Yeah, the aesthetics, or rather #the aesthetic - kinda German expressionism crossed with French rococo. If you haven’t seen the movie, the architecture’s even more ridiculous in that. JA Seazer’s music of course was a huge thing, I think it helped create the sunny feel where everything’s absurd and weighty but not ominous.

Also just all the ritualized, formalist, symbolist stuff - the “ascending to the duelling grounds” and sword-drawing bits which were literally the same in each episode, and came in at roughly the same point, but also the stuff that would happen each time but in a different way as a sort of commentary on the story - the shadow girls’ play, the preliminary conversations in the student council room/Akio’s car/the seminar’s elevator-confessional, the moment when the duellists’ flower is cut, the absurd lyrics in the duel songs, the accessories on the desks and the way they all slam together at the end in the Black Rose Arc, stuff like that.

The Anthy bits were nice and well-used to modulate the pacing, of course when I’m talking about “sunny feel” the bits in the sunlit garden while The Sunlit Garden plays help. Coulda done without Chu-Chu, I don’t know who decided that every ‘90s anime has to have a weird, humanized animal mascot.