Much of Utena's Japanese cultural context is really hard to access as an outsider. I literally just poked around with a basic search and Wikipedia trawl and found out that Arisugawa & Saionji are both names derived from different ranks of Japanese aristocracy.
Not only that, but during the Meiji restoration and US occupation, nobility were reorganized under the British model, making "Prince" the highest title, just like in Ohtori.
Utena's basic structure includes the premise of a Japanese world order restructured along the lines of British nobility, and this is shown in aesthetics and the class character of the student council and Ohtori Academy as a whole.
The academic institution itself, with its army and navy based uniforms, has historically been the site of elite cultural production in Japan as well. The way these characters navigate personal, financial, and institutional privilege has much more specific context than I realized as an American viewer. Utena as a text reflects not just patriarchy and race but also cultural imperialism.
Utena truly said what if Eurydice knew from the start that Orpheus would look back. She knows that this is how the story must end. Orpheus remains optimistically oblivious as he trudges forward. Eurydice waits for him to look back. Look back already, as other so-called "heroes" would. He does not look back. He climbs the crags and steps of the Underworld even as Hades accosts him, leads him down and down and down back to the depths. She wants him to look back, look back and end this spiraling journey of cliffs and chasms. That is how the story ends, after all. Is he purposefully denying fate, or does he truly not know what is to come? All stories have a certain end. He does not look back. She begins to ask him to look back, to beg in woven myth to let it be done already. She throws herself off a cliff, Look back, look back, watch me fall and know that it is done. He casts his head aside as he grasps her arm in his hand. He does not look back. He reaches the precipice, where the story must end even as all else has failed. He is shown a future (a fantasy) without sorrow, without her. He does not look back. Forward, forward. He thinks himself a hero. "Look back," a blade pierces his chest, "look back at your killer. Let this story end, as it should, as it will, for you are no prince." He does not look back. Forward, forward, as rock gives way to dirt. He collapses at the maw of Hades, dewkissed grass at his fingertips. He does not look back. Eurydice steps into sunlight.
AN: Holy shit this blew up
I’d greatly appreciate it if anyone seeing this checked out the addendum as well for a more rounded perspective/a short glimpse at my full opinions on the matter that aren’t filtered through Orpheus and Eurydice. Also, to anyone seeing this who hasn’t watched Utena yet (I’ve seen y’all in the tags), welcome!
Movie Version "Revolutionary Girl Utena: Adolescence Apocalypse" DVD Jacket, March 3, 2000. By Shinya Hasegawa.
Scan from page 161 of the Hardcore of UTENA - Illustration Side, a massive tome I'm scanning cover to cover, slowly, in 6k, for Empty Movement's Bibliothèque, a scanned archive of print media relating to Revolutionary Girl Utena. When the entire book is finished, you'll be able to grab it in even larger 10k from Empty Movement's account on the Internet Archive!
what is so radical about rgu is that utena embraces the rose bride. she realizes the essential structures her life is built on (the ones which condemn anthy) are incoherent, she realizes that partially because anthy is condemned by them, because they are incoherent with anthy's safety/happiness/existence. the prince is what covers the gap for utena-- it is the fiction made to obscure the unbearable reality of death and suffering (anthy)-- but when she realizes that that fiction obscures anthy, she removes herself from the known world rather than continue to hurt the woman she loves. she is the holy fool! call her bluff and die!
I'm wondering about the dichotomy between Kozue and Miki, whether it is really as... black and white, as it seems. This might devolve into incoherent rant, beware.
Kozue is presented as the one who wants to grow up and be an adult, and Miki as the naive, innocent one, who wants to remain a child. Kozue stopped playing the piano, Miki plays it obsessively trying to regain the feeling of his childhood. Kozue has sex with Touga in that same music room. When people first watch that, they interpret it as Kozue trying to push Miki away, but in actuality, going out with boys he would disapprove of is really just her way of trying to get her brother's attention. Kozue plays the piano behind Miki's back. Miki, in the end, is the one actually looking for a new shining thing, trying to find it with a new girl, while Kozue is the one who wants to have Miki back, and can't let go of him.
