Anime Revolutionary Girl Utena

[Dagger]

It warmed my heart to read that post. :catgirl:

Re: the movie, one thing you should know going into it is that there's an unresolved debate about whether it's a sequel or a retelling. I won't say more on the topic for now, but get ready to draw your own conclusions.

It's also visually ravishing--very luscious. Enjoy.

~Dagger~

[Panache]

This anime is the weirdest anime I've ever seen. It blows holes through Excel Saga and even cromartie. It takes strange to EPIC levels. That said it's a great show. The music was incredible. The only anime with music that is better is probably .Hack//Sign and that's it. The character designs were strange..but in a good way. The characters themselves were twisted and turned until they have been developed to an amazing level. Taking someone seemingly useless and showing you their entire life in different lights. The whole Lesbian thing didn't even occur to me until after it was over and people called it Yuri(although if it was actually real Yuri I am pretty sure I would notice...I never saw a graphic depiction of any chicks getting it on). Overall it isn't my favorite shoujo. Actually I think calling it that is kinda silly. I mean I can easily see how a male could enjoy every moment of this.
Oh and I luvs Nanami!

[2010DigitalBoy]

[quote name='Avenged666fold']This anime is the weirdest anime I've ever seen. It blows holes through Excel Saga and even cromartie. It takes strange to EPIC levels. That said it's a great show. The music was incredible. The only anime with music that is better is probably .Hack//Sign and that's it. The character designs were strange..but in a good way. The characters themselves were twisted and turned until they have been developed to an amazing level. Taking someone seemingly useless and showing you their entire life in different lights. The whole Lesbian thing didn't even occur to me until after it was over and people called it Yuri(although if it was actually real Yuri I am pretty sure I would notice...I never saw a graphic depiction of any chicks getting it on). Overall it isn't my favorite shoujo. Actually I think calling it that is kinda silly. I mean I can easily see how a male could enjoy every moment of this.
Oh and I luvs Nanami![/QUOTE]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]I think it's described as shoujo because of it's fairy tale nature and because, in the end, it really is a girl's coming-of-age tale.

I completely forgot to mention the fabulous music. This is one of the very few anime I actually would like to buy a soundtrack for. [B]Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku [/B]is the ultimate anthem. I plan to do my own (English) black-metal version of it sometime, lol. the lurics to most songs were so absurd, yet so brilliant.[/COLOR]

[Dagger]

Utena remixes shoujo archetypes just as Eva plays with mecha anime conventions. Basically everything in it can be traced back to classic shoujo series like Rose of Versailles, Princess Knight and Oniisama E (Brother, Dear Brother).

Kunihiko Ikuhara, Utena's director, also directed the later seasons of Sailor Moon. In making Utena, he got to play around with some of the story ideas he never got to use in Sailor Moon S.

"Shoujo" and "shounen" have little to do with who can or cannot enjoy a particular series. Many shoujo and shounen series have strong crossover audiences.

~Dagger~

[Panache]

[QUOTE]"Shoujo" and "shounen" have little to do with who can or cannot enjoy a particular series. Many shoujo and shounen series have strong crossover audiences. [/QUOTE] I did not know that. I thought it had to be appealing to a certain audience.

[Dagger]

Nah. Basically, shoujo/shounen and josei/seinen are based on the target audience of the anthology magazine a manga runs in (or the imprint that publishes a novel series, or occasionally the time slot an anime airs in). Of course, this can get tricky when the anime is the original work...

For instance, anyway, the Japanese Shounen Jump is marketed toward males, but it has an enormous female audience. The Pretty Cure anime is marketed toward little girls, but it has an enormous male otaku fanbase. The intended demographic might not even end up being the largest audience.

~Dagger~

[2010DigitalBoy]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]Case in Point: Inuyasha is shonen. Gasp, indeed.[/COLOR]

[Panache]

[quote name='2007DigitalBoy'][COLOR="DarkOrange"]Case in Point: Inuyasha is shonen. Gasp, indeed.[/COLOR][/QUOTE]

What a shocker. I thought the target audience were 60-75 year old Indian men with a drinking habit and bad breath with an affinity to black metal and Latin polka with an Irish twist.

[Dagger]

So Ikuhara is remastering Utena. Possibly even in HD! :love:

I don't care what it costs... I'm so getting this the instant it comes out on R2 DVD (or, er, whatever format it comes out on). As much as I'd love to think that the remastered version will get licensed, I can't say that the chances of it seem very high to me.

