#and only talks about utena personally

[anonymous-gambito]

This is such a weird thing to say

[echothelover]

Is it just me or do people view Shiori solely through her black rose arc episode way more than they do the other black rose duelists?

[the-cooler-king]

Oh yeah..... midnight gospel be hitting.... sitting in my bed fuckin. Crying. Get a grip girl

[ghostsontelevision]

i'm still listening to the utena james somerton podcast. hey was this post a lil too prophetic in hindsight

"would more people watch utena if they knew gay men were in it" probably but i don't know if i could handle utena discourse from someone who only got interested once they discovered gay men were in it

[cafeleningrad]

absolutely no offense to anyone because I discover many details, and re-evaluate aspects on rewatches of Ikuhara works every time, too. But my take why Shiori often receives such an uncritical "witch" treatment by the fandom by claiming she's the toxic element within the Shiojuri dynamic is because Juri hits maybe a bit too close to home for many viewers/is easy to to feel sympathy for, therefore hard to blame.

But Juri wouldn't be in a duelist position if she didn't harbor selfish interests from a privileged position. Granted, like Utena, she's easily at risk of loosing them simply because she's a woman. She dresses and behaves more masculine in public than in private. She's not safe from assault. But Juri is also at the top of the popularity food chain. One thing that marks the duelist is an extreme detachment from the world around them while mourning their own existential pain. Whereas many in the position as princess are more engaged with the world around them. Yes they've personal desires, and they seek to fix them by attaching themselves to their prince. But consider how all Black Rose duelist, previously in the princess position talk to side characters, have other friends, interact with classmates, whereas the duelists only talk to their duelist peers, Anthy (projection of their desire), and eventually authority figures which includes Akio.

Anyhow, back to Juri. Juri is understandably depressed about her future prospect. She's unable to imagine how her hope for love and happiness could ever be real at a homophobic place like Ohtori. However, she also closed herself off to the possibility that this could ever be real. Juri identifies herself so much with the certainty of pain, with herself as tortured existence, she detached herself form the world. Any belief, statement, or living example contradicting Juri's assumption of certain doom are met with her aggressive reaction.

Anthy got a rise out of Juri for imitating Shiori's gesture which was accompanied by Shiori's encouragement for Juri to open up. Utena being oblivious about her sexuality but also the hope that she might find something promising in her future angered Juri to the point of demanding a duel. Juri identifies herself so much with her pain, she ignores the real. Shiori in her locket is "innocently cruel", dating any boy, not Juri. However this is Juri's misconception often taken at face value. Utena appears oblivious about her intimate connection to Anthy, two girls who're basically married; a status Utena often has but also aims to defend (although Juri also overlooks how conflicted Utena feels about the matter). In the same vain, Juri ignores how Shiori isn't oblivious to Juri's pain, that she isn't dating around for fun but because Juri guarded herself so well, Shiori is desperate for attention.

Here comes the difficult part: Shiori, like all princesses, attached her identity to a prince for self-worth for her own identity (like what the entire BR arc is about: Keiko for being recognized/social power, Wakaba for feeling like her existence matters/doesn't drown in the crowd because a "special" person chose her, Tsuwabuki wants to be taken seriously/talked to like an actual person and not cosntantly belittled, Kozue projects everything she doesn't believe to be on her child prodigy twin brother etc.). Shiori is indeed deeply insecure, also feels worthless, and always had an inferiority complex towards her beautiful, dignified, talented friend. This is what she confesses in the elevator. This compensation by attachment is a problem for everyone in the role of "deemed not special". So Shiori will chase after Juri for compensating in mattering alone.

But on top she actually likes Juri, might likely even unconsciously love her too. Juri pushed Shiori away even when they were still friend due to Juri being afraid of her feelings. Shiori wants the proximity anyway. And one cannot blame Shiori for not understanding why Juri would not talk to her anymore. Even in Juri's flashback, Shiori encouraged Juri to talk about her feelings, in fact Juri could be surprised how other people might react. Yet Juri doesn't budge. So Shiori tries to be close to Juri by proxy through boys who're close to Juri (the unnamed male friend, Ruka). And she feels awful for that. The first time the guilt moved Shiori back to Ohtori, she tried to apologize but Juri rebuffed her by saying "it doesn't matter" for a matter that Shiori deeply regrets. Juri's coldness leads Shiori to be even more distraught, feeling worse about herself. Juri remains the source of her self worth. Here's the thing: The more Juri ignores how the real Shiori actually feels, the very human person who does not exist to personally torment her, the less Juri realizes how her detachment and false image cause deep hurt towards the real, breathing, moving Shiori. Juri's locket Shiori is an absent minded image singled out form a crowd. The real Shiori is in actual emotional pain, even asking Utena and Anthy to visit her because she feels so lonely (even says so explicitly) who cannot receive the attention or affection by someone she deeply admires, and feels like a meaningless person.