Kozue hurts the teacher who was creeping on Miki, but sees no problem in having sex with an adult herself. It's like she believes, that just like with his talent with the piano, that Miki has something precious about him worth protecting, something that she doesn't believe herself to have. Kozue saves the two baby birds. She claims she and her brother don't need parents, but that's the role they start playing for the little birds. Maybe she does want Miki to go and save her, wanted them to save each other, to be them against the world. Miki loses the duel when she kisses Anthy.
And Miki, he's supposed to be the naive one. The one who didn't realize the advances of his teacher, the wide eyed innocent one who doesn't know much about the "adult world". But is he? Is he really? Miki scolds Kozue for talking badly about their parents, says that they care. But, behind her back, he's upset about his father remarrying, even if he pretends to be okay with it when talking to the man. Behind her back, he's bitter, talking about how adults who tell you something is "for your own good" can't be trusted, about how he won't let some selfish adult use him. He deduces that Akio has "seduced" Touga. In the light novels, I've heard Miki and Touga have sex. It's unclear whether they did in the show, but Touga acts with him in a way that could very much be seen as flirty, and even called him "easy", so it's a possibility. The way Miki remembers the event that drove him and his sister apart has their father forcefully dragging a scared and pleading Kozue into a concert she didn't want to take part in.
So, are they really as oppositional as they may seem? Is Miki really naive, or is he similar to Utena, and he partially uses this act of naivety as a way to protect his mind from the ugly reality, especially from the parts he has little control over? Does Kozue really want the adult world, or is partaking in it just something she does in her search of regaining the childhood she lost? Could Miki and Kozue possibly just be two different presentations of the same thing?
The cantarella scene in Utena is so so so good and nearly every bit of it has been analyzed over the years (for good reason!). But can we take a moment to talk about how the music skips?
Right after Anthy suggests she poisoned Utena's cookies. The background music starts skipping. It's an obvious loop too, once you hear it, it's hard to unhear. The music doesn't pick back up until after Utena admits to poisoning the tea, AFTER the spinning red rose. It picks back up at "The tea is delicious".
At the most basic level, the skipping is just another method by which RGU creates emphasis.
But it just. It can't help but remind me of the most significant case of music skipping in the franchise. In Adolescence of Utena, right before E-Ko and F-Ko show the tape of Anthy's assault (another scene which has to do with something being put in Anthy's drink).
So then, the skipping could represent honesty. The brutal, uncomfortable bearing of the truth. Statements that ring in the ears and choices that maybe aren't the most delicate or harmless but had to convey the intended message somehow.
(If anyone else has watched seebeees' video essay on transfeminism in utena [which you should, it's really good], it reminds me of their point on the way Adolescence could be using static to represent Anthy's trauma. Records and CDs skip when something has dirtied them. Scratched them. Damaged them).
It could represent repetition obviously, but it could also represent the exact opposite. A breaking of the cycle, a momentary reprieve from the looping record that is Anthy and Utena's lives at Ohtori. When they confess their love for each other in that moment, in such an odd and uniquely utenanthy way, it catches the narrative off-guard. They are cracking the shell of their egg. Their love is forcing itself through the narrative.
EPISODE 37 (THE ONE TO REVOLUTIONIZE THE WORLD) ANALYSIS
I just want to talk about this episode because I feel like there’s such an interesting push and pull between Anthy & Akio and Anthy & Utena. I think it’s safe to say that the relationship between all 3 “couples” in this love triangle is at its lowest possible point. All three are working at cross-purposes.
First what does Akio NEED more than anything? Utena’s sword. He doesn’t need her to become his princess. We know this because he gives up on convincing her after offering her eternity in the castle and then trying to break her spirit by revealing that her desire to meet her prince was a fantasy she came up with to cope with the death of her parents. He also attacks her identity as a prince by reminding her that she has selfishly been protecting Anthy for her own ego without trying to understand her. And then to top it all off, he calls her a hypocrite.
