#Utena: The Rebloggening

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I've written before about how much I love the way this is drawn, because in only letting us see small slices of what's going on, it not only pulls us into those specific details, but forces us to listen more closely to the words that are being spoken. It eliminates distraction.

The glasses. Anthy's glasses are about covering up, are about hiding, and it's always been so interesting to me that in these horrible moments with her brother, she is not only exposed, but she is REAL. One of, I think, the triumphs of this show is that way it allows for the fact that Anthy is a victim, yes, but she's also deeply possessive of Akio as much as she hates him, and she has her own anger and rage, and even in hating Akio, because of how she knows him and their history together, there is a rawness there, a realness. Even without all of *gestures wildly* this, siblings are a complicated thing. I think that's part of what Ikuhara is meaning to say in a lot of this show and unfortunately mostly ends up being like "Siblings secretly want to fuck" but I digress. You are, generally, in each other's lives from birth. Love and hatred and jealousy and pride can all very very be easily bound up in the same person. When you have that much shared history it's very tough to engage with each other in a way that isn't glasses-off, even if you privately and secretly would like to leave the glasses on. Even in this HORRIBLE moment with Akio, Anthy is still more KNOWN here, as princess and witch and victim and villain, her history laid bare. (I also think this is part of what Ikuhara is getting to with the incest thing, but also, stop)

And the things Akio says here, about having discovered a comet (In what? In the fucking planetarium that you constructed? I mean, yes, obviously, but also, come on dude) before, and also that it's new, a star no one else knows about. So we go back to this idea of cycles, of things we do over and over again, and to the point that I'm not sure I think Akio knows where he is in this particular cycle. Is she a comet, is she a star? Is this something you've done before, or something that is new? Is it Utena you've discovered, or someone else? Yes of course, but remember: Planetarium. Which is the school, of course. He's 'discovered' something, but he's also created it, because only he can introduce new things into a planetarium. I've made jokes about how people even fucking get in this school and how far down does Akio's trap lie, but really, if Akio is the one who is essentially setting up this place as a means for producing princesses and princes, of trying to regain his power through the consumption of other's nobility, he's not DISCOVERING things, he's CREATING them.

Which leads me to this idea where he says "Discovering a star makes you think you own it" Well, I mean, you certainly do act that way. And it's not just Utena, remember, he's responsible for all the duelists, in truth. Look at Touga, and tell me that's not some other heavenly body he's molded in service to this little prince factory or whatever. Even when Saionji tries to leave, he's stuck in the forest because he is a possession of Akio's still more than he is his own person. Remember that it's only...Tomiko? I think her name is? Mamiya's sister, I might have that wrong, other than Anthy, who manages within our sight to leave Ohtori, and we are made KEENLY aware that it's only becuse she's come to a realization that none of it is honest. It's a planetarium, and it's not real.

ANYWAY, so, also let's look at the glasses of whiskey. One is heavily drunk, and the other isn't. I can't remember if we see who is who, but if I had to place a bet, I would say that Akio is the one who has drank it all. For all this puffery, I think Akio really lacks the ability to engage with things as they are, that's why he does all the fata morgana fracas, that's why he has the planetarium, that's why he has to engage with all of this storytelling and mythos rather than presenting things as they are. Does even AKIO know the limits of his power?

This whole 'stars belong to no one' is an unintentional tip of Akio's hand about the absolute lack of power he truly has. He can believe he is the master and commander or whatever all he wants, but at the end of the day, his power only comes through Anthy, and the only thing saving his bacon is that I am not sure that at this moment she realizes she CAN leave. It's only Utena that makes her realize she DOES have a choice.

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This is hilarious of course, because all Utena does is act. She's the world's greatest actress, so good that she even fools herself. She's crafted this role for herself so deeply that even she is fooled by it, to the point that she doesn't actually remember what really ("Really" I guess, it being Ohtori) happened between her and the prince, or the reason she wanted to become a prince in the first place.

She acted so much that it became more about the role of prince than about whatever noble aims she had behind it, and in that it's not hard to see where Anthy might also get bound up in that love and hatred for HER, because I think Dios/Akio had the same problem, where it was something did for so long without knowing why that any nobler intention, or decency, ends up falling off you. Now, Utena's not as far down the path as Akio is, of course, but that doesn't mean she couldn't be. One of the great triumphs of this show is showing how essentially everyone can get caught up in these patterns, how they can set themselves into these repeating cycles of hurting and being hurt.

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You know, I have seen a lot of anime openings at this point and time in my life, just by the very nature of what it is I do with my time, and still the Utena opener, all these years later, remains one of my favorites.

Not just "Oh this is a banger" that itself wouldn't be enough to make me rate something like this so highly--I love the opening theme song to Attack on Titan and I won't even WATCH the anime--but in terms of both the song and the imagery both SERVING the anime in a way I think openers mostly don't.

I'm working from translation obviously, but the song repeats this notion of cycles*, directly references things that happen in the anime, and I'm not sure if it was ever en vogue for the song to be written for an anime--I mean, it might still be en vogue now--but this one either very clearly was, or Ikuhara liked it so much that he bent the anime to fit the song (this seems less likely to me) And I'm not sure I can think of another anime opening song I personally have seen that ties so directly into the anime itself.

And the images in the opener! The constant pulling apart, the destruction of the castle, the way Anthy is the one who hands the rose to Utena, Utena SPINNING ALONE at the end, without at all spoiling it for us, you go back to watching it after having seen the anime and go "Oh shit! Yeah, it basically told us a bunch of stuff that was going to happen" I mean I was deep in it even before I finished the anime I was making up THEORIES based on it.

