Revolutionary Girl Utena

[Xard]

Do you think that Utena is on the same level as Eva?

Everything put together I'd put Eva ahead of Utena for variety of reasons but all these reasons are small enough to land Utena in the uppermost echelon of anime that is pretty much on par with Eva. In my eyes it's one of the Holy Trinity of anime television series.

Would you consider it a masterpiece?

Absolutely.

I still haven't watched it.

You poor sod.

[Stillborn]

I consider it a Yuri phantasy. It comes from the same guy who designed Uranus and Neptune for Sailor Moon so he just went to larger sandbox to play with his girl on girl phantasy.

Or maybe I'm just grumpy that I couldn't interact with certain people there and stab them with an icepick... But I would probably kill half of the shool then...

[pwhodges]

I can't comment on the question, because I'm only partway into my first viewing of Utena. To report on my progress, I've finished the first arc (eps 1-13), and watched the next two.

The first season was gently intriguing, very nice to watch, and certainly brought up some real mysteries, especially around Anthy, of course. The nature and origin of her position as the Rose Bride is left unexplained, and the way that she produces the Sword of Dios hints at bigger things as well. But this was all simply strangeness in the air.

The next arc (the Black Rose arc) is already quite different. There's a real sense of menace, and the mysteries surrounding Anthy have greatly intensified, plus we have the plot to kill her. But what it all means is as unclear as it was at this stage in Eva.

Visually, it is also strange, but delightful. A considerable amount of repeated use of scenes points to, let's say, economical production. But it is done so appropriately that it doesn't feel cheap - indeed it generates a real sense of ritual. Much of the rest of the animation is also very simple - like sliding still images across a background with no internal animation, but again, this quickly becomes acceptable as a stylistic choice. The duels themselves are perhaps the most stylised part of all, and there is very little variation in them apart from the characters and the words spoken. If you need these climaxes to be different and exciting in themselves, you might be disappointed. Perhaps the most varied things are the shadow commentaries in each episode, which are again strange, but fun. I commented in earlier posts on the designs being dated - just to reiterate, this was not a criticism, but merely a statement that they can be identified as being from their time, rather than being in some way timeless.

I seem to have written "strange" several times, and it is true; but it is also intriguing, and I will certainly be seeing it right through to try to find the resolution of the mysteries that are accumulating. Whether this will also reveal the underlying meaning I cannot yet say - as in Eva, it may not be so obvious!

[caragnafog dog]

real sense of ritual

This is a better way to describe the repetition that I grew so tired of. Certainly it was well done and had a sense of purpose, but it still bothered me. My backlog is massive but I need to take the time and rewatch the series soon.

@Xard, what's the third of your TV series trinity?

[kuribo-04]

Thanks to the four of you!

[schwarzstahlhelm1993]

The Utena movie is perhaps THE best thing I've ever seen in anime.

[C.A.P.]

^Wait until you see it in synced.

[caragnafog dog]

^Wait until you see it in synced.

what

[Xard]

fucking dark side of the moon, I tell ya

[Atropos]

Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?

[Justacrazyguy]

So, finaly watched the series. Nothing much to say, it´s a masterpiece, Utena is awesome, that bittersweet ending is great, etc...

Anyway, time to watch the movie.

[caragnafog dog]

Movie is the greatest thing ever.

[gorgeousshutin]

The Movie is like this wish-fulfillment fanfic based off the intricate TV series, where the (average) fangirls get what they want in abundance: blatantly bisexual female leads, blatantly evil Shiori, blatantly weak Akio, blatantly happy ending . . . etc. That said, the music and artsy visuals are wonderful, and people who've already seen the show should be able to find things to enjoy in it.

[Justacrazyguy]

Watched the movie. It was good and it had CARS and ROSES and YURI and great animation and it was fabulous.

Still, the series is clearly superior. Even though it´s kind of unfair comparing the two since the movie isn´t really trying to resume the series or anything like that. That said, it´s obvious that having watched the series helps the movie and the overall eperience.

But, yeah. Good movie.

[caragnafog dog]

The Movie is like this wish-fulfillment fanfic based off the intricate TV series, where the (average) fangirls get what they want in abundance: blatantly bisexual female leads, blatantly evil Shiori, blatantly weak Akio, blatantly happy ending . . . etc. That said, the music and artsy visuals are wonderful, and people who've already seen the show should be able to find things to enjoy in it.

uhhhh yeah I guess I didn't have a problem with any of that because it was an hour and twenty minutes (if memory serves), for the themes and characteristics of the series to be more exaggerated or blatant is the nature of the format.

I guess I just don't see how it would be an issue unless you hadn't seen the TV series.

