Anime review: Revolutionary Girl Utena
While I mostly talk about books here, I need to make an exception for this anime series because it is brilliant. We desperately need more stories for young girls that are like this! The series, created in 1996 by director Kunihiko Ikuhara based on the manga by Chiho Saito, can be watched in full on YouTube in either subtitled or dubbed versions. It follows Utena Tenjou, a girl who challenges the gender norms of her school (despite her flowing pink hair) because she insists on wearing a boyish uniform1 that symbolizes her desire to be a prince. To her, being a prince means being noble and brave, standing up for the underdog – the full chivalric ideal. In the first episode, she tells off an upperclassman, Saionji, who humiliated her friend Wakaba (and also slapped around Anthy Himemiya, who she presumes is his girlfriend), and challenges him to a duel. Stuff starts getting weird when Saionji starts monologuing about how the duel will decide control of the Rose Bride and draws a sword out of Anthy’s chest that slices right through Utena’s bamboo kendo weapon. She continues to fight anyway and knocks the rose off his chest, ending the duel – and thereby accidentally getting engaged to Anthy and becoming the target of every other duelist in the school.
This series has a reputation for being confusing, but that is only true if you try to view it literally. You cannot figure out the magic system (let alone how cars get up the narrow steps to the dueling ground, or why one character turns into a cow) because there isn’t one! Instead, the story has to be viewed more like a surrealist painting or a dream. If something seems confusing and random, it generally makes sense through the lens of symbolism. For instance, in one episode we keep getting flashes of candles; the candle flames flickering and going out reflect that Utena’s confidence and sense of self are wavering. Likewise, the “gossip girls” shadow plays might seem unrelated, but the theme of each such interval always foreshadows (get it?) something that happens later in the episode. There’s a ton of sexual metaphors, starting with the rose and sword thing, which allows the story to tackle darker and more mature themes than its PG-13 visuals and script would permit. If the image below looks like the most phallic tower you’ve ever seen…yeah, it’s supposed to. And if you’ve gotten 10 or 12 episodes in and recognized that Utena does stretches when she feels anxious, you will be immediately on edge when she seems to be doing nothing but stretching and prattling on about inconsequential things - and you would be right.
**BTW, there's going to be some things from this point on that could be considered spoilers, but given that there seems to be confusion on some of these points from people who have seen the series, knowing they are coming is probably helpful. HOW the story gets there is most interesting part!**
Disturbingly, a lot of the “romances” aimed at teen girls – ‘Twilight’, ‘After’, even ‘The Kissing Booth’ – glamorize controlling behavior, obsession, jealousy, or even self-harm in the cause of love. ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’, on the other hand, is basically a field guide to spotting and avoiding unhealthy relationships ranging from the excessive projection of your own dreams onto another person to the downright predatory. The opening sequence telegraphs the only pairing you are supposed to root for: Utena and Anthy. That’s not to say there aren’t some issues there that have to be worked through. Utena is the one duelist who truly cares about Anthy and her personhood, but her own purity of heart makes it hard for her to see the worst of what is happening to the "Rose Bride" (well, to either of them, actually). Anthy has been trapped in controlling, abusive relationships and treated like an object for so long that she barely knows what she wants. Her rebellions are so subtle you might almost miss them. Utena attempts to save her by defying the princess/witch dichotomy of female roles to become Anthy’s prince. But that can’t work because taking on a masculine role just perpetuates the same toxic patterns and exposes her to the same “I have to save everyone else no matter the cost to myself” issue that brought down princes before her. The moment where they finally reach out to each other as equals almost certainly inspired a similar iconic moment in the recent She-Ra reboot (see images below). However, in that case the roles are reversed, with the darker-skinned character whose mind had been warped by years of abuse and who is beginning to heal being the one to reach out to the sword-wielder who thinks she has no value except in being constantly selfless and saving others.
Which brings me to another point: Like ‘She-Ra’, this show is incredibly gay. It’s mostly subtext here (it was the ‘90s, after all), but it is the loudest subtext you will ever see2! Of the nine most central characters, two are probably straight, five are definitely not, and two are equivocal. Nanami, who initially seems like the standard bitchy mean girl but later gains a lot more depth, is obsessed with her brother Touga (fortunately not “like that”, it eventually turns out). Wakaba might exuberantly jump on the lead and call her “Utena, my love” but, paradoxically, that’s how you know her feelings are platonic. Juri (who, incidentally, dresses even more masculine than Utena) is definitely in love with a female friend but is afraid to talk to her about it. When he thinks Nanami is confessing to liking girls, Touga starts spouting some nonsense about how one needs to reject such urges despite the fact we’ve already seen him literally in bed with Akio, the main (male) villain of the show. Touga also keeps trying to hit on Utena, but he’s so used to manipulating people even he doesn’t seem to be sure how genuine his feelings are; the only reason she’s ever even remotely tempted is when he reminds her of the prince she thinks inspired her. Utena is also seduced by Akio3 but, again, that is partly because he is tangled up in her partial memories of the prince and her feelings for Anthy (who is Akio’s sister). One of the YouTube comments suggests that Anthy might be asexual, but it could also be that she is so used to not having agency in that realm that she isn’t really thinking about what she wants.