I think the only other opener I remember that feels so related to the show itself was 'School-Live' (great show) and I would argue even it didn't take it as far as Utena--School-Live was reacting to the show, not predicting it--and other than that I can't think of any anime off the top of my head that's had an opener that felt so deeply tied into the show itself.

ANYWAY UTENA

*I will, to the end of my days, take a certain amount of issue with using 'revolution' as a translation for 'things that go around' when something like cycles, eras, seasons, depending on what it's meant for, IN GENERAL, works better, because in English we don't just have meanings, we have IMPLICATIONS. (Other languages of course do as well but I'm talking about English here) Revolution can of course mean "A turn of the earth or whatever" but that's not the common usage of revolution, and here I might go so far as to say that the wordplay is slightly intentional both to throw us off track and to highlight that what Anthy ends up doing in the end IS a kind of revolution in the more classic sense, but like, Pluto? That should not be translated as "soldier of revolution" if what you're going for is, you know, actual understanding. Send hate mail to: Doc Holligay, PO box 1621 Billings, MT USA

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You know, i still don't know what I think Chuchu is, and I'm not sure I'll ever come to a conclusion on that which I like--everything I come up with doesn't fit in some way or the other, and I think the actual ass answer might be, "Chuchu is whatever Ikuhara needs him to be at the time" but moments like this, where Akio is reaching for Utena's shoulder and Anthy stops him by scolding "chuchu" and being able to get in between them, makes me really revisit that idea of him being Anthy's latent desires, her impulses, the things she feels she has to hide.

I ended up not liking that broad spectrum for OTHER reasons, but I like it here.

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I made the joke about the elevator of internal darkness the first time I watched this, but it's not that far off. This is something that shows us a central part of both Akio and Anthy, something that gets down to the base level of how they are formed and the ways in which they have hurt and continue to hurt each other.

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You know, the first time I liveblogged this I knew this concept of the photo was doing something with the way memories can change and shift, and a photo is a way of making things feel more permanent, but even that isn't even true when we think of it at the end, isn't it?

This is the photo we see at the end, but Akio is cropped out of it. This is about how Anthy wanted to remember the moment and the experience, not about how it actually happened, and while that's a very touching moment, it shows how even things that you think of as being accurate record can be manipulated, can be changed, and how there's very little that can be done about that. Things in this world are malleable.

But also, it's so rich of Utena to say that memories don't mean a lot to her when she has constructed her entire identity around not only a memory but one SHE DOES NOT ACTUALLY REMEMBER CORRECTLY

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*Extremely emotionally loaded interaction*

Utena, one room over: GEE WILLIKERS THIS IS FUN

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So it wasn't very meaningful to Kate, obviously if she has no idea if she ever got it back or not. ANd I say that as a real forgetful asshole who means well but has a sieve for a brain. Especially since this isn't years ago or anything, this happened like, last week. Which isn't actually me harshing on Kate--out of all the things I think people should take seriously, I'm not sure 'exchange diaries' is at the top of the list.

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What else does Anthy keep in her chest orb? Wrong answers only. 

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I will never ever stop breaking my head over this! It is NOT the boys’ uniform! You keep saying that, while staring at the boys here, and they are VERY DEFINITELY NOT WEARING THAT. 

But I wonder if it isn’t once again a thing about perception and roles. Utena says that it looks good on the other boys there. Is she, in her mind, really wearing the same thing they are? Is this maybe part and parcel of her playacting out what she believes to be masculinity and how it works? Is she in fact, doing masculinity in a womanly way, and is that why she can be the one to free Anthy, because at the end she refuses to be a princess or a witch, but also refuses to be a prince. 

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Going kind of into what I said last post, the show is drawing a bright line here, for a point. Utena is not a boy. Utena does not think of herself as a boy. Utena is a girl, who does masculine things. And I, personally, love that. I wish there were more of it in media, my KINGDOM for more butch women who it seems to my extremely biased ass basically got skipped over in the representation department. But I doubt Ikuhara is like “RESPECT BUTCH WOMEN” I think this is actually more about how he really wants to make sure that we understand however she dresses and whatever she says about princliness, Utena is a woman who occupies women’s space in the world, even if she’s doing it unconventionally. Because her position as a woman is such an important social/political thing in this show (and in life, I think) we need to be well aware that it is a part of who she is. 

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You know the first time I watched this, I could not possibly have known that these were the three important locations in the show, but it isn’t until seeing it overhead like this that I really realize HOW close the Dueling Forest ahaha, is to Ohtori in general, and how notably strange it is that seems little commented on by the rest of the students. I know Saionji ends up camping out there, when he’s in exile, but otherwise it’s mostly shied from. 

I mean, is this one of those things where it’s really about people being able to ignore these structures and machinations of the ruling classes that is RIGHT there, next to them, because they’re so busy in the petty little pursuits of the day to day? I mean, they could burn that fucking forest down if they wanted to. Is it just a think that they don’t know about not because they are stupid, but because it doesn’t MATTER to them? I mean, the duels are discussed very openly in the show, in public, so it can’t be some grand secret. 

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BEST PERSON WAKABA!!! I LOVE HER!!!

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One of the reasons I like this show so much is it absolutely and necessarily complicates victim narratives, and Anthy is maybe the finest exhibit of that not just in anime, but in a lot of media I’ve experienced in general. It’s important for us to note here that she tends the roses, because a large amount of what Anthy does within this system is manipulate Utena’s memories of being SAVED so she can be manipulated into SAVING. Anthy tends carefully at those memories of her being protected, so she thinks, by the prince, and allow her to cast herself in that role, and that idea has to be this constant background radiation, much like the scent of roses permeating the grounds. 

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“OH wait, I meant, your ass belongs to me, and Akio can fucking fight me in the taco bell parking lot” 

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Me  at the end of any given Mushishi episode.