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Post 3- Queer Girl Utena, part 2: Are they going to kiss or...?

WILL THEY WON’T THEY

I would like to start this post by confessing something: The first time I watched Revolutionary Girl Utena, I felt utterly queerbaited. The opening and the second ending were so clear about Utena and Anthy’s relationship, but the TV anime didn’t seem to agree so explicitly.

It didn’t help when the anime gave us moments like these

That being said, after watching the movie, I felt very differently. And then, after learning a bit more about society and yuri that does not occur in Yuri World, where every girl in school likes other girls, I did my first rewatch and everything changed.

It is less usual to see this in soujo, romance or anime in general but their personalities and story are not meant to build their love story, but it is built after the conclusion, after everything changes. The change is necessary for them to love each other.

If we are clearly seeing that they have the chemistry and strong feelings for each other, why are they the way they are and why does their relationship take so much time to flourish? (Ha! Flower joke.)

THE WITCH IN HER COFFIN

Above all, we must take into account that Anthy is a victim of abuse and that is what makes her being the way she is. She seems so passive, so submissive, as if she was not bothered by how bad the world was treating her or by his brother’s abuse. Utena and the viewer ask themselves the same question: Why doesn’t she say something? Why is she pushed to be the Rose Bride? Can she not just walk away? Why doesn’t she seem sad about it.

I will not deny that we get many hints that Anthy is not as passive as she seems behind the scenes (when you are being called a witch for so long, you learn to act like one), but it is also true that, when you are in a coffin it means you are dead, and therefore you cannot move. Sometimes you need to play dead to survive the situation, you need to convince yourself that there is nothing else for you in this world and make yourself be happy with it even if it’s killing you. You turn pain into your home.

The Rose Bride, meant to be used, how could she ever imagine any other situation for herself? Her? Dating Utena? Unthinkable. Not even worth pondering. Even the thought of Utena saving her is unthinkable, even less so when she is having sex with the one who is imprisoning and abusing her. It shows Utena’s weakness, she is a girl at the end of the day, and that is why Anthy does not conceive the possibility of putting herself into Utena’s care in a more serious manner. She cannot save her because she is a girl. A girl, as little free as her, will not save her. It is dangerous for Anthy to put herself in the care of another girl who cannot free her, or so she thinks.

Anthy is not willing to leave her coffin, and that is why she won’t be with Utena.

THE PRINCE IN HER COFFIN

Utena is not free either. She is subjected to the gender roles of what society sees her as and the roles of what she’d like to be, as I talked about in my previous post.

One could argue (Anthy definitely could) that her involvement with Anthy at first was simply an attempt to affirm her identity as prince. A prince who cares and saves princesses. A prince who loves princesses? Well, as I previously stated, no one told her she could be a prince and still kiss other princes, so we expect her to know that she could kiss the princess too? Her primary motive is to win the duels and defend Anthy, and that fills her motivations as prince. That was probably it for the beginning, and it is not hard to guess it very difficult to break, as she might have felt she would lose herself and what she stands for by changing that.

Also, have you noticed? She won’t call Anthy by her first name! There is no consistent theory about why is that, but I think it is related to her noble character: She is defending her, she is respecting her like no one else does. Although the name dynamic changes, not even at the end, I truly do think it is because of her nobility, it is part of her self-fulfilling prince relationship with Anthy, not because of how close or how far she feels about her.

I want to clarify that, although I’m saying that Anthy and Utena’s relationship is fulfilling for Utena’s role, I do not think Utena is using Anthy. But it is involuntary when a relationship with someone validates you, and difficult to leave it behind.

She also had to be greatly groomed by Akio for her to forget her prince, so forgetting her prince voluntarily so she could be with the princess she is defending is out of the question.

At the end of the series, when she is her strongest because she shows and accepts her weaknesses, is when she can truly give Anthy her all and allow herself to love her. Thus, causing the revolution.

UTENANTHY: MOVIE VERSION

The movie finally scratched what had been itching the whole series: They get to love each other! And kiss!!

While the movie is a reimagination of the story, I cannot think of it and the TV series separately. I think movie Anthy and movie Utena exist because of everything they went through in the TV series, in some cosmic way.

Akio is dead from the beginning, so the system is not as pressing, so they can love each other without any restriction.

