#and i guess not a lot would really change but akio's attempt at making utena more feminine would have a whole other layer of awful to it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

cviperfan · 4 years

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Okay so partially motivated by how many references there were in SPoP and largely bc it's been in my backlog for years and I remembered the whole thing got uploaded to youtube a while ago, I finally got around to watching Revolutionary Girl Utena for the first time so time for some hot takes

2 clarify I did see the movie about around 2000 which was my introduction to the series, and I did see like 1 episode back in anime club (over a decade ago now tbh) but for the most part I went into this with only a vague sense of the ending and offhand knowledge of a few of the weird comedy episodes so this was mostly a blind watch

Before getting into #spoilers I will say that this ended up being an easy Top 5 and that it's definitely still worth watching (fair warning for the very frequent rape and incest (and sometimes both)), especially if you've somehow also avoided most of the context of this show like me, and it really is one of the rare Nothing Else Like It kind of show (though it has roots in older shoujo like Rose of Versailles and modern stuff like Revue Starlight have picked up its lede)

Okay spoilers from here on

I really only kinda have vague memories of the more knightly take on Utena from the movie so Series!Utena having this powerful Dumb Jock Energy threw me

Like she's out here invoking the Air Bud Rule from minute one

This bit where Akio is going on about some Important Life Lesson thing and she's just fuckin

crab walking im

what a hero i love her

I have always kinda been more partial to shoujo than shounen bc the sense of like emotional urgency and the heightened exaggerated feelings are just more compelling to me narratively and what Utena does spectacularly is really drive that to fucking 11 and it permeates every aspect of the show

Like the melodrama of it all is so shameless and it's so committed to letting its visuals and music drive the mood and emotional intensity of its stakes that they kind of speak for themselves and demand to be taken on their own terms rather than having clear or rigid interpretations

Like it's kind of a situation of "yes most of what you're seeing ties into the show's bigger themes and characterization but also you can just vibe to the spectacle as well" like even when it's not on the Dueling Arena there's a theatricality underlying everything that pairs perfectly with the spirit of shoujo even as it... not necessarily contradicts it, but challenges it in some ways and also wants to coexist with it?

And I think that's the interesting thing how it wants to tackle some of these arch concepts tied into the genre while also being deeply intertwined with it. Like it really is a Product Of Its Time in so many ways but it also feels somehow timeless and transgressive in others even now?

Like part of me would be interested to see a remake that took into account 23 years of conversation about how much perceptions of gender and sexuality have changed but at the same time would it lose some essential part of itself in that transition? idk potentially

Also lbr a hypothetical remake wouldn't even attempt to revise anything it would just redo it thus making it pointless

So I know this has been a thing that's been brought up before but seeing it play out dang RGU and NGE really are just companion pieces to each other huh

Subverting the themes and narrative arcs of their respective genres, mysterious quiet girl who's directly the key to everything, the ritual of action setpieces rendered as Actual Ritual in the story, banger OP, comphet ruining everyone's lives

Also they really don't have much in common comparatively but I'm definitely seeing pieces of Utena in Kill la Kill too? Particularly how Mako's arc feels like a fleshing out and expansion from the archetype divergence Wakaba got in that one ep (I can't believe klk was the utena/wakaba au fanfic)

Speaking of which damn he is a sleazy bastard and a gross predator but ngl Akio can Get It he and Ragyo are basically the same character and I guess this is just my type apparently???? oops

Like I'm recognizing how like really awful he is but also you really can't blame Utena for crushing on him he is super hot and charming

aside i lost it at the audacity of "well even tho i am a man like twice your age (AT LEAST) and took advantage of the situation and also i am clearly not the type to take no for an answer since you didn't reject me you're basically just as bad as me" bruh

The Black Rose Arc is... interesting bc like it borders on superfluous with how it resolves and yet the introduction of a "monster of the week" type power rangers element specifically built to expand on the secondary cast is a pretty inspired choice

again my primary point of introduction to the series was the movie which is basically a remix of the Student Council arc so when I got to 12 I was like wth are they gonna fill the rest of this with? WELP

What I really like about it is that usually this kind of setup-- the 'character is faced with their dark inner thoughts they shy away from and they become a short-term enemy' deal-- ends with the char in question coming to terms with this and overcoming it to become a better person

but here it's just like... they lose and then they just gotta... sit with that, forever. Like it doesn't really change the status quo of their relationships w/ utena or the others but it does just stick around for them and now the audience knows that about them too. like sometimes you just can't take that shit back.

