Anime / Revolutionary Girl Utena

You'll never see roses the same way again.

"Grant me the power to bring the world revolution!"

Revolutionary Girl Utena (少女革命ウテナ, Shōjo Kakumei Utena) is a surreal Shoujo work that describes, averts, inverts, and subverts a wide variety of anime tropes. The series has a striking visual design crafted by the circle Be-Papas (headed by director Kunihiko Ikuhara) and influenced by the Takarazuka Revue, Noh theater, fairy tale imagery, and classic shoujo manga. It features a soundtrack that mixes jazz and classical orchestral themes composed by Shinkichi Mitsumune with surrealist rock with outré choral harmonies composed by J.A. Seazer. The show draws on symbolic, philosophical and literary allusions while aesthetically portraying its Dysfunction Junction of attractive and troubled characters. This approach helped the series win the "Best TV Animation" award at Kobe Animation '97.

Utena Tenjou is not an ordinary middle school student - she is a rule-bending Tomboy with a Girly Streak who wants to be a prince that saves princesses. She met one—a handsome prince, that is—when she was very young and very sad, and he gave her a ring and told her that they would meet again one day. Utena was so inspired by the encounter that she decided to become a prince herself. She still wears that ring as a student at Ohtori Academy, an opulent private boarding school. While trying to defend the honor of a friend from a bully, she is unwittingly drawn into a secret sword-fighting competition held between the members of Ohtori's student council, who all have rings identical to her own.

Through sheer pluck, Utena wins her first duel and finds herself engaged to the Rose Bride: a fellow student named Anthy Himemiya, whom the student council members compete over because she supposedly possesses "the power to revolutionize the world." Utena cannot accept that Anthy is simply an object to be fought over, and resolves to protect her, like a prince would. The relationship between Utena and Anthy slowly blossoms as challengers emerge to fight Utena, each for their own personal reasons. In time, Utena herself is forced to confront the incongruities between her childhood ideals and the realities around her, and discovers the secrets of her own half-remembered past and those surrounding the hidden benefactor of the Rose Crest Duels: a mysterious figure known as "End of the World".

The visuals and the storytelling are highly stylized, using surrealist and impressionist elements to create a narrative where every viewer has a different takeaway. For some viewers, the coming-of-age themes dominate. Some are drawn to its themes of overcoming systems of oppression, or seeing beyond one's own misconceptions. Others appreciate the openness and diversity expressed in its LGBT themes. It is a story that holds up a mirror to whoever watches it, to the point that trying to discuss it objectively lies somewhere between impossible and meaningless. According to the creators, all interpretations of Utena's symbolism are valid.

The franchise consists of:

Anime and Manga

• A five-volume manga by Chiho Saito. Serialized in Shogakukan's Ciao magazine starting in 1996, it is based on the anime's plans rather than the other way around, and is a less-surreal Alternate Continuity. Viz Media produced the English version, and reprinted it in 2017.
• A 39-episode anime series, which was produced by J.C. Staff, and aired on TV Tokyo from April 2, 1997 to December 24, 1997. Its first North America licensor was the now-defunct Central Park Media, which released the first 13 episodes in 1998 and the remainder of the series in 2002. The second North America licensor is Nozomi Entertainment, which released the DVD remaster version in 2011 and the Blu-rays in 2018.
• A single-volume manga based on the below-mentioned film, serialized in Betsucomi Special magazine in 1999. Although it follows The Movie relatively closely, it diverges with its own ending. Viz Media produced the English version, with a reprint in 2017.
• After the Revolution, a 20th-anniversary one-volume epilogue-sequel manga serialized in Flowers magazine in 2017. It does not adhere to any clear-cut continuity and uses imagery from the anime. Viz Media's English version followed in 2020.

Films — Animated

• Adolescence of Utena, an original animated feature film released in 1999. The movie is often considered a reimagining of the series rather than an adaptation, though in some interpretations, it is a spiritual continuation of the series. It has the same North America licensor history as the TV series—Central Park Media until its liquidation, then Nozomi Entertainment.

Literature

• A pair of light novels written by Ichiro Okouchi in 1998; one focuses on Miki, the other on Saionji. One of the most obscure parts of the Utena canon and yet another alternate continuity (though they bear the closest resemblance to the original manga, and are mostly Lighter and Softer).

Visual Novels

• Shoujo Kakumei Utena: Itsuka Kakumei Sareru Monogatari, a Sega Saturn visual novel. This game features two new characters—the New Transfer Student player character, and the antagonist Chigusa Sanjouin—and is set during the anime's first arc. It was never released outside of Japan, but fans completed a translation of it in 2015.

Theatre

• Comedie Musicale Utena la fillette révolutionnaire (December 17 - 29, 1997) at Hakuhinkan Theatre.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena Hell Rebirth Apocalypse: Advent of the Nirvanic Beauty (May 26 – June 1, 1999) at Zamza Asagaya Theater. Produced by Gesshoku Kagekidan, an angura theater troupe.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Choros Imaginary Living Body (September 30 – October 1, 2000) at Amagasaki Piccolo Theater. Produced by Troupe Fantasy Adventure; very obscure.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Bud of the White Rose (March 8 – 18, 2018) at CBGK Shibugeki!!. This musical adapts the Student Council arc.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Blooming Rose of Deepest Black (June 29 – July 7, 2019) at Theatre G-Rosso. Covering the Black Rose arc.

The series also aired on Viz Media's Neon Alley streaming service. Manga Entertainment, who shares a distribution deal with Nozomi, made the series available on both Hulu and YouTube; it also placed The Movie on YouTube.

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Grant me the power to trope the world!

