together in killing the prince

"and I, a holy actor, cast eternally as a dark shining margineaux, cast into hell" {a utena blog}

[sidelys]

I wrote a short comic about Juri, Shiori, myth, and photography for mine and @kallistoi 's fanzine! To read it in full, please follow the link in the comments - I'm still not sure that Tumblr is putting posts with external links in the tags.

[id: a preview of a revolutionary girl utena fan comic. on the first page, shiori watches juri fence above the title text, which reads 'mosaic light by sidelys.' on the second page, beams of light play over shiori's face and the school photograph on juri's dresser. below is a panel with a hand holding juri's locket inside a camera lens, and beside it juri sitting in front of a mirror. below is a panel from later in the comic, where anthy says to utena 'do you know the story of medusa' and utena replies 'uhh.. no?']

[sidelys]

HIDDEN FACE: A ZINE ABOUT JURI AND SHIORI

Fresh off the press from @kallistoi and me! Exploring Juri and Shiori's convoluted toxic yuri situationship through ideas about photography and the gaze (the gays) - we've got an essay by Izzy, a comic by me, and some other exciting bits and pieces!

[id: A digital illustration of Juri Arisugawa from Revolutionary Girl Utena. Juri sits at a table, cutting Shiori Takatsuki’s face out of their class photograph. The empty locket hangs from her chair. Behind her on the wall are nine fencing swords, and a painting of the Ancient Greek goddess Athena with the gorgon's head on her breastplate. Text underneath reads "Hidden Face: A Zine by Tumblr Users Kallistoi and Sidelys. Below is screenshot of text reading "By gazing into the ‘safe’ object of the locket, Juri embodies the generic role she believes she must play, ensuring she remains eternally 'unfulfilled.'" ]

[chigusasanjouin]

You challenge the dashing new transfer student to a duel, which honestly has nothing to do with her because you're projecting your interpersonal angst and inability to move on from the past onto this and every other situation. As you draw your sword, you hear faint prog rock music playing in the back of your mind - it's some ominous chanting about… The geological Periods of the Earth? That one astrological clock in Prague? Heraldry jargon? Let's find out! All translations are sourced from ohtori.nu.

GOUGAI GOUGAI!! roll up here for the most definitive and scientific duel song quiz on the internet!

[chigusasanjouin]

[chigusasanjouin]

Stages of interest in JA Seazer’s duel choruses in Utena:

These lyrics are completely nonsensical and abstract and there’s no way they have any relation to the story!!

Every single line is directly symbolic of something relating to the episode. I don’t care how tenuous and stretched the links are!!

oh my god more than half of these songs including zettai unmei mokshiroku weren’t even written for sku

[chigusasanjouin]

4. shit that’s just the japanese translation of a bit from hamlet

[jewlwpet]

Re: Your tags, you’re not going to be able to find a tracklist for the J. A. Seazer adaptation of Hamlet on the Internet, or at least not easily; it’s hard to find info on older Banyu Inryoku plays because they don’t have audio recordings.

I know it’s a very loose adaptation of Hamlet; the full title translates to Hamlet - death and candles’ chiaroscuro.

The Apocalypse CD I bought has one other song from Hamlet, so I can give you that title; it’s  三ケ月 輪廻 or Crescent Moon Transmigration. Not especially long, but certainly strange.

[chigusasanjouin]

oohh thanks that’s good to know, I could see myself setting of on an endless wild goose chase otherwise. I feel like I haven’t heard of any albums at all that seem to be direct recordings of Banyu Inryoku plays (except possibly Shintokumaru??) - most of the Seazer albums seem to be from his Tenjo Sajiki era.

[jewlwpet]

There are a few but they are hard to get your hands on. There are a few on this site, but it doesn’t ship to the U.S. Some of these can be found on sites that do have international shipping, but for some you have to go through a shopping service. Anyway, none of the plays you can get complete recordings of are ones that produced duel songs, unfortunately.

Most of the easier-to-obtain ones are either from Tenjo Sajiki, or revivals of ones from Tenjo Sajiki like Shintokumaru.

[jewlwpet]

@chigusasanjouin did I ever tell you that I did in fact find not only a tracklist but lyrics? And just a month after I told you it was futile to try.

It was on this geocities made by someone who went to see it in person. Just click on “ハムレット.”