So yeah, Shiori gets pushed towards her worst impulses when she realizes actually she can keep the person close who compensates for her low self-worth. If Juri won't talk to her, she can still date by proxy since it will draw Juri's attention actually. Juri hurt her badly first, so Shiori continues the game of unspoken affection expressed by emotional scaring. We see time and time again how duelists can easily turn a girls'/people in socially inferior position to "enemy number 1" (witch) due to their influence. As audience we see it with Miki and Kozue. Kozue is almost deemed wholly innocent in the dynamic although she also attached her identity to Miki. She considers herself a contrast to him. Her being "dirtied" against his "brilliance", as well as artificially maintained blamelessness. Any mishap of Saionji's gets blamed on Anthy. Utena is depressed from her lost duel to Touga? Anthy gets blamed. Shiori gets dumped by Ruka? The entire school thinks it must have been Shiori's fault even though some commented that Ruka was being cruel to her first. So yeah, it always reads weird to me that Juri is the only duelist who barely receives as counter-evaluation on how her behavior influenced Shiori negatively.

But that took me also two rewatches to gain a clearer picture. On top, I think it's easy to identify with/feel sympathy with a woman afraid to be herself in a homophobic society. However I think there's a good point made with Juri's character how succumbing to despair, being incapable to imagine anything beyond our limited horizon blinds one to the feelings of others for oneself, even causes one to be the one spreading such bleak feelings, and cutting off emotional relationships. And how secretly additive, it can become to relish in identifying with existential pain.

[transmascutena]

we watched the black rose musical last night and i'm still thinking about how much akio goes around just.. touching other characters, even in scenes he isn't actually really supposed to be part of. it's a really interesting directing choice. sometimes it's just a touch, like a hand on someone's arm or shoulder, but most of the time he's pushing people. very much like in the show, he is putting the actors (the characters) into the positions he needs them in. only here it's very literal. and instead of just telling them where to be, like a stage director might do, it's physical, hands-on, even kind of violent at times, yet still subtle enough that nobody notices. nobody ever reacts to it, they just move to where he needs them to be, stumbling into place and continuing to play their roles.

and i could talk about exactly who gets pushed when and to where (like how the first and last person he does it to is anthy-as-mamiya, how it's a light push, really just a touch to keep the momentum of what they're already doing going, as opposed to the way he kind of shoves other characters), but the thing that really stood out to me is that the only character he does touch but doesn't ever really push (aside from i think anthy, and i do have a lot of thoughts on the scene where they're dancing together that i may get into in another post) is utena. what he does instead instead is pull her.

in the opening number, there's a moment where it seems like utena is about to walk off-stage (like tokiko does in the scene, because their choreography is mirroring each other. very clever), but before she can, akio grabs her arm and turns her towards the center of the stage instead, where she lies down in her "coffin". the show proper starts, of course, with the once upon a time story of utena meeting the prince, and a recap of the first arc/musical. and of course akio is the one who puts her into position for it. she's still trapped in her coffin.

and, i don't know, there's just something especially unsettling to me about it compared to the pushing. maybe just that it's different from his interactions with every other character. or the contrast between the pushing being more direct and aggressive, compared to him subtly and gently guiding her around the stage, into the chair or closer to him. there's something horribly personal or intimate about it i guess, especially since he often takes her hand to do it.

[haru-dipthong]

The Dreaming of Anthy

I like to interpret the events of the Revolutionary Girl Utena as a universe comprised of a patchwork of metaphors. Almost like the fantastical events that occur at Ohtori Academy are a dream, or many dreams, stitched together from the real experiences of the demographics that each character represents. Saionji���s dreaming is the dreaming of the male victims of patriarchy, seeking true companionship but cursed to never have it as long as he upholds the values he’s been taught. Juri’s dreaming is the dreaming of the “girlboss”, the women who, seeking success and legitimacy in a patriarchal world, perform patriarchal masculinity themselves, not realising or not caring that they are perpetuating the system that made life difficult for them in the first place.

Anthy’s arc is the most surreal out of everyone’s, and it makes sense to me to read what happens to her as an analogy for a more real experience. Who is the demographic that dreams Anthy?

When I first started watching Utena, and saw the dark-skinned, violet haired prince come down from the castle, I was so sure that the prince Utena met in her youth was a pre-transition Anthy. Even when Akio was revealed I was still so sure of this interpretation, because all the themes seemed to point to it, especially Anthy’s performance of hyperfemininity at the expense of her oppression and abuse.

So when all is finally revealed in episode 34, I was honestly disappointed. Right up until the Prince was shown in the same room as Anthy, I believed they were the same person.

But I’ve spent a lot more time thinking about Utena since I first saw that episode, and now I believe this theory more than ever. The key is that all three of them, Dios, Anthy, and Akio, are the same person.