Tropes A to E

• Absent Animal Companion: Apart from Chu-Chu, none of Anthy's numerous pets appear or even get mentioned past their introductory episode.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Anthy can power up the Sword of Dios/Utena's soul sword, granting it this property, although it's only demonstrated during Utena's duels with Touga. Utena's powered-up soul sword is so sharp, she can easily split approaching cars without them losing velocity.
• Accidental Marriage: Downplayed; Utena is surprised to find herself engaged to Anthy, the Rose Bride, after winning a duel against her previous fiancée, Saionji. However, Anthy always accommodates her betrothed, and since Utena just wants to befriend her, their dynamic is that of roommates getting to know each other more than lovers.
• Action Girl: Utena is athletically gifted to the point that her natural ability compensates for her lack of martial arts training. Juri is captain of the fencing club and is capable of defeating Utena, only coming up short due to unusual circumstances. Every other girl who chooses to become a duelist also counts for this trope.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: Due to the divergent evolution of the manga and the anime, the character color schemes are different between the mediums. The manga creator, Chiho Saito, favored more down-to-earth hair and eye colors in the beginning.
  • Utena started in the manga as a blonde, but once the pink-haired version of the character debuted in the anime, later illustrations were likewise pink-haired. Her eyes vary between brown or blue in the early colored artwork, but stay blue after her hair changed to pink.
  • Anthy has dark brown/black hair early manga illustrations, which was changed to violet in the anime and later colored illustrations, while her eye color changes from brown to green.
  • Other hair color changes include Juri going from blonde to orange (while her eyes changed from brown to blue), and Touga from black with red bangs to red with one paler forelock. Miki's hair was also brown in the first color illustration of him, but quickly changed to blue to fit with the anime (as did his eyes).
  • Costumes in the manga started out brighter; Utena's uniform was originally pink but Ikuhara vetoed the idea of it carrying over to the anime. In the third volume, Utena receives a black uniform as a plot point. Anthy's Rose Bride dress was originally white with blue trim, but changed to red in later manga illustrations.
• Advertising by Association: The Central Park Media video releases of the series capitalized on Kunihiko Ikuhara's prior involvement on Sailor Moon by plastering it on the covers.
• Aerith and Bob: The Latin American dub gave most major characters Western names (based on the ones originally proposed for the English dub), yet kept several Japanese ones like Nanami and Kozue.
• Against the Grain: Utena has a very tomboyish attitude and refuses to wear Ohtori Academy's girls' uniform. In the manga, she explains she prefers a boys' uniform because she loves jumping fences and running, and she hates that the boys are always trying to see the girls' panties. The teachers, of course, don't buy any of this. They sigh in relief when Utena suddenly starts wearing a girl's uniform and starts behaving as a Proper Lady after she loses Anthy to Touga. And the boys... they practically throw themselves over the new, "feminine" Utena (in the manga)! Most people don't notice that she's suffering a Heroic BSoD; fortunately, Wakaba snaps Utena out of this.
• Age-Appropriate Angst: Played with. Though most of the cast are teenagers, reasons for angsting and levels of angst will vary depending on the personality and maturity levels of different characters. Then it's played straight with Akio and Anthy, who've lived for what's implied to be centuries and have universal problems proportional to their humongous ages.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Neither Touga nor Saionji make a secret of their bad behavior, but it does not diminish their popularity with girls at school. Touga goes through girls like tissue paper but it seems like there are always more lining up for his attention. Saionji may put on a sunnier face for his adoring public, but he slaps Anthy just as publicly. Wakaba has personal experience with how cruel Saionji can be, but she still refuses to give up hope that she could be his pick.
• All Love Is Unrequited: The various love triangle situations are improved but not settled by the end and the established couples break up. Sadly lampshaded by Juri, who remarks that the cast would be much happier if they could simply change the objects of their affections.
• All Take and No Give: The relationship between Akio and Anthy offers an interesting twist on this trope. Akio has the obvious position of power, not just in the relationship but throughout Ohtori Academy, while Anthy is at the bottom of the social pyramid and often plays into her brother's schemes. However, he is powerless without her, and she knows it. While he may abuse and dominate her in order to maintain control, it does not change the fact everything he has is smoke and mirrors except for her.
• Almost Holding Hands: In the opening, Anthy and Utena's hands reach to grab each other but slip away, a few seconds after an Almost Kiss. This symbolizes the unresolved romantic tension that lingers between the two for most of the series, and also foreshadows a future point where Utena holds Anthy's hand as the arena crumbles around them.
• Alternate Continuity: Played with; although the manga, series, and movie do tell their own stories in literal separate continuities, they also work in a kind of symbolic sequence that seems to indicate a connection of some kind, like how Utena gets her series' outfit partway through the manga, or how the characters in The Movie have kept some character development from the series. The movie-manga plays this straighter, being a more normal and rearranged version of The Movie's scenes.
• Anachronism Stew:
  • The setting roughly corresponds with a modern one, contemporary to the time it was made, but it's all practically made of symbolism; fairytale characters like princes and witches might be real, might be waiting just around the corner. The same may be true of aliens. It seems like there are people from beyond the grave lurking about, too.
  • The legend of the rose prince is a standout example; it seems to take place in medieval Europe, but the sword-wielding townsfolk are dressed like OLs and salarymen and there's a fax machine prominently placed in the scene, unspooling endless messages.
• Animation Bump:
  • The Stock Footage is stock footage, yes, but it's very well-animated. The complex architectural imagery in the arena ascensions is animated using a full 24 frames per second, which is uncommon for TV animation, especially from Japanese studios.
  • Unconventional use of high frame rate sequences is an Ikuhara calling-card. It's normal to boost the number of frames used during action scenes, but this show is likely to use it for Imagine Spots and elephants on surfboards instead. Mamoru Hosoda^note credited under the pseudonym Katsuyo Hashimoto did the storyboards for several episodes of the TV series and notably uses this trope for drama, drawing attention to scenes of characters moving very slowly and deliberately, like Mikage turning to look at Utena in episode 23. One of the episodes he worked on...
  • ...is the infamous episode 33, with Utena and Akio's artfully composed yet extremely hard to watch sex scene. Utena's movements in this scene were very carefully designed to convey her emotions on the matter.
• Arc Words: All over the place, to the point where the show occasionally parodies its own arc words for humorous effect.
  • "Absolute Destiny Apocalypse" is both the title of the song that precedes the duels and the final line of every episode. According to Ikuhara, this phrase gave the series its unique identity.
  • "Revolutionize the world!" and numerous variations. ("[Grant me] the power to bring the world revolution!", etc.)
  • The incantation in the sword-pulling sequence: "Rose of the noble castle, by the power of Dios that sleeps within me, heed your master and come forth...!"
  • End of the World, used to refer both to the mysterious individual and the actual event.
  • The Shadow Play Girls have "I wonder, I wonder! Do you know what I wonder?" and "Extra! Extra!", which open their segments in the first and second arcs, respectively.
  • Various mentions of "endless motion" and other forms of repetition.^note Or, in other words, revolution..
  • From the Student Council arc (and also somewhat the whole series): "If it cannot break out of its shell, the chick will die without ever being hatched. We are the chick, the world is our egg. If we don't crack the world's shell, we will die without ever truly being born. Smash the world's shell!^note For the revolution of the world!"
  • Most of the Student Council has their own special words: Saionji's "something eternal"/"that which is eternal", Miki's "shining thing"/"that which shines", and Juri's "the power of miracles".
  • From the Black Rose arc: "Deeper... go deeper..." and "The path before you has been prepared.^note Your only choice is to revolutionize the world."
  • From the Akio arc: "There, can’t you hear it? If your soul has not truly abandoned all chance for hope, then you can hear the sound that races through the End of the World. Follow us to the world you seek!" and "I now reveal the End of the World...to you."
• Artistic Age: It's easy to forget that Utena and Wakaba are 14 years old, and Nanami is only 13 years old. They look about the same age as their 16-18 year old upperclassmen. Makes for added squick during Akio's seduction of Utena.
• Artistic License – Engineering: That long, slanted support pillar shouldn't be capable of holding the dueling arena up. Which is actually brilliant because in the end nothing holds the dueling arena up — it's not real, or at least not what it appears to be. The whole "journey into the unknown" that sets up the duels is an illusion generated by the hologram projector in Akio's planetarium, where the duels are actually fought.
• Ascended Extra: Nanami is an odd example considering the relationship between the manga and the TV series. Nanami does not figure into the plot of the manga and only appears as an Easter Egg, but given the recursive, chicken-or-egg way influences moved between the two mediums it's hard to say if she represents this trope or a sort of low-level Canon Immigrant.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: A good rule of thumb with this series is that if something (especially a relationship) seems a little unsettling at first glance, odds are it's not only exactly as bad as you think it is, but worse.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Possibly Utena, in the end of the series and manga. She disappears from Ohtori Academy in the end of the story and it is framed as bittersweet but inevitable; she accomplished what she set out to do and there was no place left for her there.
• Author Avatar: Ikuhara stated in a Q&A for the New York Anime Festival in 2000 that the character he's most like in Utena is Chu-Chu. He did a lot of leg-pulling in that Q&A, but maybe that's something Chu-Chu would do?
• Autobots, Rock Out!: The duel choruses are Dramatic Choir Numbers which always have electric guitar accompaniment. Try not to enjoy the Black Rose Arc songs.
• Badass Boast: The songs during the duels sometimes contain these, like "My children, astronomical planets—five solid bodies are my descendants". Sometimes they're the namesake of the song, like "I Am All the Mysteries in Creation" or "I Am an Imaginary Living Body".
• The Beautiful Elite: Almost every major character (except, notably, Anthy) has a scene where they are being admired by a crowd of lovestruck onlookers (of both genders). This usually happens when they're first introduced.
• Big Bad: The End of the World, the individual or group that lays out of rules of the dueling game and directs the duelists via letters, is a mystery to most of the characters for most of the story. There are early clues for the audience that the identity of End of the World is Akio as soon as he is introduced, well before the Student Council members (excluding Touga) get let in on it. The last person to clue in is Utena herself.
• Big Brother Attraction: Nanami is a thorough deconstruction. She seems like a textbook case of this trope, obsessing over her brother and hating people who get his attention...until she actually confronts her feelings and it becomes clear that she doesn't actually know in what way she likes him, if at all.
• Big Brother Instinct: This trope is played with in various ways considering that each of the sibling relationships in the series is its own flavor of "troubled."
  • Dios ignored Anthy when he was too busy saving the rest of the world. Then he became Akio and decided that he wouldn't mind having his sister stabbed by swords for all eternity.
  • Subverted with Touga, who outwardly indulges Nanami but ultimately sees her as a toy like he does with most girls.
  • Played with with Miki, who wants to have a positive relationship with Kozue, but no longer knows how he can do that.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: Utena is torn between first Touga and then Akio, both princely Manipulative Bastard types, and Anthy, the submissive, exotic prize offered in the games they play. Touga and Akio both remind Utena of the prince she met a a child, but her attractions to them come with a burden of gender-role expectations. If she accepts a relationship with her prince, it will make her a princess—a girl who is saved rather than a heroic savior. Whereas Utena's interest in Anthy is closely connected to her desire to become a prince and emulate the Knight in Shining Armor ideal. However, there is a bitter undercurrent in this: if being Akio's princess robs Utena of her agency, then by extension being Utena's princess robs Anthy of hers also.
• Bitch Slap: Anthy is on the receiving end of this multiple times during the story, typically courtesy of Nanami and her posse. Her close relationship to the student council (particularly Nanami's brother, Touga) and unresisting tendencies make her an easy target.
• Bittersweet Ending: In both the manga and the TV series Utena disappears from Ohtori Academy and the student body at large starts to forget her. An element unique to the manga is that Touga keeps his memories of Utena, and he encounters Anthy, who has taken up Utena's princely ideals. In both mediums, Anthy leaves the school to look for Utena, but the manga ends with a scene of the pair reuniting.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The official English translation by Neil Nadelman is rather notoriously bad. Translation errors are widespread, affecting character beats, plot developments, and more. It makes the plot more difficult to follow than it should be by overcomplicating exposition and creating plot holes that fans have to explain away. Listing every problem in the official subtitles (and the dub, which is based on the same translation) would fill an obnoxiously long stretch of this page, so have some highlights instead:
  • In the iconic Absolute Destiny Apocalypse song, "sanba uba" in "yami no sabaku ni sanba uba" is rendered as "shining place" rather than the intended "midwife, wet nurse".
  • The songs overall are subject to poor translations. The duel songs for episodes 14 and 20 directly reference Hamlet's Japanese translation, but you wouldn't know that from the official translation (though admittedly most fan translations also miss this.)
  • The updated Nozomi subtitles corrected final line of episode 1 to the accurate translation of "From this day forward, I am your flower" rather than "From this day forward, I am your bride" as in previous releases.
  • Kanae's monologue in episode 14 counts for a distorted character beat. In the actual script, she says she despises Anthy no matter how hard she tries. The official translation misparsed this to her saying she can't get Anthy to like her no matter how hard she tries, and the updated subtitles do not address this.
  • Episode 18 centers on Tsuwabuki wanting to be a grown-up, and there are a variety of double entendres in the dialogue, including the final line of the episode, which has Nanami saying something that could be translated as "Is it hot in here or is it just me?". Some of the more obvious ones are translated in the subs, but there's still many unaccounted for, including the aforementioned final line.
  • All references to the Namahage are scrubbed out of episode 21's Shadow Girl play in the official translation, which means the Namahage isn't mentioned and the mantis Shadow Girl's speech quirks are not adapted.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The manga, surprisingly enough, is much more violent than the show in a couple scenes, despite the manga usually being Lighter and Softer. Utena brutally cuts a large gash in Akio. Even The Movie-manga's painting scene has the paintings melting in a bloody-looking way.
• Bloodless Carnage: There aren't any injuries that would be accompanied by noticeable blood until the final episodes, but none of them feature the puddles of blood that they should.
• Book Ends: The very last episode features a montage of "everyday" scenes paralleling events that happened to Utena and the other characters throughout the past year. As Anthy points out, the ending is not as bittersweet as it initially appears — the character dynamics that Utena changed are things that can't be undone.
• Brick Joke:
  • One of the shadow plays features a scientist and her robot, which every now and then mutters some nonsense about catching monkeys. A few episodes later, there's an entirely unrelated skit with talking animals, and it ends when a robot appears out of nowhere and kidnaps the monkey.