~Dagger~

[Panache]

[quote name='Dagger']So Ikuhara is remastering Utena. Possibly even in HD! :love:
[/QUOTE]

That would be so smexy...I just got a HD tv too. I hope it comes out on r1 dvd so I can watch it again.

[2010DigitalBoy]

[quote name='Dagger']So Ikuhara is remastering Utena. Possibly even in HD! :love:

I don't care what it costs... I'm so getting this the instant it comes out on R2 DVD (or, er, whatever format it comes out on). As much as I'd love to think that the remastered version will get licensed, I can't say that the chances of it seem very high to me.

~Dagger~[/QUOTE]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]I just got a hard-on :O best news in forever, especially since Utena DVDs are too many and too hard to come by. This will be t3h **** no doubt!!![/COLOR]

[Shinmaru]

lolinevitablepost

So, I finished [b]Utena[/b] a couple of days ago and watched the movie yesterday. The thing I love most about both the series and the movie is how thoroughly surprising they are, and how they can pull such unexpected tricks on me, even when I went into them expecting something off the wall.

First, basic thoughts on the series -- love the twists and turns of the story, even with the severe mood whiplash that occurs about a thousand times. There is high drama followed by silly comedy episodes (which are hilarious, no doubt), and then it shifts gears back into the drama (which is always incredibly surreal), before going back to more comedy, and on and on. It takes some serious skill (not to mention utter balls lol) to pull that off without pissing me off, haha.

In fact, even if I [i]didn't[/i] enjoy the series so much, I would still have to sit back and admire the mindset that went into creating it. Utena does not hold back on anything for even one second. It just plunges straight in and goes all the way with its stories, symbolism and character interaction. There are not many anime that are as confident in their pure storytelling ability as Utena.

To branch off that, it makes me incredibly happy that a series can shock me so thoroughly with its big dramatic moments ([spoiler]Akio seducing Utena, Ruka sacrificing any decent feelings Juri might have had for him just so that she would be freed from her feelings toward Shiori, etc.[/spoiler]) and move me so much with its subtler moments ([spoiler]the badminton game is probably the biggest one -- it reaches a whole new level of sad after the finale, when Utena confirms she felt betrayed when she walked in on Anthy and Akio; Juri and Miki had been helped so much by Utena, and she is just falling apart, though she won't even show it[/spoiler]). It's probably more miraculous that a series so dedicated to ****ing with its audience could still elicit such feelings, haha.

Screwing with archetypes has always interested me, mainly because it's interesting to see them from a different point of view. The one that sticks out to me the most in the series is [spoiler]the success of the "unprincely" characters and the failure of the princely characters. Obviously, there is Akio/Dios first and foremost -- being a prince nearly destroys him, and then as Akio, he continues to act in a princelike way (sweeping women off their feet and so on), but he is doomed to never regain his power. Saionji fails in his quest to usurp Touga and dominate Anthy. Touga fails to save Utena, because she doesn't need him in the first place. Miki doesn't find that replacement for Kozue in his heart, and his rift with his sister grows even wider. Even Tsuwabuki (poor little guy), a budding prince, is rejected again and again by Nanami. The only "prince" who really succeeds is Ruka, and he does it by ruthlessly destroying Shiori and arousing a bitter hatred for him in Juri.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Meanwhile, Juri succeeds in shedding herself of the chains that weighed down her heart (it wasn't her initial goal, but frankly it was a much better goal than helping Shiori, anyway lol). Then, of course, Utena succeeds in freeing Anthy from her bonds with a noble sacrifice. (By the way, Akio getting owned at the end is hilarious. "lol @ Utena, I am the man!!!!!" "Yeah, except no wai I'm leaving." "WTF?!?!?!" Har har har.)[/spoiler]

