So I've been thinking about Utena the series now for a while, and here's what I have to say about it. Just keep in mind that I'm not exactly a film student who usually studies and analyzes these sorts of things.
I'm probably wrong about a few things. And there are some subjects that didn't make it into this post, and I barely mentioned Adolescence at all (I may say something about that at another time). Just know that nothing has prompted me to write this much about it in a long time, and that I probably haven't ever written this much about something just because I wanted to.
As Utena is one of the most heavily discussed and debated anime titles in existence you have the option of reading literally hundreds of articles on the subject, if you were so inclined, with everything from blogs to people's academic essays available at the click of a button: http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=Revolutionary+Girl+Utena
As Utena is one of the most heavily discussed and debated anime titles in existence you have the option of reading literally hundreds of articles on the subject, if you were so inclined, with everything from blogs to people's academic essays available at the click of a button: http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=Revolutionary+Girl+Utena
As Utena is one of the most heavily discussed and debated anime titles in existence you have the option of reading literally hundreds of articles on the subject, if you were so inclined, with everything from blogs to people's academic essays available at the click of a button: http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=Revolutionary+Girl+Utena
Well, there's nothing wrong with drawing one's own conclusions but that takes a lot longer. If you've got the time, however, I would recommend revisiting the actual text.
I'm not sure what the Human Intstrumentality Project is, but I'm pretty sure it didn't cost a lot of money.
Uhhm... Hmm..
This all feels sort of sour. But I'm also not disappointed? Well, I am in a way. I don't know. I feel like nothing really happened. The show ended at 24. Anything you can derive from the last two is just your own conjecture.
I'm not going to write my ending thoughts just yet. I want to watch Death and End of Evangelion.
I'm not sure what the Human Intstrumentality Project is, but I'm pretty sure it didn't cost a lot of money.
Uhhm... Hmm..
This all feels sort of sour. But I'm also not disappointed? Well, I am in a way. I don't know. I feel like nothing really happened. The show ended at 24. Anything you can derive from the last two is just your own conjecture.
I'm not going to write my ending thoughts just yet. I want to watch Death and End of Evangelion.
Also damn you, David Production, for making episode twenty only a fleeting memory. At least you fixed up what had been lame transitions into Roundabout with this one.
whoa I posted too soon about Ep. 30. Credit where credit's due: awesomeanimationattheend of the episode.
Futari wa Precure Max Heart 31:
wow, not a bad episode, even if it was mostly action and lots of generic affirmations of HOPE and DREAMS. Nagisa should get extremelypissed off more often, even if in this instance she was more infuriated by missing her lacrosse match than the fact that her enemies are threatening to plunge the world into darkness. Have some priorities gurl.
Solid production for an episode that wasn't even introducing a new piece of plastic shit. What madness is this?
Well, there's nothing wrong with drawing one's own conclusions but that takes a lot longer. If you've got the time, however, I would recommend revisiting the actual text.
I'm not sure what the Human Intstrumentality Project is, but I'm pretty sure it didn't cost a lot of money.
Uhhm... Hmm..
This all feels sort of sour. But I'm also not disappointed? Well, I am in a way. I don't know. I feel like nothing really happened. The show ended at 24. Anything you can derive from the last two is just your own conjecture.
I'm not going to write my ending thoughts just yet. I want to watch Death and End of Evangelion.
oh god, I don't know, it's fucking confusing. Did you watch the original episodes, the prime ones, or the recut prime ones?
I have the old US manga DVDs, and death+rebirth has new footage, but death is basically recap stuff from the series, and rebirth is the first 25 minutes of end of Eva. You might just go ahead and watch end of Eva. (but does end of Eva have Tamashii no Refrain? That's the best song in the entire franchise! And you'll be missing out on all the silly string quartet stuff!)
Well this was depressing. Zeta is infinitely better than the original series. I actually care about the characters to a much bigger extent. Four was a great minor sidecharacter.
A beautiful animated 5 minute short for charity to the Tohoku Earthquake victims directed by Yamakan. It's pretty safe to say its the best thing he's ever done yet so great job, Yamakan.
It also seems the version upon on crunchyroll & youtube replaced the music and the words with some song by Sigur Ros but apparently this all came out on DVD months ago so s'all good.
So I've been thinking about Utena the series now for a while, and here's what I have to say about it. Just keep in mind that I'm not exactly a film student who usually studies and analyzes these sorts of things.
I'm probably wrong about a few things. And there are some subjects that didn't make it into this post, and I barely mentioned Adolescence at all (I may say something about that at another time). Just know that nothing has prompted me to write this much about it in a long time, and that I probably haven't ever written this much about something just because I wanted to.
I think you're on point with most of what you say, especially in terms of love, and its consequences for the characters. I'm not sure if I really picked up on how widely that applies when I watched it.
As I was making my final sprint for the end of Utena, icarus-daedelus mentioned the cookies-and-tea scene and the badminton scene in Episode 37 specifically, so I tried to look at both of them more closely in my impressions at that time, before I watched the final episode. I don't think I necessarily nailed it, but trying to figure them out told me a lot about how the characters developed from the ideal roles they were aiming for.
I've only seen Utena once, though, so what do I know?
Anyway, congratulations on finishing. It's a pretty fantastic series.
