#utena meta

[akissthroughtheglass]

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.

[ohtori-dropout]

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!

[empty-movement]

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!

[absolutebirth]

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!

[anonymous-gambito]

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?

[midnightfox450]

SA Mention //

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.

[os-eclipses-tamen-son-yuri]

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.

[queervegancryptid]

I just rewatched the last two episodes of Revolutionary Girl Utena. I just suddenly had a burning desire to see that in particular, and fortunately, it's on YouTube, the whole series.

And I gotta say, it hits differently now. It was always a powerful show, and the ending in particular is beautiful and kinda makes the show, in my opinion. I adored it immediately, and I'm really happy they had 39 episodes as opposed to maybe a dozen, which is how it would be if it were made today. You absolutely could make it today, though; the beautiful and terrible thing is, it actually is timeless in a lot of ways. And rewatching the ending episodes in particular now, like I said, it hits differently.

I've seen it at least a couple dozen times, but I don't think I've ever cried at it that much before. I guess maybe that's part of growing up. I really want to write about it, actually. It haunts me, in a good but lately very painful way.

This is about the political situation, if that's not clear. But it's about a lot more than just who the president is. It's about the lies people tell themselves, how people in power gaslight others into doing their dirty work for them, and yes, how patriarchy fucks things up for literally everyone but a fraction of a percentage of the population who have a vested interest in promoting it.

It's a good metaphor for a big part of what's going on in terms of political and social attitudes. One thing I don't see talked about much is the scene where the student council are doing their spiel, riding up the elevator together one last time. They each put a rose in a vase on the table. As they go in, they are shown to be different colors, based on each person's signature color. After Touga puts a white rose in, for Utena, the vase is shown again. Now, all the roses look the same.*

The meaning, I think, is two-fold. First, all of them being there together to hold a kind of vigil for Utena as she fights Akio unites them. They entered as individuals, but as long as Utena is fighting in this final duel, they're together, so the old differences and divisions don't matter.

Second, I feel like it should be considered along with the planetarium and Akio's tendency towards manipulation. That is to say, maybe all the roses are actually the same color, but his planetarium makes them look different; in the same way, his manipulative actions can't work without sowing division between people and pitting them against each other, and against their own interests. He literally gaslights everyone; the social hierarchy in terms of the school's nobility class (the student council) is itself a manipulation designed to keep them competitive with each other rather than being cooperative towards their shared best interests. Or like. Actually doing student council stuff.

Sound familiar? There's a lot more I want to say, but I need to get my thoughts in order. Anyway, I haven't rewatched the movie in a long time, but I'm guessing that will hit me a little differently now, too. I really don't like the voices in the dub, which is all I have access to streaming. But life finds a way, as the saying goes.

Expect more Utena-based posting in the near future as I distract myself from the things I can't control that are scaring me. But as always, if it's political, I try to tag it with "nik gets political" and 'us politics" if relevant, so people can block those tags if they want to.

* I posted this without that sentence, which really clarifies my point lol sorry