Another thing I love about the series is how daring it is in presenting taboo relationships without being exploitative. You can see why [spoiler]Nanami would love Touga so dearly, even if it is a bit strange, haha. (It is more than arguable that she doesn't even hold a sexual love for Touga, considering her reaction to the Anthy/Akio tryst she witnessed.) Then there is the Juri/Shiori relationship, which is an essay in and of itself lol. I have read a few interpretations that I agree with -- I don't think Juri even likes Shiori as she is in the present; she is more in love with the Shiori she once knew, who wasn't a boy-stealing uber *****. Juri has her old picture of Shiori close to her heart, which signifies to me that it is the memory of Shiori she holds dear rather than the girl herself. She does try to protect Shiori from Ruka, but I think she is trying to prevent painful memories from repeating themselves and tainting her view of the ideal Shiori even more.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Then there are some Touga/Saionji moments that come across half like moments of friendship and half like deliberate fangirl tweaking, haha. Their relationship is kind of an odd one for me -- Saionji has so much hatred built up toward Touga, but he comes around and is at least semi-supportive of Touga in the end. And Touga is always tweaking Saionji and using him, but Saionji acts as his bride for his final duel with Utena, which I suppose means he has learned to value Saionji as a friend at least a little bit. And also there is Utena/Anthy, of course, but I am hesitant to comment on that because this post is sooooooooo damn long already, and I haven't even talked about the movie yet.[/spoiler]

Anyway, yes, the movie. I didn't like it as much as the series (to be fair, though, it's a 90-minute movie versus a 39-episode series lol), but I did enjoy it quite a bit. First off, it looks exquisite (yes, I had to pull out a pretentious adjective -- that's how pretty it is); I felt legitimately guilty watching it on friggin' YouTube. I need to see it on DVD like now. The weird, futuristic Ohtori Academy is such a gorgeous setting. I was seriously floored, haha. And the fights -- oh, the fights. [spoiler]Saionji/Utena and Juri/Utena are glorious. I was so disappointed that Touga turned out to be dead, because it meant Utena wouldn't fight him lol. Robbed of another awesome fight scene!![/spoiler]

The differences between [spoiler]Anthy in the movie and Anthy in the series are pretty wild. I guess no glasses = sexpot? Haha. It is interesting how Utena and Anthy's personalities were mixed in the movie -- Utena comes of as way more demure in the movie than she is in the series (although she is still fiery), and Anthy is more forward in the movie by, like, a lot, culminating in the painting scene, which I still feel horribly guilty for enjoying so much. Like, I should probably be imprisoned for a week for that. My God.[/spoiler]

ANYWAY, I loved the first 2/3 of it, but the final third, when everything had to be wrapped up, just felt incomplete to me. [spoiler](Though I did like the escape sequence -- enormous LOL @ Car!Shiori, btw, for crashing and burning after, like, two seconds of evil. She tries to play chessmaster and then gets totally dumped on. I love it.) For example, Miki and Kozue feel completely unnecessary -- they barely do anything at all. Also, poor Nanami getting stuck with just a cow scene. However, I did enjoy everything with Akio. It was interesting how his character was totally flipped into such an outwardly pathetic figure. He is totally stripped of his power (can't find his car keys), is dead before the movie starts and is owned pretty easily by Anthy and Utena.[/spoiler]

I guess I'll close out this post with some random ravings:

[LIST]
[*]I am officially a super mega ultra hyper Juri fanboy. There's no going back now. (Juri's unmasking in the movie = moe overload. If I were a robot, that moment would have been followed by comedic circuit explosions.)
[*]Short-haired Utena in the movie rocked my world. Egad!
[*]I feel really bad for Miki for the whole series. [spoiler]He gets owned constantly by Juri in fencing. His sister ruins every potential relationship he has, and he can't cast her off because he is still attached to her. Kozue uses him to gain power and then abandons him when he loses to Utena.[/spoiler] Guy's just **** on the entire time. :(
[*]I want "Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku" to play during every important moment in my life. No exceptions.
[*]I've read some random Shadow Girls hate -- can I say I love them? They are so ****ing bizarre, and they rock.
[/LIST]

One more benchmark to measure the impact Utena had on me -- this [i]has[/i] to be the longest non-RPG post I have ever made. Hell, it might be the longest post I've made, period. Good lord.

[Anakata]

i'm about to finally WATCH Utena, like, starting now...after I'd avoided it a long time for reasons having to do with associating it with my ex's younger girl friend who's best described as "someone-I-thought-of-as-having-defeated-me" I'm free of the problems connecting to that now so I am not at all nervous.

I just wondered if anyone recognised that Anthy's name means 'Flower' in Greek...
I thought that was interesting, given the whole 'Rose Bride' thing...:rolleyes: