On Revolutionary Girl Utena: Part 1

 

While most bloggers are busy discussing the new season I’m still stuck on Revolutionary Girl Utena. I feel as if I’ve discovered a long lost friend… who won’t leave me alone. So I’ve decided that the only solution is to write about it but between 1997 and now hasn’t everything already been said?

Well, maybe not. Fans have tried dissecting the meaning behind every single spinning rose and character relationship but Utena is such a layered show that they’ve still only just scratched the surface. And for my purposes I’m not so concerned with every minute interpretation as with the show as a whole.

This won’t be a review because let’s face it, reviews get boring. I simply want to discuss some of the things that make Utena so unique and so damn good. I’ll try to do it justice while keeping this as spoiler free as possible.

In Which I Fail at Summarizing Utena in 100 Words or Less

The story goes like this: once upon a time there was a girl named Utena whose parents had just died. Before her appeared a prince who wiped away her tears and gave her a rose crested ring, saying that if she stayed noble it would one day lead her to him. However Utena was so impressed by the prince that she decided to become one herself.

Fast forward to the present when the now tomboyish Utena is a middle schooler at Ohtori Academy. Here the all powerful Student Council challenge each other to fencing duels for the possession of the Rose Bride – a girl named Anthy Himemiya – because with her at their side they can gain the power to “revolutionize the world.” 

When Utena wins a duel with the current possessor of the Rose Bride she finds herself caught unwillingly in the council’s games. Choosing to protect Anthy whom she is now “engaged” to, Utena duels with the Student Council who want Anthy and the power she can give them.

When A Car is Not a Car: Surrealism and Symbols

Utena is one of the strangest shows I’ve seen thanks to its surrealistic imagery and symbolism. For instance during Student Council meetings there’s usually something else happening in the background like escaping colored balloons, an apple on a chair or a baseball game. Occasionally the council interacts with these things but other times they seem perfectly unaware of them in a way that almost but not quite breaks suspension of disbelief. It’s sort of like seeing the set move during a play except that the audience is never quite sure if the characters are going to notice or not.

Naturally the same can be said about the Shadow Girls who show up in almost every episode in order to put on a really short shadow play. The subject of the plays are an allegory for whatever is happening that episode, sometimes in ways that are obvious and other times I’m left scratching my head and wondering if even the scriptwriter knew what was going on. 

At first I thought that the Shadow Girls were not really there at all and were something only the audience could see. So I nearly fell out of my chair when in the second arc Utena actually started addressing them by delivering a quip at the end of every play. In the final arc the girls even go so far as to put on a play specifically for Utena which shows her something incredibly relevant to the plot.

The fact that these surreal elements can directly affect the characters just goes to show how integral they are to the story. This is especially true when it comes to the symbolism, and there’s a lot of symbolism: swords, roses, cars, enormous towers, castles in the sky, stampeding elephants… The cynical among us might wonder if all of these symbols really hold any meaning or if they’re just there to look cool. Well they do look cool but this is not just an instance of cross shaped explosions for the sake of it.

In constantly drawing attention to the symbols by placing them prominently in the frame or repeating them again and again, director Kunihiko Ikuhara makes it very clear that they’re more than just window dressings. Sometimes the symbols emphasize something about a character such as with Akio the acting chairman of the school who appears in the second arc and lives in an incredibly tall tower. An extremely phallic tower to be precise. He also drives a shiny red sports car. Clearly these symbols represent his power and authority which is tied directly to his masculinity and with Utena, in which gender roles and the subversion of them are so important, you can bet that this relates to an understanding of everything about the show itself (but that would be a topic for another post).

In fact almost nothing is ever directly explained in Utena or if it is you shouldn’t necessarily trust what’s being said. The closest a character even comes to explaining they key concept of the show, what it means to “revolutionize the world”, is in the mantra that the Student Council says before every meeting. Which is itself a metaphor where they describe the world as an egg and themselves as chicks trying to break free. From which one can infer that the revolution has something to do with birth or life but full understanding doesn’t come until later in the show when all is revealed… through the use of yet more symbols.

The way Utena makes use of its visuals in this way, completely ignoring that adage you sometimes hear about how a director should make his presence invisible, is one of my favorite things about it and in all likelihood what people remember it the most for. Although I do have to wonder if there are people who’ve dropped it (the fools!) because they simple couldn’t stand when things got strange. Rather like those who hate Ef – A Tale of Memories for the intrusive sky.

Now I was going to discuss a couple of other things but my wordiness got the best of me again and this post is God awfully long. Even I don’t want to go back and read it.

Next time: the use of repetition, why Utena has awesome characterization and maybe the worst best musical ever made?