Utena's relationship to queerness, having heard about it tangentially for years but seeing it play out now is also interesting bc while in the grand scheme it doesn't feel necessarily any more ahead of its time than something like Cardcaptor Sakura there is a casualness to it that's distinct

Like for the most part it's either kind of the tangential fluff that even then was part of shoujo as a standard but then there's also stuff like the Akio/Touga or Touga/Saionji hinting or Kozue's casual pass at Anthy in addition to the maintext Juri/Shiori push-pull and ofc the subtext-but-maintext Utena/Anthy threads

I wanna take a moment to talk about Juri bc of how kind of in the spirit of the show itself it plays things both with and against the grain with her

Like she's a Tragic Lesbian which is nothing new but usually this character type (and Distinctively Lesbian characters in general) in anime/manga tend to be portrayed as being very predatory, invasive and either played for laughs or to repulse the audience, so the degree of empathy RGU shows her in 97 is rare to see even now.

Like there is a "safeness" to her bc of how unattainable Shiori is (though their arc ends in a decidedly ambiguious way), but it doesn't really feel like she's getting the short end of the stick over the more straight-leaning characters bc arguably all of the relationships here are defined by an aspect of chasing the unattainable, echoing Utena's own quixotic search for her Prince, and her choosing to remain closeted feels realistic *especially because* of the surrounding context of how heteronormative the world she exists in is. Like the character is aware of that and is navigating it in a way that feels honest

Speaking of which it's interesting how the reveal of Juri's pining for Shiori in Ep 7 echoes the bigger reveal of Utena/Anthy bc of how it plays up this heterocentric love triangle or at least it seems to be but then the cards are on the table and no that's really not what it is at all, and it feels significant that after spending most of the series naively oblivious to Juri’s feelings and what she wants out of a relationship with Shiori that Utena finally Gets It in Ep 37

Is it a coincidence Juri actually gets to be the one to point it out? No

Speaking of triangles big ups to the Ruka/Juri/Shiori one honestly bc of how hard it commits to the unknown third result of a LT where absolutely no one comes out happy and it actually works even with the handicap of Ruka basically coming out of nowhere just for these two episodes

Like all three of them want the one person who's absolutely never gonna love them back and that's just rough buddy and isn't that kinda the show in a nutshell

So the thing that struck me about Utena/Anthy and how it plays out is how subtle it really is. And that does make sense bc while f/f teasing/subtext again was part of shoujo before it's quite a different thing for the heroine to ultimately reject her 2 male love interests and choose a life with her female best friend, esp in nineteen ninety seven

Like I think you can argue that Ep 12 feels like The Moment where What Their Relationship Is, Definitely shifts and that possibility is suddenly there, and then it doesn't come back in a big way until the ending but there are tiny glimpses throughout where you can see that working in the background if you’re really paying attention

Small things like Anthy's flashes of unspoken jealousy, Utena fretting over her even when she's in bed with Akio, and part of that is coming from going in with a knowledge of what the endgame is and keeping an eye out for it. I can hardly imagine being a viewer during the og broadcast and then ep 34 comes and suddenly the intent is made clear and our understanding of the inciting incident gets all flipped turned upside down

And to a modern viewer I can get coming into this for the first time and being frustrated at just how close to the chest it gets played, but that's also kind of the only way it gets to happen at that point in time? But I think it ultimately is effective and vital to their individual arcs and dovetails nicely with the themes of the show

Like I remember hearing that original manga creator Chiho Saito was pretty against their paired ending, but with a lot of convincing from Ikuhara ultimately came around to it, and it's hard to imagine the anime's ending working any other way and being nearly as impactful

And there is something really beautiful about the bucking against the established idea of yuri relationships being a childish concept that gets left behind in order to 'grow up' actually becoming the impetus of their own journeys into adulthood and eventually back to each other, and it’s hard not to feel a little disappointed that for this Bold Step and declaration for the future that RGU takes that while yuri is more common than ever it largely continues to exist within the realm of schoolgirls and something to be left behind in adolescence like for RGU’s faults and shortcomings it saw this world of possibility in moving forward, while the genre largely elected to stand still