Dios is both a metaphor for the myth of perfect masculinity, and Anthy’s pre-transition self. There has been talk of a “crisis of masculinity” since forever ago, and as Alex Avila puts it:

Maybe masculinity has always been in crisis and will always be in crisis. We will never save or recover traditional masculinity because traditional masculinity depends on a perpetual crisis state.

He can do everything. He’s strong, gallant, noble. He can save every girl, all of whom are implied to be helpless without him. And he’s gone — he only exists in the past, despite Ohtori being portrayed as frozen in time. Ohtori is the perpetual crisis state. “Men aren’t like they used to be anymore.” And at the same time, he’s the memory of a trans girl’s past. Like the idealised but fictional imaginings of the “masculinity of the past”, he never existed (but she did). He is the memory of the desperate struggle to perform an idealised masculinity that kills the girl performing it.

He lies dying in the shack. Anthy, the girl in their head, says, you can’t do this anymore. You’ll die — I’ll go out there instead. So she comes out. And she tells the people they will never see Dios again. “I’ve sealed him away (in my mind).” Transition can often feel like killing or sealing away the pre-transition you (just look at I Saw The TV Glow).

And because she took away the people’s idealised vision of masculinity, because she showed them how fragile it is, how malleable gender is, by transitioning, she is crucified. She is persecuted for shattering the illusion of masculinity. But, she lives. Transitioning caused her immense suffering, but it was suffering of a new kind. Suffering she could live with. Suffering that brewed resentment. Suffering that coloured her understanding of the world. As she lives with the suffering, the boyish ideal of Dios becomes corrupted.

しかも、彼女を愛した王子はもはや彼女の知る王子ではなく。結局、世界の果てになってしまった。

And now, the prince she loved is no longer the prince she knew. Not anymore. He has become the End of the World.

Through her transition, and as she grows and learns more about what it is to be a gendered adult and what it is to be a woman, her conception of ideal masculinity becomes patriarchal, oppressive and cruel. Dios becomes Akio, the End of the World. But it has ever been thus: Ohtori is eternal, and Akio has always been there to oppress. Remember, the memory of Dios is a false one.

Anthy’s hyperfemininity is mirrored by Akio’s hypermasculinity. The more Anthy finds solace in femininity through submission, the more Akio, the patriarchy, finds power through domination. To Anthy, to be feminine is to be oppressed. So Anthy needs Akio to live with herself, to be feminine, which is why and how she creates him through her transition.

Anthy is the dreaming of the trans girls who, seeking to express their true self, feel the guilt of strengthening the norms of the gender binary. A girl shouldn’t have to wear makeup (but I have to, to pass). A girl shouldn’t have to act quiet and demure (but if I don’t, my identity will be invalidated). I know this feeling well, because Anthy is my dreaming. And Utena is the opposite. Utena is the dreaming of the people who seek to expand the idea of what their gender can be from the inside rather than putting themselves in a new box. Utena is the dreaming of the girls who say “A girl shouldn’t have to wear makeup (and I won’t!)”, “A girl shouldn’t have to act quiet and demure (AND I WON’T!)”

I don’t believe the show portrays Anthy’s dreaming as bad and Utena’s dreaming as righteous. I think it portrays Anthy as stuck in a loop of self-punishment, made torturous by external persecution. The patriarchy is not Anthy’s fault, but she will be tortured (or allow herself to be tortured) as long as she believes it is, and as long as her conception of femininity requires the torture.

In the end, it’s their love, and the lessons they can teach each other, that save both of them. The show doesn’t say “Utena saves Anthy”, it says “victims of the patriarchy can be very different and express their rage and rebellion against the patriarchy differently, but they're in this together and they can teach each other so much.” Anthy learns how to be a woman without contextualising herself against patriarchal masculinity, and with that, she can finally leave Ohtori.

[schrodingers-catgirl]

Top ten lies

Finished episode 8 of rguuu . My biggest critique is that saionji is not treated with the weight he should be. Like yeah he's super pathetic but also he was extremely abusive and no one is shutting him down

[saiscribbles]

Lily is correct. She doesn't make rage bait. You'd have to be at least a little clever and actually plan out your video scripts to do that.

Lily's opinions are just so off-base, so deranged, so childish, so wrapped up in her own personal bullshit and delivered in that smug ass Ben Shapiro "I'm so right and smart and logical" style that it just stabs painfully into the brain of anyone with sense who hears them.

And aside from this strange deficiency she has when it comes to understanding narrative, she doesn't seem to fully watch or play anything she ever talks about!

Utena? Clearly didn't see it. She didn't even know the name of the villain. If she had watched it she'd have been screaming about the tone and either praising or deflecting on the three sibling relationships of varying degrees of incestuous in it.

Steven Universe? I doubt she's rewatched it since it aired. She constantly gets things wrong or is surprised by things that are in episodes. And the movie? I doubt she watched it beyond just a few clips. She went by a bunch of edgy Reddit fan theories, didn't know what any of the songs were actually about, and then kept disgustingly saying reset Pearl being a Pearl to Greg was gay conversion therapy and cut out Opal's entire existence to maintain that narrative.