  • In the first episode, Utena asks Saionji why there's an upside-down floating castle in the middle of the forest. He says, "It's a kind of mirage. Think of it as a trick of the light." Thirty-seven episodes later, Akio turns off the planetarium projector.
• Bright Castle: The castle in the forest above the dueling arena is the classic fairy tale castle, with lots of spires and pointy turrets, all in red and white. Termed "the castle where eternity lies", it is the home of Dios, a spirit embodying the Knight in Shining Armor ideal. Like most fairy tale tropes at the end, the castle has a much darker secret behind it: much of it is an illusion cast by Akio, and the castle is associated with the imprisonment and perpetual torture of the Rose Bride.
• Brother–Sister Incest: No! Don't be repulsed! Or, well, do be repulsed, because it's deliberately not played for fetish appeal. Pairings include Miki and Kozue, Nanami and Touga, Anthy and Akio. The first is implied and the second never gets explicit. Akio and Anthy, on the other hand... And all three pairings are creepy and full of insidious manipulation from one or both sides.
• Broken Ace: While not immediately obvious, Utena, the Student Council, Mikage, and even Akio(!) all have amazing skills, legions of admirers, and a dumpster fire's worth of psychological hangups apiece. Though certainly buttressed by magic and privilege, each duelist has reached acclaim through a massively unhealthy obsession with something from their past that (they think) will fix everything; actual fame and and social prestige are tertiary. The unasked question: is "specialness" worth that level of emotional turmoil, especially if you didn't care anyway?
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: Generally an ominous symbol in this series. The cabbage white, a specific type of butterfly which appears several times (most iconically in the movie, but they show up in the TV series too,) is common garden pest which the story uses to symbolize unwelcome change and parasitism. The Black Rose arc repeatedly focuses on a mounted butterfly (of uncertain type but not a cabbage white) in the confessional elevator as it moves backwards from mature insect, to chrysalis, to caterpillar, to leaf.
• Caged Bird Metaphor: Anthy's rose garden is inside a birdcage-shaped greenhouse, emblemizing how she is bound to her role as the Rose Bride. The fact that she can technically leave this "cage"—but chooses to stay—also hints that she's imprisoned by more than physical or magical means. A caged bird is also prominently placed in Miki's foundational childhood flashback—one of several bird-related images that surround them.
• Cassandra Truth: Touga and Nanami come to fear that Utena is in terrible danger once it's clear that she will be chosen as the one to revolutionize the world. They are correct about this, but they've both shot too many angles with Utena in the past for her to heed them. No matter how many times Utena is told not to trust Akio and Anthy, she doesn't listen.
• Cast Full of Rich People: The Student Council is apparently made up of rich kids. It accounts for the way that everyone in the school defers to them, but it's downplayed in that their wealth has little effect on the plot.
  • Touga and Nanami are explicitly wealthy and live in an off-campus estate.
  • Miki and his twin sister live in an apartment by themselves and are shown to have a large house as well.
  • Saionji and Juri have associations with power and prestige built into their names - the historical Arisugawas were a branch of Japan's Imperial family, and the Saionjis were aristocrats. Juri is also a model and has easy access to luxury goods. Saionji gets no demonstrations of wealth, but his traditional pursuits and honor-driven worldview hint at an old family with appearances to keep up.
  • Akio intimidates them all with his Sleek High Rise Apartment, fancy car, and close association with the namesakes of the school.
• The Chain of Harm: A recurring theme is how abuse victims often turn around and abuse others.
  • Anthy makes a convenient target for more socially mobile students who have frustrations to vent. Over the course of many episodes, this is revealed as an aspect of her role as the witch - a universal scapegoat. Even her beloved brother, whom she accepted this role to protect, hurts her now. Pain has made her bitter. So she has learned to lash out in subtle, passive-aggressive ways at Nanami, Utena and others.
  • Touga is (according to Word of God) abused by his parents (this is made explicitly canon in the movie). He manipulates Nanami and Saijoni who take their anger and jealousy out on Anthy.
• Chained to a Bed: Kozue's husband does this to her every night in After the Revolution because he thinks she's in love with someone else. She is.
• Chalk Outline: During the Black Rose arc, the dueling arena is covered with scattered red outlines of bodies. The losers of these duels fall onto the outlines, posed to fit them. This is evidently related to the origin of the Black Rose Seals: a hundred students burned to death in a building.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: How the prince is deconstructed. Not even Dios could save every girl in the world, and he nearly killed himself trying. It may have been better if he had, considering what he becomes.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: A number of girls strive to hold on to relationships with important people in their lives, to the point that it is not so much about the other person as the relationship itself.
  • Nanami bases her self-worth on her relationship with Touga, and her efforts to maintain that relationship by repelling girls who are interested in him are ruthless.
  • Kozue thinks of herself as having embraced the ugly side of life so that her brother Miki won't have to, and she is willing to dirty her hands to eliminate anyone who tries to hurt or "steal" him.
  • It is possible to read Anthy as jealous, but it's up to interpretation which point on her love triangle she is jealous of.
• Clip Show: Episodes 13 and 33 summarize the first and third arcs, respectively, while surrounding the clips with intrigue, surrealism, and plot twists. Episode 24 is a humorous version, and compiles all of Nanami's Butt-Monkey moments as diary entries written by Tsuwabuki.
• Clothing Damage:
  • During the ball in episode 3, Nanami gives Anthy a dress made from a fabric that disintegrates when wet, and then arranges for her to get splashed. Utena ends up making a new dress for her out of a tablecloth, which looks surprisingly good for an outfit made from found materials in under a minute.
  • During Utena's second duel with Touga, his sword strikes repeatedly tear the girl's uniform she is wearing. One interpretation of this is that Utena is shedding the false sense normalcy and clear discomfort the female uniform she was wearing gave her, in an attempt to get back her princely self. It's also more than a little fanservice-y.
  • In the final episode Utena's outfit is ripped and battered after Akio breaks her sword, reflecting her exhaustion, emotional turmoil, and the state of her self-perception.
• Colour-Coded Characters: Each major character has a color associated with them. Each color, in turn, represents the biggest emotional problems they face. Similarly, Utena's white rose when she faces Black Rose Duelists is a classic example of Light/Darkness Juxtaposition.
• Comically Missing the Point: The Black Rose arc introduces a new shadow play girl who performs solo and in front of an in-universe audience. It's a very small one, though; usually just Utena, who at the end offers some innocent comment or question about the performance. Said comment is invariably about the literal events portrayed without grasping any of the allegorical similarities to the events of the episode.
• Conspicuously Light Patch: Utena's locker in the Black Rose arc stands out from the other lockers, since it is the only one that's not part of the background.
• Coming of Age Story: Whether Utena is a story of self-revelation featuring young people struggling to attain maturity, or a story about growing up with a particular focus on understanding oneself and overcoming self-deception is for the viewer to decide.
• Compete for the Maiden's Hand: The duels in general exemplify an Engagement Challenge set up by the End of the World rather than two suitors vying over one maiden, but there is one exception - in Saionji's second duel, he is explicitly fighting Utena to take Anthy back.
• Continuity Nod: The shadow play girls talk about a monkey-catching robot in episode 22. It makes later appearances in episodes 24 and 31.
• Cool Car: Akio's car is a major motif of the third act and it could hardly be cooler. Supplemental material reveals that it's based on the 1957 Chevrolet Corvette, with the most obvious bit of artistic license being that has a back seat...usually. It's cherry-red with gold trim and the convertible top is always, always down.
• Could Have Been Messy: Since the objective of the duels is to cut a rose off the opponent's jacket rather than to draw blood, most duels end with minor injuries at worst. Akio even points out in the final duel that Utena has no experience in real fighting because she's only fenced under a gentlemanly victory condition, which leaves her totally unprepared for getting run through by Anthy.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The TV series uses some religious imagery and incorporates some Judeo-Christian nods, but does not play this trope as straight as the manga does.
  • Dios appears as a divine figure, complete with Holy Backlight, who descends from the heavens to give Utena his strength. The antagonist self-identifies with the "Morning Star," as in the fallen angel Lucifer. The TV series uses this Dios-to-Satan progression to illustrate Akio's fall from grace, but in the end neither the prince nor the fallen prince have any actual power or even meaningfulness. Akio is small and petty; Dios offers nothing but cold comfort.
  • In the manga the Power of Dios is real and Akio clearly defines himself as Dios' evil counterpart. They were once two parts of the same divine being, but Akio overthrew Dios, who has been in stasis ever since. In the finale, Utena merges with Dios and Akio, reuniting the two pieces of the deity and apotheosizing in the process.
• Custom Uniform: The duelists' uniforms are in non-standard colors, with custom tailoring and military decoration like braid and epaulets. Utena's Non-Uniform Uniform gets pimped out to the point of Custom Uniform when dueling. The transformation is part of the standard duel intro sequence.
• Damsel in Distress: Deconstructed. The traditional damsel in distress suffers beautifully and always remains a perfect victim. She is sweet-natured, kind, and never struggles with how to move on from her pain - perhaps because many writers wouldn't know how to portray her otherwise. Utena points out that in real life, people regardless of gender who are stuck in these roles will stop being "pure" and "sweet" and become vindictive and manipulative if they lack agency in their lives. This can be seen in the cases of Shiori Takatsuki (looks sweet, gentle and demure, but is very malicious and has horrible self-esteem since her "best friend" Juri is a beautiful and strong Lady of War), Kozue Kaoru (repeatedly gets herself in trouble and flirts/sleeps with other guys to catch the attention of her twin older brother and "prince", Miki), and especially Anthy Himemiya (once performed a huge sacrifice, paid the price by both suffering immense physical pain and becoming a passive figure as the Rose Bride, ultimately became a mix of Broken Bird and puppet to her manipulative brother Akio a.k.a. Dios aka End of the World) and Utena Tenjou (she's not one since the beginning, but her insecurities and naiveté more than once play quite part into shoving her close to the "role"). This is not to say that Being Tortured Makes You Evil, or that it's stupid to remain nice after a tragedy. It's just pointing out a general trend: if weakness is imposed on people, it will bring consequences.
• Dances and Balls: Fancy parties, akin to royal balls, are held during the show and significant events occur during those parties.
  • The ball in episode 3 is a showcase of how underhanded Nanami can be, and in corollary, how effortlessly heroic Utena can be. Touga expresses his interest in Utena in Nanami's presence, which has repercussions later in the arc.
  • The inciting action of episode 16 occurs at party where Nanami receives the titular "Cowbell of Happiness."
  • The party Nanami organizes in hopes of cheering up Touga during the Black Rose saga. Keiko is disinvited thanks to Nanami, and her distress opens her up to Mikage's manipulations.
• Dead All Along: The boundary between life and death is flexible in Ohtori Academy, it seems:
  • In the series, Mamiya is definitely dead, and the existentially elusive Mikage could be.
  • In The Movie and movie-manga, Touga and Akio haunt those who loved them.
  • In the game, Chigusa is a Vengeful Ghost.
  • Ruka in After the Revolution.
• Deconstructor Fleet: A prominent feature of the series, much like Neon Genesis Evangelion, is how it tears apart character tropes that are usually portrayed as either adventurous and romantic, as endearing quirks, or just Played for Laughs (or Fanservice) in most anime, but are actually really, really messed up by the standards of any ordinary human being. See Genre-Busting below.
• Distaff Counterpart: With its surreal and deconstructive nature, Dysfunction Junction cast, and being highly open to interpretation; the series is often considered one to Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is fitting considering that creator Kunihiko Ikuhara is friends with Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno.
• Distant Sequel: After the Revolution takes place two decades after the original series, revisiting the characters as adults in their thirties.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • The duelists wear roses on their chests that need to be knocked off with a sword in order to win, hence "deflowering."
  • Swords-as-phallic-symbols goes from background implication to active symbolism when Anthy kisses Touga's sword to power it up, causing it to glow red and giving him the ability to deal massive Clothing Damage to Utena.
  • In "Nanami's Egg", Nanami wakes up to find an egg in her bed, jumps to the conclusion that she laid it, and spends the episode wondering whether this is something that happens to other girls or not. Viewers generally interpret this as a metaphor for aspects of female puberty that girls often struggle to get answers and support about, like menstruation, unexpected pregnancy, and doubts about motherhood. Nanami's situation is ridiculous and played for laughs, but her worries are remarkably salient and treated sympathetically.
  • In some scenes, we see Touga, Akio, and Saionji rolling around in bed shirtless with unzipped pants.
  • The sensual yet vicious manner with which Akio devours a flower in one of the later episodes tells you pretty much everything you need to know about his relationship to women and sex.
• Downer Ending:
  • Most of the Black Rose episodes end with the Black Rose duelist happier and with some Character Development for their trouble; Wakaba's, on the other hand, ends with her discovery that Saionji has left as she mutters an "I'm home" to herself. In short, it's implied that not only is she still discontent with her status as an ordinary person, she also missed her Aesop—variously interpreted to be that her attraction to Saionji is something she should reconsider, or that Wakaba never realizes that she was the source of her own specialness, and the entire episode, down to the structural level, was focused on this.
  • ''The Tale of the Rose'' ends with the Witch trapping her brother, the Rose Prince, and sealing his light away from the world.
• Dramatic Irony: The series makes extensive use of this - the audience is privy to a lot more information than the protagonist is, and the situation intensifies as the story nears the end. It's terribly heartbreaking at times, especially on rewatches.
  • In the Black Rose Arc, Utena never knows who will be waiting when she reaches the dueling arena, but the audience always does. It actually heightens the drama of the reveals in most cases.
  • The displays of "sibling love" between Akio and Anthy, especially when Nanami is around to witness them, are disturbing to the point of hilarity.
• Dub Pronunciation Change: Early episodes had Anthy's surname pronounced "him-eh-ME-ya", but later episodes corrected to "him-EH-me-ya," which was how it was pronounced in Japanese.
• Duels Decide Everything: It certainly looks this way, since the main characters fight one-on-one for control of the Rose Bride, and by extension the revolution, but gradually revealed as a subversion. The duels seem to be a sort of Secret Test of Character designed to identify a duelist who has the princely qualities needed to unlock the power of Dios, and thereby bring about the revolution. But it doesn't work, and from the ending it's clear that it was never going to work and indeed, never meant to work.
• Dysfunction Junction: This is a story about a bunch of profoundly psychologically flawed young people, each of whom has a closet packed full of skeletons. They might really benefit from having supportive grown-ups around, but there aren't any. The only therapist is actually doing brainwashing, but actually manages to do some of these poor kids a small amount of good despite himself.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The Student Council motto, one of the many arc word routines, is an early indicator that the pursuit of fulfillment will come through struggle.
  Touga: If it cannot crack its eggshell, a chick will die without being born. We are the chick. This world is our egg. If we cannot crack the world's shell, we will die without being born. Smash the world's shell!
  All: For the sake of revolutionizing the world!