And it really speaks to either the timelessness of the show or how much the queer experience has remained constant that even with a tragic ending, that hope, or rather the promise of their reunion, feels bold and defiant and genuinely uplifting even now

Like the moment where just before they reach out to each other one final time, and their voices as children speak out to each other, as if finally fulfilling a promise they barely remember, I really did just start ugly crying

Lastly some assorted closing thoughts--

-Touga? Punk. Guy really takes advantage of Utena's whole prince thing to manipulate her, ends up losing to her in the rematch and then fucks off to mope for like AN ENTIRE SEASON then pops back up "oh yea im in love with her literally nothing else about my behavior has changed tho" like lmao you tried i guess

-Also i know Touga's design is p stock standard bishounen ojou-sama type but god this is all i can think about when I see him

- Green Touga Saionji is a bitch-ass motherfucker but like he at least tried more than anyone else so uh that's something I guess?????

Like the guy clearly has some unresolved feelings about Touga so i'm inclined to be sympathetic bc wow poor choice my dude but also... bitch-ass motherfucker

-Nanami really went through this thing for me where it's like... she's a brat and a shitty person but it's also hard to really dislike her bc she does get what she deserves most of the time and also she gets kinkshamed more than most of the cast despite none of them really having a high ground over her lol

-Miki did nothing wrong (aside from like the implied incest but that's also like... half the relationships in this show uh)

sidenote I can completely see the notable excess of Incest Subtext/Maintext being intended as like... A Thing to comment on how common it is within shoujo and also tying in to like the bigger themes of Growing Up bc the idea that you’re chasing after your own damn siblings betrays some freudian inability to mature or whatever but tbqh it doesn’t always feel like the show knows the line between commenting on this and indulging in it and RGU is very indulgent by its own nature so I really can’t blame people put off by the show as a whole bc this is an area where RGU is largely indistinguishable from its genre peers

-Juri really did nothing wrong tho also props for having the best duels

-FUCK SHIORI THO for eel

so obviously i have not seen the show up to now but I've been in yuri circles for a long time so I knew about Juri/Shiori and my perception of it had always been "oh it's one of those kinda messy with complicated feelings" kinda ships where the drama is a big part of the appeal and that's true but like

the actual nature of it I did not realize up to now and OH SHIORI'S REALLY THAT BITCH HUH

So not only does she date that one anonymous guy specifically to spite Juri unaware she doesn't actually like him BUT THEN WHEN THEY GET REUNITED SHE'S JUST LIKE LOL IT DIDNT MATTER BUT HEY WE COOL RIGHT *AND THEN* when she finds out about Juri's feelings she's like HELL YEA I CAN HANG THIS OVER HER HEAD FOREVER FUCK HER

***AND THEN*** when she gets some karma after Ruka dumps her ass she airs her dirty laundry out in front of EVERYBODY like Juri hasn't been dealing with this shit like an absolute champ the whole time like?????

Like ok i get that there's the sad longing drama there and usually that's my jam and the show itself seems to end on kind of an ambiguous note and the follow-up manga from this year seems to leave it as kind of a "maybe" but I'm sorry get Juri a better GF 2020 she deserves better

I saw some Juri/Wakaba going through the tumblr tag for the show and honestly that's some big brain shit I'm here for it

Also now knowing exactly how this dynamic operates it really makes that Jasper/Lapis reference pic one of the SU crew drew of them read very.... interestingly???????? (tho Lapis' design reads a lot closer to Kozue and that's probably a closer personality analogue too)

-I love that thing in ep 37 where the whole SC is just very casually like hey utena if the whole revolutionizing the world thing with anthy doesn't work out uhhh call me im free haha just kidding unless...? lmao

-I'm pretty uninclined to try to pin precise sexuality HCs to characters for series this old where the ambiguity is part of how its danced around like partly coming from my own experience I'm inclined to read Utena as bi but that really is just coming from me?

