CW/TW: The sexual assault depicted in episode 33 of Revolutionary Girl Utena
I (Gio here) was recently gifted several episodes of storyboards by the lovely cscratch, and among them was episode 33. For those of you with an interest in animation at all, these are a really fascinating glimpse into the working process of creating something like Utena. You can view the whole episode’s worth of storyboards here, in the Empty Movement gallery.
From the storyboards I’ve seen, major deviations from the storyboard to the final product are not really that common. So I did a double-take when I saw that one of the most critical, not to mention elaborately animated, sequences in the series has very sparse storyboarding, and a completely different ending. I begged a translation of the working notes for the sequence off ShinyWoopers on the Empty Movement Discord, wondering if there was a notation suggesting the sequence could change. There is not: see above. The sparse storyboarding of her face is interesting to note because this is one of the few episodes Shinya Hasegawa did the art direction for–a recap episode. I imagine they didn’t need much detail there because the whole thing was done in house with their best animators working on it.
But the ending being different? That, to me anyway, is very interesting. The storyboard shows Utena’s face cutting to the ferris wheel in the amusement park from inside the dark hotel room as she asks “What is eternity?”, and then a fade to black. (This is a shot seen earlier in the episode as well.)
This is very different from the ending we get, where her face is cut to the road speeding past, screaming “STOP”, and then Akio and Utena’s clasped hands.
The take-home for me is that this moment was argued over until the last minute, and the point of contention was what metaphor they wanted to stress. The shot of the amusement park in the background of the dark room is seen earlier, but is very, very on the nose: The glimpse of a symbol of childhood that Akio both took her to, and took her away from, seen from a dark room filled with shadows at a far distance. The loss of innocence is pointed at in this shot, and the illusion of Utena’s ‘complicity’ is implied earlier by that it’s her that turns out the lights in the room, aware of what is about to happen but unable to dim the lights beyond.
Instead we are given a whole different set of symbols. The road screaming STOP is also seen earlier, right after Akio, dressed as Ends of the World, has accelerated the car to some ludicrous speed, spun the wheel, and smashed the brakes. Accelerating, then veering off to the side in some unnatural direction, and smashing the brakes with an unnecessary amount of force. And then, STOP STOP STOP. Would I go so far as to say this is an allusion to the rape that’s about to happen? Yes, yes I would.
This is, I suspect, why they chose to use that same road, screaming STOP, instead. The episode is already jam packed with allusions to her loss of innocence, childhood being far away, departed from. This is instead the show letting us know just how unnatural a course of events has transpired here.
What of the hands, then? The road seems to be replacing the amusement park, but their hands clasped are a totally new shot added. I want to say this is to make it abundantly clear what has happened is sexual in nature, and that’s definitely part of it. Even with it, back in THE DAY, people didn’t actually assume they were having sex. Some peak denial there by the early fandom. But I think the juxtaposition of the road and their hands is intended to depict Utena’s conflicted state of mind. The road, what could stand for an awareness Utena has that something has gone terribly wrong here, contrasted with a shot that would be in any other context, almost romantic. Romantic enough that it’s the idea of what has happened that Utena is clinging desperately to now.
The worst thing, in my opinion, about this entire event, is that Utena does not know she’s been raped. And she never really does. She is given just enough illusion of choice that she believes she chose this road, even if STOP is painted all over it. She needs to believe that, and needs to believe their hands clasped is something real, because otherwise…what just happened? Utena copes with this experience on the basis of believing she had some part in how it went. She needed that to frame it in a way she could handle, and Akio did absolutely nothing to stop her believing it.
This is a very ugly, but very real depiction of CSA and how it can be viewed through a completely warped lens by the victim, both out of necessity and out of ignorance. What force is there is made into her appearing complicit, and her victimization is dealt with by believing, for herself, that she chose it.
If you got this far, thanks for reading. This is, to me, an interesting look at both the creative process, and how carefully and delicately they handled this moment, knowing how important it was to the story, to the character, and to the context of everything going forward. They thought long and hard about it, for good reason, and I think they absolutely couldn’t have done it better.
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