Roses of an Enslaving Goddess
Ichinomiya Fukiko is Oniisama E’s mysterious nobility. As her name prophesizes, she is born to wealth and abundance. To the eye she is but a captivating and prideful teenager whose intimidation reaches even the viewer. However, as disordered events hail over the school and thus the characters, Fukiko’s layered complexities start unveiling and revealing themselves to us, both in secrecy and plain sight.
Fukiko, the prideful eighteen-year-old Sorority president, loved and admired by the school and considered to be one of “The Magnificent Three”, is an enigma whose revealed intentions and actions have yet to have a solid justification. Throughout the series, flowers and specifically roses have followed Fukiko’s steps in almost every scene, whether worn by her, standing tall, or cursed with fallen petals. The way I interpret the roses, thus, is the way I interpret Fukiko, and the eye that beholds Fukiko beholds her roses equally.
Firstly, being a member of the Flower Arranging Club herself, we see these beautiful plants decorated and placed all around the school, and especially in Sorority events, where she is in charge. Roses are her control, an artistic manifestation of her reality- she arranges, cuts, trims, and cultivates, all on the basis of her eventful life and sadistic personality. When under many occasions the characters end up gifting flowers to others, Fukiko is the only one given a full bouquet of roses, as if roses were made for her, as if she is destined to stand out amongst the many other students, or in this case, many other types of flowers. Fukiko’s fair roses are a reflection of her mood. When Henmi, the one she longs for, gifted her lilies on her eighteenth birthday, her stress rose up until she snapped and threw them into the fire. This escalation comes from the fact that not only is his gift a reminder that the space between them has widened to the point where he knows not of her favorite flower but also suggests that taming roses are her specialty; she bears no personal cultivation to another flower. Fukiko’s identity is shown clearly and simply as even the beauty that is held in the world can be sabotaged by her if something parts her manipulative hands. Her territory, her rose garden, her sacred space where she can cry without anyone knowing or lurking, is a manifestation of the severity of her pride; she hides in the place where her flowers stand tall, keeping her secret tears from slipping away to anyone.
Fukiko’s ever-growing wound that originates from Henmi’s break of promise made her seek refuge within these red roses; they have become her spies, her love- dangerous, obsessive, possessive. We are shown that the summer of her love and heartbreak awakening, all at once, have been sealed in her summer house. Her room, remaining unchanged, is her constant reminder of a phantom haunting her, even when the phantom himself has moved on or knows not that he is a phantom. This ghostly presence is birthed by her perseverant pride that has kept her from enjoying her life to the fullest. Her summer room is an eighteen-year-old chamber pretending to be a child. Perhaps, the only change was not time, but roses. The roses demonstrated in the room are purple, a color of infatuation. They have not withered yet, even after six years, because their souls have left these vessels and occupied another: they have now become her dear red roses. Her innocent infatuation with Henmi turned, throughout the years, into a monstrous yet beautiful, tragic roses that seek mendicity. These roses have protected Fukiko by injuring Henmi upon the touch of delicate skin. These red roses have shed the blood of those who hurt her, without showing any traces of perpetrating a crime. These roses have no need to wash all that blood away, no need to scrub and scrub with no use- the color of a red rose and blood are one and the same. However, when a white rose sheds the blood of Fukiko upon hearing Henmi’s plans for the university fair, the white rose is troubled- no ocean can wash the blood away, it is but a stable reminder of complicity and treason.