But on the other hand literally every time a guy is like "i love you utena come be happy with me and we can love each other forever" she's like "k" after having left them on read for a day and disconnects from them entirely so lesbian going through comphet is a pretty valid read i think lol

-Lastly I think it’s pretty interesting but validly frustrating how fast and loose the show’s relationship with dream logic and non-traditional storytelling really is like when the shadow girls show up I was like “oh this is a greek chorus thing and it’s meant to reflect on the themes of the episode” (or uh in the case of exactly Ep 29 to break from tradition and explicitly tell us what a characters deal is lmao) but then no actually turns out they’re actually real characters who exist within the show too fuck you

ANYWAY I really did love this show and felt like I got a lot out of it despite it being pretty infamously hard to decipher but the ways it's inscrutable appeal to me specifically so very happy with this I'm gonna be thinking about it for a while

#revolutionary girl utena #cw: rape mention #cw: incest mention #might follow up with some thoughts about the movie later

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katherine-rambles · 6 years

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Since some of my friends are fiiiinaallly watching RGU, spoilers under the cut re: the last few episodes and Anthy. If you’re on mobile, just, uh, scroll really fast I guess? I don’t know why cuts don’t work on mobile...

Is..... is Ohtori.... Anthy’s grave...?

The kofun burial mound, the coffin, Akio’s determination to try again and again... The swords........

Did Dios ‘sacrifice’ himself in order to keep Anthy ‘alive’...?

Okay okay okay. So two paths to go down here: a metaphoric death (1) and a literal death (2).

1 - metaphoric death

Looking around at the internet, I’d say other folks have this side covered pretty well; I wanna get to the other one because I have Ideas about that

2 - literal death

In this scenario, we’ve got the archetypes as having some sort of... power over the metanarrative, right? But not complete power, because their power is the belief of those who buy into the narrative. Anthy takes the brunt of the anger for allowing the Prince to escape his obligations to ‘the people’, because those obligations were going to kill him. That anger turns into Anthy being literally, actually run through with lots of implements that kill her.

But the Prince, newly liberated from his obligations, has a lot of power that he’s now not really using. He can’t save Anthy-- he was too late for that. But he can preserve Anthy. Keep her alive. Turn what would normally be a painful but brief moment into... an eternity. Dios’s powers to change the world are used to stop the world from continuing to happen. To halt time and physics themselves. To stop Anthy from bleeding out. She’s not doing great, but at least she’s not dead. That counts for something, right? Here is where I think Dios turns into Akio; change becoming stagnation.

Well, they both realize this is a terrible situation. Akio can’t leave Anthy, because then she’ll die. And visa versa. Without the Witch to blame for the Prince’s absence, Akio has no protections from the obligations that gave him the power to change the world in the first place. And without the Prince as a protagonist, the Witch isn’t a credible threat, she loses the Prince’s heartsword: then she loses the power, since it all runs on belief. They’re trapped. Even if Akio lets Anthy die, then he’ll probably die later, trying to fulfill the obligations put upon the Prince. Because a Prince that got lost is still A Prince. It isn’t whether or not Akio wants to be a prince; it’s about what people will demand of him no matter how he chooses to act. If people know that the Prince is free, they expect the Prince to serve them.

(There’s also a bunch of corollaries here: why Ohtori seems so removed from seasons and time in general can be explained if it’s all tied to Anthy’s literal moment of death. Ohtori academy is both the future where Anthy didn’t die [the academy] and the future where she did [the kofūn]-- and as a princess, she’s entitled to some sweet burial digs, I guess. This also goes some way to explaining the campus’s labyrinthine nature; it’s a superposition of states that are probably always in flux.)

So... they know heartswords are key to this mess. It’s the heartswords that impale Anthy-- perhaps not in the most literal sense, but in the sense that the weapons, insults, & degradations were intentionally meant to cause her harm. Anthy originally hid Dios’s heartsword/obligations/powers within herself; this is the Witch “trapping” the Prince.

They’re looking for power to free themselves. To do so, they must open the Rose Gate-- the key to this situation is nabbing Anthy from the coffin (the potential future that awaits if time is allowed to continue properly) before the heart/hate-swords can fully kill Anthy. The final Duel, then, is a physical portal to a moment stuck in time: the moment of Anthy’s dying. Anthy can’t do it; she’s being stabbed to death. Akio can try, but his power is trapped with Anthy; so he needs someone else’s power.

And thus the duels. Take a promising bunch, mold their lives to maximize their motivation, pit them against each other: whoever comes out on top must be the strongest. Take that sword, attempt to break Anthy free. Repeat ad nauseum until something works.