Also, what happens in the movie is really anti Class-S stuff. In case you are not familiar with Class-S, it was the predecessor of shoujo and yuri. This genre explored the things girls would live, like sentimentalism and sexuality. These stories would almost always take place at schools, where girls could develop feelings for other girls and have relationships with them, but they would alwats part ways when they graduated, as those sapphic relationships were considered as practice for the men they would marry.

It was a really nice surprise that, in Utena’s TV anime and the movie, they are free to get together at the end, when they leave school. Well, in the anime it might be a little more complicated than that, since we don’t really know where Utena is, but Anthy is free now to go look for her and to want to be with her and escape her own chains so they can be together.

In the movie, they literally escape school and their chains to be together. They don’t belong there, they belong together in the real world, I cannot stress this enough. That felt like such a win.

So, taking into account everything that is going on in the TV series and how the movie takes it, I hereby declare Utenanthy canon from beginning to end.

CANON AT FIRST SIGHT

We cannot speak about queer love in Revolutionary Girl Utena without talking about Juri. She is in love with Shiori and she is her weakness, which allows the dueling system to push her to participate. Not really much to say about a painful sapphic love story of unrequited love, but it is nice to see a canon lesbian right when you are crying on the floor wondering why Utena and Anthy are not kissing. I really do wish we could see more about Juri and her backstory apart from Shiori to have a proper analysis about this queer character.

This was my second post about Utena, which is my favourite anime (including the movie, and the manga too, but it lacks queerness to be discussed here). I think I left a lot of topics untouched, since Utena has a lot of readings and it is hard to cover everything, so feel free to say if there is something you saw that I didn’t!

I will probably write about Utena again in the future as well.

Sources:

https://davedalessiowrites.wordpress.com/2019/09/02/character-analysis-utena-tenjou/

https://ohtori.nu/analysis/04_azusa_anthy_mirror.htm

It was revealed to me in a rewatch.

Post 2- Queer Girl Utena, part 1: The gender nonconforming prince.

Today I wanted to talk about a staple in yuri and shoujo: Revolutionary Girl Utena, personally one of my favourite works of all time.

Created by the group Be-Papas, assembled primarily for this project, this work consists in a manga (1996), an anime TV series (1997) a Sega Saturn game (1998) and a movie (1999).

In this post and the following part I will be discussing mainly the TV series. If I might talk about any other work, it will be stated explicitly.

This story follows 14-year-old Utena Tenjou, whose parents died when she was young, so she was saved by a prince from all that sadness. Somehow, she ends up entangled in a series of duels in order to defend (and keep by her side) the Rose Bride, Anthy Himemiya.

THE GENDER NONCONFORMING PRINCE

As the story says, she was so amazed by the prince who saved her life that she vowed to become a prince herself. “But was it such a good idea?”

Utena is scolded more than once for wearing “a boys’ uniform”, but her uniform is neither the boys’ or the girls’ uniform.

Ohtori Academy's actual boys' uniform

Utena reading on the school rules how it is allowed for a girl to wear a boys' uniform

"With Utena, the main character wears a male uniform--but it isn't really a male uniform, is it? It's just the clothes that Utena likes. She's not bound by the same male/female conventions that previous characters may have been bound by. I don't think that society has changed all that much, but in modern manga, a person is all allowed to follow her own path." - Ikuhara on an interview with Animerica Extra, year 2000

Revolutionary Girl Utena often explores gender non-conformity not only on a visual level with elements like her uniform, but also with Utena’s role and aspiration to become a prince. She wants to save Anthy, she wants to be noble and defend everybody, she is good at sports and very popular among other girls – qualities that of course a woman could fulfill, but they are often performed by and symbolic of men.

She doesn’t see herself as a masculine person, as she acts surprised when Nanami calls herself “boy-girl”.

In the 1999 movie, we can see her with a different look: Her hair made seem like it’s short (though it’s not), a “male” uniform with long pants this time and even we have an awkward moment when Saionji confuses her for a man.

Utena's uniform in Utena The Movie (1999)

FITTING IN THE MOLD, BETRAYING WHO YOU ARE, FITTING IN THE OTHER MOLD

I think it is really interesting to see how she finds trouble keeping up the aspiration of becoming a prince with all that it means since she is still looking for her own prince and finds herself completely disarmed when the thought of finding him is presented to her. She “betrays” Anthy, and saving her starts to matter a little bit less when she wonders if Touga could be her prince (of course, manipulated by him) and when Akio shows romantic and sexual interest for her too, becoming her first love (and an older one, too). These men try so hard for her to be the princess of their stories and, of course, as she has lived in the same system we have all lived in, she is conditioned to do so.

