A World Without Roads

The outside world has no roads. But you can always build new roads. That’s why we must go. As we travel, the world will get bigger by that much, I’m sure.

[chie-utena]

there’s a post going around of somebody, i believe, attempting to explain what they think the “fan theory” about the utena movie being a sequel is, but not only are they misreporting it, but to call it a fan theory is a bit foolish given that, from the standpoint of actual analysis we would call it an interpretation.

the utena movie being a sequel cannot be explained through any in-universe connection. that’s very important. the utena movie is not another dimension, and it is not inside of utena’s head. the utena movie is the utena movie. it’s another continuity. but it’s still a sequel. it’s all in the themes, yet with little bits and pieces of evidence that the characters ARE aware on some level of what they’re in.

utena is postmodern. you have to be thinking with the idea that the in-universe events and out-of-universe events can exist on the same level, because that’s basically what’s going on with the movie. anthy is more open with her emotions because she left akio. the fact that that is not exactly the case in the movie’s continuity doesn’t matter. because the movie knows that you’ve seen the show, or at the very least knows there was a show, and doesn’t pretend. it doesn’t try and present a story that you can just jump into, (even though watching it alone can still be enjoyable,) instead it just throws the same themes and characters into the new continuity like nothing happened. and that’s what makes it good and what makes it and the show inseparable.

also, anthy’s the instigator because she’s looking for utena, at the end of the show. so she initiates the relationship, being very openly gay for utena, because she’s looking for her. and i wouldn’t say that the characters can “see beyond the fourth wall” because that’s not true. they’re just the same characters because they ARE. they exist in a production published after the previous one and continue their roles and functions.

so i mean, it’s not as though i mean to discredit others’ interpretations, but to say that utena and anthy are the only real people in the movie as this person’s post says, while a valid interpretation in and of itself, is a simplification of the postmodern analysis that makes up what i think the connections between the different continuities actually rely on.

[retro-friki]

Thoughts about being a fool

I can accept the fact that the manga is completely different from the anime, what gets me is when both versions have very similar scenes but with a completely opposite meaning.

The context of these scenes is almost the same. There are set before Utena’s final confrontation with Akio.

In the manga, Akio reveals himself as the World’s End and tells Utena to meet her the next day so they can make a ritual that will allow her to finally meet her prince (who in this version isn’t Akio). Of course she ends up accepting because she doesn’t have any other choice (she love Akio and can’t help it) and also she still wants to see her prince.

In the anime the situation is more complicated. At this point, Utena is not only starting to figure out  Akio’s true nature but also she’s starting to see that neither herself nor Anthy are exactly who she thought they were. She already knows that Anthy manipulated and hurt her but also she has accepted that she too hurt and lied to Anthy. She’s aware of her faults and wants to do something to mend her ways. In the conversation she has with Saionji and Touga before this it’s made clear that she’s not only doing this for her prince, she’s mainly doing it for Anthy. This leads to a final verbal confrontation with Touga that we’ll analyze later in this text.

Keep reading

[empty-movement]

This is a really great breakdown of the relationships, and I’m glad you wrote it out. Thank you!

[chie-utena]

But... it does make sense for Utena to still want to be submissive for Akio, because she’s spent her whole damn life waiting for a followup on the encounter she had when she was young. Akio and Dios aren’t totally different people, either, it’s just that they gained more autonomy from eachother. They’re still closely linked and become whole and disappear at the end.

Remember that in the manga Utena had been receiving letters from her prince for years, and that End of the World sends similar letters. So Utena has all the evidence she needs by this point that Akio probably IS the person she’s been waiting for for so long (maybe she isn’t acknowledging it because she still wants to believe that the prince is someone else, even if logic says otherwise?). When you take somebody and rely on their existence, even their hypothetical existence, for all your life, it can be really hard to acknowledge them as horrible. Now, the manga was smaller for time reasons and Chiho Saito obviously loves Touga more than the narrative itself probably should. But the manga serves as a sort of taste, or prelude, to the greater work itself that comes after, and her version of the story is more self-aware than most people would think.

For example, in the final confrontation, Utena shouts a lot about how she’s going to be the prince who protects Anthy, and Anthy actually outright says that she doesn’t actually need a prince to save her. Anthy is totally aware of the greater themes of the work, and Utena doesn’t get it. She doesn’t get it yet because it takes her until the TV show to get it. At the end of the manga, the revolution explicitly hasn’t happened - at the end of the show, it has. So the manga I don’t think is supposed to be an alternative to the show at all, it compliments it.

...These are just my own idle thoughts now, I went really off-topic. Also, I don’t meant to insult your analysis at all, it’s always nice to see things like this. It’s just that Utena does have reasons in the manga to have a hard time with Akio, just less complex and nuanced reasons than in the show.