Furthermore, roses are her, personified. The roses serve as a creational acting tool of the true nature of Fukiko. Though she carries and presents herself as kind, her intimidation and confrontational character overshadows. As to the darkest pieces of her character, they are revealed by the way she treats Rei and Nanako, or when she is alone. For instance, on the day she hurts Rei to the point of bleeding, the wound forms what looks like a rose, and consequently, Nanako, our protagonist, fails to idolize Fukiko after witnessing such a horror from that moment forth. She starts imagining Fukiko hurting her the same way- the imagery of a rose unleashing her petals and transforming into bloody drops dripping from the violence that presumably sought them continued to be embedded in the girl’s mind. This unspoken fear mirrors the relationship between the rose petals and Fukiko- as each petal gets plucked, the bare face of Fukiko discloses itself shamefully. In several episodes, such as the one that ends with the dismissal of Junko from the Sorority, the image of a rose separating from what initially makes it beautiful- the petals, appears. Fukiko’s perfect image she tries tenaciously to contain slowly yet surely starts breaking apart in both our lens and the narrator’s as we observe her abusive tendencies, reflected within the perfected roses, whose appearance gets shredded to pieces. On multiple occasions, and for instance in episode nineteen, the window she opens brings upon a party of flying dried leaves. These leaves entering her occupation are the one and only leaves she trims when perfecting her roses as a part of her arranging ritual. As her true persona is successively revealed, these abandoned leaves welcome her again. They greet her to the gruesome side, a side she has but shows not so often. They come back to her as she starts losing her grip on certain situations she wishes to eternally control.
Lastly, Fukiko’s roses are her ‘perfected’ love. Fukiko’s twisted definition of love and perfectionism is taken out on roses. “A single ugly rose has vulgarized this whole arrangement!,” she says, though she was the one responsible for messing it up in a moment of rage. The truth is that even after Fukiko’s closer side is revealed, so many questions are left unanswered- why does she act that way? What is her connection to love and hate? Fukiko’s treatment of her roses is almost compatible with how she treats Rei and Henmi. Rei and Henmi are both very dear to her, with the former being her only sister and the latter being her first love. However, time and again we insinuate that Fukiko cannot fully love someone or something unless they are perfect. These naturally found flaws create a love-hate dichotomy inside Fukiko’s heart, first towards Rei mainly because of her lack of pride, drug addiction, and her inability to carry the Ichinomiya family name, and second, towards Henmi because he could not keep his promise when she was twelve. Subsequently, when Fukiko is enraged, she takes it out on her roses and on Rei, and if Henmi had been more present in her life, then he would have taken a piece of that anger with him, too.
In the series, Fukiko and Rei’s relationship is an oscillation of what could have been, what is left to pick up, and what could later on be. Fukiko’s signature red rose associates itself with Rei’s white rose, which we see several times, whether between Rei’s lips as she is playing the piano or when she is buried inside a casket of white roses. The interesting symbolic color between the two is linked to the tension these two characters have. White is innocence, white is purity, white is snow. Red is obsession, red is danger, red is blood. If I could choose two sentences that sum up the relationship between these two characters in association to one another, it would be those above. The past reveals itself in later episodes, where we see a double suicide attempt of these characters in the snow. As Fukiko slits Rei’s wrist and watches her fall on the pure, white snow, she hesitates to complete their mission. This scene sets the dominance between the characters had their social status failed to already do so. The one with the blade is responsible for the fate of the other; she is the death and life one cannot run away from. Born the younger sister, Rei is desperate for Fukiko- she is the controller of her tides and waves; she is her enslaving mistress. Both of them having signature roses, Fukiko’s incestuous and abusive relationship with Rei is hinted through roses. I would go as far to say Fukiko forced Rei to associate herself with a white rose, a white rose that can be tainted, colored, and stained by Fukiko alone. In addition, Fukiko’s pride prohibits her from fully reuniting with Rei because the whiteness is bound to dilute the bold red. The innocent and kind nature of Rei is exploited and preyed upon by Fukiko’s sadism. “You must never have eyes for anyone other than me,” says Fukiko addressing Rei, like a rose pleading for attention. Subsequently, Fukiko admits that her tears are “for Rei only”. Fukiko’s perception of eyes and tears seem synonymous because the birth of their relationship started the moment Rei saw Fukiko’s rare tears falling from her glorious face in the garden when they were kids. This is a great deal to Fukiko, and the least that can be done to get repaid is to take Rei’s “eyes” and attention, forever. Similarly, Henmi “taking away” her brother as their timeless friendship persists provoked her to “take away” Nanako, his sister.
As is proven, so much of Fukiko’s immaturity is crypted under her prideful attitude and presentation. However, her complex feelings and actions cannot be easily defined, and perhaps, that is the point.