When that doesn’t work, he drops it. They move on to the duel and he switches to just condescending to her, which isn’t going to make her agree to be his princess. If his ultimate goal was to turn Utena into a princess, his actions here make no sense because he burns that bridge and never returns to it.
Akio is no longer seriously trying to acquire The Power of Dios but I do think he would like to have it. He just doesn’t want to do the serious, hard work he needs to do to get it. It’s easier to put adolescents through the meat grinder and then steal their sword at the last possible moment. If Akio were just doing all this to get a child-bride I don’t think Anthy would have put up with it for that long because she has her own shining thing: Dios. She doesn’t really believe that Dios is recoverable anymore, but she will stay for that chance of a miracle. Akio needs to run a real game for her benefit (And frankly I think he takes more of a personal interest in it than someone who is just doing it to put on airs). I think Akio and Anthy are running a serious game to find a genuine prince’s sword that neither of them really believe exists anymore. The Power of Dios is a ‘nice to have’ for Akio. So is a princess.
I just don’t buy that the winner of the tournament is always a girl. I think Utena was a special case. Otherwise Akio giving Utena the ring was a total Xanatos Gambit because how many girls out there are going to grow up to have the exact psychological split that Utena has of wanting to be a prince AND a princess. Nanami and Juri never had a shot. Nanami never wanted to be a prince or to have the power to revolutionize the world and Juri’s rejection of the power of miracles forced her to lose. And I don’t think it’s enough for Anthy to just push the chosen female duelist to the endgame. The winner of the duels seems to be chosen by some combination of swordsmanship, conviction, and their connection to their Bride and in the third arc, everyone has a Bride. Ruka notes in episode 28 that he and Shiori lost because of his Bride. In Juri’s duel with Utena, where Ruka acts as Juri’s bride, the power of Dios misses for the first and only time, and Juri forfeits, giving up on ever having a relationship with Shiori, and getting Ruka the very beginning of HIS miracle, which is good for Juri in the end. All of that is to say, that I think Utena ended up at the duel called Revolution because she IS special and different. And I think Akio worked the princess thing in because he wanted to break her for it because at the end of the day, he thinks she should be what she really is: A girl. A child.
The Prince’s Sword is what he needs and he needs Utena to be wearing her ring to get it. He is walking a very fine line in his seduction of Utena. A line he misjudges because he’s a lazy misogynist.
And now what about Anthy?
Well quite frankly I think she’s lying in this preview. One last little fakeout on Anthy’s feelings for the audience to say goodbye.
But she wants Utena to believe it. I’d argue that Anthy is in full rebellion against the dueling system by episode 37. She has been subtly trying to get Utena to quit since at least the last episode. First she attacks the idea that there is a prince waiting for Utena at the end of all of this.
Like a dream you have, just as you’re waking up.
Oh, is this about a dream?
A dream?
Isn’t it?
No…Or maybe it is.
And Utena falters. She thinks, maybe, that her memory of the prince really is just a dream. If Anthy can get Utena to give up on meeting her prince or wanting to become a prince, Utena is out of the game.
Trust me. I swear I’ll protect you.
Really?
You don’t believe me?
By the time they’re going up to the final duel with Touga, Utena is still clearly in the game. So Anthy presses the big red Incest Button. Anthy takes out both of Utena’s goals; becoming a prince and meeting the prince, in one fell swoop.
And I WILL argue that Anthy intended Utena to discover her and Akio that night. She left Utena sleeping in an odd position and sat very still until she was asleep and then snuck out to meet Akio. She has never hidden her meetings with Akio before. She wanted Utena to wake up and wonder where she was.
And it works. It detonates Utena’s perception of both her prince (Who as Akio points out, she knows deep down is End of the World and Akio) and her identity as a prince protecting an innocent princess.
