Playing for the draw
"That's the kind of guy you are. You play the gentleman, but you've never really loved anyone. You see everyone else only as pawns to be controlled."
In the runup to the final duel, Touga helps Akio woo Utena and is shocked by how much progress Akio has made in making her into his princess. After Akio spends the bulk of the episode showing him up, Touga turns to Saionji to try to work through his feelings and the pair start to reconcile.
"The Love that Blossomed in Wintertime" provides examples of:
- Age Cut: On the student council balcony, Touga and Saionji flash back to their childhood encounter with Utena. Their boy versions dissolve into their present-day versions, suggesting that in some ways they still live in the moment when they met her.
- Brutal Honesty: Touga actually seems to be a little hurt by how Utena and Saionji react to him.
- Call-Back: When Akio asks Touga to give Utena a present as part of his plan to manipulate her, Touga tells Akio that Utena isn't the type of girl who can be easily won over with gifts, mentioning the time he gifted her a dress in Episode 3.
- Camera Sniper: There is an extended photography theme in this episode that starts off with a blink and a camera shutter sound effect while Utena and Akio are in the park. Someone is observing them. Apparently it's Touga, since he is carrying a camera in the next scene.
- Encyclopaedic Knowledge: For a change, Akio rattles off facts about flowers rather than about stars. Utena takes in his lecture even more adoringly than usual, impressed with the breadth of his knowledge.
- Facial Dialogue: When Akio "steals" Utena for an impromptu date, Anthy wears a gentle smile until the door closes behind them. Once no one is there to see, Anthy's face falls, making her look sad and resigned.
- Flashback Echo: Utena suddenly imagines dozens of blades emerging from Anthy's body as she once again nearly remembers meeting her at the same time that she met her prince.
- Hidden Depths: Saionji, of all people, is a voice of reason in this episode. He's caught on not only to the fact that the Akio's game is rigged, but that Akio is exploiting their flaws to keep them in his web. He can tell that staying in the game is wearing Touga down, and that Touga still isn't ready to throw in the towel yet.
- Horseback Heroism: Touga aims for this when he takes Utena horseback riding, but he is too reckless and she falls from his horse. Akio just so happened to be riding nearby and scoops Utena up before any harm can come her — the perfect prince, on a white horse and everything.
- I Love You Because I Can't Control You: In the shadow play, the playboy fisherman is astonished by the one fish that resists him. He wonders what the fish is, and it's a koi — which is a pun that leads into an instance of Metaphorgotten. As the official subs helpfully note, "koi" can mean both "carp" and "love," but the playboy fisherman is hung up on what a freshwater carp is doing in the ocean.
- Jealous Romantic Witness: Touga looks on in rueful surprise as Utena accepts the gift he gave her because she believes it's from Akio.
- Media Scrum: On the student council balcony, Saionji and Touga are surrounded by microphones and cameras on tripods, which flash occasionally in response to the things they say. The equipment spontaneously increases in quantity such that it's difficult to make out the characters in the middle of it all, but the people who should comprise the scrum are for all intents and purposes absent.
- Moment Killer: Utena is on the verge of remembering why she really decided to become a Prince and has a brief Garden of Love interlude with Anthy, but Akio walks in to spoil the moment.
- Natural Weapon: A potential interpretation of the cacti. Akio, like the barbed plants around him, is unassailable. Touga holds a cactus of his own, but it has a weak point — the flower that represents his love. Another, punnier interpretation is that the cacti represent how Akio is being a big prick.
- Once More, with Clarity: This is the last time the Stock Footage fairy tale of Utena's backstory is used, but it veers from the script in the middle. The story is not so much about the prince or the princess anymore. It is about the witch.
- Slapstick: Wakaba, in a fit of envious admiration, gets several really solid punches (plus a glomp) in on Utena when Touga gives Utena a gift on behalf of Akio.
- Too Good to Be True: Utena stays up late contemplating the gift earrings and her charmed encounter with Akio, and even she seems to think it was all a little too perfect.Utena: It's too much... A prince on an actual white horse?
- Wicked Cultured: Highlighted this episode by the transition from the earnest, professorial Akio chatting with Utena among the flowerbeds, to the next scene where Akio drawls and casually flaunts his wealth and power in front of Touga, whom he's roped in as a photographer for what amounts to a boudoir photoshoot.
