Because it's fun to channel Ikuhara ;-)
2: "The Fruits That Could Have Been"
(much of the following text is modified from Ikuhara's English Commentary for Episode 2)
"Let us share the fruit of fate!"
– Oginome Ringo, Mawaru Penguindrum
While Googling for new Utena stuff in 2012, I chanced upon this (gasp! finally!) new Ikuhara show.
Being impatient, I watched the final episode first. Completely lost, I didn't know what the show was on about.
However, that particular quote from Ringo stuck with me. One day long afterwards, after I've since gone through the entire series, I again revisited that intriguing Final: the climax tying up the multiple convoluted storylines together.
Sharing the fruit of fate is sharing the burdens of life, this I can understand. I can even see right through Ikuhara's thinly-veiled references to Japanese society's assignment of collective guilt upon known criminal's innocent relations: Takakura Himari's illness/curse vanishes by way of her becoming "Ikebe" Himari; Shouma and Kanba –- both still Takakuras –- were given a "reincarnation" a.k.a. a fancy metaphor of their rejection by society.
Say, the boys walking into the irrationally present starry skies look rather … shadowy, don't they?
Shadows … starry sky akin to that shown in a planetarium …
Alright: Shadow Boys it is then!
A reader and I discussed my decision to make Seinen a Penguindrum crossover time and again, because I was obsessed with the idea that it could make for a "better" story. Plus, I figured crossing a Utena fic with Penguindrum would get more people to want to read this (I was wrong: apparently, the two Ikuni fandoms don't really crossover that much). Most importantly, the story potential in using the in-series facts in Utena to explain the mysteries in Penguindrum — and vice versa — greatly intrigued me. The Utena storyline and the Penguindrum storyline are thus tied up together in this manner.
Male!Utena is another draw to read this fanfic. In the initial stages of planning, I thought of the character as someone who self-identifies as a trans man. However, I later decided to depict Male!Utena simply as someone who self-identifies as Utena –- not male or female, but simply a "person" with a modified body. But what did this even mean? I would agonize over the expression of Male!Utena for the entire fic.