[chie-utena]

Game over? What

[chie-utena]

[chie-utena]

Another thing about the game is that there is a much more “present” outside town, with an arcade and a police force and stuff. The majority of the game still takes place on campus, but given how a large part of the show was how they never really left until the end, it’s kind of out of place. Perhaps when D-ko’s story gets “retconned” because she leaves Ohtori, her unique plot points like the outside town vanish as well, just like with how Mikage’s backstory contradicts with the rest of the timeline, and he was most definitely retconned.

[chie-utena]

utena game is so good you guys play it theres an english version on the ohtori.nu forums now okay!!! its like a whole new episode except longer and branching and stuff

[chie-arale]

im playing the utena game and! PLOT REVELATIONS

> D-ko’s parents made it outside of Ohtori fine. …Perhaps they were there when Akio wasn’t around? Mikage’s arc muddles the timeline a ton, but then again it didn’t exactly happen. So going by what Akio says that doesn’t have to do with Mikage, there was indeed a time when Ohtori was just a school…

> Saionji goes “First Utena, now you. Why are transfer students so vexxing?” In other words, Utena is a transfer student. It’s always been ambiguous as to how long she’d been there in the show, honestly, but Saionji at least seems to think she’s new. But how new? I dunno.

And the Utena game was iirc developed as intended to be canon… i think… or at least by people who were working on the show

[revolutionarygirlanthy]

ok this is bugging me. I’ve been looking all day to try and find a specific post on tumblr regarding the name/naming of the green-haired girl that is friends with wakaba at the end of the series.

all i rememer was that it was a text post with a couple of replies and the OP’s blog had a red background? According to the post apparently wakaba mentions her name at some point in passing but IDK what canon that’s in. I can’t find it anywhere OTL I need to know her name for a fic because I’d rather not make one up if there is a canon/fanon one established.

if anyone knows the post I’m talking about (or the girl’s name) please link me!

it’s this girl (and I’m p sure these were the pics used in the post I’m talking about):

[chie-utena]

Hey there! It’s my blog, you can go find the post on it easily, it’s not too far back. But I’ll recap it too.

Wakaba mentions a girl named Mitsuko at one point early on in the show, which is weird because a character by that name is never mentioned again, so it’s an awfully odd line. (In fact, the dub edited that line to remove the name, and it usually doesn’t change much otherwise.) We had determined that this girl could be Mitsuko, as Wakaba seems to know her.

[chie-utena]

Interviewer: I owned a Volvo from Sweden... no, a Saab. That's why I named it Sven, after a Swedish name.

Ikuhara: Didn't you consider the car as your girlfriend?

Interviewer: No, Sven's a guy.

Ikuhara: Why? You enjoy riding a guy?

Interviewer: At the time I named my car Sven...

Ikuhara: Are you gay?

Interviewer: No, I'm not.

Ikuhara: Being gay is fine.

Interviewer: Well, I have a wife, so...

Ikuhara: Well, there's the possibility that you might go both ways.

[chie-utena]

Was there a character named Chu Chu?

Kunihiko Ikuhara

[utena-tfln]

[Image - Utena talking to herself after her fist duel.]

[Text - (585): I feel as if some line has been crossed, but only in this vague, WTF sort of way.]

[chie-utena]

That’s it, that’s the entire show

[chie-arale]

HOLY SHIT

THAT SUNDIAL’S ZODIAC THING? THATS IN THE MANGA

ITS IN TOUGA’S SECRET DUEL PREDICTION ROOM THING

ACK THIS SHOW RUNS DEEP. EVEN NOW IM STILL FINDING THINGS

[utenascreenshots]

[chie-utena]

this is actually interesting because its the only hint of modern non-magic technology in all of Ohtori IIRC. i mean i guess the saturn game isnt the best place to find hidden canon hints but. still.

[utenascreenshots]

[usagimoonbunny-deactivated20160]

the utena movie, or as i like to call it, mad max yuri road,

[sihayanami]

Haya analyzes things not even people INSIDE the fandom might care about

Okay, so Adolescence of Utena had shadowplay girls E-ko and F-ko (just reaching the 20th century with radio and TV!), while the original anime started with A-ko and B-ko, and later added C-ko to the mix… do I even want to ask if there was a D-ko and/or whatever happened to her?

Also don’t even get me started on the whole shadowplay girl army in the control room…

[chie-utena]

sadly there’s never been a canon D-ko. however, D-ko has been used as a fan nickname for the unnamed protagonist of the Sega Saturn game, who does appear in semi-SPG-esque silhouette in promotional art...

i would imagine that the control room has one for every letter of the alphabet

[miyabihanakouji-archive-deactiv]

a+ translation