#*commentary

[betsyworthingtons]

"We're mutants. We're never safe."

Well, that sounds like a skill issue, James. I've gotten really annoyed and disillusioned by the "Mutants are oppressed" narrative since I finally gave it more than 30 seconds of thought.

Many of them are very powerful, and in those cases, you can pay me to believe that they'd be oppressed by humans in real life.

[what-is-my-aesthetic]

MINIONS LORE

As many of you know I had to post again bc after it was out for an hour the first time they shut it down due to me saying horny too much

[horse-girl-anthy]

The City and the Self: Or, the Uses of Lesbianism

someone in my server recently asked why Ikuhara seems so hung up on lesbians. I gave a short answer which in hindsight doesn't satisfy me. even this post won't touch on everything, there's plenty more that could be said, but here's a stab at a more complete answer, drawing from RGU specifically, though I think these points generalize to YKA as well.

a long time ago--around 2017, I believe--I posted in the RGU tag, asking about differences between how the western and Japanese fanbases see the show. the answer I got surprised me: I was told a popular fan theory held that Utena and Anthy were the same person. this is confirmed in the interview Ikuhara did with Mari Kotani:

Kotani: How did you think about relationships between two women, like the relationships between Utena and Anthy, Juri Arisugawa and Shiori Takatsuki, and so on? Sometimes it is thought of as one girl and her alter ego. Ikuhara: Yes, that's true of course.

at the time, this didn't make sense to me. now, though I don't take the "alter ego" concept literally, I certainly see where these theorists were coming from.

the very first impression the audience gets of the show, the opening seconds of the theme song, depict Utena and Anthy as mirror images of one another. I can't find the post now, but I once saw someone do a face swap of Utena and Anthy... and there was almost no difference in the final result aside from their eye color. yes, the show has somewhat same-y character designs (pointy chins, noses, etc.), and yes, Utena and Anthy are differentiated by coloring and height. however, there are differences in the facial features of the other characters, including other female characters like Juri and Nanami, meaning that you wouldn't get the same result from face swapping them that you do from face swapping Utena and Anthy.

visually, the show is trying to tell you something: Utena and Anthy are counterparts; not "the same person," in that there are clear contrasts between them, but perhaps different aspects of a single self. to put it another way, they cannot be separated from one another; what happens to one of them will affect the other, and how they relate to each other tells you a lot about how they relate to themselves.

RGU is not the first story to have this premise. I just watched Ingmar Bergman's Persona, which uses two women to tell the story of one woman, and that came out all the way back in 1966. I think that it's possible to do this kind of story with characters of different genders--however, it's most often done with homosexual/homosocial pairings because two people of the same gender are seen as better mirrors to one another.

when I initially gave my response as to why Ikuhara writes a lot of lesbians, I cited the influence of shoujo manga. however, I didn't detail how homosexuality was featured in those manga.

Ikuhara once said that the core theme of shoujo is "self-revelation." he wanted to capture that in RGU, and it seems to have come across. consider Takemiya Keiko's reading of RGU as "A story about independence, about finding oneself. It feels like a story about a girl defining 'what is myself?'"

this journey of self-discovery must involve encounter with the other. part of romance is other-longing, the desire to meet the unknown; love requires a separate entity which is not merely an extension of the self (this is why I don't believe that Utena and Anthy actually are "the same person"). through encountering the other, one can find one's own self, and further, through this encounter, the selves which meet can be transformed.

while plenty of 20th century shoujo did center heterosexual couples, I believe that homosexual and homosocial relations were so prevalent because they facilitated this romance more effectively. on a visual level, a homosexual pairing can create a clearer parallel, as discussed above. for a more thematic angle, RGU's lead writer Enokido has mused that homosexuality removes the issue of "genetic advantage" from the equation; since there is not a clear "survival and reproduction" benefit to homosexuality, it is easier to see it as "pure love." along the same lines, Ikuhara has said that "as soon as you see the destination point of producing children, sex becomes a social system." that's not to say that homosexual couples exist independently from social systems. the point is that writers who wish to pursue the idea of "self-discovery through the other" may wish to do so in the context where the norms of heterosexuality are not an issue, as they could muddy the water.

as an example, take Kaze to Ki no Uta, an influence on RGU. Gilbert and Serge, the lead couple, are very different people. often in conflict, their love ends tragically. that is precisely the power of the story: Serge, who is left alone after Gilbert's death, will live the rest of his life feeling incomplete, unwhole, because he has lost the "other self" by which he came to be defined. in Ikuhara's words, "It’s a story about that which forms the core of an artist - a starvation that can never be satiated."

