Yes another Utena post. Deal with it. 8)
I can't stop thinking about Utena, to the point where I'm being plagued, it's haunting my dreams so I'm just going to ramble for 5 minutes.
I've come up with my own ideas about it, I've been looking more into the characters. One thing straight off the bat is that after watching the thing in it's entirity it was foolish of me to half way through spout Anthy as being "annoying", it was foolish to write off her TV personna, because Anthy was (if you were to look at Utena as a chess board) the Queen of the game. Indeed by the end of the show she even gets the title Witch to her name. She's the puppertmaster, she manipulates, but she's not the man behind the curtain, at least not in the series. In the movie yeah she pretty much does control 85% of what the characters do, but that's a whole different ballgame. I'm not going to go into any depth about Anthy because jfc that could be a dissertation, but I just wanted to state first that I was wrong about Anthy, horribly wrong. Afterall it's always the quiet ones we should be watching right? Anthy turned out to be one of the most complicated characters I've ever seen.
The topic that really is interesting to me right now is Utena's overall message. Undoubtedly Utena is about coming of age, but there seems to be a differeing in opinion when it comes to what Utena and Anthy hold onto in the end. And by that I mean ideals and values. Do they put behind them the childish notions they have believed in all their lives? Or do they hold onto them in the face of a cynical "adult" world? There's arguments for both and for me I am siding much more with the former, or maybe it's a grey area IDK. The notion that Utena and Anthy use their childish ideas of noble hero's to overcome a bitter, failing adult lifestyle is credible. To use a metaphor like the bored housewife running off with her knight in shining armour, or "I want to break free" by Queen. That couldn't be more fairytale, it couldn't be more fantasy. And that's why I can't get on board with the idea because in both the series and the film the idea of "fantasy" is rejected by Utena in the end. She realises she's not a "prince" but nevertheless she does hold heroic qualities, she is headstrong, brave, dashing, that's who she is, and Utena I believe, triumphs in freeing Anthy in the end because of who she is, not because she's a "prince". She always had a sense of nobility and goodness, it's right there in her backstory but she never reached any higher plain of righteousness, that she might see as being a "prince". She always had what Anthy needed, and Anthy gave her the the strength to see she was a good enough person already.
And yes Anthy does get ~saved, or rather she doesn't in the fairytale way the rose bride is supposed to be saved, she's gets saved from the rose bride and the deluded trappings of the castle for all eternity with everything she wants. She leaves the academy, the place where she stays youthful, the place full of grand delusions of eternity and she steps not as a princess, a witch or a prince, she goes as Anthy.
To me the whole point of Utena is that there are no roles. There is no set way we should live. And in the end Utena and Anthy are ultimately free because they relinquish those ideas and idealistic memories. They don't conform. As the film put it they are free to "make their own roads". And that's the revoloution.
That's my quick 2 cents. But as was so often said in the Black Rose arc I could seriously "go deeper". It's actually insane how much depth this one cartoon has.
And very quickly about the romance between Anthy and Utena in the series, I still don't know. I am now very much with the idea that Anthy was in love with Utena, and by the end Utena realised she loved Anthy too, but I think it's left more on a 'they will develop romantically when/if Anthy finds Utena again'. Whereas in the movie the romance blossoms right from the get go. I had refused to call the series Yuri before as there's no overt romantic affection, but there are motives, and a huge connatation of future romance so I will revise that statement too.
Gee geeeeeeeeeeeee.
I've come up with my own ideas about it, I've been looking more into the characters. One thing straight off the bat is that after watching the thing in it's entirity it was foolish of me to half way through spout Anthy as being "annoying", it was foolish to write off her TV personna, because Anthy was (if you were to look at Utena as a chess board) the Queen of the game. Indeed by the end of the show she even gets the title Witch to her name. She's the puppertmaster, she manipulates, but she's not the man behind the curtain, at least not in the series. In the movie yeah she pretty much does control 85% of what the characters do, but that's a whole different ballgame. I'm not going to go into any depth about Anthy because jfc that could be a dissertation, but I just wanted to state first that I was wrong about Anthy, horribly wrong. Afterall it's always the quiet ones we should be watching right? Anthy turned out to be one of the most complicated characters I've ever seen.
The topic that really is interesting to me right now is Utena's overall message. Undoubtedly Utena is about coming of age, but there seems to be a differeing in opinion when it comes to what Utena and Anthy hold onto in the end. And by that I mean ideals and values. Do they put behind them the childish notions they have believed in all their lives? Or do they hold onto them in the face of a cynical "adult" world? There's arguments for both and for me I am siding much more with the former, or maybe it's a grey area IDK. The notion that Utena and Anthy use their childish ideas of noble hero's to overcome a bitter, failing adult lifestyle is credible. To use a metaphor like the bored housewife running off with her knight in shining armour, or "I want to break free" by Queen. That couldn't be more fairytale, it couldn't be more fantasy. And that's why I can't get on board with the idea because in both the series and the film the idea of "fantasy" is rejected by Utena in the end. She realises she's not a "prince" but nevertheless she does hold heroic qualities, she is headstrong, brave, dashing, that's who she is, and Utena I believe, triumphs in freeing Anthy in the end because of who she is, not because she's a "prince". She always had a sense of nobility and goodness, it's right there in her backstory but she never reached any higher plain of righteousness, that she might see as being a "prince". She always had what Anthy needed, and Anthy gave her the the strength to see she was a good enough person already.
And yes Anthy does get ~saved, or rather she doesn't in the fairytale way the rose bride is supposed to be saved, she's gets saved from the rose bride and the deluded trappings of the castle for all eternity with everything she wants. She leaves the academy, the place where she stays youthful, the place full of grand delusions of eternity and she steps not as a princess, a witch or a prince, she goes as Anthy.
To me the whole point of Utena is that there are no roles. There is no set way we should live. And in the end Utena and Anthy are ultimately free because they relinquish those ideas and idealistic memories. They don't conform. As the film put it they are free to "make their own roads". And that's the revoloution.
That's my quick 2 cents. But as was so often said in the Black Rose arc I could seriously "go deeper". It's actually insane how much depth this one cartoon has.
And very quickly about the romance between Anthy and Utena in the series, I still don't know. I am now very much with the idea that Anthy was in love with Utena, and by the end Utena realised she loved Anthy too, but I think it's left more on a 'they will develop romantically when/if Anthy finds Utena again'. Whereas in the movie the romance blossoms right from the get go. I had refused to call the series Yuri before as there's no overt romantic affection, but there are motives, and a huge connatation of future romance so I will revise that statement too.
Gee geeeeeeeeeeeee.