#There's a lot of nuance behind my feelings best described by revolutionary girl utena | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thirdmagic · 7 years

Note

I have no fucking clue what happens in the Fate series (despite following you and kurozu for quite a while, I somehow have not the slightest clue what the shit even happens in this series) but I am very happy for these Utena-related revelations for you.

Hahaha, thank you! I know I’m a huge big mess of fandoms of a blog despite how I originally started as a Fate blog mainly, but since then I’ve had so many that I bet a lot of people who followed me for Fate-unrelated stuff might be a bit confused and overwhelmed by how much I post of it.

For some context I guess, since I know all this rambling and hype of mine probably makes very little sense from an outside POV: Fate is a series I have always loved and adored for a lot of reasons, and the original Fate/stay night visual novel has always been close to my heart. I’ve always seen a lot of different parallels and similarities between Utena and the VN and other elements of the series, but never considered them to be connected because while I love and appreciate it’s main writer, Kinoko Nasu, very much, and really enjoyed the way he wrote his female characters as nuanced human beings... I never really thought of him as a feminist figure or anything. I still don’t! There’s far too many messy little things in his writing for him to be considered such, and I can’t say he ever handles gender in the most sensitive ways. But I do know that he legitimately tries to be good to his female characters, and that when he writes, he writes with sincerity, as opposed to many ‘straight dudes thinking with their dicks’ writers. And while I can see some themes in his work that can be seen as feminist, his track record in writing also has some extremely fucky and uncomfortable stuff, so I do feel he tries his best to be good to his women but doesn’t write with feminist intentions in mind. I try to stay realistic about how I perceive him. He’s also always been modest about most things and admitted in one interview that yeah, as far as feminism goes, his writing leaves some things to be desired, which I really gotta respect.

But this interview that’s really released has him talk about Ikuhara’s works, and Utena in particular and reading all these thoughts had me extremely shook? It’s such a fantastic read not just because he really, really gets Utena-- he describes it as a masterpiece, he gets how the symbolism and abstractness of it works and the meaning behind it, how it’s meant to be something to interpreted from many different subjective angles, but what had me the most shook is that he also understand the feminist themes in it? Like he was absolutely on point on Utena and Anthy’s arcs and the messages behind them, how their characters represent these feminist themes, what Utena’s relationship with Akio served in the story and her relationship with Anthy... like he literally said that in his opinion, the people who keep it closest to their heart are people who truly understood what it’s about, but also women who resonated with the difficult patriarchal struggles the show represents. Like it blew my mind because i honestly did not expect him to understand that. He’s a very straight dude writer in many ways, just, you know, a good one, so like I did not expect him to be sensitive to these things at all and I won’t lie I’m pretty damn happy. It also makes me feel weirdly validated to know that this write I like a lot was so inspired and influenced by and likes such a wonderful, incredible and I daresay revolutionary work as Utena, and understands it.

Also the whole interview was just a really good read and hearing him fanboy about it was really adorable and endearing.... and talking about how much he loves it and was inspired by it...

WHAT’S REALLY FREAKING ME OUT THOUGH is this: Fate/stay night, and the series in particular, always had a lot of things in common with Utena. There’s a character who’s a lot like Saionji but absolutely ten times worse in every way, without his more sympathetic/pitiful qualities, who even has similair hair except blue and he outright confirms the character in question was inspired by him?? The main character has a LOT in common with Utena thematically, and one of the heroines is like if Anthy was an actual Japanese teenage girl- not an exact carbon copy, but they have a lot in common in terms of character arcs, personalities, and thematic elements. (Though he confirmed she wasn’t inspired by Anthy but the similarities are still there).

There’s also a lot of sword/impalement imagery, much of it symbolic, a character who literally embodies the curses and hatred of the entire world much like Anthy with her swords of hate, lots of imagery involving being both stabbed with a lot of swords and being impaled by swords from the inside, and like, the amount of sheer symbolism present EVERYWHERE in Fate/stay night always made me think ‘haha it really lives up to Utena’ so now I’m really really shook???? Like dude. DUDE. I always thought that was coincidental and just me seeing parallels everywhere, but the writer not only confirmed that one of his characters from another work (not Fate) was inspired by Anthy, but several others were too, and I’m just like??? Holy fuck? All the parallels and similairities I saw are suddenly perfectly validated???? Like who knows what else in Fate was inspired by Utena either subconsciously or not.and while much of it might be coincidental the fact that the writers likes, understands, and was inspired by Utena PUTS IT ALL IN A WHOLE NEW LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway yes I’m going to be screaming about this for a while. I’m sorry my body was just.... wholly unprepared for all this it’s more than I can take. It’s too much.

#asks #azuresquirrel

17 notes · View notes