[Dr. Nick]

Finished the TV show. This might just be the boldest, most impressive TV anime I've ever seen. I mean, 39 episodes of cocktowers and moist roses and swords being polished, all executed with earnest single-mindedness (C.A.P. described this general attitude the show has really well a few pages back). The series fully commits itself into doing what it does and sticks with it, and I just have to wonder how much Ikuhara and co. had to battle against censors and marketing department zombies to keep the crazy train going. Or were the ratings always really good so they had free rein to do whatever they wanted? At this point I've only superficially glanced at the liner notes and other info dumps in this thread, so I don't yet have a grasp of its production history.

I'm obviously not part of the intended target audience, being a more standard-narrative tits-and-robots type of idort, so while I enjoyed playing spot the penis, this level or artsiness isn't my cup of tea. It was the same thing when I watched Angel's Egg. I thought "oh wow, this is some impressive weirdness", but it didn't engage me on a deep personal level. Hence my purely subjective score of merely "good"; it's not assessing the objective quality of Utena as a cultural artefact, and this needs to be pointed out before Xard stabs me through my mail slot. The show made me repeatedly laugh out loud and utter "what" out loud, which means it pushed a lot of my buttons, and while I won't be revisiting it any time soon because of its length, I'm kind of looking forward to rewatching it ten years later or so because I can tell repeat viewings are going to be totally different experiences. After all, I went in blissfylly blind. I had heard the "shoujo Evangelion" description and seen a minute-long video tutorial on appreciating the repeating rose motif, and that's about it. In fact, I have a feeling that the eventual second viewing is going to be a much bigger mindfuck for me when I start spotting all the things that flew completely past me the first time around.

Also, the finale made an admirable job of resolving the best gril issue:

SPOILER: Show

That is some fabulous skewering.

[C.A.P.]

(dat feel when a Evageeks veteran praises you)

From what I've gathered, the biggest problem they had was trying to get the whole thing done on time; Ikuhara's biggest concern, meanwhile, was that he feared audiences were going to think that the show was going to be some kind of odd parody. He got so worried about that, he intentionally tried to make the first two episodes or so a bit more "normal" than usual. As for censorship, King Records themselves was sponsoring the show, instead of, say, a toy company, so they had a bit more flexibility in what they could or couldn't do. The impression the booklets give is that whatever issues happened, it was mostly between the staff at Be-Papas trying to figure out what they wanted to do with the show. Any of the sexual subtext in it, the staff just went with it and didn't really questioned it.

I view Utena the same way someone would watch, say, those oddball Fleischer shorts; either you get it and just accept whatever insanity is up on the screen, or just be frightened on what the people behind it were thinking. It's definitely the results of a creative team who probably loves/were involved in too many shoujo shows/artsy farsty stuff and abused their freedom from the realities of TV animation to create something only they and "art" people will get. The difference between it and Evangelion was that they at least knew how to sustain whatever they wanted to do for 39 episodes, while Eva was done by people who took advantage of the freedom they had, and eventually suffered from the realities the TV system they took for granted and rebel over topics that, while resulted in a fascinating auteur, probably did more harm to the studio than it gained. With Be-Papas, it seems it just petered out and died because they couldn't figure out what to do after Utena was done.

[Xard]

Ikuhara's use of word "parody": He seems to use parody when he means pastiche. Amalgation of recycled ideas, basically. In this regard he's polar opposite of Anno who likes to go around describing Evangelion as copy of a copy of a copy.

He stopped giving shit when making Penguindrum when he realized there were more important things to communicate than worry if someone had done something similar before.

Just chalk it up to Japanese (or Ikuhara's own) appropriation mismatch weirdness, I guess.


and yeah, incredibly enough Utena was hit from the start. This led to production of high budget film adaptation which unfortunately bombed hard.


edit: and here I thought post number 13,000 would be something special.

[C.A.P.]

Really, it's a miracle something like Utena was ever made. It's even more amazing considering that it was made by people who walked away from a huge franchise like Sailor Moon and manged to crate a whole studio just to get it made. The fact that there they manged to do all of that and not get in finical trouble (until the movie) is awe-inspiring.

[EvangelionFan]

In October first boxset of the DVD remasters arrived on store shelves in Australia. As far as I can tell the packaging is identical to the North American release from 2-3 years ago (+ a sticker on the shrink-wrap that says 'from the creators of Sailor Moon' or a remark to that effect) - as for the time it took to be to be licensed here, I suppose Madman had no interest in it so we had to wait until Hanabee picked it up a few months ago. The boxset does look good, though I'll hold off on it for a bit...