#utena ep 33 /

[maggiecheungs]

REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA 🌹 EP 31: HER TRAGEDY

[yomigaere]

The design sheet for Utena in her episode 33 dress seriously guts me. The contrast between these two sketches feels almost like a "before" and "after"...

[aroanthy]

the symbolism of revolutionary girl utena is key to understanding what it’s even trying to say narratively and thematically. if you remove the symbolism, if you remove the ways in which the narrative obfuscates itself and abstracts what it’s saying, then what it is saying changes dramatically. if rgu was like ‘yeah lol and did you guys know that incest is bad’ or ‘maybe gay people are good’ or ‘hey did you know that csa victims are Real and Alive and Have Interiority’— like those are all paraphrases of things that it says, but the way that it chooses to say them is so powerful and conveys so much nuance and complexity that those simplistic statements don’t. it provides an incredibly meaningful commentary on the way that systemic violence and abuse are covered up, codified, made part of our culture that supposedly resents those things. it’s examination of incest, the incest taboo and how that impacts incest victims— it’s all so incredibly considered and layered because the show chooses to convey what it’s saying through symbolism, through its metatheatrical framing, through allegory. it retains the reality of these issues; it shows them to us only when we’ve already bought into the system’s lies to make a point about how that operates, how that works to make us all complicit in that violence. nanami. nanami.

dont even get me started on how the movie uses its symbolism to demonstrate how the abuse anthy and touga experienced is simultaneously built into the world and culture they exist in, and always obfuscated and abstracted for the sake of their abusers (also specifically the way that it engenders shame and prevents people from seeking help. rgu is so damn good at understanding how and why people don’t ‘do what they should’ in abusive situations: the systems in place don’t fucking work bc they are an extension of the system built upon that abuse). anthy is the model in all the paintings, the symbol of so many undesirable things, the canvas on which they are painted. her likeness is used as an approximation for all of these awful things, many of which are a part of her in a way, but such that her interiority, her feelings, are never regarded, never seen, never understood. she’s the model. akio is never explicitly named as her painter.

[transmascutena]

i hate when utena fans are like "this is the one true and correct reading of this character's motivations for doing this" because it's never that simple. it's never just one thing. there's always a lot of different (often conflicting) thoughts and feelings that go into any decision anybody in this show makes. like someone will say that anthy stabbed utena because akio wanted her to. or that it was because she was afraid. and both of those statements are true, there are just so many more layers to it, and you shouldn't stop your analysis at one of them and pretend that's all there is to it. another thing i've seen is someone (probably me let's be honest) saying "utena is nervous around akio because she is on a subconcious level aware of the grooming and abuse he's putting her through" and someone else responding with "nope. it's because she feels guilty about betraying anthy" not realizing that those things can absolutely be true at the same time, and only believing one thing at a time is severely limiting your perspective on the character. some people want to make things so much simpler (and therefore less interesting) than they actually are, and in a show like this i just don't get it. these characters are complicated, you're not going to be able to sum up everything they're feeling in a single sentence. and if you think you can you are definitely missing something.

[ebaltika]

Oblivious Utena

[epifaniacintilante]

Am I finishing Utena or Utena is finishing me off? That's the real question

[the-darkness-does-not-bargain]

Person who’s interested and thinking about watching RGU here, is Utena/Anthy a toxic ship? How is it portrayed and what is your general opinion about it?

So short answer? No, it's not a toxic ship. Long answer? Utena is about a lot of things, and one of its biggest themes is unhealthy relationships. Friendships, family bonds, and romantic relationships. It is a large scale dissection and deconstruction of how these relationships can become unhealthy and what can be done to fix them, if they can be fixed at all.

So, without spoilers, for the majority of the story the relationship between Utena and Anthy is unhealthy and kinda toxic, but the point is to show how they overcome it. Again, no spoilers, but there's a scene in the 38th?? episode I think that is one big thesis statement about this theme.

RGU is fearless when it comes to confronting dark subject matter. It is compassionate in its portrayal of these subjects, but it doesn't pull any punches. As such, there will be moments throughout where you'll think "wtf wtf wtf" and moments that will heal your spirit. Utena and Anthy have their share of both, but far more of the latter.

[sheila--e]

TAKE MY REVOLUTIOOOON 🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣‼‼‼‼‼‼‼💯💯💯💯💯💯

[arielluva]

just saw a youtube comment of someone saying that what happened in ep 33 wasnt actually rape bc utena was attracted to akio and she never said no. im.

