Revolutionary Girl Utena
I suppose I owe it to the people who introduced me to the show to attempt to put some thoughts down here, but I ought also to be forthright about things:
Revolutionary Girl Utena continues to escape me. I really don't
get a lot of what's going on in this show, and I think part of it is that I simply have no basis in which to contextualize what's going on. I am wholly uninitiated in the realm that the series is criticizing, so much of the meaning of what goes on is matter which I can only guess at.
It is my understanding that Utena is meant to do for girl's anime what Evangelion did for Super Robot anime. That is a fundamental assumption I worked with throughout this second viewing of the series, and one which colors all of my subsequent interpretations. Unfortunately, I just don't have much experience with that stuff. All I know of the Magical Girl genre are tattered memories of Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu, and I guess Madoka Magica and Kiddy Grade, if you want to
really stretch the limitations of what we're talking about, here. As to anime targeted specifically at girls, the only possible idea I can get at here is
Escaflowne, and that's because there are robots.
There's very little in the super genre, class, kingdom or whatever you wish to use to term it that I really, really understand or care for. I've spent no time there and to be honest I don't often feel that interested in doing so. It's just not me.
However, I
am somewhat familiar with the common fairy tale set-up, and with its presentation in the form of Disney Princesses. So I've sort of struggled to make up the difference using that, and go from there.
The General- Conceptually, the most obvious point of the show is to really tear into the set up of what it means to be a Prince. Right from the get-go the premise challenges the established ideas of what it means to be a Prince by introducing a
girl who wants to be a Prince. Through her duels to defend and free the Rose Bride, the show illustrates piece by piece different established aspects of the common fairy tale Prince and invites the viewer to consider them. Does a Prince have to work miracles? Is a Prince eternal? Does he shine with sublime light? Early on, the suggestion that simply because one appears to be princely does not mean he is a prince is made in the form of Touga Kiryuu. Openly Touga appears to be every bit that champion of women, and Utena herself wonders more than once whether or not Touga is her Prince. These threads continue over the course of the show in one form or another until this premise comes to its natural extreme:
Are Princes really necessary at all? Utena ultimately fails to become a Prince, and the Prince she had so sought turned out to be the source of all the show's pain and suffering. Yet even he, the magnificent End of the World, was not so lofty as Tutu's Raven, but rather a miserable, pathetic remnant of a bygone age. The victory of the series does not come when the Prince and Princess ride into the sunset to live happily ever after, but rather, when Anthy and Utena both cease to play the game of Princes and Princesses altogether.
The Heroines- It is my belief that the idea behind the show is to dispel the notion of Princes entirely from the audience's mind, or rather, to drive home the point that such notions are not only unnecessary, but harmful. From episode 33 onward, a significant amount of effort is put into highlighting the flaws of our titular heroine: Utena isn't the typical shonen protagonist whose unflagging spirit and belief in righteousness will conquer all. Or rather, Utena's aim to be such continuously causes pain for those around her (as foreshadowed early on during Jury's introductory arc), and whose princely ambitions are ultimately selfish, or cause her to think more of herself than others. Anthy's utter lack of self-esteem simultaneously leads her to be manipulative both for the sake of Akio and for her own desire. And yet, neither of the girls are truly bad people. The point is not "Utena's a bad person." I think, instead, the point is "Utena is a person." She and Anthy are not just Princesses to sit in towers while Princes go about slaying dragons for their sake. They're human beings with their own strengths and weaknesses and, most importantly, their own lives.
Ask yourselves, truthfully, what you know of the personalities of the oldest Disney Princesses? Specifically, Snow White and Aurora. Can you name anything about these girls that is unsightly, that is bad, that is dirty, loathsome, or in any way negative? I cannot. The worst I can come up with is Aurora being too curious for her own good, and that's the kind of third rate character flaw that, persistent as it is, only amateurs tack on to a character. What little personality Snow and Aurora have is entirely pure, and if you still think there are women like that, you do all women everywhere a disservice. That, I think, is the point of RGU: These girls aren't just pretty porcelain dolls to be used at the pleasure of others.
All of this is perfectly embodied during the final episode when the personification of Utena's Prince tells her flat out that "you can't do anything because you are a girl." And remember that he's meant to be the embodiment of the Princely qualities of the villain. The Prince for whom Utena has striven the entire series.
It is for this reason, too, that Touga fails in his attempt to rescue Utena: because he was ultimately mistaken in assuming that she needed a Prince anyway, and, perhaps in even thinking that she needed rescuing. It is significant, I think, that the heroines' triumph only truly begins when Anthy decides to reach out toward the lid of her own prison.
But I think, really, that most, if not all of this, is terribly obvious to everybody already, and so I will not seek to endlessly explain these things any further. Instead, I want to take a moment to comment again on a few of the aspects of the anime that really impress me.
The Visuals
Now, I don't have the actual numbers for what this show's budget was, but I've always been lead to believe it wasn't very much, given the sheer amount of stock footage the anime makes use of. That said, it's impressive just how beautiful this show manages to be in spite of that.
Especially, the backdrops.
I don't mean to sound like one of those people who hates on modern anime, because I'm not and because I haven't the experience necessary to make qualified statements of the sort, but lately I've developed a great deal of fondness of the large backdrop pieces like these in older anime. Whether that's because I've been watching a lot of older anime or not, I can't say, but what I can is that Utena manages some truly impressive scenery for a show that apparently was made on a wish and a prayer. At times, I just really enjoyed watching the scenery and losing myself in it. There's a sequence late in the anime wherein Akio and Utena go for a drive in the sunset that I find truly breathtaking.
I'm also a
huge fan of the use of silhouettes like these in the show. Whether it was to save money on not having to draw faces or use different paints for differing skin, or was truly a stylistic choice I don't know, but I just adore these scenes. There are some levels in Donkey Kong Country Returns and Super Mario 3D World that operate off of this sort of same aesthetic and I just love it. The mix of featureless shadows and colors is striking in a way I lack the vocabulary to truly explain.
There are constant visual cues throughout the show, many of which escape my grip, but I came to appreciate the spinning roses a great deal more this time through, whereas the first run of the show left me annoyed by them.
The Music- I regret to say that here, as in all other places, I lack the necessary words to truly do the justice to the soundtrack to this show. I won't bother to go over the need to constantly analyze the sort of bizarre lyrics to the pop songs that play during the duels, but rather, I would like to express here my appreciation for the show's jazz pieces, which become more common in the second half. There's a lot of more classical music early on, all of which I like, but the jazz music is really what helps set the mood for Akio as a cunning, charming smooth-talker. From the seductive
Akio Car to the much more upbeat
Campus Dandy. The jazz pieces in the show touched a familiar, forgotten chord with me of nights spent listening to jazz on the old radio, and so I've a special fondness for them. There are also much more humorous pieces, like
Dona Dona.
I'm now left on the edge of the decision of whether or not to rewatch the movie. I really didn't like it the first time around. It makes a lot of decisions I find questionable, and I find it even more difficult to really get what's going on in it than in the TV series, but it
is a very pretty movie, and with the recent success I had on granting Zeta Gundam a second chance, I suppose I've no choice but to go ahead with it.
In any case, as always, I thank the readers for their attention, and to those who find these posts ever tiresome, I am, as ever, grateful for your patience.