Even Kingdom Hearts? Well mah boi Crim from my supporter Discord went over that one. Lily, supposed big mega fan of KH, tells you to just skip a bunch of the games. We now wonder if she's actually played them or only watched cutscenes.

[charmtale]

Shameful secrets cause a person to become haunted. She cannot sleep, for a shaming secret is like a cruel barbed wire that catches her across the gut as she tries to run free.

(Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves)

the fact that no one* knew about akio's abuse of anthy is far from the only thing wrong with it, but the inherent shameful secrecy of it was an integral part of her abuse, something that significantly served to isolate anthy from her peers.

it was definitely akio's plan for utena to see anthy and akio at the end of ep. 36. (anthy's hands disappear into her hair = she had no hand in this. + the way the scene lights up like how lights come on at the beginning of a new scene in a play (anthy's previously black silhouette gaining color and features) = it was staged. not to mention her bleak expression) akio thought that utena would just be disgusted by her, and/or feel betrayed, and that would be that. however, he sealed his fate (anthy being able to ditch him) with this action, because utena offered anthy compassion and understanding instead of condemning her.

utena acknowledging anthy's pain as a result of being abused by akio touched anthy more than any of utena's other actions up to that point. while utena says a lot of stuff in that scene about utena's ego and being a prince, anthy only has visible reactions to two of utena's lines until utena is completely done speaking.

"And the night I learned about you and Akio...!"

the camera focuses completely on anthy, nothing else shown, as anthy slightly tilts her head up. there is no dialogue while anthy makes this small movement; anthy is listening intently for what utena will say next, and the show wants us to notice that.

"I thought that you had betrayed me. Even though you were suffering so much...!"

when utena talks about suffering- acknowledging that akio's treatment of anthy caused anthy pain- anthy uncurls her body significantly. a visual indicator of feeling less shame, immediately in that moment.

anthy does not move in reaction to anything else utena says until utena is fully done speaking, when anthy and utena are now shown kinda-holding eachother. utena may or may not know the full impact of her words, but it is clear to the viewers what moved anthy to say:

"It doesn't matter now. Just leave this school. Forget about everything that happened here!"

in anthy's opinion, this has to be the kindest, most honest thing she can say in this moment. utena leaving would ruin akio's plan and anthy would be the obvious reason why (likely leading to punishment), not to mention how anthy would obviously miss utena. the fact anthy said it anyway shows how impactful utena's statement was

it's good to talk about utena's obsessive girlprincing and how it was damaging. it's good that utena acknowledges it herself. but i think the fandom commonly overestimates how much that mattered to anthy, especially in relation to this scene. i feel that people sometimes abbreviate it as 'utena apologized to anthy for her egotistical behavior, and that brought them closer together!' like yes, she did and that was positive and indicative of utena maturing. but i do not think that was the most important aspect here

[deripmaver]

one thing that berserk fans more or less universally agree is done well is its portrayal of characters' trauma. from griffith clawing at his arms and saying he's dirty, to guts' breakdown during "wounds," to the corridor of dreams for casca, and of course the lost children arc - a lot of people find this writing very personally meaningful.

that being said, a lot of the actual depiction of rape and sexual violence exists in a kind of total fantasy land despite it supposedly being a part of the manga's "gritty realism". i mean this both in the overtly negative way (panels that look straight out of a hentai, rape somehow only happening to beautiful slender young women, the protagonists finding dens of beautiful, naked young rape victims who never once feel the need to cover their bare breasts as they're rescued) but also in an interesting... not quite negative way?

one thing i've praised the manga for is that, despite what its worst fans say, it never once victim blames casca. it's never "her fault" for staying with griffith after he is disabled, or with having a crush on him. weird kentaro miura quote aside (if you don't know what i'm talking about don't ask lol) and the ethics of possibly including a victim climaxing during a rape scene, casca is only ever seen as a character that needs to be cared for. guts becoming frustrated with her continued trauma is portrayed explicitly as a bad thing, and its consequences continue to this day in the manga.

the thing is though... that's just not realistic LOL.

i got the idea to write this post because of a series of tweets about revolutionary girl utena, which is such a brutally realistic portrayal of rape culture. even utena herself, once she finds out that anthy is being abused by akio, and despite being abused by akio herself, says she can't forgive anthy. you rarely see stuff like that in berserk. the closest you get is during the lost children arc, where rosine's mother was impregnated due to rape, and whose father abused both her and rosine because of his "shame." otherwise, women are always rescued by kind, sympathetic knights (ie the women from midland taken by the kushan empire), and are happily-ish reunited with their families (ie after the trolls), and other women at least are always kind, unfailing sources of support for casca, and they rarely get frustrated or angry that she's just not getting any better.

and while this is something i actually kind of like about berserk (at least that last thing), it's pure fantasy. irl, people treat rape victims absolutely terribly, they treat them like the characters in revolutionary girl utena treat anthy, with disgust and horror not at the rape itself but at the victim. i try (and probably fail lol) not to exposit too much about what kentaro miura thought on a personal level, bc i will never know for sure. i wonder though if the thought of drawing victim blaming was a bridge too far for him after drawing all those explicit panels of violence of abuse, that at least the women shouldn't have a "grim ending," or maybe he just didn't quite understand rape culture. who knows.

but "gritty realism" when it comes to sexual violence somehow only seems to mean explicit, on page abuse, with nothing to say about rape culture on the whole.