[chigusasanjouin]

oh that’s so cool!!! you know I think I came accross this site once because I think I found the lyrics to the electric bulb ammonite album there, but then it got taken down - I hadn’t thought to look on archive.org! thanks for letting me know!

[revolutionarygirlanthy]

I’m a million years late but I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind today for the first time and was struck by the similarities between the city-like design of the alien mothership and the castle floating above the duel arena in Utena.

Considering other early designs of the castle were quite different from this I’m thinking this is an intentional homage? It does have some relevant symbolism to it I think, like how only the chosen one/few can ever go to the castle and the mystery of what’s inside it; the flashing light sequences and the planetarium projector’s lights (even more so in the additional scene inside of the ship like Utena seeing the reality of the duel arena/Chariman’s tower all being a lightshow); the reference to people being frozen or suspended in time in Ohtori like those who were abducted by the aliens; the fact that it’s the place where Dios/the Prince and Anthy are meant to be and the implications that Anthy therefore isn’t entirely human… heck, even the castle in the movie with all the bright spires and lights on the underbelly looks like the ship when it’s flipped over and has landed!

So I guess Anthy was the space alien all along? Sorry for ever doubting you, Nanami.

[hakonohanayome]

鳳学園指定図書少女革命ウテナ: いつか革命される物語オフィシャルガイドブック

[halmoney]

It makes me sad that people hate on nanami :(

i think people think of her as a “pointless” character, and many people who haven’t seen rgu all the way through watch the nanami episodes and think they’re fillers and don’t really understand her character (when i first watched rgu, it was difficult for me to see how these episodes made sense in the grand scheme of things, too) but after having seen the show again in full, you can see how well these episodes explore serious themes that run through the entire show.

at first, rgu seems like a typical shoujo anime, and nanami seems like your typical shoujo mean girl. but we all know the first statement isn’t true, so why should we assume the latter? her character, like a lot of things in rgu, is a subversion of a trope.

when we’re first introduced to nanami, it’s very, very shoujo. she pretends to be nice and “saves” anthy from keiko, aiko, and yuuko (who basically serve her) in order to let anthy’s guard down, and it works. we’re led into thinking she’s an antagonist, but very quickly we are shown that that’s not true. In the snails episode (lol), we see she’s rather harmless and silly, failing over and over again to out anthy as a freak. and as later episodes show, she also serves as comic relief. while she does act cruelly, it’s important to recognize that we are shown from the very beginning that she is dismissed and ignored by everyone she cares about. there’s something to be said about nanami, and how vulnerable she really is.

now to talk about the two most iconic nanami episodes – the cowbell episode is commentary on consumerative identity and status, and the egg episode has to do with menstruation, sexuality, and growing up. both the cowbell and egg episodes have to do with the morphing of identity. In the cowbell episode, we see her obsessed with the way she presents and the way she’s perceived by other people, and how all that attention is centered around a material object. throughout the egg episode, she’s in constant fear of being outed as “an alien” for laying an egg, so much so that she can’t even mention it to anyone (this also shows how she literally doesn’t have a single person she trusts). this is evident in the snail episode as well, when she’s trying to out anthy as “a weird girl who keeps snails in her pencil box”. all those schemes she’s making up in her head reveal her own complexes and insecurities surrounding how she’s perceived. 

these episodes also hint at the true nature of touga and nanami’s relationship. in the cowbell episode, nanami has a dream where she’s a cow and touga feeds her hay, saying that it’s her “last meal” only to sell her later. At the end of the dream, he’s shown eating a steak. then in the egg episode, when nanami asks what touga would think of her if she laid an egg, he tells her that their relationship only exists because “she isn’t the type of girl to do that”. this is far more upsetting when you realize just how much nanami views their relationship as a measure of her own self-worth/status. it’s also why i cant stand touga and why episodes 31 and 32 are so upsetting, when she learns of the true nature of her relationships with her brother/ her “friends” and tries to cope with that. Nanami goes from being a comedic relief character to having two full episodes in a row without any comedic relief revealing some serious plot development.

That being said, nanami is more weak and vulnerable than not, and i think she acts out similar patterns of abuse in environments where she feels like she has at least some power. No, that’s not an excuse, but its an explanation and it’s one i can have sympathy for.