That said, once the actual finale arrives the story withholds what actually happens to Utena after all the physical and emotional pain she experiences. She isn't there to see what she accomplished...but the audience is.

• Elaborate University High: Ohtori Academy is a Boarding Elevator School covering elementary through high school. The campus is so large that it is difficult to tell where it ends and where town it's situated in begins. Virtually all the action is set in the school, making it an Academy of Adventure as well.
• Engineered Public Confession: Subverted for laughs in Episode 6. Utena and Miki converse with Mitsuru - Nanami's Dogged Nice Guy "boyfriend" - and he casually confesses that the various absurd attempts on Nanami's life were actually Engineered Heroics so Nanami would see him in the same light as Touga. Cue a cutaway with Nanami listening in on the conversation via an elaborate secret radio setup... before the camera angle shifts and reveals that she was somehow right there on the balcony the whole time, inexplicable radio set and all.
• Epiphanic Prison: Ohtori Academy is commonly interpreted as a place the students can only leave by growing beyond their circumstances, especially considering that Anthy is physically capable of walking away from the school at any time, but only has the bravery to do so after witnessing how strongly Utena feels about her.
• Everyone Is Bi: Most everyone is implied to experience same-sex attraction, and suggestive scenes and dialogue occur between nearly every pair of major characters, including siblings, and completely regardless of gender. Lip service is paid to heterosexuality as being the norm ("I'm a totally normal girl who wants a totally normal guy!") and this is eventually played for Hypocritical Humor when Touga, who is both literally and figuratively in bed with Akio, tells his sister Nanami that only boy/girl romance is normal. And proceeds to make out with her episodes later.