when done properly, this kind of romance can be very moving, because it is not only a "love story" but also a story about the self and its relationship to the other. and even more potent are stories which are both about "finding one's other self" and about "the city":

Ikuhara: Out of your works, I particularly like the stories about cities... Stories of cities and “one’s other self” are enchanting aren’t they. There are a lot of shoujo mangaka who write about one’s other self, but there aren’t really any who write about cities. I think a story is weak if it only talks about relatives and neighbours and never about cities. In contrast, I think your stories which are simultaneously about cities really bring out their era. I think that allows you to mark out a line for the story of the other self. Takemiya: Personally, I feel at a basic level that stories without a sense of daily life aren’t very interesting. If one thinks of each person as a single cell, then the city becomes the “body”, and one cannot create a world without both. Based on where they live, some people become more modern or more provincial - the environment really plays a role. For me, it is a necessary component.

I agree with this exchange: the best stories about "one's other self" aren't solely about love between two people, but instead love between two people placed in a particular social context. it is that social context which gives the relationship flavor.

this brings us to the other reason that lesbianism (and homosexuality more broadly) is used in Ikuhara's works. not only does it allow him to tell stories about "one's other self," but also to tell stories about social systems. homosexuality is "deviant" within the social system that is set up to produce children in the nuclear family; thus, homosexual couples will face resistence and prejudice. as Ikuhara discussed in this interview, he is not necessarily trying to capture "the lesbian experience" in his works, but rather using lesbianism as an allegory for the sense of being a minority; a person outcast for standing out from the crowd. homosexuality thus allows for a marriage between the themes of "the self" and "the city" which are central to the telling of a great romance.

bringing it full circle, let's take a look at how this plays out in Utena and Anthy's dynamic, specifically the climax of the first arc. in the build up to it, Utena has been insisting that Anthy behave like a "normal girl," and believes she's succeeding in this venture. however, her illusions are crushed when Touga defeats her in the duel called Conviction. Anthy, now his bride, tells Utena that she likes being the Rose Bride and doesn't mind being alone.

Utena's reaction to this is interesting. suddenly, she is obsessed with being a "normal girl" herself, deftly signaling that all along, she was projecting her own conceptions onto Anthy. though she comes to realize this, Utena ultimately decides to duel again; in the episode 11 preview, she says, "Himemiya, wait! I have to try to get the real you and the real me back!" their selves are linked, tied; Utena cannot be herself without Anthy. what's more, the "false self" that Utena presents is linked to Anthy's "false self"--for, despite her words, it is quite difficult to believe that she "enjoys" being the Rose Bride, any more than Utena "enjoys" wearing girl's clothes. after Utena wins the duel called Self, she and Anthy meet again, paralleling the end of the first episode, but when Anthy tries to impart the rules of the rose crest, Utena tells her, "never mind all that, let's just go home." the two share a moment of authenticity, their "false selves" blown away like petals in the wind. they've drawn closer to each other and to who they truly are, while simultaneously gaining a level of independence from the system which seeks to define them by their gender. the rest of the show will play out in the same manner.

----

side note: I don't think that Ikuhara is more fixated on lesbianism than he is on male homosexuality; however, I'm not sure if he's focused on "mirroring" between homosexual males the same way he has between females, despite the fact that his cited inspiration for the way he wrote relationships between girls in RGU is yaoi.

[i-have-no-enemies]

Thorfinn with messy hair and stubble will always be so important to me

[cosmicjoke]

The Student Becoming the Teacher:

You know what I realized about this moment?

Kenny is envious of Levi.

He asks Levi, with naked derision, "What are you?! A hero?!", because Levi is what Kenny always wanted, but never managed to be, which is a good person, and Levi managed it without ever needing to gain ultimate power.

Kenny believed that the only way to be a good person was if you were so powerful, you could simply afford to be good. In other words, as long as it cost you nothing to be so. As long as you were untouchable and not at risk of losing anything through your acts of kindness. And that really exposes Kenny's own, selfish nature, that he believed goodness could only be attained through being in a position of total power. That he couldn't conceive of there being someone who would willingly sacrifice their own well-being for the sake of someone else. He sought the power of a Titan like Uri had because he thought that would allow him to be a good person like Uri. And, ironically, in his warped philosophy of how to achieve goodness, fueled by his selfish nature, and in his pursuit of that goal, he only became a worse and worse person, murdering whoever got in the way of him achieving what he wanted for himself.