This is something that many gender nonconforming and trans people have lived through: You can still have elements that were forced onto you by society, but they mean something different for you, they just don’t deny who you are. Just like a transwoman can have a beard and still be a woman, or a transman can wear makeup and still be a man, or any nonbinary person can do something that relates to their assigned gender and still be nonbinary, Utena could have been so much happier if someone had told her that she could kiss other princes and still become a prince.

But that is never the case, and those seemingly “girly” instincts are a penintence to her sometimes. When she loses to Touga and her prince uniform has been scratched, she wears the school girl’s uniform. That episode was painful to see, she really is seeing herself having failed in being just who she is, in not having proven that she could be a prince and not a girl, just because for a moment she was happy with the idea of Touga being her prince and liking it. She also felt as she has failed her own princess and, the ugly truth is that they live in a system where that is actually true.

Of course that was Touga’s plan for winning the duel, but how would have things gone if Utena knew that she could love Touga outside the dueling arena without that interrupting her fighting for Anthy’s freedom and security? Of course, Anthy won’t forget that either when she sees Utena being attracted to Akio.

On the other hand, there is a language level of it all. In Japanese, Utena uses the “boku” first person pronoun to refer to herself, which is normally used by men exclusively. This is something that never changes, not even when she is about to be kissed by Akio or taken to a hotel with him.The language aspect of it all stays with her until the very end. Very rewarding and affirming to watch.

WHEN WOMEN’S LIBERATION AND GENDER NONCONFORMITY CLASH

When women in fiction are presented with the “you cannot do that because you are a woman” statement and they work against it, taking the steps only a man is expected to take, it is of course proof that women can do anything and fulfill every role, e.g., you do not need to be a prince (masculine) to save other women, to have a noble attitude, to defend people and what you stand for, to fight.

I really did want to stress that because I would never want to state things like “She is wearing a blazer instead of a dress, that is so not a girl from her” as to state the gender nonconformity about her.

Ikuhara: During the Rose of Versailles, by wearing the uniform, (Oscar) his her own body line--her own femininity. But now, times have changed. Even though it's not yet a world where all women are free, this costume might allow her the chance to be a "woman." We're trying to envision a world where a woman can decide what she does with her own body. Utena decided to show off her own beautiful legs. She's comfortable with her own beauty. That's the type of world we were trying to portray. - Ikuhara on an interview with Animerica Extra, year 2000

With that being said, I speak from myself as a nonbinary transmasc-leaning person and I know for a fact that other fellow nonbinary and trans people feel the same: When we see those traits being displayed, it does resonate with us.

We see ourselves in those actions, those elements, those steps, because we have experienced that too.

That leads us to the next question:

AM I SAYING UTENA IS NOT A WOMAN?

The short answer is no. As I previously stated, I reckon these elements were created to make Utena a free woman, free from what society says a woman can or cannot do. But, knowing Ikuhara wanted to include queer elements on the anime (even if it was just to symbolize other minorities), I also do think the genderfuck element of it all definitely exists and is not just a headcanon.

And I don't really care if it is not canon: The gender deviance aspect of Utena speaks directly into my soul.

I would really like to know other people’s opinion on this matter, and what else is very gender about Utena for you. Come yap with me, please!

otaqueer

Post 1- From Class-S to I'm in Love With the Villainess: Is it gay to be gay?

In the beginning, there was no yuri (what a sad world to live in!), but in the early years of the 20th century, Class-S was born.

Class-S is a term used to coin a genre really prominent in Japanese fiction in the early 20th century. To sum it up, the S stands for concepts like sex, sentimentalism, shoujo, sisterhood, and more. These stories took place in all-girls schools, where they would experience romantic and/or platonic feelings towards each other, and they would even get to experience sexual attraction sometimes.

I will love to touch more on Class-S, how it came to be yuri and the Year 24 group and their works in future posts, but for now, I just wanted to clarify that, looking at Class-S as yuri’s predecessor, it had little to nothing to do with queerness, as these stories between young girls were considered just a phase. They would graduate school and marry men. Everything would go back to normal in the end.