Tropes F to K

• Face–Heel Turn: The Black Rose arc combines this trope with A Day in the Limelight for several tertiary characters (and one secondary character). Most were previously introduced as friends or friendly acquaintances to Utena, but after a spotlight episode revealing their motivations they turn to opposing her for their own ends. Once Utena defeats them, they forget ever having challenged her.
• The Faceless: Utena makes use of a few different techniques for obscuring visual information about characters depending on what the story is trying to convey.
  • When a character is not important as an individual their face will simply not be in frame; this is common with the few parents that appear in the narrative. In the few instances where the shadow play girls appear outside of performances, they are framed so only the backs of their heads are visible.
  • Some flashbacks show the characters as blacked-out, shadow puppet-like abstractions, recognizable by their hair styles and costumes since their facial features cannot be seen. This treatment is not universal for flashbacks and is usually reserved for scenes where memory has shifted into myth, like Utena's fairytale-styled origin story.
• Fairytale Motifs: The series opens with an explanation of Utena's motivation, casting her as a lonely princess saved by a kind prince in a moment of need, which inspired her to become a prince herself. The concepts of the "Prince" and the "Princess" are key to the story and are ultimately subverted down to the core. Utena's childhood fairytale ends with a rhetorical question regarding her desire to become a Prince - "was that really such a good idea?" In the end, the answer appears to be "no." Not because she couldn't succeed or that her desire to help people was wrong, but because the "Prince" and the "Princess" are ideals that hurt and entrap people, and clinging to them keeps her from achieving her goals.
• Fallen Hero: Series Metatropes - What is the value of heroism? What happens if a hero falls? Just ask Dios...turned Akio!
• Fanservice: Played straight given how the art style enforces idealized body types. The girls are uniformly cute, or if they are too serious for that they are graceful and prone to showers of angst. The boys are uniformly willowy, or if they are too cool for that they are suave and will lose their shirts at the drop of a hat. Then there's the Akio Car.
• Fan Disservice: As a show that walks a line between fetish and Fetish Retardant, it has its own page for this.
• Feminist Fantasy: A female-centered story with themes of personal growth and liberation, and a powerful examination of the effect that social roles, particularly gendered ones, have on people.
• Filler: Mostly averted, as much as you'll see the term "filler" tossed around in the fanbase and on this page.
  • The Nanami-related episodes may not seem that important to the plot, but they establish characters like Nanami and Tsuwabuki that otherwise wouldn't receive very much characterization due to their tangential position in most of the main plot, and this characterization is necessary for their episodes that are more plot-related.
  • The clip show episodes avert this even harder, usually having a Framing Device that contains very important plot details.
  • The Black Rose Arc subverts filler. A description of it seems like a through-and-through filler arc: it introduces a Filler Villain who corrupts minor side characters to fight Utena. The arc wraps up with a All Just a Dream ending and is never mentioned again. However, it also ramps up the surrealism, introduces the last of the main characters, and the Black Rose duelists lean on the fourth wall with their general awareness that they are bit-players.
• Floral Theme Naming: Most characters have botanical elements in their names. This is a common real-life convention of Japanese names, but some examples in the series go beyond the norm, like the two heroines. "Utena" (萼) means "calyx", the part of the flower that protects the petals, and "Ánthos" (Anthy) which is Greek for "flower", so their names are also Significant Names. "Utena" is not a common name in Japan ^note neither of the applicable kanji for it are included in Japan's naming regulations and "Anthy" is foreign. Besides these two, there are many other examples to choose from, including some that extend into episode title wordplay:
  • "Miki" means "tree trunk," "Kozue" means "treetop." Kozue-centric episode 15 is titled "The Scenery Framed by Kozue."
  • The elements in Touga's name mean "winter" and "bud/sprout". He features prominently in episode 35, "The Love that Blossomed in Wintertime."
• Flower Motifs: Roses, everywhere! Every character's theme flower is a rose - the duelists each wear roses (usually in the color that symbolizes their emotional issue) when they fight, the characters spend a lot of time in a lovely greenhouse in the shape of a birdcage which is not coincidently full of roses, and rose designs are all over the architecture. Sometimes they even eat roses. Well, rose-hip jam to be more precise.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The opening sequence is chock-full of this; for instance, we glimpse Extreme Doormat Anthy in a knight's armor riding alongside Utena. O.O.C. Is Serious Business, because at the show's end, Utena disappears and Anthy is left to break free and search for her on her own. The theme song even closes with "If ever we two should be torn apart, I swear that I will change the world."
  • In the first episode when Utena looks at the floating castle in shock asking what it is. Saionji sardonically tells her that it is "a trick of the light". Turns out Saionji was a lot closer than he realized, as the final episodes reveal that the castle is actually an illusion that Akio creates with his planetarium.
  • From the final episode of the anime: Juri Arisugawa tells the other duelists a story about a boy who tried to save her sister from drowning in a river. The boy didn't succeed and drowned himself, while someone else saved her sister. The tragedy was that the sister soon forgot the boy. Juri was upset by this, but admits to the others that she, too, can no longer remember the boy's name. The episode goes on to depict Utena putting herself in mortal danger to help Anthy, but Anthy slips from Utena's grasp as a torrent of swords bares down on her - and afterwards, all the students and her friends forget she ever existed. Akio and Anthy remember her however, and Anthy uses her memory of Utena to finally free herself from Akio's control.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Utena met Anthy for the first time right after her parents died. While Utena remembers meeting the prince and that he gave her a reason to live, she forgot what he showed her - that something eternal does exist, and it is Anthy's eternal suffering. The real reason Utena wanted to become a prince was to save Anthy.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: While the Mind Screw imagery may make viewers want to pause to contemplate what it's there for, ^note Why are we looking at an apple with a dozen forks stabbed in it, sitting on a saucer? Or how about a pyramid of red sportscars, stacked like a champagne glass tower at a fancy party? it mostly averts this trope by being very deliberate about what it what it chooses to focus on. Nonetheless there are some Easter Eggs and blink-and-you'll-miss-it bits:
  • It can be a little difficult to catch, but when Saionji appears in the opening, he shakes away tears in time with a line in the song that mentions crying.
  • When Utena confronts Mikage in episode 23, the photos in the background are real life photos for one shot.
• Funny Background Event:
  • There is often some symbolic or punny event going on during the student council scenes, like Touga using Miki as a knife throwing target for no reason except to demonstrate to the audience how formidable they are.
  • An punny example from the student council scenes - Saionji mentions a "farce," and an anonymous woman appears out of nowhere to bring him a cup of green tea. The Japanese word for "farce" has a double meaning of "tea service."
  • During the Black Rose duels, there are a hundred desks arranged in the dueling grounds, each of which has some item symbolic to the Black Rose duelist. In Kozue's episode, that's milkshakes. While she's fighting with Utena, Anthy is drinking all the milkshakes.
• Gambit Pileup: Played with. Touga and Mikage are manipulators with their own ambitions, which sometimes run contrary to the apparent goals of the End of the World. But for most of the series the appearances of these alleged Manipulative Bastards is deceiving. Only Akio's machinations truly drive the story.
• George Lucas Altered Version: The series got an HD remaster with a new 5.1 audio mix in the late 2000s, and all releases since then use its source.
  • The director was particularly invested in the punching up the sound effects. Two easy-to-hear changes are bells in the bell tower and the Akio Car engine noise, which are more varied and complex in the remaster. Some Japanese dialogue was re-recorded as well.
  • There are altered visuals, which may revert changes made to meet broadcast standards. Visceral sequences of Anthy being pierced by swords in the final episode were warped or scaled down in the broadcast version, and the remaster displays them in their original aspect. The remaster also adds bodies resembling the Black Rose duelists to the slabs in the Nemuro Memorial Hall crematorium - the slabs were enclosed in the broadcast version.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Of the eight main characters, four are female (Utena, Anthy, Juri, and Nanami) and four are male (Akio, Touga, Saionji, and Miki).
• Genre-Busting: It's a complex, metaphorical coming of age story seen through the lens of Buddhism, Gnosticism, and Jungian philosophy. It tackles issues such as gender roles, the incest taboo, and binary principle. It's a complex look at the dark side of tropes and imagery associated with European fairy tales, such as the prince, the princess, and the wicked witch. It's a surrealist dramedy observing the complicated interpersonal relationships between the students. It's also about lesbians.
• Genre Deconstruction: The series is often held to be one, although there are varying opinions on what it deconstructs.
  • The label "magical girl deconstruction" is often applied to the series despite its limited magical girl elements. It casts a wider net for Shoujo tropes than just the magical girl genre.
  • Another common description of the show is a post-modern fairytale or deconstruction of fairytales. Easy-to-identify character archetypes are a hallmark of fairytales, and Utena goes to great lengths to show how its characters are so much more expansive than the roles they play.
  • A logical-extreme approach to shoujo romance tropes, depicting how unhealthy relationships with some of the commonly romanticized character types would be without the underlying assumptions of the style to hold them up.
• The Ghost: The Student Council receives letters from the End of the World instructing them on how to conduct the duel game, but the sender of the letters is anonymous and remains unseen until the second arc, which reveals that Akio is the End of the World.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: The Ohtori Academy girls' uniform is a Sailor Fuku with noticeably large, puffy sleeves. Even the gym uniforms have them.
• Grand Finale: The final episode is as abstract as it is emotionally resonant. Even though it's open-ended, it's joyously satisfying. Almost every named character puts in an appearance except for the dead and graduated ones...and Mari. Tough luck, Mari.
• Gratuitous English: The first ending theme is the most prominent example:
  Missing truth and forever
  Kissing love and true your heart
  • The opening theme has a few instances also:
  Take my revolution
• Gratuitous French:
  • The eyecatches and soundtrack CDs translate the title as Utena: La Fillette Révolutionnaire.
  • The first clipshow episode gives Utena's seven duels up to that point French names: amitié, choix, raison, amour, adoration, conviction, and soi.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: This applies to the whole cast of characters. The student council members are all fighting for their own personal goals, none of which are truly good or bad. Utena herself falls into this since her goal of becoming a prince is motivated by a desire to find her identity rather than out of a sense of justice or love. Even the most villainous characters are a darker shade of gray with sympathetic motives gone awry.
• Greek Chorus: Once per Episode there is a break in the action for a shadow play that parallels the episode's themes, performed by a company of Shadow Play Girls that only appear as silhouettes, and who may or may not be aliens. Utena casually participates in their performances during the second arc.
• Growing Up Sucks: According to one reading of the show, the central motif is the trials growing up - something everyone must face in order to take their place in the world. (It speaks to just how much is going on in this series that not everyone in the audience will read this as the central motif.) The Student Council members struggle with their problems and complexes throughout the story, but by the end they are starting to move on or coping in more effective ways. One interpretation of the finale is that Utena's diappearance after rejecting Akio and reaching out to Anthy signifies that she transcended the childishness of Ohtori Academy and can no longer exist there.
• Hard Light: Implied. Akio's planetarium projector can project tangible objects, if episode 38's duel is anything to go by. Of course, it could just be magic after all.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Utena states in the second episode that she is still a normal girl and only wants a normal boy, despite the ambiguous relationship she shares with Anthy. Again, in the last arc, Utena lamely denies that her feelings for Anthy are similar to Juri's feelings for Shiori.
• Heel–Face Turn: This trope is tricky to apply since the moral perspective of the series is nuanced, but it does have some utility insofar as some of the antagonists warm up to Utena over the course of the story.
  • By the final episodes, the whole Student Council is in Utena's corner. Touga accepts her as the "representative duelist" even though he isn't capable of truly helping her. Saionji is always standoffish with Utena - he isn't so much "with her" in the end as he is "against the game." Miki and Juri had limited interest in the revolution from the start, and once they start coming to grips with their personal problems they become openly friendly to Utena.
  • In the manga plays this more straight. Touga's reaction to losing to Utena is to become her personal servant. He does have ulterior motives, but he sheds them as he spends time with her. Similar to the TV series, she eventually goes to places where he cannot follow.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The idea of paying a high personal cost to regain his power is anathema to Akio; thus, his plans revolve around forcing others to bear the cost in his place. In contrast, Utena's genuine desire to free Anthy above all other considerations - and treating the price as a worthwhile cost to pay - is ultimately the key to helping the latter break free of her abusive relationship with Akio and leave Ohtori.
• Human Resources: The Black Rose Circle's plot is apparently powered by the corpses of 100 boys who died in a fire at Nemuro Memorial Hall, interred in a deep sub-basement of the restored building. The dead boys were all duelists, and Mikage, the leader of the Black Rose Circle, takes their signet rings from their caskets and gives them to the students he manipulates into challenging Utena.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: They're called Duels (even the ones without an actual duel in them).
• I Just Want to Be Special: Aside from a small handful of exceptions ^note  Anthy, Akio, Dios, Chu Chu and the Shadow Girls, everyone from the rank-and-file students to the Student Council members is dealing with some sort of inferiority complex and ties their self-worth to a goal or another person rather than valuing themselves as they are.
  • This trope gets a deep exploration in the Black Rose Arc. Most of the Black Rose duelists are Satellite Characters to the Student Council members - an array of characters who aren't the chosen ones, aren't the stars of the show...and they seem to know it. But they aren't going to accept it without a fight.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Imagery of Anthy being either pierced by swords or having a thicket of blades burst from her body becomes a motif in the Apocalypse Arc.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Downplayed - the uniforms worn by the duelists are perfectly reasonable for fighting in. Keeping them clean would be a pain, but they are light and allow for plenty of movement. The Rose Bride dress is fancy, but not outlandish. On the other hand, the student council members all wear custom uniforms, and even Utena gets a Non-Uniform Uniform. This, along with the magical manner in which Utena and Anthy's uniforms get pimped out for battle, still qualifies the costumes for this trope.
• Implausible Fencing Powers: Utena tends to do this during the duels, particularly with the Soul of Dios powering her up. Her biggest accomplishment is probably slicing multiple incoming cars in half.
• Intertwined Fingers: Utena and Anthy do this quite a bit - hand-holding is portrayed as very intimate, and most examples of it are between this pair. Interlocked fingers in specific is used at the end of the series for dramatic effect. It's the final frame of the anime.
• If It's You, It's Okay: This trope seems to be the closest fit for Touga's knotty sexuality. He is unmistakably a playboy with many sexual conquests among the girls of Ohtori Academy, but he is pretty obviously also having sex with Akio. While Akio is, by his own design, desirable to everyone, Touga never talks about what sort of feelings he has toward Akio. Based on his actions, he is with Akio in the pursuit of greater power. Once he realizes he is as much a pawn as the people he lures in for Akio, he backs off.
  • This trope may also summarize Saijonji's feelings for Touga, but just the same, it's possible to argue that it's purely platonic.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Revolutionary Girl Utena makes it clear from the very beginning that everything is going to be weird and stylized. Attentive audiences will notice that it sets up a familiar scenario only to give it a subversive twist right away - Utena was rescued by a prince, but she decided not to simply wait for him and become a prince herself instead. That's only the beginning, though. The mysterious world the series describes unfolds slowly as we learn more about the characters, since it is a character-focused drama. Viewers won't realize just how far the creators are prepared to go in subverting their expectations until the conclusion, but the hints are there throughout - hidden in plain sight. Rewatches of this series are highly rewarding.
• Knight in Shining Armor: The archetype of the "Prince on a White Horse" is synonymous with this. It is what Utena aspires to be, initially entering the plot to defend Wakaba's honor and staying to Rescue The Princess. But was that really such a good idea? The idea is gender-flipped, subverted, deconstructed, and reconstructed throughout the series.