[medoisa]

carson’s antigonick (tr. sophocles), ja seazer’s absolute destiny apocalypse (tr. allegoriest). hmmmm record as socially systematised narrative as fate as socially systematised death as that which officially links u to your fucked up family which sure is a pretty big deal in both the theban cycle and revolutionary girl utena

[chigusasanjouin]

what to do with this blog, eh.. i made it at a time when i had a problem with decentralising all my interests into sidelblogs but since then i’ve been doing my best to move past the sort of thinking that underlay that practice (that is, being super insecure about said interests).

most of the analysis posts I made here weren’t particularly insightful (or well written lol) I think but I don’t particularly want to delete them for various reasons. I might go and delete some stuff (like gifs) and reorganise my tagging.. also i like my url and theme here a lot.

anyway, I’m much more active on my main blog, @palatinamedea and on twitter (same username) and I’m thinking about rewatching utena soon which will definitely mean.. more meta.. I’d kind of rather post it either on main (more followers lol) or on a personal website/blog I’ve been thinking about making. I'm considering using this place as a reference blog for saving good utena takes that I find on tumblr. maybe i’ll just reblog all my utena posts here for easy access, like some artists do with their art blogs. 

in other news, I’ve been planning a discord server dedicated to ja seazer for a while now, and posssssibly even an utena podcast. we’ll see where that goes.

[littleeyesofpallas]

I don’t know how it never hit me, but going thru someone’s liveblog of Utena it suddenly hit me like a freight train that Miki’s stopwatch numbers are probably all just goroawase: Number puns.

In episode 17, Nanami, rather than Miki, uses the stopwatch and comically asks why he always does this as she stops the watch on 7:73 –“Nanami.”

I am now upset that seemingly no one has just typed up what all his times are in each appearance before because this means now I gotta go do it myself.

[blackrosezine]

ABSOLUTE DESTINY POST-APOCALYPSE: an Utena Future Zine has been released!

http://www.gumroad.com/l/absolutedestiny/

Our 38 artists and 12 writers have come together to create this beautiful zine to explore the many possibilities that lay out there for our favorite duelists, whether it be happy or tragic. Need some catharsis after the ending of Utena? We have your back.

http://www.gumroad.com/l/absolutedestiny/

[entamewitchlulu]

okay i wish i could write a better more coherent meta right now but all i have is my emotions and they are Big right now so uh here’s some thoughts about Utena

I think the moment Utena actually realizes that she’s in love with Anthy is the “i put poison in your tea” scene.  She’s been playing with the idea in her head consciously and subconsciously to varying degrees throughout the entire episode, and perhaps throughout a large part of the series, but this is the first time she goes wait, no but for real.  I love you.  Not like a friend, but like the way I felt towards my prince and the other guys that I’ve fallen for this year.  That’s the moment she knows and accepts that she loves her and like okay i might be super emotional right now but bear with me because like this is currently the most important thing in my head now

because on the other side of this I think Anthy loved Utena from basically the moment she met/saw Utena.  And she knew.  She knew she loved Utena.  But she forced herself to ignore it.  She pushed it away, she sealed it up, she pretended she didn’t know because for her love is pain and love is suffering but being with Utena isn’t suffering for once so it can’t be love.  accepting that it’s love would be paramount to accepting that it will end up in a fiery ball of torment like it always has for her so she doesn’t accept that she loves Utena and manages to make herself believe she doesn’t

but Utena is a disastrous bisexual and didn’t know she could love girls until like, recently, honestly in my mind it was probably around her second duel with Juri that she subconsciously started to realize that her feelings towards Anthy weren’t just friendship and a desire to be a prince, because Juri proved to Utena that a girl could fall in love with another girl and before Utena probably hadn’t even considered that was a possibility.  

And then she falls for Akio, and things get hazy, and she sort of starts to lose herself somewhere in there because Akio is a master manipulator and that’s exactly what he wants her to do.  Except she sees Anthy while she’s with Akio that night.

And that’s the trigger.  That’s the moment.  Because I never got the sense from Utena after that that she felt like…betrayed, or anything.  She was shocked, for sure, and after all of her emotions getting tangled up by Akio I’m sure she didn’t sleep well that night, trying to deal with all of the conflicting emotions but like….that moment focuses on Anthy’s eyes.  On how empty and broken she looks.  And I think that’s the first time Utena realizes that she has never seen Anthy for who she is all this time, and she starts to reevaluate every interaction she’s ever had with Anthy and realize just how much Anthy has been hurting all this time.