And of course there's a fundamental flaw in Kenny's thinking.

He didn't understand that what makes someone a good person, what makes someone a hero, more specifically, isn't simply bestowing acts of kindness and mercy, such as Uri showed to him, but an ability and willingness to sacrifice something of ourselves for the betterment of others. Someone who is willing to give up what's most important to them if it means helping someone else.

A hero is someone who's willing to lose so that someone else can win.

And nobody embodies that willingness, that heroism, more than Levi.

Kenny accuses Levi here of "killing when it benefits (him)", too, and Levi agrees, but that's actually not true.

Levi never actually does anything in the story for his own benefit. He never acts toward self-advancement, but always toward the advancement of others. He's the only character in the series who doesn't carry a personal dream that he's fighting for, but instead fights for the dreams of others.

That selflessness is what defines him, along with his compassion, empathy and kindness.

Levi is willing to do bad things, things which take a personal toll on him, like killing, like committing acts of violence, as long as it means other people don't have to also carry that burden, as he explains in his monologue to the 104th. Levi is willing to lose one of the most important people in his life in Erwin, a person he's relied on for so long to guide him, because it means saving Erwin himself from becoming a monster and giving him peace. Levi is willing to give up a physical memento which would have brought him comfort in his grief, in order to bring comfort to another, grieving soldier, like he does when he gives Petra's patch to Dieter. Levi is willing to repress his own, natural instinct to save lives and carry the burden and pain of that choice because it means more lives will be saved down the line and because it's what his comrades chose to give their lives for, like when he makes the choice for Erwin and the one hundred other scouts to charge to their death against the Beast Titan, or when he stays the course of their mission to lead the Female Titan into Erwin's trap, even as he knows the soldiers behind him are being slaughtered. Levi is willing to destroy his body in order to save the lives of his comrades, like when he rescues Mikasa, when he rescues Jean, when he rescues Connie, and ends up disabled and needing the use of a wheelchair for the rest of his life as a result.

That's a large part of what differentiates Levi from Kenny. Kenny kills to advance himself, to achieve greater personal strength because he himself wants to be "good", all while being so blinded by that personal ambition and selfishness that he fails to see how his actions take him further and further from being what he wants to be, while Levi kills to save the lives of other people, to honor their choices and allow them agency, even when it costs him his own, personal comfort and may even cost him the ability to call himself a "good person". Ironically, of course, it's that very willingness that makes Levi a good person, that makes him a hero.

Again, that willingness to lose in order for someone else to win.

Nobody taught Levi that he could use his strength to help others, Kenny least of all. Kenny never taught Levi anything but how to use his strength for personal gain, how to be selfish with his strength, the same way Kenny himself was, wielding his gift only to get what he, personally, wanted, unwilling to lose or sacrifice anything for the benefit of others. Levi discovered on his own that he could use his strength to help others, and on his own, that's what he decided to do, because unlike Kenny, Levi's nature is one of selflessness. He instinctively understood, once he realized his strength could be used to help people, that because he had this thing that others didn't, he should share it and use it for their benefit. He felt an obligation even to use it for others, to give them what he had, the same way we see Levi give what he has to others all throughout the story, even when it leaves him with nothing for himself. Kenny only understood that the thing he had should be horded and used for further self-gain.

That's the difference between someone with great, natural empathy, with great, natural compassion and kindness, and someone without any empathy at all, someone who at their core is selfish and self-serving. The difference between someone who's good and someone's who's bad.

And what's so interesting about this, then, is that it wasn't ever Kenny who taught Levi how to be a hero, or how to be good, but Levi, in the end, who instead teaches Kenny.

Through his encounter with Levi during the Uprising arc, Kenny realizes that Levi has managed to become on his own what Kenny always strove to be. A good man. And he sees how that goodness expresses itself through Levi's selfless actions. Kenny learns, through Levi, that to be good is to sacrifice, to be a hero is to help others even when, and most especially when, it comes at great, personal cost.

It's no coincidence that at the end of his life, after he's born witness to Levi and his genuine heroism, that Kenny finally learns what it means to be a good person, and we see him commit the only, truly selfless act of his life, by giving up his dream and giving the serum to Levi.

