Shoujo Kakumei Utena

Years ago, a tragic incident befell a young princess when both her parents died. Devastated, it seemed nothing would calm this poor soul. However, a prince traveling through the area came to see the princess, hoping to cheer her up. After wiping her sorrowful tears, the prince gave her a ring carrying a rose emblem and told her as long as she holds onto the ring, they are destined to meet again. The event leaves a deep impression on the girl, Utena Tenjou, leading her to become a prince herself.

Years later, Utena attends Ootori Academy, recognized by the same rose emblem as her precious ring's. There, attracted by the scent of roses, she witnesses Anthy Himemiya tending the flowers, accompanied by the Student Council President Touga Kiryuu and Vice President Kyouichi Saionji, who seem to be arguing over Anthy. While Utena thinks nothing of the occurrence, the Student Council gathers to discuss an important matter.

Subsequently, a misunderstanding leads to Utena being dragged into the world of Duelists—those with rings similar to her own. The Duelists fight for the ownership of the Rose Bride, Anthy Himemiya, who is said to possess great power. Wanting to prove her capabilities as a prince, and enraged that Anthy is being wronged and objectified, Utena resolves to fight against the Duelists to save her from the cruel fate.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Tenjou, Utena Main

Kawakami, Tomoko Japanese

Himemiya, Anthy Main

Fuchizaki, Yuriko Japanese

Arisugawa, Juri Supporting

Mitsuishi, Kotono Japanese

Kiryuu, Nanami Supporting

Shiratori, Yuri Japanese

Ootori, Akio Supporting

Kosugi, Juurouta Japanese

Kiryuu, Touga Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Mikage, Souji Supporting

Midorikawa, Hikaru Japanese

Chuchu Supporting

Koorogi, Satomi Japanese

Kaoru, Miki Supporting

Hisakawa, Aya Japanese

Takatsuki, Shiori Supporting

Nishihara, Kumiko Japanese

Kobayashi, Noriko Producer

Ikeda, Shinichi Producer

Kawasaki, Tomoko Producer

Ikuhara, Kunihiko Director, Script, Storyboard, Theme Song Lyrics, Original Creator

Reviews

Dec 1, 2024

k-0da

Recommended

I really don't feel like I am qualified to write a decent review on this anime. So to that end, I'll try to separate this review from any analysis, because this is really a story that invites multiple rewatches.

Utena is good. Utena is a damn good anime, and I'm genuinely shocked it somehow comes in at #360 in popularity.

Start with what I'm least qualified, which is the animation: some episodes (The Nanami early focuses especially) can be off-model. However, it's never impacted the story in a way that I think holds any merit. Barring that, the animation is gorgeous. Everything looks beautiful. ... The direction in this series is masterful, and something that should really be examined. I recommend watching Utena with a friend, as I did, to bounce ideas off of each other at what each little thing means. It's actually a blast.

Story & characters are phenomenal. Each and every character is, in some regards, a bad person, with deep, innumerable flaws, and they all end up hurting each other, constantly. But they're still extremely charming, and mostly sympathetic. The cast as a whole is extremely strong. They're funny, interesting, and you just want them to win so bad. I never felt disappointed or disheartened with a turn in someone's arc, only continuously enthralled, only wishing for them to overcome the obstacles they faced, especially towards the end. Utena, Jury, and Nanami were standouts to me. Watching their journeys throughout the 39 episodes was always entertaining, sometimes harrowing, and deeply satisfactory. Utena's arc is a particular standout; she goes from plucky, stereotypical protag, to something so much more, every detail affecting her life, arc, and trajectory.

Utena is a must watch. It's a damn shame no one seems to talk about it more these days, even within "philosophical" anime analysis circles. The only reason it's not a 10 is purely personal bias, as I didn't feel that final "click"-- but that doesn't mean what I'm seeing her isn't masterful, in every sense of the word.

Also the music is fucking spectacular.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Jun 14, 2024

bergars

Mixed Feelings

Oh boy, it's one of those.

