[Utena review: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4]

This site is so cutting edge! Accompany me on the next few days as I take a look at an animated series that aired in Japan back in 1997. “Why should I?”, you might be asking yourself. Well, because it’s a really damned good series. I’d like to show you why I love Revolutionary Girl Utena, or better yet, why you will love it if you don’t already.

Utena and Anthy from Revolutionary Girl Utena

Revolutionary Girl Utena (Shoujo Kakumei Utena) is an anime series (also a manga and a movie, but I only watched the series) that appears at first glance to be a fairy tale belonging to the magical girl genre – you know, like Sailor Moon and so many other similar series. In truth however, the authors took the staples of the genre and just had fun playing with them, twisting them or just plain ignoring them. And the fairy tale bits, well, that’s just a springboard to an extremely twisted, utterly captivating, impossibly impredictable story. Wow, that’s a lot of ADVERB + ADJECTIVEs.

Utena tells the story of a girl who, having been saved by a prince in her childhood, decides to look for her prince, all the while becoming a prince herself, so impressed was she by him. We meet her as a teenager now, and she’s become a tomboyish girl who can apparently defeat the boys at any sport and has the girls fawning over her. Yet she isn’t a rude girl, behaving gallantly and charming the boys as well.

Utena, wearing a boys' uniform

And then we see her being dragged into a series of sword duels where the winner becomes “engaged” to another student from the same academy, Anthy (pictured above), a shy and demure girl who is often abused by other people. And by abused I mean she gets slapped around in pretty much every episode. This girl plays the role of the “Rose Bride” in these duels and as you can probably guess, Utena becomes engaged to her in the very first episode.

Anthy gets slapped. Get used to this sight.

Utena then has to go through a series of increasingly difficult and, let’s state it already, increasingly bizarre duels defending her position as the champion and the, huh, groom I guess?

Nothing in this series is what it seems to be at first glance. Things become bizarre, then more bizarre, then seriously WTF! as the issues of self-discovery, sexual awakening, abuse, gender roles are tackled, twisted around, and generally treated like nothing you’ve ever seen.

In future entries (hopefully during this week, should I not be so busy) I’ll talk about some elements of Utena such as its music and graphic style, and also about some of its weirdest parts and why I liked them so much. Let me just say for now that this is a series worth watching; I don’t watch a lot of TV nowadays, on account of being always too busy, but this was so good that I made the time to watch the 39 chapters of this series in less than two weeks. Although it’s an old series by now, it has aged very graciously.

You can buy Utena here:

• The Rose Collection / The Movie Boxed Set (episodes 1 – 13 and movie)
• The Black Rose Saga (episodes 14 – 24)
• The Apocalypse Saga (episodes 25 – 39)

It will set you back some $400, but it’s totally worth it.

…OK, at something like $10 per episode, it’s a steal. You could buy two full “Friends” complete box sets for that price, if you are into that. So here’s hoping someone releases a decently priced version of this classic jewel of a series.

[Utena review: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4]