Because he learns through Levi that it's not power or invincibility that makes someone good. It's not a lack of desperation or being in a position of having nothing to lose that makes someone's generous actions heroic. It's easy to do good when it costs you nothing. It's easy to be generous when you have more than enough. It's when being merciful, being kind, being compassionate actually costs you personally, and you do those things anyway, that someone can truly be defined as being a good person. As being a hero.

Earlier, Kenny bragged about "teaching (Levi) everything he knows", and talked about his pride in that, wanting to take responsibility for the person Levi was. But Kenny didn't teach Levi this. He didn't teach Levi how to be good. He didn't teach Levi how to be a hero.

Kenny's tone implies sarcasm when he asks Levi if he's a hero, and it's because Kenny is actually envious of Levi, and maybe even in awe of him. He's angry, because Levi managed to become the man Kenny could only ever dream of being, and he did it totally on his own, without Kenny's help or example.

It's a case of the student becoming the teacher.

In the end, it was Levi who taught Kenny the most important lesson of all, by showing him what it truly means to be a good person.

[portland-polycule-archive]

New reaction image just dropped!

[askshivanulegacy]

This is all totally valid. I don't think most audiences are under the impression that a live action remake is the more "real" version of a story. Animated originals will always be superior because they're the original, anyway.

I also doubt a company like Disney is confused either, they're just pushing CG tech, not always very well, and getting money for it.

Their time and effort could possibly be better spent making something brand new, but also the live action remakes don't take anything away from the originals either. Sometimes they're even enjoyable. I'm definitely looking forward to see the new Lion King live action just for fun.

It's also not true that you can't convey emotion and personality with realistic animals. Just go watch Homeward Bound.

You don't have to love live action, but also you've lost nothing at all by the existence of it. Just don't go watch movies that don't interest you.

Since we keep getting "live action" CGI remakes of already perfectly adequate animated movies, and because people need to understand that animation is a medium and not a genre, I have prepared this primer about the importance of Visual Language for Conveying Information.

Can you tell what the personalities of these two mice are?

Can you tell now?

Which of these two tigers feels safer to be around?

Which of these three dogs is the funniest one?

If you can answer these questions, then you already have experience with the idea of visual language and stylistic choices being used to impart narrative meaning. If you can understand why these choices were made to impart meaning, then you can understand why animation is a medium for telling stories that has its own inherent value, and is not merely a "placeholder" for the eventual implementation of photorealistic presentation (aka "Live Action" CGI). Animation does not need to be "corrected" or "legitimized" by remaking it into the most representational simulation of observable reality.

[appendectomy]

i dont think iwtv couldve communicated the utter horror of claudia's situation better than in that scene of her being dragged on the floor by louis. its genuinely frightening to watch. it really hammers home the emotional horror that exists in louis and lestats relationship - revealing the depth of louis despair, so awful that it would make him do something like that, beg the way he did. lestats own strange panic, unsettling. and the plain, unobscured, violent horror of claudia's burned body being pulled around like a doll, never to have autonomy ever again. its not romantic, not from any point of view, not anymore. it is just horror.

[satelliteantenna]

no nuance. and assume they're of age

[bikiniarmorbattledamage]

This is truly stiff competition for the worst case of willful false equivalence we've ever seen.

So, for those not aware: Ongoing embarrassment to gamers and the gaming industry, Mark Kern (former lead on FireFall), has been desperately trying to get Gamergate 2 going on X/Twitter... well after others have given up. If you need to get caught up on Mark, I recommend this video by documentary maker and experienced game developer, Dead Domain:

One of the latest fiascos in this mix has been the comparison of responses to character designs from Hades 2 (Aphrodite, left) and Stellar Blade (protagonist Eve, right). The post isn't by Mark, but is part of the general harassment campaign he's trying to lead.

If you're somehow not familiar with Aphrodite, she's the Ancient Greek goddess of love, lust and hot girl shit. It is absolutely perfect characterization for her to show up to a battle (or anything else) nude but for her hair teasingly covering the intimate parts of her body. But the buried lede here is, you don't fight her in Hades and nothing about Hades 2 indicates she'll fight there either, she just likes the aesthetic and has no reason not to indulge.

Stellar Blade will release on 26 April 2024, so we can't really give an informed discussion of her character. But what we do know is the studio head is the illustrator from Blade & Soul, Eve is described as being a member of "the 7th Airborne Squad" engaged in an "operation to reclaim the planet from the Naytiba", and the promotion material promises "an enthralling narrative filled with mature themes, mystery and revelation. Embrace the relentless pace, with no time to pause between moments where critical, story-changing decisions are made."