A thematic piece of characters with dubious morals, and gray zones of horrible acts. A drama that starts off as a “fight of the week” sort of thing, but slowly evolves, morphs, into a disturbing showcase of traumatic events. A story with no proper explanation, or a straight-to-the-point narrative. I have an idea of what just happened, but I could be legitimately wrong about everything. However, this isn't about a story, but about thematic depth.

Coming of age. School, love, friends, family, sister / brotherhood. Those are all fun things to explore, aren't they? Many slice of life anime ... touch upon those with care, with love, with enough to fill a heart to the brim. The anime was following the themes with a little more spice into it. Infidelity, unrequited love, toxic love. I was getting invested in the relationships, even with the superficial incest that was grinding my gears, until the shift right about episode 24.

Something changed in the writing team, maybe it was the plan from the beginning, but I could not expect those disturbing aspects to take center stage, with proper writing accompanying them. Incest, and the traumatic repercussions and causes. Rape, and the negative effects on one's psyche. True toxic love, and toxic relationships for those you love. Possession, victim blaming, gaslighting, suffering, loneliness, loss of purpose.

“Revolutionary Girl Utena” became a series about how truly messed up coming of age can be for a woman. The gender norms, sexuality, grooming, it didn't stop, and it never let go after grabbing the audience. I wanted to turn it off, to rest from the themes, only for the next, goofy combat to happen. The story was there, but it doesn't matter at some point.

This is an artistic representation of womanhood in its early stages, and how people decide to use it for themselves, or for others. The psychological bonds they can achieve, be it positive or negative. It was a brutal watch, one behind some okay animation, but excellent direction. Visual symbols, the art of the edit, of coverage, and the uses of sound design. It didn't dabble on the usual, visual cocktail that's any other shoujo anime. This one let the silence happen, it let scenes land on their mangled legs, and let us watch as people's egos get demolished in front of us.

I truly just wish it wasn't presented in such a convoluted narrative, with events happening as “one offs”. Episode 23 or 24 didn't just mark the series as a turning point, but as the beginning of the absolute confusion. Powers or situations that occur only once, story beats that don't play out until the very end, and surrealist instances where the meaning feels much more thematic than a tying the story together.

It's a mesh of ideas, ones that work amazingly well if it weren't trying to tell a story in the middle of everything. I don't know if the writers wanted to create discussion about it, but it feels like it was done artificially. They had all the resources to tell a coherent narrative, and they chose not to. I'd wish they went one way, coherent, or thematic, instead of this clash between both that doesn't perfectly land with me.

The combat wasn't particularly interesting. But then, the characters were so well-written that I tolerated all that. Every episode that focused on the psychological landed so much better than the “oh my god, a fight scene”. Should've been cut, but I don't know how. They didn't have much time per episode for a proper fight scene, so why frame the story entirely on those? It's a question for another day.

7/10. Amazing, psychological story about women, and their relationship with life at their coming of age. Brutal, disturbing, but incredibly important for what it tries to say. I just wish they polished, or cut down on the action aspects, to allow a greater story to be told, or the themes to come in at full force, instead of their constant interruptions.

Extra: What in god's name was that cow episode? Up there with the worst episodes I've ever seen, please skip that one.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Jan 23, 2025

Supersonic_Pain

Not Recommended

Around the halfway point (actually, I can tell you the exact last episode I watched before temporarily shelving it, it was the Nanami cowbell episode), I dropped it because I was bored and lowkey dreading watching more. But I felt bad because it was ~Utena~ and maybe it gets better-

No. I was 100% in the right to drop it, my opinion of it went from like a 6 to a 3 when I picked it back up.

I guess I'll start with Utena x Anthy because it being one of the, if not the, most iconic yuri anime was one of my driving factors to ... watch it. I guess I'll state here that I'm a man and I've never been one to, like, seek out yuri. Yuri's fine but it's not something I'd go out of my way to watch a show for, right (ignore what I just said in the same paragraph)?