Where Utena comes in, what she shakes up, is her willingness to free Anthy no matter the personal cost to herself. Anthy has just LITERALLY backstabbed Utena. In Anthy’s mind, there’s no possible reason that Utena could want to continue, now that Utena’s seen the ‘true’ Anthy. Up until this point, the only person who has seen and accepted that side of her has been Akio.

So now we have two people who have seen just about everything Anthy thinks is true of herself. Akio has used that emotional leverage as free reign to be Awful. Anthy, I’m sure, struggles with her pain as much as she struggles with the belief she deserves it, which Akio is able to leverage into his comfy life. He, is actually just kinda fine going with the status quo: he’s not the one dying for eternity. And hey, this gig’s not half bad. Utena wants to be his princess? Sweet. No skin off his back. He’ll tire of Utena just like he tired of Kanae, I’m sure, and then Utena would just be another pawn in the next round of duelists. As long as the swords don’t work to open the Rose Gate, Akio can honestly say that he’s trying, while still actually never succeeding. Maybe he is actually trying, or maybe the duels are no longer anything but an amusement to pass the time. It doesn’t really matter: it’s gone on for so long that they’re all talking about Eternity, something Eternal, how to achieve Eternal Things. (And implied, for Anthy, is eternal pain/death.)

Utena is a pretty powerful gal, but it isn’t her power that changes things. (Her heartsword does break, after all.) No: it’s her belief in Anthy; her deep-seated conviction that Anthy shouldn’t be in so much pain. Utena is willing to sacrifice herself if it would help out her friend. She doesn’t care that she's been hurt, she doesn’t care that she may die, she doesn’t care that Anthy wants her to go back to safety. She believes Anthy is worth saving.

And it’s that, I think, that finally motivates Anthy into breaking the cycle. Dios cared about Anthy, sure; but he didn’t do anything when she put herself in the line of fire. He didn’t jump to save her as he did to save the princesses-- because to a prince, a potential marriage match is more important than a sister. Not necessarily (originally) a personal fault; it’s part of the Narrative-- his power derives from that idealized vision of a prince saving princesses. He never later decided to try diverting the hateswords by fessing up to the fact that he’d been living the high life by faking his princely death.

Anthy breaks the cycle by walking away. Instead of protecting Akio, as she’s been doing all this time, she gives him back what she took in trying to save him. Well-- insofar as she ever actually took anything. Instead of standing in front of the barn, she walks away, to let Akio deal with his own problems.

Utena convinced Anthy that Anthy herself is worth saving, too. That Dios’s self-inflicted damage was the same as Anthy’s curse: doing for others what they can (or should) figure out for themselves. I mean-- if those people could kill a Witch, why couldn’t they protect their own princesses? For that matter, why are the princesses so incapable of protecting themselves? That seems like something royalty should generally learn how to do.

Now, in this setup, that leaves the last moments of the final duel a little in the lurch. If Anthy stops the cycle by getting out of the way, and Utena inspires her to do so by getting in the way... then what? Well, I think that means that there’s no target for the heartswords. I mean, yes, Utena puts herself in the line of fire; but that line of fire exists because of Anthy’s original decision to ‘save’ Dios. When Anthy decides to stop doing that, there becomes no swords that were ever aimed at her. The universe settles into a shape that allows for the past, but it’s now the present in which Anthy is alive, Ohtori never was a kofūn and is only a normal academy, and Utena's stay at Ohtori becomes fuzzy to everyone involved because it’s the crux of a space-time paradox. But importantly, in this reading, it means Utena didn’t have to save Anthy in the ‘resettled’ past. So the universe makes sense of this, essentially, by diffusing Utena’s impact, and Utena is off doing what Utena would’ve been doing had she not been in the duels.

(A generous continuation from there would have Utena already having made friends with Anthy; and at least the official epilogue art, there’s some indication that that may have been the case. An angsty epilogue would have Utena never know nor recall Anthy’s lived past. A cruel epilogue would be something akin to Donna’s departure from Doctor Who, wherein Utena’s recovered memories destabilizes the universe and would lead to her death. I think, in this reading, it’s unreasonable to assume Anthy couldn’t track Utena down fairly easily, though.)

Anyway, now I want to write a lot of fic that I know I have no patience to write. C’est la vie.

#revolutionary girl utena #rgu #anthy himemiya #akio ohtori #anthy #media #text #present #curiosity #happy

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