It's to be compared to games like Nier: Automata, Devil May Cry 5, Jedi: Fallen Order and Sekiro. And the screenshots look like this:

And yeah, unlike Bayonetta she's not supposed to be an unstoppable force of nature (and fashion) who is immune to self-doubt, she's supposed to be the scrappy underdog last survivor of her team.

Weird they gave her a costume that conveys... the opposite of literally everything they're supposed to be trying to tell you about her.

-wincenworks

[askshivanulegacy]

These industry people need to start conceptualizing projects like this as employment and not just commission gigs. Full time work is employment. It's that simple. If the project is half a year, take a year salary and divide it in half as an easy framework: $20-40K or more depending on cost of living expenses and skill/experience of the artist. That's the level these people need to be thinking, and I bet they're not.

It's a problem a lot of people with "cool projects" weirdly seem to have. It's not a hard thing to price out. The cost of the project is the cost of the project, to include employees ... which is all your hired talent. It's not artists who are insane, it the industry people. They should be embarrassed, especially since they evidently weren't competent enough to secure necessary funding to pay their talent.

Frankly, they are not that serious if they can't manage that funding lift.

ah......I might have priced myself out of a cool work opportunity. it's happened before - serious industry people come to me with projects that would take half a year of me working full time, and then I calculate my mortgage, my food, my various bills, add a sprinkle of profit on top so that I'm not just breaking even, and ask for that. and the response is always "wtf, you're insane!"

I don't like working in illustration. it's why I barely do any freelance anymore. my wrists are ruined, my back is ruined, and I have to make enough to keep living. I can't jump for crumbs anymore.

[lexyscross]

William I guess had the decency (???) to at least have some emotion in his face after stabbing Vanessa. But really, it boils down to the fact that he intentionally stabbed she own child, he looked her in the eyes while doing so, and then after his flash of emotion he seemed to have the resolve of "Well, it had to be done."

God, the Complex Toxic Characterization lover in me is frothing at the mouth about this. I wanna study them both like bugs. (x)

[dragonnnfly]

“This is Berk. It’s 12 days north of hopeless, and a few degrees south of freezing to death.”

So, Hiccup is a sarcastic little shit (and we love him for it) we know this. This is clearly a jab at just how terrible Berk’s position in the archipelago is, but, oh, I’d have loved if this was actual names of islands in httyd.

Like, we’d obviously think this is sarcasm, but then one day in one of the tv shows they’ll visit the islands Hopeless and Freezing to death, briefly, and we’d be left going “…..huh….. They exist…”

[flyinghellfish]

David Mirkin discussing which of The Simpsons writers are gay

[wrong-turn-ronald]

So wonderfully put here ^^^

Not to get emo on main but you ever think about how the troop sang about their dreams of finding “a girl worth fighting for”, and they think their girl worth fighting for is one of romance, but the song abruptly comes to a halt when they find a different girl worth fighting for.

A tiny girl that had been killed at the hands of the Huns. A child too weak, too small to have any chance of withstanding the murderous invaders. That is their girl worth fighting for.

[horse-girl-anthy]

Revolutionary Girl Utena: Gender in Context

beneath the cut, I discuss the RGU's portrayal of gender in the context of 1990s Japan.

in Ikuhara's interview with Mari Kotani, he stated that in traditional Japanese society, "prince" meant "patriarch." the same is true in Western societies--there was a time when a prince would be an heir to a royal line. by 1997, this meaning had died out of large parts of the world. even the association between princes and traditional masculinity was fading. Saionji, the weakest, most pathetic man in the show, is a parody of historical Japanese masculinity, with his kendo and his blatantly regressive beliefs about women.

in RGU, prince may still mean patriarch, but in a far more subtle fashion. Ikuhara and Kotani discussed the changing expectations for men in the latter half of the 20th century--it became gauche to fight over a woman with one's brawn, so instead, power struggles were played out in the arena of looks and sex appeal. one can see this reflected in the character Akio, whose power as a prince arises from his ability to turn "easy sensual pleasure based on dependency" "into a selling point with which to control people."

