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Forgive me if I'm about to say something blasphemous which I may later realise I disagree with myself, but I almost feel like shipping Utena and Anthy in just the straight up diegetic "they are girlfriends" way sort of undermines a big part of the message their relationship is trying to send? And before I say anymore please know I am the number 1 backer of the "Make Everything Yuri" movement, usually if two female characters vaguely ever look at each other or simply exist within the same show (cough, Noriko and Chidori) it's enough for me to bend all the show's themes to paint them as the ultimate couple. But Anthy spends the entire show being an object of someone else's romantic or sexual love (or obsession, since a lot of this "love" isn't healthy at all). Even when Utena tries to protect her, she does so under the mindset of a knight protecting his princess (something we're geared to see as another inherently romantic thing), and that also robs Anthy of her agency. Because what Anthy actually needs, and what she never has, is a friend. Someone who cares about her not because she is the Rose Bride, not because they claim to be in love with her whether that love is very cruel (Akio) or just slightly misguided (Utena). The thing that allows Utena to save Anthy in the end is to fail at being this knight, to fail at this patriarchal ideal that the only thing women need and could be saved by is romantic love with a masculine figure. Instead, what she can offer Anthy is true friendship. Love detached from any sort of desire you might find in other forms of love. The sort of care a child feels when they see the face of another crying child.

Of course, I'm not saying romantic love can't include those feelings - in fact, I think it should. I think healthy love is founded on a healthy friendship. But I specifically think Anthy needs friendship *without* romantic love, without just being another thing somebody tried to help and save because they felt they were IN love with her.

I'm not going to bring up Juri (very very canonically gay) and how Utena says the love she feels for Anthy is "different from the love [Juri] knows", because I know a part of them deciding to go down this route is probably a reluctance to make Utenathy too explicit. I mean "best friends" and "true friendship" are basically Yuri speak for "hey look at our canon lesbians we just can't say they're lesbians" (looking at you MadoHomu), but what I'm trying to say is I'd love to see more content that took this at face value and really DID just make Utenathy friends. Or at least queerplatonic (this entire post is probably just my subconscious aromantic urge to make every ship I like queerplatonic but whatever).

Because I think a big theme of Utena is "I don't care, I still want to help you." I don't care if the world tells me no, I don't care that I'm a girl, I don't care if you stab me in the back, so why not "I don't care that you can't be mine" as well? I'd still want to help you because I care about you, no matter how you see me, because that's what right. Idk I just think more platonic Utenathy would be neat. Because it's not even like they're not inherently connected, they definitely are! They're yuri in the way the narrative connects them, but I think it would be interesting to consider them as a platonic pairing when you look specifically at them as characters and not as like, the narrative's chess pieces (bcos in that sense they are literally fated to be together).