Because what does Utena want? She doesn’t fucking know, but she’s about to figure it out.
Why does Utena get mad at ANTHY when she finds out about her and Akio’s relationship? She’s not stupid. Later, she is able to correctly identify the victim in this scenario and it’s not Utena. But she was only thinking about herself. HER betrayal.
Because deep down, Utena expected fidelity from Anthy. She thought because they were engaged, no one else could touch Anthy. Utena was happy to keep their relationship in the stagnant cycle it was in if it meant no one else could have Anthy either (Hmmm…maybe like Juri refuses to let her feelings be known to Shiori…but more on that later). In trying to fight the system from within, she has been subsumed into it.
I just think it’s interesting that Touga, flattering Utena’s princely aspirations, frames the duel challenge as protection. But Utena reframes it as ownership.
Essentially, she feels cheated on, but not by Akio. She already knows that she’s “sharing” him with Kanae. It’s Anthy she’s twisted up over. Plus I think this whole situation has made her be totally over him because she never shows any genuine interest after this.
Utena doesn’t understand her feelings yet. Maybe she has told herself that Anthy betrayed their promise to help each other (thus rejecting her princeliness) or maybe she told herself that Anthy stole her man (And perhaps part of the reason for the date is to try to reassure herself that Akio is who she wants—it doesn’t work) but the point is she wants to make Anthy hurt the way she hurts.
Akio notices that she’s not wearing the ring immediately and asks her why. Utena dodges the question and asks Akio on a date.
And here’s where I break with the fandom again. I don’t think this is for Utena, or at least not primarily for Utena.
I don’t think Anthy is possessive of Akio because I don’t think she has any reason to be. She knows he sleeps around (a lot) and doesn’t seem to have any problems with it. She also knows that he thinks Utena is just a girl and she will fall for the prince & princess bullshit and he will break her and then get bored. Utena can’t be anything more than a passing fancy. Anthy and Akio are eternal, bound by blood and that moment that froze them both in time an eternity ago when Anthy stepped out of her role and saved the prince.
No, I think this was for Akio.
Because he can’t let Anthy have ANYTHING. For no good reason, he has decided to take away the one thing that has given her genuine happiness in who knows how many cycles. He’s made a process that is already going to be painful because of the genuine care she’d started to develop for Utena, even worse by trying to ruin Utena too. Anthy is prepared to go nuclear.
She says this because he has overplayed his hand. If he hadn’t seduced Utena, Anthy could’ve remained a victim but he’s turned himself into something like a cheater and her into something like a mistress. He NEEDS Utena to wear that ring. If she doesn’t, he can’t turn her into a princess OR take her sword. She will be a normal girl uninvolved in the dueling game. He can continue grooming her, but that’s not the point of this.
And then when Utena leaves, Anthy teases him and he looks down and away, chastened.
But wait there’s more. In the final scene with just Anthy and Akio, he takes her on a punishment car ride because he sees what she did and he’s fucking pissed (This is the only time I will agree that the car represents rape. In my opinion it represents adulthood, which encompasses sex, but also freedom and power).
So back to Utena’s awesome fun date where she can’t even look at Akio and spends the time thinking about Anthy.
Akio asks her about her ring AGAIN by the way. This time Utena says she doesn’t think it suits her.
But Utena and Anthy can’t leave each other alone can they? Utena can’t set these feelings free.
She did this to hurt Anthy and when it comes time to see the damage, she only wants to avoid it. She’s meek when she returns to their room and finds Anthy awake. She makes a desperate attempt to connect with Anthy by asking if she’s mad and when Anthy gives her usual Rose Bride answer of “About what?” Utena sounds resigned. But she’s still disturbed by the feelings the date drew out of her and complains to Anthy about it. Akio called her girlish and she feels bad about it in some bad, undefinable way. Anthy commiserates. All girls are like the Rose Bride, to be abused and exploited by men. They go from opposite sides of the room to the middle and Anthy holds Utena’s hand. Anthy asks if Utena has read her letter from End of the World, the only thing left that could possibly tempt Utena back into the game. Utena only replies that so much has happened since they met. She’s unsure now, about her previous goals and ideals, but Utena returns the hand-hold (THEY CAN’T LEAVE EACH OTHER ALONE).