*pulls out comically large hammer that says "utena is 14 years old and akio is a grown ass man who was grooming her" and hits that commenter over the head with it repeatedly*

[yomigaere]

As grim as it may be, I do think about how Utena portrays its on-screen rapes.

Even now, you see a lot of attitudes in the real world about how it supposedly doesn't count as rape if the victim doesn't struggle or try to fight back or get away, or how it supposedly isn't rape if the victim doesn't explicitly say "no" or "stop", or how it supposedly only counts as rape if it's in certain positions, or how it supposedly isn't rape if the victim seems to "enjoy" it, or how it supposedly isn't rape if the victim keeps seeing their rapist afterwards -- among so many other horrible attitudes that rape culture perpetuates. I've certainly seen those kinds of attitudes colour the more obnoxious discourse that's surrounded scenes like these over the years.

Something about what rape can look like.

(All screenshots from ohtori.nu)

[roseillith]

which episode makes you want to kys more?

[transmascutena]

there's this collection of utena analyses that left a really strong impression on me because it was one of the first things i read about the show after i finished it, and while there's some absolute bullshit in there, it also had a lot of good insight into small details and symbols i definitely didn't notice on my first or second watch. whoever wrote it really loved to use the phrase "akio's metaphorical sword" though and that kind of ruined the entire thing by itself

[baltharino]

Revolutionary Girl Utena + Girly Clothes Ep 03 / Ep 12 / Ep 33 / Ep 37 / Ep 38

[motheryves]

i just got done watching EP 33. when utena was trying to dissociate herself by talking about food and shit to distract herself from what's happening to her, that actually made me cry. like my heart broke.

fuck you, akio. you fucking bitch ass nigga.

[moistvonlipwig]

sorry to bring up the disk horse but seeing you and others talk about that person has made me feel so much less insane 😭 I turned on a vid of them tlaking about how l*ly still doesn't understand rgu when I was doing other stuff and kept questioning the stuff they were saying 😭 lol

autistic as hell so I have a hard time dissecting some of what rgu is trying to say but. I really do not think it is that much of a mind bender to see who is in the wrong in that situation. jesus christ

Also for the ask game (if you want) 11 and 13 🫶

right like we all know l*ly orch*rd and jimothy somerton have wack media takes but if you make a video with the explicit purpose of proving that your takes are better than theirs then uh maybe you should make sure your takes are actually good first. i tried watching one of their videos like that months ago and i don't even remember what takes they had (it wasn't anything so bad as what they've been saying on twitter though) but i do remember going ??? a lot.

[also idk i always feel so torn about whether or not we should even be discussing l*ly's media takes like otoh yes they're often bad and she's semi influential in the animation criticism community and i do enjoy seeing people pick apart her bizarre arguments but at the same time if someone is an abusive pedophilic rapist does it matter if their media takes suck??? like, to quote one of my favorite tumblr posts, if you stab someone to death in an ikea your opinion on pink diamond could not be less relevant.]

[also i said i would stop and maybe i will tomorrow but i do keep hatescrolling saiscribbles' twitter account on sotwe (new website i just discovered that lets you see people's tweets if you don't have a twitter which is definitely going to be the death of me) and to be fair some of the people arguing with them ALSO have weird as fuck takes. none so vile as 'what akio did to utena wasn't rape' though. but rgu sure does bring out the weird takes in people.]

but honestly part of the reason i keep talking about this even though i know i Should move on and stop thinking about it is that i also felt insane reading their tweets because they take such a smug, Only I Possess Media Literacy, I Was Watching Utena Before You Were Born, I Have Made YouTube Videos About RGU And Am Therefore An Expert stance that it does make you start to second-guess yourself. but you know what they're wrong. just like l*ly and jimothy it doesn't matter how many videos they put out or how authoritatively/arrogantly they word their tweets or how popular their SU art is. they are wrong about rgu and they are wrong about lapis stevenuniverse and they are wrong about the r word and they are DANGEROUSLY wrong about rape. and none of us are crazy for seeing that.

to calm down i've been catching up on animiddo's utena reactions/analyses on youtube. i like that he takes the show very seriously including the nanami episodes. he's not on ep 33 yet but i have yet to see an utena reactor who didn't understand that ep 33 was rape. because, you know, it is in fact pretty fucking obvious.