Tropes L to P

• Lady and Knight: One of the elements that immediately make the show stand out is that both the lady and the knight are women, and this is the launchpad for its gender-role subversion. Utena clearly aspires to a Knight in Shining Armor role...but what sort of lady is Anthy? The knight defends the lady and Utena obviously does this, but the lady also directs the knight. The influence that Anthy has over Utena is more difficult to pin down. Utena struggles to think of the relationship as a two-way street, but it becomes clear that Anthy knows better and she intentionally leads Utena into situations where she'll get hurt. Is it spite? Maybe, but it's mostly fear - of the world that hurts her and the man who perpetuates her pain.
• Lethal Chef: Anthy, who cooks up not poison but explosives with magical side effects. Unless she's making shaved ice, which is safe. In the comic, the magical side effects are Chu-chu's fault instead.
  • Subverted with Akio, whose magnificent cooking skills only belie his Big Bad status.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: The conflict of the Black Rose arc involves the supporting cast arming themselves with the soul swords of the student council members and challenging Utena to duels with the goal of killing the Rose Bride. Many a jaw dropped when characters who the audience wouldn't have otherwise suspected - like Tsuwabuki and even Wakaba.
• Light Is Good: The spirit of the prince that descends from the inverted castle is often portrayed with Holy Backlight and dresses in immaculate white regalia. His Cool Sword is likewise shiny and brightly colored, and he has a glistening rose Flower Motif. To a lesser extent, Ohtori Academy is itself is a massive, brightly-lit landscape where marble columns and European architecture feature heavily. However, these are all subversions, either thin veneers covering a sordid reality, or mirages to sway impressionable youths.
• Loophole Abuse: Ain't no rule a girl can't wear a boy's uniform! Of course, Utena's uniform is noticeably very different from the standard Ohtori Academy boy's uniform. This is given more detail in the manga, where the exact rule Utena is bending states that a student must wear a uniform from the school's designer. It may not match the normal girl's or boy's uniform, but it's by the same designer, all right.
• Love Dodecahedron: The Love Chart for this show is very complicated, yet we have an exhautive description of it:
  • Utena idolizes Dios and falls in love with Anthy, but gets tempted by Touga and groomed by Akio.
  • Anthy is pursued by Saionji and Miki, has love/hate feelings towards Utena and an incestuous dependence on Akio.
  • Akio is engaged to Kanae and sleeps with Kanae's mother. He also has sex with Anthy, Utena, probably Touga, and possibly everyone who rides to the End of the World with him. He had an affair with Tokiko in the past.
  • Saionji claims to love Anthy but his feelings are shallow. However, his feelings for Touga are intense and seemingly more than platonic. He does not truly appreciate Wakaba's feelings for him.
  • Miki pursues Anthy as a "pure" version of Kozue. Kozue fools around with lots of boys, sleeps with Touga and quite likely Akio as well, but actually loves Miki. Miki may-or-may-not be attracted to Kozue in return.
  • Touga may-or-may-not return Saionji's feelings for him, but has sex with hordes of schoolgirls anyway, attracting Keiko and eventually attempting to seduce Nanami. He tries to charm Utena, but after she rebuffs him, he falls for her instead. He is strongly implied to have sex with Akio too.
  • Nanami only has eyes for Touga, but tries to monopolize Tsuwabuki anyway. Tsuwabuki would do anything for Nanami, and Mari envies the attention that Tsuwabuki pays to Nanami.
  • Wakaba crushes hard on Saionji and has history with Tatsuya, who definitely fancies her. She develops a schoolgirl crush on Akio later, and she may-or-may-not love Utena in romantic sense.
  • Mikage once loved Tokiko, who was seduced by Akio, and now loves Mamiya, who is actually Anthy in disguise.
  • Juri, Shiori, and Ruka have their own love triangle all to themselves, but Juri also has lots of subtext with Utena.
• Love Redeems: A common interpretation of the show's conclusion is that Utena's selfless love gives Anthy the courage to emancipate herself, and that is the awaited revolution. Touga is a debatable example - he comes to admire Utena and has romantic feelings for her, but he never truly understands what drives her, which makes his motives subject to doubt.
• Love Triangle: Juri-Shiori-Ruka and Utena-Anthy-Akio are the main ones, and several other less-prominent ones besides. The Juri-Shiori-Ruka one is unusually messy for not featuring any of the main characters, and while these three come closer to understanding one another over the course of the story, the triangle isn't really resolved even in the end. Of all the love triangles, Utena-Anthy-Akio comes the closest to being resolved by the end of the series. Utena and Anthy are definitely aligned with each other and against Akio, but whether or not they live happily ever after together is up to personal interpretation.
• Loving a Shadow: Every character in the story has at least one relationship that is:
  1) Fundamental to their self-perception, and
  2) Poorly actualized, if actualized at all.
  For instance, meeting the prince had a tremendous impact on Utena and she thinks herself as promised to him in some ill-defined way, but she doesn't actually remember him very clearly. All of these relationships are examined and have well-developed backstories to keep them from being repetitive, and no two of them evolve the same way. The Utena/Anthy relationship is especially unique.
• Madonna-Whore Complex: Miki's treatment of Anthy, whom he sees as entirely virginal and passive because in his mind Anthy is the foil to his promiscuous sister, Kozue, whom he is sexually attracted to. The theme appears to be that Miki sees Anthy and Kozue as two sides of one woman, and by extension seeing neither as a full person in her own right.
• Magic Realism: Part of the genre, a lot of probably magical stuff happens which no clearly defined border as to where the realism stops and the fantasy begins, even some things that are clearly magical at first are latter explained to be quite mundane but others aren't.
• Magical Girl: Elements of the genre are present in the story, insofar as it has action girls and magic (probably? Possibly?) and many of the key staff members are well versed in its genre conventions. The Shadow Play Girls even lampshade the standard Magical Girl Warrior finale formula of using the The Power of Love as a Deus ex Machina that always saves the world:
  Shadow Play Girl: "When that happens, the power of miracles will make me a real Prince!"
  Shadow Play Girl: "That's right out of some anime or something."
• Manipulative Bastard: Akio is very charming, but his cynicism is bottomless. Touga admires the unassailability Akio projects and tries to imitate him; Ruka similarly copies Akio's playbook in hopes that ruthlessness will help Juri somehow. Mikage believes himself to be one and succeeds for the entire second arc.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Aside from the setting's Magic Realism, there is likely at least something magical or supernatural going on at Ohtori Academy, which is also an Academy of Adventure. However, it's never entirely clear whether something is actually magical or just some kind of bizarre symbolism.
• Mental World: The dueling arena has aspects of this trope. The process of reaching the arena is a symbolic venture into another world that involves passing through a very fancy gate that only opens for the chosen. Somehow duels are always fought under a blue sky, even though the duelists arrange meeting times after school, around sunset. During the Black Rose arc, the arena becomes filled with school desks and atop each one are identical copies of some item important to Utena's opponent, and later on, the desks are replaced by cars. Subverted with the reveal that it's all the result of Akio's planetarium projector - but then double subverted when the symbolism takes on a life of it's own, allowing Utena to open the Rose Gate and reach the real Anthy.
• Mind-Control Eyes: When the Black Rose duelists are under Mikage's influence, Empty Eyes are used to achieve this effect.
• Mind Screw: The series uses such surreal and over-the-top imagery that it's sometimes hard to tell what's really going on. While it's generally agreed that it takes place in a World of Symbolism and that not everything happening on-screen should be taken at face value, the symbolism itself can be rather bizarre. The first arc starts pretty normal, ramps up the surreal imagery in the Black Rose arc, and becomes a metaphor/symbolism storm in the final arc.
• Modesty Towel: In the manga, Touga sees Dios's power for the first time and decides to get close to Utena to find out more about it, so he joins Utena's household as a "shimobe" (personal servant). The first time Utena hears of this is the next day, when he waltzes out of her shower, clad only in a towel.
• Mood Whiplash: The episode with the boxing kangaroo is followed by an episode where Juri agonizes over her sexuality. This is followed by a Freaky Friday episode, which is followed by a flashback-heavy episode where a young Utena hides in a coffin and begs to die.
• More than Mind Control: In the Black Rose arc, Mikage takes advantage of emotionally distressed students and turns them against Utena and Anthy, even though their problems seldom have anything to do with them.
  • Akio maintains his control over Anthy with sophistry, occasional violence when she seems too willful, and when he's really concerned he's pushed her too far, displays of emotional vulnerability. Whether or not he really means it is hard to say.
• Mundane Made Awesome: It's a surreal show, so even minor actions and conversations often get punched up with dramatic flourishes and/or objects suddenly appearing out of thin air.
  • Utena is frequently framed in dramatic poses to emphasize her heroic qualities. Optionally, a storm of rose petals may swirl around her when she's doing something cool to draw attention to her princely nature.
  • When the show focuses on Nanami, the largest of the cast's Large Hams, it doesn't matter how trivial the conflict is - she will blow it wildly out of proportion to comic effect. It's no wonder that there are Nanami-focused episodes scattered throughout the series.
  • Touga, Saionji, and Akio often combine this trope with Fanservice - their shirts have a habit of flying open from one shot to the next even when all the more they are (apparently) doing (most of the time) is having a conversation.
  • In episode 21, Keiko hands out party invitations by whipping them like throwing stars.
• The Musical: Three musicals were produced in the years following the TV series, and a series of revival musicals started in 2018.
  • The early musicals are disparate in style - the first is reminiscent of 90s Sera Myu productions and there is an official recording of it; the second was produced by Gesshoku Kagekidan, a small angura theatre troupe with ties to Shuji Terayama, a favorite playwright of Ikuhara Kunihiko. It's sought-after Lost Media among fans; apparently it featured Anthy wielding a machine gun, zombie mummies and the Egyptian God Osiris. The third is a small production out of Western Japan that is even less-documented than the second.
  • The revival musicals came out of the 2.5D Theater trend and have their own video releases. It was likely on it's way to being a trilogy, but the pandemic seems to have derailed the final installment.
• My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: Zigzagged. The starting subversion is that victory in the dueling game has more to do with motivation than strength or skill. Utena consistently wins against the student council members, even though they train in the fencing or kendo clubs, and Utena doesn't participate in any combat sport extracurriculars. The trope is inverted in that Utena is plainly outmatched several times, but wins anyway thanks to happenstance. But it's also played straight, since Utena develops sword-fighting skills on-the-job, as it were, and she makes quick work of her less-skilled opponents no matter how motivated they may be.