I dunno, it was fine? To be quite honest, my read of Utena's sexuality was bi with a MALE lean. I've heard of "oh, I've gotta keep myself pure for my prince/future husband" or whatever as the backdrop to yuri anime before so I get that aspect but to me, she seemed more enthusiastic when she met guys she thought would be her prince than with Anthy.

If this is one of the defining yuri couples of anime, it's not because of the quality of the relationship, at least imo. And maybe this is how much they could get away with at the time but yeah.

Really, all of the relationships in this show kind of sucked. Kozue in particularly soured my mood just seeing her on screen.

Honestly, and maybe this is showing my cards on the table a little bit, but the relationship in the whole show I was most interested in was Mikage's with Mamiya.

One of my main problems with this show is it isn't gay enough.

You cannot IMAGINE my disappointment when they were like "oh, yeah, Mikage? Totally straight, he was chasing Mamiya's older sister" and like sure, dude, awesome.

Honestly, the Black Rose Duelist arc as a whole leads me to another huge problem: there is so much padding and filler in this show.

I've heard this was pretty low budget and, like, it looks fine but it relies a lot on stock footage. The "prince blah blah blah princess" monologue, Utena walking to the Dueling Arena, pulling the sword out of Anthy's chest, there's a lot of filler footage in each episode you can skip around.

Not to mention the entire EPISODES dedicated to Nanami dicking around that has no consequence to the story. Which, like, based, honestly the best episodes in the series, but why did you do this to us? There's even a RECAP episode for NANAMI'S COMEDIC FILLER SHENANIGANS

Oh yeah, there's recap episodes too.

It's also just a really repetitive show? There are so many episodes which feel like "Utena meets someone, look at them! Oh, what? They're gonna duel now?" and it happens over and over.

The Student Council arc, I was willing to forgive it because yeah, sure, whatever, they've gotta introduce us to the main cast.

And then it happens again but with D-list jackasses tangentially related to the Student Council in the Black Rose Duelist arc. There's, like, one Black Rose Duelist who I enjoyed. I liked Mikage, one of my favorite characters (and my favorite of the 3 "main antagonists" of their respective arcs although that's not saying much considering the other 2 weren't good), but he doesn't really get much to do since he just "corrupts" these flunkies into being Black Rose Duelists.

It happens more after the Black Rose Duelist arc but I wanna talk more about the duels themselves.

I've said this before about certain shows but if you don't have the budget and/or interest to write a battle shonen, then don't write one. Nobody's putting a gun to your head making Utena have, like, 20 duels or whatever the actual number is. The padding to get to the actual duels is about the same time as the duels themselves and they're just high school-tier fencing matches. I could have probably blocked some of these duels in my high school production of Hamlet.

To be honest, the comedic characters like Chu-Chu and Nanami were my favorite, any character I had to actually take seriously were kinda mid at best. I liked Juri fine enough, I guess?

Honestly, by the end, I just wanted to see what the shadow puppet girls were up to. While Utena was busy having Days of our Lives over in the light, the drama club was having a fucking ball and they seemed a lot more fun to hang out with.

I'm sure the ending means something really cool but *shrug*. I'm fine with weird surrealist endings, I think Evangelion's TV ending was better than the movie but I was audibly actually laughing at the ending.

I'm sure this show has great themes but if you don't make an entertaining show, I don't care.

I did like some of the aesthetics and I like the IDEA of Revolutionary Girl Utena and it was kinda funny and I thought some of the characters were okay, good even.

It's not a total wash and if you're looking for yuri anime, I kind of feel obligated to recommend it to you even if I didn't like it or even thought it was all that good as a yuri anime

But, like, I don't know man, I didn't enjoy it.

To be honest, this song popping up in my head while watching the show brought me the most joy out of anything during the anime and when your highlight is the Spin Doctors, you probably weren't very good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsdy_rct6uo

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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