But that’s not good enough. The next morning, Anthy twists the knife.
What a grotesque thing to say. Two 14 year old girls sleeping with the same adult man, one of them his sister, and all three of them knowing about each other. The situation is too ugly for even Utena to ignore. Anthy knows exactly what she’s doing. With the letter destroyed, Utena is out of the game for good. There is nothing left to tempt her back in.
Or so Anthy thinks. I think she, like Akio, has badly misjudged Utena here. She’s getting the result she wants, but not for the reasons she thinks she is.
Anthy is so mind-fucked by an eternity of being blamed for everything, I don’t think it even occurs to her that Utena will recognize her as the victim of her incestuous relationship with Akio.
And we know this because of Anthy’s reaction to Utena recognizing her as one in a later scene. Utena says “And the night I learned about you and Akio, I thought that you had betrayed me.”
Anthy hangs her head low for her own confession and doesn’t move while Utena confesses to only protecting her for her own ego. But she starts to look up and then starts crying when Utena confesses about selfishly feeling betrayed by Anthy instead of trying to help her. She genuinely didn’t expect someone to notice her suffering at the hands of her brother. But we’ll come back to this scene.
Utena angrily plays basketball until Miki and Juri invite her to play badminton. And the conversation Utena has with Juri changes the entire trajectory Utena follows.
And this is Utena’s whole problem, right? She’s only been thinking of herself. She is using Anthy as a totem to prove herself worthy of princehood. Episode 12 (For Friendship, Perhaps) taught her not to project her idea of what Anthy SHOULD be (a normal girl) onto her. But she swapped that for projecting the “princess” archetype onto Anthy. She took Anthy as she was, but she didn’t try to pry any deeper. She didn’t interrogate the way the dueling system restricted Anthy’s choices. And if you didn’t get that from this scene, Akio says it outright for you in episode 38 as I posted in my first set of screenshots. Utena recognizes Juri’s self-centeredness in herself and addresses it with Anthy in the suicide scene later in this episode.
But that’s not all. Juri says “Why can’t I set these feelings free?” And Utena, miraculously, understands she’s talking about Shiori despite having no clue what is going on between them at any point earlier in this series. But Utena also knows how this feels, no? She wants to stay angry with Anthy but she can’t help but want to stay close. And then of course everyone’s favorite part of this conversation:
Well…It’s different from the love you feel. I purely…not to say your feelings aren’t pure, but now I’m…Himemiya and I…Himemiya and I….
And I think this is the point that Utena realizes that her feelings for Anthy are exactly like Juri’s feelings for Shiori, and they’re certainly no more pure. Utena’s feelings for Anthy are no longer the “pure” love a prince should have for a princess. They are messy, complicated, possessive, romantic, and painful. Juri has never tried to purposefully hurt the object of her affections. Utena has. Utena is in love with a girl and she doesn’t want to be, because that girl has hurt her so badly.
And from this point on, Utena’s attitude towards Anthy changes completely.
We get the Cantarella scene. Anthy tries to take another dig at Utena, telling her she’s poisoned her cookies. It’s another warning. Anthy is not a princess in need of rescue. She’s a witch.
But Utena has started to understand her own feelings now. She recognizes that she’s been unfair to Anthy this whole time because she’s been thinking about herself. And she recognizes that she can’t set these feelings free, so in typical Utena fashion, she attacks the problem head on. She meets Anthy’s claim of poisoning her and says she’s been poisoning Anthy in return. And Anthy, because sHE CAN’T LEAVE UTENA ALONE, says the poisoned tea is delicious and Utena agrees that the poisoned cookies are too…and they hold hands and promise to have a date just like this 10 years from now where they laugh and drink tea together. They have hurt each other, willfully, and they might yet do it again, but it’s all been worth it. This is a catharsis Juri and Shiori were never able to reach.