That next day she asks Akio out on a date, but something feels so different now.  Is she still in love with him?  I think so, because feelings don’t dissipate that quickly, but there’s confusion now.  I think she asks him out because she’s confused.  She’s confused by everything she’s feeling about Anthy and Akio and the two of them together and she thinks, okay.  I’ll spend time with Akio again.  I’ll see if it feels the same.  Maybe this is how I figure things out.

And it doesn’t.  It doesn’t feel the same anymore.  It’s not about feeling cheated on.  It’s about the fact that Utena’s been shown how hurt Anthy is, and she can’t divorce her growing realization of her feelings for Anthy with how hurt she is, even though she still loves Akio, because it’s pretty damn obvious that Akio is why Anthy is hurting.  So she goes on another date with him, and it feels wrong.  Suddenly this romance feels wrong.  She doesn’t feel like herself and she recognizes that in herself now.  And throughout the entire episode, I think rather than thinking about Akio, like she has been for the past few episodes, she’s thinking solely about Anthy.  She can’t get Anthy out of her head.  All this time she’s been distracted and now she thinks oh god i haven’t even really seen her all this time and now Anthy is all she can think about as though in compensation, as though to make up for how awful she feels at having never truly seen her and yet having the gall to fall in love with her anyway.

Because then she meets with Miki and Juri, and that whole conversation, including with Nanami, feels like the time where she’s thinking about what she wants to do about her feelings for Anthy.  How much she wants to accept.  How much she wants to explore and confirm them.  Nanami tells her to stay away from Akio–and Anthy.  And Utena can only smile and say “thanks for the advice” but she’s thought of nothing but Anthy all day and she knows now that come fire or ice she’s not leaving that girl’s side.

And then we come back to the poison scene.  Which I heard some beautiful meta about that I’m going to absolutely reference shamelessly here because it makes me cry every time.  Because Anthy knows that Utena saw her, and I think Anthy’s hoping to have a final relief.  All this time she’s loved Utena and the longer this goes on the harder it is to pretend she doesn’t know she loves her.  But if Utena finally hates her, abandons her, like all of the people before her, she’ll be relieved of that weight.  She’ll never have to acknowledge that love again because it won’t matter.  If Utena hates her, that’s finally the end of the pain that Anthy knows love is.

And so she speaks of canterella.  Reminding Utena that though she’s pretended like everything is normal all day, what she saw last night happened.  Anthy is telling her “that wasn’t a dream.  I really did that.  I actually am awful and horrible, and I’m poisoning you with my existence.  I’m not going to let you forget.  You should run and stop eating my poisoned cookies while you can.” For a moment, Utena hesitates.  Then she finishes the cookie.  “What a surprise.  I put poison in your tea, too.”

“Yeah, I know you did that, and that I saw it, and that it happened.  But let’s not forget that I’ve hurt you too.  I haven’t even looked at you like a real person this whole time and yet I have the gall to love you.  So I’m a poisoner too.”

Utena doesn’t hate her.  She can’t.  This is the moment where Utena sees, clearly, that Anthy has been hurting her. Purposefully, directly, indirectly, in all sorts of ways.  And that she’s been hurting Anthy in turn.  But she says yeah, I know.  But I’m not leaving you unless you tell me.  Because that, that is the moment that Tenjo Utena recognizes, and accepts, that she is in love with Himemiya Anthy.

So Anthy hesitates.  And she drinks the “poison” tea. “It’s delicious.”  “So’s this cookie.”

[spoookiepie]

Swords swords swords!

So okay, here’s my long ramble about stuff I’ve noticed with the swords in Utena. Spoilers below!

Keep reading

[empty-movement]

Two guest illustrations by Arco WADA and Kenjiro Hata for the September 2017 Kunihiko Ikuhara retrospective publication by Eureka magazine. I’m obviously not scanning it.

[empty-movement]

Thank you so much for your kind words about my long-ass, weird last post, guys. <3 In return, here’s something hot off the presses that you’ve almost definitely never seen until now! Chiho Saito artwork done for and printed in the new Utena musical’s program book, released not even a month ago.

Be prepared. I’m going to be hyping the musical hard.

[empty-movement]

*excitement intensifies*

also jfc Touga just

…you know what just keep being Touga, I guess