Man, if it weren't for the typical shitty abrupt transition from story to battle, this would have felt like a passable S1 episode. I mean, it was still pretty boring thanks to it mostly being about a one-off character who did nothing but spout platitudes on WARM FEELINGS and FULFILLMENT, but it was at least coherent and decently-paced. This stretch of not-terrible episodes is shocking, although I'm disgusted that Max Heart has already lowered my standards so much that I'm satisfied with an episode that would have had me checking the timer every thirty seconds in S1.
I'm really liking this Akane full of confidence. Before I liked her design and the prospect of her becoming a good asset for the squad, but that really didn't seem to ever materialize, until now at least. Now she keeps delivering what I wanted from her and that makes her pretty awesome for me.
I'm sad for
I like how Akane has developed, but I find it weird how much she still seems to exist in Kogami's shadow. It feels like everything she does is based on her thinking, "What would Kogami do?" and just doing that. If what she does isn't what Kogami would do, she thinks to herself, "I must have missed something."
It's a pretty good way of doing things, since I don't think Kogami has been wrong about anything in this entire series. But it makes her still seem incredibly dependent on him, even though she's more competent now.
So far I've seen episodes 1, 6, and 10 and I don't think I've missed anything at all. Some off art this episode butt the hilarious drama made up for it. I might even watch the next episode.
It's pretty lewd but at the same time it's all so incidentally placed, no lingering tracking shots, that I got used to it. I wonder if it's like living at a nudist colony.
Well this was depressing. Zeta is infinitely better than the original series. I actually care about the characters to a much bigger extent. Four was a great minor sidecharacter.
Disagree completely. DYRL was nearly perfect. SDFM had too many things wrong with it. The strange pacing, the repetitive music, the animation budget... It held up better than I expected, though.
Cuticle Detective is quite a bit more homo. The main character gives us some pretty... interesting expressions when talking about/playing with other male characters' hair.
Nakajima looks up to his father, who was a war photographer, but can only get a job as an assistant for gravure magazines. Mizuno is a provisional high school teacher, currently on probation. Nishimura is Mizuno's best friend, whose boyfriend has been avoiding her since she discovered she was pregnant. Ichihara works at a magazine where he is being blackmailed into sexual favours by his chief editor. Park, on Twitter, takes on the persona of a doctor, when he is actually working at a company that sells medical equipment to disinterested doctors, and at the same time, trying to take care of his younger sister.
This is a story about the blossoming friendship of five young people who were brought together by Twitter, and their journey to finding honesty with each other and with themselves.
Really good first episode. Having Twitter as plot device is a pretty neat idea.
Love the cast, there are Eita and Ueno Juri which are always fantastic, and there's also a Korean actor! That's cool to have a non-Japanese actor.
All the characters are interesting and all have quite different issues even though they all have shitty co-workers. Definitely looking forward to the next episode.
Mecha night continues. I find it really hard to compare a television series to a movie because they're trying to achieve roughly the same thing over completely different time scales. I find both works to be flawed, albeit in completely different ways, but overall I do prefer the series to the movie. I hadn't really thought that much about it up till now but I just don't think that the pacing for the movie works. It is extremely pretty though.
My... my heart...
...How can I exist on the same plane as something so incredibly absurd?
The animation in this was through the roof! So unbelievable. The movie itself was, as I said, absurd. The whole tone of the film felt like it was working towards a more macabre, adult approach to the series. This was pretty evident having transitioned straight into it. It was honestly a bit jarring. Like that first scene with Shinji? That seemed extremely out of character and, honestly, a bit hamfisted. It seemed like it existed more for shock factor than relevance of character or story. The characters themselves just felt distant and disconnected from their TV incarnations. Almost like caricatures. They were definitely different, in a way.
I enjoyed the story telling in the first half I thought it was prompt and properly paced. The second half? I don't know. I never really felt too overwhelmed, but you gotta be kidding me this those live-action shots of movie theaters. Give me a break. Is it trying to look pretentious? I couldn't help but laugh. All-in-all, thinking back, the movie wasn't poor or anything, I almost just want to say it wasn't exactly to my specific liking. I respect it, sure, but it felt like it was achieving levels of narrative disconformity for the sake of doing it. It wasn't a spectacle so that we could see and be part of a spectacle, it was a spectacle so that we could momentarily peer into Anno's psychedelic, blood soaked paradise. I guess that's not so bad. No man could possibly be prepared for it, though.
I have a hard time inserting this as the end of Evangelion. It just feels different enough to not be so.
Some Last Thoughts on Eva
This has been an interesting personal experience for me. Why? I watched half of this series when I was 14 and just let it fester. Over time it began to manifest a personality. My mind had filled in the blanks of what could possibly exist in it's legendary mythos. However, my expectations were completely wrong. My cognitive process of filling in blanks and creating a template for Eva was lacking. I think it's fame and popularity concocted a very middle of the road ending. I thought there would be something there that could be relatable to the (TV Series') halfway point and would be able to please a very wide audience. Something very ideal and character-centric (After all, look at how popular the characters are!).
Now here, nearly a decade later, for better or for worse, my expectations have been betrayed. There wasn't a romantic and beautiful exclamation point at the end. There was just an empty pocket book wrapped in words. And the movie that's supposed to make it all better? It's just lights and sound and sperm and vaginas in places where vaginas shouldn't be and a confusing last kiss from Misato and an LCL soup made up of humans. This isn't a mecha. This isn't a drama. It's a love letter from Anno addressed to himself. That's fine though. It shouldn't be fine, but it is. You've broken me and you deserve it you son of a bitch.
What i'm trying to say is,
people don't like Rei because Rei is a good character, they simply like Rei.