Akio has his moments of showboating masculinity, but when preying on Utena, he operates by making himself seem non-threatening and soft.

not only that, but he purports to want to allow students to express their individuality and thus approves of Utena's masculine form of dress. this is a front--by the end of the show, he's telling Utena that girls shouldn't wield swords. thus, through Akio's character, the show argues that traditionalist patriarchy in Japan isn't gone, but instead has only been papered over with false progressivism.

with all that said, there seems to be more to the character. he's taken the family name of his fiance, Kanae, and whatever material power he has in the school is dependent upon her family. in Japanese society, this is considered a humiliating position to be in, something that only a shameless man would do. the show never gives the audience any insight into how Akio feels about this--is he unbothered entirely, or are his actions against the Ohtori family an expression of his repressed anger? does he harm the children under his care to compensate for his humiliation?

this aspect of Akio's character may seem irrelevant in light of the larger, immaterial social forces at work in the show. however, I would argue that it was included for a reason. Akio, despite his status as ultimate patriarch of Ohtori, is in fact a highly emasculated character, to the point where lead writer Enokido even said that he is driven by an infantile mother complex.

to explain why Akio was portrayed this way, we have to discuss Japanese history. the nation suffered a major defeat in WWII and was forced to accept whatever terms the United States laid out for it. for an examination of how the Japanese have never truly processed those events and have plunged into modernity with reckless abandon, I recommend Satoshi Kon's Paranoia Agent. to sum it up briefly, in a very short period, the nation regained its economic footing, and by the 1980s had the largest gross national product in the world. this economic boom may have allowed Japan to maintain a sense of sovereignty, dignity, and power, but it was inherently fragile.

the infamous "bubble economy" lasted from 1986 to 1991. during this time, anything seemed possible; financial struggles appeared to be a thing of the past, and capitalist excess reached new heights. the ghosts of this period can be felt across Japanese media; for instance, think of the final shot of Grave of the Fireflies (1998), where the two dead children look down on Kobe, glowing an eerie green to imply its impermanence. the abandoned theme park from Spirited Away (2001) is explicitly referred to as a leftover from the previous century, when many attractions were built and then tossed aside in a few short years.

the bubble popped in 1992, leaving an entire generation feeling cheated. the bright futures they'd been promised, which had actually materialized for their parents and older siblings, had been lost to them overnight. economic crises are often accompanied by gender panics. to quote from Masculinities in Japan, "The recession brought with itself worsening employment conditions, undermining the system of lifelong employment and men’s status of breadwinners in general. The unemployment rate was rising, and although it never reached crisis levels, men could no longer feel safe in their salaryman status. Their situation was further complicated by the rising number of (married) women entering the workforce."

with this in mind, Akio's character can be taken as a representation of masculinity in crisis in 90s Japan. he's forced to rely on women for his position in life and has failed to save his only relative, Anthy. he tries to escape his misery through hedonism, perhaps an allegorical representation of how men tried to maintain their old standard of living after the economic bubble burst.

but of course, Akio is not the main character of RGU--the story is about girls. mangaka Yamada Reiji discussed the series in the context of the 90s, stating the following:

while I opened this essay by discussing the prince, the same points could be made about the princess. despite the increasing irrelevance of royalty, princess is still an important concept. how does it relate to the socioeconomic landscape of the 90s?

in Yamada's view, RGU is full of relics of the 80s; for instance, the figure of the ojou-sama, an entitled young woman who never lifts a finger for herself. during the economic bubble, it was increasingly common for women to be entirely taken care of by the men in their lives. Yamada names Nanami as a clear ojou-sama type character: she weaponizes her femininity, demanding to be rescued, doted on, and served.

however, by 1997, the ojou-sama could no longer expect to get what she wanted. from the 80s to the 90s, the percentage of women in the workforce increased around 15%; it was no longer viable for most women to be "kept" by their families. as the men experienced the humiliation of not being able to provide for their wives and children, women were undergoing a disillusionment of their own.

Yamada blames Disney for creating the ideological structure which led women astray. obviously, the company is known for its films about princes rescuing princesses. in Yamada's recounting, during the 80s, the company was infiltrating Japan through its theme parks as well; across the country, Disneylands were opening up, and people were buying into the escapism the corporation offered. Japan, as America, became a country of eternal children. its people were waiting for a prince to appear and save them.

but fairy tales can't stave off reality forever. Yamada claims that RGU embodies the rage of young women who woke up one day and realized that they had been raised on a lie. this anger pervades the work from beginning to end.

though RGU was created in a particular social context, its lessons can be extrapolated to any time and place. as the first ending tells us:

I hope this essay helped provide more context for the series. thanks for reading!