[jewlwpet]

Alchemy, Gnosticism, and Revolutionary Girl Utena

In many Gnostic scriptures, Sophia, whose name means Wisdom, fell bc she tried to create something through her own "independent thought," without her consort, alternately described as her sibling or twin, who is the Logos/Word of God that was eventually incarnated as the Christ. What she created was a half-formed demiurge that mistakenly thought itself to be the only being in existence & created the "evil" material world. Depending on what version you read, Sophia then either "sunk into matter" (a literal fall from grace) or went down on purpose in order to do damage control.

In some versions it is Sophia who breathed life, spirit, into the two beings the demiurge had shaped from clay, & she who convinced Eve to disobey the demiurge (who wanted to keep humanity in ignorance) and eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, though she was unable to prevent Eve being made subordinate to Adam. At least one text explicitly condemned the patriarchal order as being based on "a lie" (since Eve wasn't made from Adam's rib in this story), despite still portraying it as a consequence of a woman stepping outside her assigned role.

"And the Word became flesh." Like Sophia, it "sunk into matter," but while the "matter" in her case was the entire material universe, Christ was contained within a single human body.

In sum, the narrative is that through stepping out of her assigned role, she brought the abuse of "the world" on herself, and if spends thousands of years atoning, she'll eventually be rescued by a prince she can believe in God's grace.

Carl Jung was very influenced by these Gnostics. He believed that Sophia represented something that existed in every man, and that anyone could become a prince Christ. Because each person is a microcosm of the whole universe--which is an ancient idea, one that the Gnostics probably believed too--he believed that every man had a Sophia within himself, waiting to be rescued, and he could do so by embodying the Christ principle. It's worth noting also that while he believed the psyches of men and women were different, some of the original Gnostics called for women to take on masculine traits and roles--one text even talked about Mary Magdalene being "made male" by Christ, though this is generally taken to be a metaphor).

The idea of Abraxas being a "god above God" who encompassed both the Christian God and the Christian devil is something that Hermann Hesse got from Jung. It's actually an idea that Jung got from reading something that was mistranslated rather than an authentic Gnostic belief. Still, many people have found it compelling.

The Western alchemists also believed in something they called Sophia or Wisdom, often personified as feminine, which, if one gained accessed to by proving oneself worthy, would grant them the power of God (citing parts of the Hebrew Bible, such as the book of Proverbs, as evidence) to live forever, reverse aging, transform matter, heal any disease, and sometimes even to create life. The alchemists' "great work" was often depicted as a "Chymical Wedding" in which the alchemist, or else an allegorical figure representing something within the alchemist, would "marry" Sophia and obtain these miraculous powers.

These alchemists differed from this strain of ancient Gnostics in that, first, they didn't see Sophia as being guilty of anything, and second, they did not view the material world as intrinsically evil, as to them it was the creation, not of a flawed demiurge, but of a perfect and complete Godhead. In fact, it was this act of creation that they sought to replicate on a microcosmic level in their oratory-laboratories.

Jung also wrote quite a bit about the psychological aspect of alchemy and how the transformation of matter represented the transformation of the human spirit.

Incidentally, the idea of a female alchemist was not unheard of even in ancient times, though it was uncommon in practice. There are legends of an amazing Jewish woman alchemist named Miriam (translated as Maria, Mary, etc) who lived in ancient Egypt. I couldn't tell you if she was real or not, but it's entirely possible! The bain-marie was named after her.

Anyway, if you've ever wondered why one of the Utena albums has "Sophia" in the name and what the "I am Sophia; Sophia is me" lines in Astragalus Earth Backgammon (a song from that album) were about...

[casliveblog]

(I literally just finished Utena and I did a mini-rant about this partway through about some of the side characters but there's a theme the finale episodes also put on Utena herself and I think it's really neat.

