: Orange
Quote: "Show me your 'miracle' NOW!"
Name Meaning: To wrap oneself in tree bark to avoid storms.

Without love, there can be no faith. Without faith, there can be no miracles. And when the memory of a miracle only brings pain, so it is that the inwardly tender romanticist Juri withdrawals from all feeling. Cold as stone, feared and misunderstood by all around her, she tries to convince herself there are no such things as miracles.. no such thing as love.. to shield herself from the pain of deeply loving one who hurt her in her past. At the same time, she knows this to be the ultimate lie...

Her Story

Juri is the doubter, the skeptic and bitter rationalist among the Student Council's Duellists. She loved a girl, Shiori, once, but the girl betrayed her with a male classmate, and so Juri's heart became a closed rose wrapped in thorns. She is not, clearly speaking, a lesbian; she shows no apparent sexual interest in other girls at the campus; rather, much like Saionji's singleminded obsession with Anshi, Juri's obsession is with Shiori. She is haunted in particular by a memory of Shiori handing her an open orange rose, whispering, "Believe in miracles, that your wish might come true."

Juri carries close to her heart a small gold rosebud-locket which contains a tiny black and white picture of Shiori clipped from a class photo inside it. Even though she outwardly rejects the actual person, she still clings to the belief that Shiori is *hers*. Perhaps it is that Juri rejects the reality of Shiori in order to cling to Shiori's image; this is an all too common flaw running through many of the Duellists.

She is ruthless, logical and somewhat dry of wit, the president of the Fencing Club of the school, and fiercely opposed to any notion of magic or miracles- so much so that Utena's mild retelling of her dream to become a prince sends Juri into a bitter, violent rage. I think, however, the rage came from recognizing herself in Utena- there's no real difference between the way Juri feels about her pendant and the way Utena cherishes her rose signet. Many characters in Utena are quick to flare up at comparisons between themselves and others when the comparisons touch on 'sore spots' -which they often do with unerring accuracy.

Juri is feared throughout the school as being one whose influence is so great that if a teacher displeases her, she can get the teacher fired. Juri is well aware of this reputation and seems to do nothing to discourage it, perhaps liking the aura of distance and detachment it provides her... a convenient wall of dead tree bark to hide behind.

As a Duellist she is one of the most skilled and experienced fighters and represents a serious challenge on the Arena floor to anyone unlucky enough to face her. However, the doubts and inner turmoil that she tries to hide away inside her icy heart make her a poor candidate for revolutionizing the world; she may even know this inside. She holds too closely to the past, and to her lack of faith, even as miracle after miracle is literally shoved in her face along the course of the Duels.

Juri hides a delicate, fragile heart behind her stone shield of indifference and practiced asceticism; the one thing that makes Juri bow and submit to ANYTHING is a threat against Shiori. A very messy situation with between herself and Tsuchiya Ruka, the former fencing club captain who taught Juri how to fence, leads to Juri's forced realization that she can not possess Shiori, can not even hope to cling to that. Her precious locket is utterly shattered by the power of Dios, the will of God, and the whole world seems to weep for her loss. Yet, this paradoxically frees Juri in the end; she is able to see that she wants friendship with Shiori above all else.

Could realizing that bring Shiori closer to her?