We travel in time now to October 2023, when the I’m in Love With the Villainess anime based on Inori’s light novels and manga with the same title was released. This story is an isekai who follows Rei Oohashi, or Rae Taylor, as she is called in the world of her favourite otome videogame, to which she was spontaneously transported. The former burned-out office worker now lives in her favorite game, which takes place in some kind of Medieval-like time period, and where she is in love with the villainess rather than the male love interests. I was personally already obsessed with the novels so I really loved that they were doing an anime adaptation.

The anime had a good reception overall, with a bit of a viral moment originating from a conversation that happened on episode 3 (and part of the reason I thought of creating this blog).

The following does not contain spoilers per se:

Misha, Rae, Lene and Claire are having tea together and Misha confronted Rae with the following question:

“Are you what they call gay?”

And it says so in Japanese as well, using “doseai-sha”, which directly translates to “homosexual”. Lene scolds Misha, as she deems that question inappropriate, to which Rae clarifies that she is okay talking about it. Claire expresses that she is uncomfortable with that conversation and that she feels herself in danger around Rae, to which Misha points out that those are prejudices and it is not okay to have them. After Claire has been scolded, Lene verbalizes what she just thinks she understood: For Rae, gender doesn’t matter when it comes to love. But turns out, it does. Rae clarifies that, for her, gender matters as she only likes girls, not boys.

I loved this conversation from the bottom of my heart. Also, in the novels, topics like being transgender and gender non-conformity are also mentioned very thoroughly from Rae’s thoughts and memories from her previous life and some other events that take place in the story.

This marks a very big checkbox for me about queerness in manga and anime: It is queer out loud. So I guess this raises a question: Does a manga or anime need to be queer this out loud in order to be classified as “properly queer”? My answer is, although I loved this and wish to see it more in this kind of works, it probably shouldn’t be a necessary criteria to be met. At the end of the day, I am seeing everything through Western lenses and, though I think it is a worldwide wish to be able to speak about queerness more openly in fiction, every country has their own reality, as every author and artist does. All in all, not talking about something does not make it any less true.

But, after episode 3 was released, it caused some negative reactions online.

These screenshots were uploaded by Twitter user ShoujoCent:

Although not talking about something doesn’t make it any less true, it seems like some yuri fans don’t consider the yuri genre to be queer in on itself. They don’t consider the sexual and romantic attraction between two women to be necessarily sapphic.

This reminded me of the Class-S conception: These girls love each other romantically, they are attracted to each other sexually, but it is just a thing girls do sometimes, isn’t it?

It is pure entertainment, it is simply fun, or beautiful to watch. The stereotypical girl who chases another girl and is not afraid to say out loud that she wants her as it is not a serious thing is simply a loved trope, it doesn’t mean anything.

One thing that the World Wide Web has given us is that people speak up their minds more often and louder than before. Someone could read yuri in the 80’s just because they liked the appeal of it and then be a homophobe, but no one would know about the hypocrisy of those two acts coexisting together. Probably, many more wouldn't think that is a hypocritial thing to do. Sadly, this thought never died, and queer people are still regarded by many as just a theoretical concept made to entertain them, to have opinions about us and to consume us as simple content.

This is not to say that Class-S was untouched by queer people, as one of the most notable authors, Nobuko Yoshiya, was a lesbian. Also, Class-S authors were not to blame for the way queer themes were used devoid of queerness for (mostly) straight readers to consume. But the message that those works expressed 100 years ago should have already disappeared, as in most of the world’s societies we know about the existence of queer people as real, tangible beings.

For me, queerness in fiction doesn’t have to be about saying it out loud, but it sure has to do with not separating queer people and queer themes from queerness.

All in all, I’m in Love With the Villainess is a very queer work by a very queer author, since Inori also happens to be a trans woman and her themes really do have a contrast with the Class-S narrative.

What do you think? Do we share the same concept of queerness?

Thank you for reading my first post!

myrrgana

Very good post, though I would add (as a bit of criticism of this show) that the protagonist of “I’m In Love With The Villainess” lumps together LGBT+ relationships with incestuous relationships, under the same veil of both being “forms of love that people don’t always accept” iirc.

Like the villains were an incestuous couple and she was just like “wow you’re in the same boat as us, huh?” Tho it’s been a hot minute since I’ve watched it.

otaqueer

You are completely right about this, actually.

Though it is still important for the people who is watching to know "yuri is queer, actually!" and I will stand by that, it is true that the anime/manga/novel does immoral stuff like that (and there is more at the end of the series...) and their concept of LGBT+ is not as good as it can be.

It is also important to note things like that so fiction works are not glorified, so I really thank you for your comment.