The idea of ego warping otherwise noble goals is really kinda neat, it's something that really became popular when Madoka Magica did the whole 'are you doing good things because they're good or because you want to be praised and feel good for them?' question and I think that is something that each of the characters in Utena also struggle with. In my first rant I only did it for the males about how their feelings are very genuine but their egos warp their actions and it makes for a more nuanced picture of male abuse than the usual "Men will hurt you because this is the Lifetime Channel" type of thing. Miki does genuinely care for Anthy but is too tied up in his idea of what she should be and his own family issues that he's projecting more of what 'she wants' onto her than Utena who's more generally just trying to make sure Anthy has a speck of agency in a world that's trying to rob her of it. Sayonji's just kind of a wreck on general but to the extent he does have genuine care for people like Anthy and Wakaba it gets filtered through his own frustrations and feelings of inadequacy and how that translates to a heightened self-image to puff out his chest about. Touga has very deep genuine feelings for Utena but can't get past his pride enough to see her as anything more than a prize to be won. This is literally like 90% of Ruka's character as he has so much ego shielding that he does the opposite of what he really wants every step of the way and we only learn about the real him through someone else after he's already dead. Juri gets a little less of this than most but tends to trip over herself with the 'I want the one I love to have love' schtick where she's putting up too much of a front and can't be honest enough with herself to commit to this toxic relationship or fully pull herself free from it till the end.

But the reason I'm even repeating myself on half these characters is because we revisit that theme in the end with Utena, we get hammered in at every turn that she wants to be a Prince and when we finally see why she wants that it's both more noble and more delusional than we've come to expect. There's an optimistic way to look at it that says Utena saw Anthy suffering and her first instinct was to help in any way she can and this isn't false, it's very true that Utena's unfailing nobility is what allows her to overcome her challenges, but she's also confronted with the idea that she latched onto the idea of Princehood because she was saved and wants to just basically be the person who saved her, despite that person themselves being deeply flawed (A little Fate Zero theming in there for spice) she gets a little bit of a savior complex the way guys in classic lterature feel like it's the noblest thing in the world to find a hooker with a heart of gold and 'rehabilitate' her so they can soak up all those chivalry points. Her goals and even her methods aren't wrong but she still has that bit of ego attached to them. There's a reason in Purgatorio the last thing you have to do to get to Heaven is jump through the fires that burn away your Pride and it's the one trial no one is exempt from, and it's this final challenge that burns away Utena's pride and it's just... talking with Anthy, them being honest about their situation and owning up to their subconscious intentions, it's not something to stop trying and hide in shame over but it's something to acknowledge. And I feel like that's why she was able to open the door when Dios couldn't, it literally purified her love absent ego and shame, his flaw was thinking he needed something more than love, of thinking it was him that was lacking and of thinking only power could save her. Utena's love for Anthy is love for its own sake, not because she was someone that she met at a pivotal point in her life that she's projecting her dreams on, not for feeling shame for her pain as Dios did, just because she likes her, being with her makes her happy and she values Anthy as a person and is able to be honest about what she wants and why and I just think that's a really beautiful thing to tackle.

[purpledemonlilyposting]

Responding to Lily Orchard on Utena

So I already talked about how Lily Orchard never watched Revolutionary Girl Utena and doesn't understand it on my main blog, and now she's trying to invoke the arguments I've had with other morons who have never watched and don't understand Revolutionary Girl Utena. Discussion beneath the cut!

[Lily's Post]

Here Lily and the little zoomers on Twitter who have never engaged with Utena beyond making a tumblr mood board, let me hold your hand through episode 33 The Prince Who Runs Through the Night from my "Let's Watch Utena" livestream from a few months ago. Uploaded unlisted:

Going "um sweaty she's a minor!!!???" instead of engaging with the actual text just stalls any meaningful discussion about the purpose of this episode within the narrative. Utena is a surrealistic piece that operates entirely on hazy dream logic. Trying to bring in real world ethics outside of the text into Akio's seduction Utena is simply irrelevant to what is being communicated. It would be like stalling every discussion about a revenge plot movie with "but murder is illegal!"

As I said on the stream Akio's seduction of Utena is Faustian. He is the devil pulling her further away from her gender role defiant values and her true purpose of saving Anthy from her eternal suffering, as she was spurred to do by the spirit of Dios. He is also using her because he thinks the Sword of Dios he can draw from her will be the key to opening the seal to the "Power of Revolution". But Akio can never regain the power of the Prince again, as he's a corrupt adult now. The ideal of the Prince that exists in both the hearts of Anthy and Utena.

This is a series you have to take within its own symbolic language. It is not interested in being realistic or straight forward. It's heavily influenced by experimental stage theater. Ikuhara purposefully wanted it to be tonally mismatched to put the audience in the mindset of the world.

On the next point:

I've been into Utena for 28 years. I've read lots of essays on it and have listened to many interpretations of it. I have no idea where this idea that Utena "rejects" Dios is suddenly coming from. I'll reiterate from the debate I had about this on Twitter:

Dios, the actual spirit of the ideal of the Prince, whose spirit she calls down during duels, who has only ever spoken to Utena in the space between life and death, appears here to Utena as the duel song chorus swells with "I exist! I'm here!"