• Never Grew Up: Ohtori Academy is apparently a twisted version of Neverland. Not growing psychologically is expressed in visual terms as not growing physically, and the metaphor for "growing up" is "graduating".
• Nonuniform Uniform: Utena wears a version of the boys', not the girls' uniform. She justifies this with a loophole in the student handbook: technically, the only dress code requirement is that students buy items from school-approved lists. There is no written requirement that all the pieces come from the same uniform set, nor is there any rule against custom dyeing or tailoring. The standard boys uniform is a light-green jacket and pants; Utena's jacket (with darts and nipped waist) is dark blue, and she wears it with tight red shorts from the gym uniform. In the manga her uniform was originally bright pink top and bottom.
• Noodle People: All the characters have the sort of long, spindly limbs that are common in shoujo art, and the larger men have very broad chests similar to fashion illustration.
• Not Blood Siblings: Nanami is crushed after finding out she and her brother Touga are both adopted and not blood related after all. This is then subverted when it turns out that Touga was just playing with her head — while they are adopted, they were adopted from the same family and thus actually are blood siblings. For the record: This is the Double Subversion of the inversion of a trope — a prime example of how Mind Screwy this show is. Even further subverted in that Nanami never finds out the truth (or if she does, it's never shown onscreen).
• Not Just a Tournament: The external conflict is a series of one-on-one martial contests, although it doesn't really have the feel of a Tournament Arc. There is a prize for winning the dueling game - the power of revolution - but because it is so abstract, each of the duelists imagines it to be something different. In the end, the winner is a patsy. Whichever duelist has the right balance of conviction and gullibility is steered to victory and manipulated into giving the key to their success to Akio. And Akio, having no more insight into what revolution means than anyone else, promptly grinds it down to nothing, gaining nothing in the process. It's empty movement.
• Odd Friendship: Miki and Juri have an age gap between them (small, but significant for their general age group), have sharply contrasting personalities, and don't have much in common besides fencing. Even so, they seem to have a fairly strong and mutually supportive friendship (perhaps one of the few genuinely healthy relationships in Ohtori at all).
• Oddly Visible Eyebrows: A common stylistic and time-saving technique in animation used throughout the series. Hair does not obscure facial expressions even when it should (unless the animators are deliberately hiding a character's reaction.) Most readily seen with Touga, whose hair is often over his face.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: The wordless Gregorian-style chanting in the "Nectar Knife" background music is beyond creepy. Another track, "Confession", is A Cappella Gregorian-style chant - again wordless and creepy, but with a more lonely sound.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: The soundtrack has two songs that prominently feature this instrument.
  • "Idea of Memory" is solo pipe organ arrangement of a leitmotif associated with Nanami (to be precise, the song is "That Girl's Tragedy".) It seems playful despite the creepy instrumentation and it tends to be heard when Nanami is making mountains out of molehills.
  • "Legend: The God's Name Is Abraxas", the theme for student council meetings, is more of a straight example as it has a lot of gravitas. The non-sequitur visuals in the meeting scenes often subvert its formality, though.
• One-Woman Wail: Wakaba's duel chorus, "Magic Lantern Butterfly Moth 16th Century," begins with one.
• Only Six Faces: The characters tend to have the same facial structure with different hairstyles or eye colors.
• On The Next Episode Of Catchphrase: The next episode preview always ends with the same line: "The absolute destiny, apocalypse."
• Ontological Mystery: In a loose sense. The series increasingly hints as it goes on that Ohtori Academy is a prison of the mind.
• Our Ghosts Are Different:
  • Mikage, if he is in fact dead, doesn't know he is dead.
  • By contrast, Chigusa, the villain of the visual novel, is similar to Mikage but much less ontologically slippery. She is absolutely a Vengeful Ghost who is exorcised in the good endings.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: Based on her sudden disappearances and reappearances, often leaving her clothes behind, Anthy may possibly be some form of projected phantom. The reveal of her actual body being sealed behind the Rose Gate would seem to make this almost explicit.
• Palette Swap:
  • The Black Rose duelists unsurprisingly wear black rose signet rings, differentiating them from the other duelists, whose rings are white.
  • The first ending credits sequence gives Utena a pink version of Anthy's Rose Bride dress, which she actually wears in episode 38. The third arc gives Kozue an identical dress in blue, and Shiori gets a plum-colored one.
  • Akio and Anthy wield a black version of the Sword of Dios/Utena's soul sword during the final episodes.
• Parental Abandonment: Utena's parents are dead, and the parents of the Kiryuu siblings and the Kaoru siblings are distant and seldom seen, leaving their children to look after themselves. The other main characters do not even mention their parents.
  • And then there's Kanae's mother, who, even though she's one of the only parents to appear, manages to show in one short scene that she's abandoned her daughter in a way more heartbreaking than the rest of the casts' families put together.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Deconstructed, like many other tropes in this series.
  • Utena ends up in an Accidental Marriage (or rather, engagement) with Anthy after winning her first duel, and is quite surprised by the sudden revelation. Still, they quickly bond and show signs of falling in love, making it appear the trope will be played straight after all. Then the second arc starts, and it's cast heavily into doubt.
  • Akio and Kanae are engaged in a union arranged by Kanae's father, the chairman of Ohtori Academy. They show every sign of being a harmonious, affectionate young couple. Subverted in that Kanae has no idea who or what Akio really is, or how much danger she is in, until it's too late. The audience only gets a brief glimpse of her fate, but it's clear that Akio breaks her.
• Personality Blood Types: Discussed by Nanami and her Girl Posse, and later by Nanami and Utena. These discussions lead to The Reveal that Touga is not related to the rest of the family, because Touga and Nanami's parents blood type is B, and Touga's blood type is A, which would be impossible if he was their biological son. The fact that Nanami's blood type is also B allows Touga to mess with Nanami's head by making her believe that the two of them aren't related by blood when they are in fact, biological siblings.
• Person of Holding: Anthy summons the Sword of Dios from her body, signifying the power contained within her. But it's later revealed that Utena and the other duelists also have swords of their own inside of them. Notably, Utena's sword is identical to Anthy's.
• Pimped-Out Dress: The top-line item is the Rose Bride dress, a floor-length, sleeveless gown with tasseled epaulets. Even though it's sleeveless, it's worn with sleeve cuffs at the wrists that are possibly suggestive of manacles. It's worn mainly by Anthy, but other characters appear in identically styled dresses are various points, Palatte Swaped into their respective theme colors.
  • There are several fancy parties held over the course of the series which offer opportunities for the girls to get decked out in formal dresses, but the character with the fanciest dress is always Nanami. While they don't all meet the standard of pimped out, Nanami's dress in episode 3, with it's Giant Poofy Sleeves and huge, butterfly-like bow at the small of her back, is a contender if nothing else.
• Pink Means Feminine:
  • Utena is heavily associated with pink; having pink hair and being associated with pink roses. It's one of the few concessions to femininity in an otherwise tomboyish character, thus seemingly subverting the stereotype. However, it's played straight and deconstructed as Utena wears pink dresses when she acts/becomes more feminine. The deconstruction comes in that she's wearing pink and acting feminine because people like Touga and Akio manipulate her into doing so, taking advantage of her naiveté to push her into a "princess" role.
  • Played straight in the Grand Finale when Anthy trades her red dress and school uniform for a pink travel suit. It's a triumphant moment as she rejects the uniform and role that others forced on her for her own outfit.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The student council spends far more time talking about the Rose Bride, the duels and any messages they may have received from The End Of The World than they do handling things that would normally be the responsibility of a student council, like organizing student events or allocating school funds to various clubs.
• The Plan: End of the World's plan is actually not that complex: make duelists fight each other because the swords they form from their hearts might be the weapon strong enough to cut open the Rose Gate and release Dios's power. (Even the Black Rose arc is part of it: the brainwashed duelists demonstrate that using Anthy's sword was So Last Season compared to the power of drawing a sword from your own heart.) Meanwhile as Akio he seduces Utena so he can take her sword when it's ready. If only his plan hadn't meant abandoning Anthy to her torment...
• Poor Communication Kills: This goes hand-in-hand with the crazy amounts of Dramatic Irony. Most of everyone's problems could be solved if they would just sit down and talk, but their hang-ups get in the way. (Besides, if they did all get on the same page the show would be over.) This goes double for Shiori and Juri, but it applies to everyone.
• Postmodernism: Described as a post-modern fairy tale, it takes the genre's building blocks and uses them to construct a story of feminine empowerment, of how we are all, regardless of gender, more than whatever it is that constrains us. It's a story that subverts, and subverts, and subverts some more; it's oblique, enigmatic and just plain weird; it knows you're smart. For one final subversion, its visual flair also lends it just enough earnest romanticism to challenge its own post-modern bent.
• Princess Classic: Anthy as the Rose Bride seems designed to evoke this in ways that are played for sympathy. She has no control over her future and is passed from victor to victor, obeying their commands because "those are the rules." When she confesses a desire to learn to cook like Wakaba, Touga laughs at the idea of the Rose Bride cooking and replies that her only priority is taking care of the roses. She is a trinket that represents power, but has none of her own.
• Princess Protagonist: Played with extensively, fitting the Fairy Tale Motifs. In Utena's fairy tale backstory, she is an orphaned princess who meets a handsome prince that saves her from despair. This story colors the world. We view the events the way Utena does - our pink-themed protagonist living in a world of castles and seeming Princes Charming, trying to become a prince but swayed by the promise of princessdom: the eternal happy ending.
  • The Tale of the Rose postulates that all girls are princesses by virtue of the prince's aid, but the prince is singular. How can one person save every girl? Answer: he can't, but the world at large and the prince himself buy into the idea anyway. One interpretation is that both princes and princesses are childish and false ideals, and that the way to grow up is to move past them.
• Prince Charming: The Prince archetype is a combination of this trope and Knight in Shining Armor. He is not just any savior of the unfortunate; he is a savior of girls specifically, and in saving them they become princesses. Rescue Romance is implied from the very beginning, as Utena's fairy tale illustrates:
  "Was the ring from the prince meant as an engagement ring?"

