#i'll admit color symbolism is not my strong suit. but i find it very interesting

[transmascutena]

why is utena's uniform black? within the show, the color white represents the prince, or the idea of princehood, which is why utena wears a white rose in the duels, and why dios' (and akio's) uniform is white, and by extension why the student council uniforms are too. so the fact that the main color utena wears is the opposite of that is significant. i think the black of utena's uniform is mainly meant to stand in contrast to the student council, to show that she's not like them, that she's an outsider. it's also important that it's in contrast to the prince's uniform; she's playing a role she can never really fill. she cannot become a prince, and she doesn't really, truly, want to either. or she wouldn't, knowing what it really means. her uniform is a way of expressing her masculinity, and whether she realizes it or not, the way she does that does not entirely line up with being a prince. it exists outside of that. this is of course a good thing.

the red accents are interesting too, because it's a color very heavily associated with akio and anthy (and touga, obviously, but i don't think that's directly relevant when it comes to why utena wears it.) in this way utena's outfit also works as a sort of inversion of akio's outfit when he's not playing prince: red vs black shirt, black vs red pants (or shorts in her case.) then there's the red of anthy's rose bride dress. red accents are present in the white uniforms of the prince and the student council too. the dresses utena wears in episode 3 and 33, as well as the girl's uniform, are also white (or very close to it) with red accents. the sweater she wears in episode 37 is entirely red. utena's rose bride dress does not have any red on it, unlike anthy's, and it isn't white either; it's pink, a combination of the two colors, like her hair. i'm not completely sure what all this means, but it's interesting that the moments utena wears colors closer to white, to the prince's color, are the very moments she's the least masculine and "princely" (the two are seperate, but in these cases connected.) perhaps white is not just the color of the prince, but the princess as well? is red the color of the witch, then?

in the movie, utena's uniform is both black and white and does not have any red until she's in her dueling outfit, where she gets red stripes between the black and the white, as well as on her epaulets and shoes. and here anthy's rose bride dress is no longer fully red, but mostly white with red accents like utena's uniform (if white is the prince's color, does this reflect anthy's more proactive role in the movie? is she not playing utena's saviour in many ways here?) an important part of the movie's ending is anthy and utena both shedding their clothes entirely, and their roles along with them. so whatever meaning the colors may or may not have held, they're free of that now.

#revolutionary girl utena #analysis #well. not so much analysis as just a bunch of disconnected thoughts and observations #i'll admit color symbolism is not my strong suit. but i find it very interesting #utena #anthy #akio #adolescence of utena