But for Anthy, this is a disaster. Utena is promising to know her 10 years from now, which means Anthy needs a rescuer. Which means Utena is back in the game. Anthy takes the nuclear option. She removes the thing Utena is fighting for: The Rose Bride.
Anthy cannot die. We know this from the flashback in episode 34 (The Rose Crest). So this “suicide” is entirely for Utena’s benefit.
When Utena stops Anthy from jumping off the tower, Anthy plays the only card she has left: The Truth.
Because I’m the Rose Bride. Because I’m a heartless doll…I thought no matter what happened to my body, I wouldn’t feel the pain on the inside. Forgive me, Utena-sama. The pain I feel comes with the curse of being the Rose Bride. But…the pain I’ve caused you…! You were swept up into all of this against your will. And even knowing that, I…! I used you and your naïveté. I took advantage of your kindness. Forgive me, Utena-sama. I’ve cheated you. I’ve used you. I’ve betrayed you from the very beginning. I-
No.
I… I never realized the pain you were in. I never realized how much you were suffering. And despite that, I…! I kept acting like I was a noble prince who would save you! The truth is, my protecting you was just for my ego! And the night I learned about you and Akio…! I thought that you had betrayed me. Even though you were suffering so much…After I said we should help each other no matter what! I was the one who cheated you! I was the one who used you! I was the one who betrayed you…
And Anthy begs her to forget about everything and leave and of course, Utena responds “You know I can’t do that!” And Anthy does know.
The next morning, Utena puts her ring back on. Anthy mends the letter from End of the World. Even she knows it won’t make any difference now. Utena still doesn’t read it. Whatever it says about princes and castles and eternity doesn’t matter anymore. Because Utena is just here for Anthy.
Anthy makes one more attempt, one she knows won’t work. She says “There’s still time. You can still turn back.” Utena doesn’t respond to this. The letter is carried off by the wind.
A thing I really enjoy about RGU is how when producing the anime the crew was aware of the budget and limits that often come with TV shows at that time and created their own cinematographic language based on them.
The roses, the frames, the transformation sequences... Not only were they able to use them smartly but also make them reinforce the core themes of the show; that of repetition, circularity, a repeated movement, a revolution.
I personally greatly appreciate when narrative media is -meta- not in a direct way but in its semiotics. Utena creates this language based on repetition and is constantly seen subverting it, adding new "rules".
Episode 33 is cinematographicaly one of the episodes I find most interesting because they literally put the turning point of the story (I personally think of this episode as a turning point because we see Utena finally with her "prince"; except that, instead of the happy "ending" one would expect in traditional stories, it is here where everything comes into place and the grim reality is made perfectly aware. Were Utena a traditional princess story, episode 33 would mark a happy conclusion. Instead it is only the beggining of what lies inside the box and once opened it cannot be closed again) in an episode that is all about repetition. A recap.
Also, for as much as many people gloss over the Black Rose Arc I very much think it crucial to establish all of RGU's symbols. Because Utena doesn't tell us things, it wants us to learn them by noticing the patterns, by seeing the repetitions and where they are being broken, so that we ask ourselves why. The elevator sequence is one of such cases where we learn more of the characterization of these characters by seeing how they act inside of it. It's even a basic screenplay exercise: "how would your characters act trapped inside an elevator".
Mikage itself is a shadow, not just of himself but of Utena as well, an omen forever frozen in time.
Because that's another theme, shadows. And how in a way they are echoes, simplified and distorted repetitions of oneself.
And while shadows are cast in contrast, projections are cast forward. While one is a memory of something, projections are the reproduced illusion of it.
Utena works with parallels and repetitions and understanding their semantics and syntax allows us, the viewers, even subconsciously to feel their weight.