Dios kisses her ring

And Utena finds the strength to get back up.

And when Akio is about to drain away the remainder of Utena's life? Dios, his presence completely unnoticed by Akio, quietly disappears behind the glass of pink liquid Akio is drinking. Never to be seen again. Dios has been Utena's ally throughout the entire show. Embodying the ideal of the Prince without having to be a prince is how she frees Anthy.

She puts her fist to the floor to lift herself up with the hand the ring is on. At no point does she "shatter the ring" as this person on Twitter tried to claim:

She has the intact ring still on for the rest of the episode. Because the ring represents her promise to free Anthy. You can watch the damn scenes yourself. The entire show is available on YouTube. I'd recommend watching the entire series first but here's the finale.

Wherever these painfully incorrect surface level readings of Utena are coming from please stop reading them and go to Ohtori.nu I beg.

[pinkmoondoll9shihtzu]

👁️👁️🔂👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️

cringe at myself.....,.....

im aa FOOOOOLLLLLLLL 🫥

Sometimes i think, im a real artist or something..

But whats even real about me? everything i do only exists online

majority of it being on TUNBLR of all places.

fragile fucking tumblr.

my entire life is my imagination and fantasies my entire life is a thoughtform. how can i be a real artist if im barely even a real person in "reality".

not even banishedgirl but intangible girl.

The other day, when i posted about how i want to use the inter net less but im too lonely to stop, i feel it came back to bite me today, in a way i didnt want at all, for the short time my blog was gone, and this brought to my attention, how truly deeply foolish i am

i could disappear so fast like nothing because its all just 👉🧠💭 up here

Even tho my blog is back now. i cant get that feeling off of me. Like yeah there no reason my blog would actually be deleted, unless you know like, tumblr just got discontinued as a website. Which is not an unlikely scenario. i often wonder how long they'll keep paying for these servers. We saw what happened with myspace...

if tumblr was gone, id really be GONE gone

like. i dont exist.

sick to my stomach all day. even if i export my blog and put it on a hard drive ... does it even matter? it literally is not even "matter" it is pixels it is thin air.

How do i be a real girl in the real world

in utena , the "real world" is actually all an illusion. and i believe that to be true for our world too. In a way ive always believed my fantasies and spirits are more real than my body

But i still do want to exist here. i almost have to live in denial about this to stay sane. But i want to exist forever. i want a normal life and friends. i want normal things.. its disgusting.. i feel sick!!!!! im so happy but im so miserable. i love myself but im so insecure. i dont understand anything. i resent fakeness but im fake too. im all just words and space and airy air air

How do i change my life how do i stop yearning to Prove that i exist..... Why do i want to prove it so bad

WHY DID I HAVE TO BE CONFRONTED W THIS TODAY WHAT AM I BEING CALLED TO DO

Like dude i am already going thru it lately. i didnt need any more crisisfuel.

IDK i have to believe its some kind of catalyst to save myself , lest i succumb to the void

it has to show me something i needed to see.

Stuff like this makes me want to disappear in a way that i have total agency over. (Not like in a killing my self way but just in a going away way.) Thats not practical though is it i know thats my evil side talking.

trapped in a sticky web trapped in this glue trap thats what gets me all defiant.

the book im reading rn is from the 70s. i wish i was writing books not posts... i wish i was meeting people in real life the way the author describes in the book. I know the vainly imagined past doesnt hold all the answers either. Good chance i wouldve been institutionalized for woman hysteria or st. But i dont like whats happening here i dont feel natural at all. And its not just me who feels it, clearly.

if only i could be the one who finds comfort in impermenance.

do i accept what im dissatisfied with, do i try to change, or both, or neither?

i am sad

i am existentially disturbed

and i am fucking arrogant ��

for wanting to be real.

FUCK!!!!! ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

[otaqueer]

Post 2- Queer Girl Utena, part 1: The gender nonconforming prince.

Today I wanted to talk about a staple in yuri and shoujo: Revolutionary Girl Utena, personally one of my favourite works of all time.

Created by the group Be-Papas, assembled primarily for this project, this work consists in a manga (1996), an anime TV series (1997) a Sega Saturn game (1998) and a movie (1999).

In this post and the following part I will be discussing mainly the TV series. If I might talk about any other work, it will be stated explicitly.

This story follows 14-year-old Utena Tenjou, whose parents died when she was young, so she was saved by a prince from all that sadness. Somehow, she ends up entangled in a series of duels in order to defend (and keep by her side) the Rose Bride, Anthy Himemiya. 

THE GENDER NONCONFORMING PRINCE

As the story says, she was so amazed by the prince who saved her life that she vowed to become a prince herself. “But was it such a good idea?”

Utena is scolded more than once for wearing “a boys’ uniform”, but her uniform is neither the boys’ or the girls’ uniform.