The ending apparently seems sad to some. Certainly, if you are expecting a triumphant lesbian kiss in a shower of rose petals, you need to temper your expectations. Or watch the movie, which Ikuhara did end that way – but since that compresses almost 900 minutes of show plot into 90 with even more confusing imagery (Utena turns into a car at one point), it is probably best to watch the show first! You get the impression that Ikuhara was working under constraints, but he does a lot with meaningful hand holding and images like the one below. While at the end Utena and Anthy are not together, Anthy has freed her own mind. You see, you can’t free an abuse victim without their cooperation, and Anthy needed to let go of the toxic world-view she grew up with in order to actually believe in Utena’s love. So the happy ending is that they could be together, and probably will; There is no reason to believe Anthy is going to give up on finding her true “prince” again. There also isn’t the kind of “revolution” some – including the characters – probably expect. But what you do get is probably more inspiring in a practical way. Most of us don’t get to literally fight monsters or chuck evil rings into volcanoes, but we can all be the change we want to see in the world, and Utena leaves everyone she comes into contact with better than she found them.
I really wish more young adult books and movies could take inspiration from stories like this. ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’ contains a lot of stuff that is dark and disturbing – but it is disturbing in the right way. The youngest viewers will probably miss most of the darkness hidden under the bright color palette but can still pick up some good lessons on what true friendship or bad boyfriends look like. Older viewers who do get the subtext will get that horrified, stomach-churning feeling exactly where one should. Oh, and by the way: A story inspired by this doesn’t have to be gay. Much as we still need more stories like this and ‘She-Ra’, het teen romance is such a cesspool that yes, please, someone write a love interest that is “Utena, but a boy”*! Moreover, characters that could have felt like stock cardboard cutouts all get interesting development. Saionji is indeed an abusive asshole at the beginning, but we also get to see that when not under the toxic influence of the school he has the potential to be kind of an adorable dork. Importantly, though, he doesn’t get paired up with anyone to show he is “redeemed” – you just see that he, along with Touga, Nanami, and others – have the potential to work on themselves and get better. Juri and the youngest duelist, Miki, don’t have quite as much work to do; they are damaged, but never evil, and show a greater ability to resist Akio’s temptations. Akio himself is too far gone. And while most viewers would be happy to see him dead at the end, what actually happens is arguably what most needs to happen.
1. Though ‘uniform’ is kind of a misnomer, as no one else in the series wears a black-and-red jacket over basketball shorts! It is always a bad sign when Utena starts acting “girly”. As her friend Wakaba angrily points out when she starts wearing the “normal” girl uniform: “normal” for everyone else isn’t normal for Utena!
2. I give it the highest ranking on the ‘Good Omens’ scale: 2.0 – You have to have your head in a bucket to miss it!
3. Well, that’s not technically the right word, since while the ages of the characters are confusing (Touga and Saionji in particular do not look or act like high school students) Utena is clearly under 18 (and according to the text is really a middle-schooler!) and Akio is clearly an adult. Again, nothing graphic is actually drawn, but…ick.
*Edit - Actually "Utena but a boy" would only work in so far as the rejection of the "gallant prince saves helpless princess" narrative in favor of something more balanced was brought to the fore more obviously. "Anthy but a boy" could be interesting, though you'd have to be careful in adjusting for gender not to recreate either the "female lead must fix the damaged man" or "it's OK that he's a jerk because he has a tragic backstory" tropes. The female-female pairing has an advantage in that it already telegraphs that this story is going to be subversive and you CAN'T apply the more toxic traditional tropes literally. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I'd like to see more stories for young readers featuring male-female pairings where the characters are truly equals and where unhealthy gendered roles/expectations are either just absent or something the characters learn to reject.
That's the sort I'm trying to write in my fiction. For instance, in the "magical Peasant's Revolt" book I'm working on, Eric is a young wizard who doesn't quite fit his society's standards of masculinity, being gentle, bookish, and bisexual. Alys, a witch and Eric's childhood friend, is prickly, creative, intuitive, and not at all happy about the limitations placed on witches and women in general. Eric admires Alys' boldness and her inventiveness with magic; Alys admires how Eric reflexively cares for people, and somewhat envies his access to ancient written knowledge. Assuming I've done my job right, though, Eric won't come off particularly "girly" any more than Alys is "boyish" (she actually does have to pretend to be a boy at one point, with rather mixed success) - they're just people with a highly complimentary set of traits.