Ohtori Academy's actual boys' uniform

Utena reading on the school rules how it is allowed for a girl to wear a boys' uniform

"With Utena, the main character wears a male uniform--but it isn't really a male uniform, is it? It's just the clothes that Utena likes. She's not bound by the same male/female conventions that previous characters may have been bound by. I don't think that society has changed all that much, but in modern manga, a person is all allowed to follow her own path." - Ikuhara on an interview with Animerica Extra, year 2000

Revolutionary Girl Utena often explores gender non-conformity not only on a visual level with elements like her uniform, but also with Utena’s role and aspiration to become a prince. She wants to save Anthy, she wants to be noble and defend everybody, she is good at sports and very popular among other girls – qualities that of course a woman could fulfill, but they are often performed by and symbolic of men.

She doesn’t see herself as a masculine person, as she acts surprised when Nanami calls herself “boy-girl”.

In the 1999 movie, we can see her with a different look: Her hair made seem like it’s short (though it’s not), a “male” uniform with long pants this time and even we have an awkward moment when Saionji confuses her for a man.

Utena's uniform in Utena The Movie (1999)

FITTING IN THE MOLD, BETRAYING WHO YOU ARE, FITTING IN THE OTHER MOLD

I think it is really interesting to see how she finds trouble keeping up the aspiration of becoming a prince with all that it means since she is still looking for her own prince and finds herself completely disarmed when the thought of finding him is presented to her. She “betrays” Anthy, and saving her starts to matter a little bit less when she wonders if Touga could be her prince (of course, manipulated by him) and when Akio shows romantic and sexual interest for her too, becoming her first love (and an older one, too). These men try so hard for her to be the princess of their stories and, of course, as she has lived in the same system we have all lived in, she is conditioned to do so.

This is something that many gender nonconforming and trans people have lived through: You can still have elements that were forced onto you by society, but they mean something different for you, they just don’t deny who you are. Just like a transwoman can have a beard and still be a woman, or a transman can wear makeup and still be a man, or any nonbinary person can do something that relates to their assigned gender and still be nonbinary, Utena could have been so much happier if someone had told her that she could kiss other princes and still become a prince.

But that is never the case, and those seemingly “girly” instincts are a penintence to her sometimes. When she loses to Touga and her prince uniform has been scratched, she wears the school girl’s uniform. That episode was painful to see, she really is seeing herself having failed in being just who she is, in not having proven that she could be a prince and not a girl, just because for a moment she was happy with the idea of Touga being her prince and liking it. She also felt as she has failed her own princess and, the ugly truth is that they live in a system where that is actually true.

Of course that was Touga’s plan for winning the duel, but how would have things gone if Utena knew that she could love Touga outside the dueling arena without that interrupting her fighting for Anthy’s freedom and security? Of course, Anthy won’t forget that either when she sees Utena being attracted to Akio.

On the other hand, there is a language level of it all. In Japanese, Utena uses the “boku” first person pronoun to refer to herself, which is normally used by men exclusively. This is something that never changes, not even when she is about to be kissed by Akio or taken to a hotel with him.The language aspect of it all stays with her until the very end. Very rewarding and affirming to watch.

WHEN WOMEN’S LIBERATION AND GENDER NONCONFORMITY CLASH

When women in fiction are presented with the “you cannot do that because you are a woman” statement and they work against it, taking the steps only a man is expected to take, it is of course proof that women can do anything and fulfill every role, e.g., you do not need to be a prince (masculine) to save other women, to have a noble attitude, to defend people and what you stand for, to fight.

I really did want to stress that because I would never want to state things like “She is wearing a blazer instead of a dress, that is so not a girl from her” as to state the gender nonconformity about her.

Ikuhara: During the Rose of Versailles, by wearing the uniform, (Oscar) his her own body line--her own femininity. But now, times have changed. Even though it's not yet a world where all women are free, this costume might allow her the chance to be a "woman." We're trying to envision a world where a woman can decide what she does with her own body. Utena decided to show off her own beautiful legs. She's comfortable with her own beauty. That's the type of world we were trying to portray. - Ikuhara on an interview with Animerica Extra, year 2000

With that being said, I speak from myself as a nonbinary transmasc-leaning person and I know for a fact that other fellow nonbinary and trans people feel the same: When we see those traits being displayed, it does resonate with us.

We see ourselves in those actions, those elements, those steps, because we have experienced that too. 

That leads us to the next question:

AM I SAYING UTENA IS NOT A WOMAN?

The short answer is no. As I previously stated, I reckon these elements were created to make Utena a free woman, free from what society says a woman can or cannot do. But, knowing Ikuhara wanted to include queer elements on the anime (even if it was just to symbolize other minorities), I also do think the genderfuck element of it all definitely exists and is not just a headcanon.

And I don't really care if it is not canon: The gender deviance aspect of Utena speaks directly into my soul.

I would really like to know other people’s opinion on this matter, and what else is very gender about Utena for you. Come yap with me, please!