The prince always has to save the day; he has to be perfect. But nobody in this story is perfect, as it turns out - as the series progresses this trope gets heavily deconstructed, both through Utena and...

• Akio, who once embodied this ideal as Dios. When he couldn't hack it anymore, his idealism fell apart and he became the Big Bad, but he continues to use his Prince Charming image to manipulate those around him.

Tropes Q to S

• Queer Flowers: Roses are a dominant symbol with a surfeit of meanings, and this series makes use of many of them. But for the purposes of this trope, it links to the use of roses in manga like The Rose of Versailles as a symbol of gender-bending beauty. Similarly, Anthy is a sapphic woman who is called the Rose Bride and is betrothed to Utena, another girl.
• Questionable Consent: This is employed deliberately several times, played both for drama and for a significant amount of Fan Disservice.
  • The paramount example is the relationship between Akio and Anthy. The audience is led to believe that it's consensual at first, and despite the rather sinister way their encounters are framed, both parties seem happy with the relationship. Just another of the shocking surprises that Anthy's character development generates; it's nothing we can't get used to, right? But then this rug, too, gets pulled out from under the audience, in the scene where Akio rapes Anthy when she hesitates to come to him. In fact, their relationship is almost literally ^note to the point that people have actually run it through a checklist used by professionals and hit pretty much every point a case study for Domestic Abuse.
  • Due to the age differences between the parties, most of Akio's relationships would be considered statutory rape in real life even with consent. On paper, Anthy is too young to consent. Touga, despite his hypersexuality, is only 18. Utena is 14, and she's clearly uncomfortable with what happens but seems to feel like she can't back out. Which leads to the next issue: the massive authority gap between the parties. Akio is senior faculty at Ohtori Academy while virtually everyone else in the cast is a student, which would make consent highly dubious even if everyone was the same age.
  • The light novel also has Touga having sex with Miki, with extremely dubious consent present throughout the entire scene.
• Rape as Drama: The show is nuanced and discrete about it (after all this is no late-night anime; it aired at 6:00 PM) but as it moves into its final story arcs, Anthy and Akio's relationship goes from creepy to heinous. In episode 25, Akio uses force on Anthy when she hesitates to "come to him" as she usually does. It isn't blatant, Kick the Dog sexual violence; it's something more insidious, something more true to lived experience of Domestic Abuse than most stories have the nerve to depict. The nearer the series is to its finale, the more obvious it becomes that Anthy's wants don't matter to Akio, and their nighttime meetings are not truly consensual.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: The narrative supports this trope at first glance - after all, Utena is an Action Girl who wears a modified boy's uniform and Anthy is a Damsel in Distress who wears a floor-length gown. While there is a correlation to be made between wearing dresses and powerlessness in this story, these waters get increasingly murky as it goes on. Utena's masculine persona helps her win duels, but the more she wins, the weaker - and more manipulable - she seems. In parallel, Anthy looms larger and larger until she almost seems to be everywhere all at once. Maybe she really is everywhere all at once.
• Recap Episode: One the the first pieces of advice fans give to new viewers is "don't skip the recap episodes!" The footage is edited in ways that maintain the viewer's interest, and they use framing devices to give a new spin to events they already know. All of the recaps lay important groundwork for the plot arc to come, and most of them are actually pivotal to the plot.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: There are multiple contrasting character pairs, all closely examined and played for drama. A lot of tension is because the Red and Blue Oni have different communication styles and end up talking past each other, contributing to self-defeating behaviors.
  • Utena and Anthy. Utena is a sporty Tomboy with a Girly Streak and an open-hearted Blithe Spirit, while Anthy is an obedient Neutral Female and an extreme closed book, to the point that other characters think she doesn't even have a book.
  • Touga and Saionji. Touga is a suave, cynical Manipulative Bastard, while Saionji wears his emotions on his sleeve and is easily provoked.
  • Miki and Kozue. Miki is mild-mannered, idealistic and a highly-accomplished model student, while Kozue is world-wise and cares little for what others think of her.
• Red String of Fate: Used (quite ironically) in Juri's flashbacks about her history with Shiori. The red string appears as part of a Tin-Can Telephone linking Shiori to a boy that Shiori assumes Juri likes and intends to steal away from Juri. But there is nothing "fated" about this boy. He is not even important enough to get a name. The real significance of the red string is that it does not lead Shiori to Juri.
• Ret-Gone: The events of the Black Rose arc do not "stick," not in obvious ways at least. The Black Rose duelists all forget their duels with Utena after they lose, but the catharsis they experience from going through the ordeal seems to color their interactions afterward. Similarly, when Utena defeats Mikage, his identity as "Mikage" is wiped away, but his prior Nemuro identity remains as a matter of record.
• Rewatch Bonus: Watching the series a second time is a different experience with the knowledge that Touga, Anthy, and Akio are manipulating everyone including Utena, and Anthy is a witch with vaguely defined powers, turning gags and minor acts into expert string-pulling. For example, in episode 5 the first time you see Anthy cheer Utena on during the duel with Miki it looks normal, the second time it's clearly Anthy deliberately tripping Miki up so he'll lose the duel. And the act that inspired Miki to issue the challenge in the first place, namely Anthy playing the song Miki used to play with his sister on the piano, goes from coincidence to a calculated act.
• Rule of Symbolism: This show is a playground of symbols. It invites the audience to come in and play however they like, and the curtains are never just blue. A passing gag about a multi-layered bento box even symbolizes the series' deeper themes!
• Sailor Fuku: The standard girls' uniform at Ohtori Academy is a sailor fuku, notable for also having Giant Poofy Sleeves.
• Samaritan Syndrome: The unintended consequences of well-intentioned act of self-sacrifice are this story's original sin. Anthy shielded Dios from his crushing obligations as the "prince," and her reward was the frustrated wrath of all the people who demanded his help and could no longer receive it, symbolized as a "million swords of hatred." Those swords are always piercing her, and Dios, having since become Akio, is content to let her suffer in his place forever.
• Satellite Character: The Black Rose arc deconstructs this archetype by focusing on characters who, in Student Council arc, were mainly narrative devices for the student council members to bounce off of. The satellites know their situation - that they are "not chosen" and the student council member they orbit is one of "the chosen," - and one by one they try to become the influencer instead of the influencee. While the status quo holds - barring a few cracks, the character dynamics are tremendously enriched by giving the audience an outside perspective on the student council members' dilemmas.
• Save the Princess: Utena's goal from the very beginning is to become a prince who saves princesses, turning the basic idea on its head. This is only the surface-level of the series' take on the subject, though. It dives into the ramifications of this sort of heroic ideal. The prince made girls into princesses by rescuing them from anything from legitimate danger to mild inconvenience; the princesses themselves, meanwhile, Stay in the Kitchen. This framing, combined with Dios only dying after his sister rescues him, leads to an unpleasant conclusion: that for all his supposed power, it's actually the prince who depends on the helplessness of the princesses.
• Say My Name: Utena and Anthy repeat each other's names back and forth at a few points, starting in the surreal conclusion of episode 9 where Utena saves Anthy from a coffin. Usually Utena says "Himemiya" many more times than Anthy says "Utena-sama" (or "Anthy" and "Miss Utena" in the dub). There are more instances of this trope in the later parts of the series once the heroines' relationship is more developed, but rarely more than two repetitions. In the final episode, scripts usually ascribe about 40 lines to Utena. Half of them contain the name "Himemiya."
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: The series approaches the trope as a concept rather than as a plot, and in the end portrays it as a hollow notion. Akio - the rich, handsome authority figure - represents the glamor of adulthood, and his presence in the show takes the already sexually-charged general dynamic into uncharted fanservice/fan disservice territory. Many of the adolescent characters are swayed by his charm and his worldview, but it doesn't last. Getting seduced by Akio doesn't make them into someone new; they still collide with the immovable object that is Utena and his methods fail them. The final episode shows that Akio has no real power - he doesn't have a sword of his own.
• Sex Is Evil: Downplayed. While no one in the series has sex for healthy or positive reasons, its portrayal of sex is still sensuous and it's a romantic story at heart.
• Sexophone: Akio Car, the background music that plays during Akio Car rides, is a horn-forward jazz piece with strong "underworld" vibes and prominent use of the saxophone.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: The student council wears pristine military-style uniforms, all decorated with their trademark colors. Utena's regular outfit also gives off this feel.
• Shirtless Scene: A character wearing an unbuttoned uniform jacket, often with Dramatic Wind, is visual shorthand for seduction and/or temptation from an early point in the series. The later arcs are full of unbuttoned jackets (and even unbuttoned pants) to the point that it actually becomes laughable. As in the scenes are deliberately funny.
  • The opening animation for the Sega Saturn game parodies this - first thing that Akio and Touga do is open their shirts and show off their chests, and they shut Saionji out when he tries to do as they do.
• Shout-Out: Utena features commentary on and references to existing works, including (but not limited to) the works of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, the House of Borgia, Paradise Lost, Cicero, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. It even has multi-episode obscure visual references to Manet.
  • The Rose of Versailles is a key reference. The grandiose European-style architecture, the roses, the sword fights, the military-esque uniforms, and the themes of gender-bending and revolution are all homages to and evocations of this manga.
  • The Takarazuka Revue inspired the gender-bending tradition in shoujo manga and recursively reflects it, since an adaptation of The Rose of Versailles is one of its most famous productions. Besides the themes and motifs above, Utena shares with the revue a musical theater element - each duel has its own choral theme reminiscent of a musical number.
  • The Mobile Suit Gundam character Lalah Sune was the basis for Anthy's appearance. And then there's Keiko's response to getting slapped in episode 8:
    "You...you slapped me! Not even my own mother has ever slapped me!"
  • The student council motto about breaking the world's shell is paraphrased from Hermann Hesse's existentialist war novel Demian. The original quote in the novel makes reference to Abraxas, a deity with a symbolic role in the works of Carl Jung, and the title of the background track that plays during the student council meeting scenes also name-drops Abraxas.
  • Wakaba is seen reading and talking about Magnolia Waltz, an earlier manga by Chiho Saito, in the second episode.
  • The most obvious nod to William Shakespeare is Akio's episode 34 paraphrase of "all the world's a stage," which delightfully comes from one of his works that feature gender-bending. The duel songs for episodes 14 and 20 were sourced from J.A. Seazer's choral adaptation of Hamlet and directly reference the the play's Japanese translation, although few translators who tackled these songs caught on to this.
  • Anthy is reading a book in episode 35 titled "Heidenröslein". The poem under this title by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is far too short for an entire book, but it's subject matter is well suited to where Anthy is emotionally at this point in the story.
  • Dear Brother is possibly the most important inspiration for Utena - in the words of the participants of an ANN roundtable on it, "Ikuhara cribbed the hell out of Dear Brother. In a good way!"
  • A previous work by Chiho Saito, Kanon, may have served as the inspiration for several of the themes and tropes in this story.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Utena's opponents monologue at her a lot, either about the grievance that drove them to challenge her or about what they desire to gain. This trope is her usual response - to a point that it becomes a fault. Utena assumes that she knows what everyone's problem is and that whatever she intends to do about it is the best solution. She doesn't know why, for instance, her best friend might be so conflicted and desperate that she ends up resorting to violence. She just reacts to it without really wondering about it. The worst blowback from Utena's constant "shutting up" is in the final duel, when Anthy stabs her in the back and refuses to be "saved" by her.
• Significant Name Shift: Anthy drives this several times for both moments of awesome and moments of despair.
  • When Utena wins her first duel with Saionji, Anthy stops referring to Saionji as -sama and starts using -senpai to indicate she no longer has any obligation to be subservient to him.
  • When Utena loses Anthy to Touga, Anthy starts referring to Utena as "Tenjou-san" rather than "Utena-sama" in a tear-jerking reversal of the above, emphasizing that they are no longer on close terms.
  • Anthy refers to Utena without any honorifics at the very end to indicate that she turned her back on her former subservient role.
• Single-Stroke Battle: This is a common way for duels to conclude, particularly when Utena is fighting Saionji or Touga, and it uses the classic horizontal framing and slow motion. In some cases, the screen goes black with starbursts to represent the swinging swords. In other cases, the at the moment the victor's sword would strike, a spinning rose appears to obscure the action as if censoring the violence or, perhaps, the implied intimacy of the sword penetrating the rose.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: The series plants itself in the middle of the spectrum, refuses to budge, and lets the characters and plot (and audience) fight over it to whatever extremes they please.
• The Smurfette Principle: The series flirts with this in the Student Council arc, where Juri is the only girl on the council. Then, it inverts with the Black Rose duelists - the majority of whom are girls. (Tatsuya, another boy, was lured in, but rejected).
• Something about a Rose: Roses are the main flower motif in the series, and they pop up absolutely everywhere, from Anthy's title as the Rose Bride and her frequently tending to the roses in the school's greenhouse, to the stylized spinning rose that pops up during key scenes, to the duels involving opponents having to knock roses off each other's clothing.
• Spoiler Opening: A spoiler ending in this case. The first ending shows Utena in a loving embrace with the prince, wearing a pink version of Anthy's Rose Bride dress. (Utena wears the dress in the final two episodes.) An identical image of Anthy in the prince's arms splits off from Utena. (Utena and Anthy both love the prince, and the love triangle is laid out before Akio is even introduced.)
• Start of Darkness: A notable aversion. The series offers two versions of how Anthy became the witch, but leaves vague how or when Dios became Akio. In his own words, he ceased to be the prince at the same time that Anthy became the witch, but it's unclear if that is the same thing as being Akio, the End of the World. Was his loss of idealism gradual or immediate? Does it even matter?
• Stargazing Scene:
  • Akio has a colossal planetarium projector in his penthouse residence at the top of the academy's central tower. He likes looking up at the stars on his ceiling and making philosophical observations, often dispensing advice to Utena during solemn sessions of stargazing. These scenes develop the Akio-Utena romance, as Utena grows to trust Akio during these sessions. The fact that the stars are a planetarium show and not real is symbolic, representing the fact that almost everything in the world of Ohtori Academy is an illusion created and manipulated by Akio.
  • Anthy gets her own solo scene where she poignantly closes the roof of the planetarium on the night sky and insists to Akio she prefers the fake stars. It perfectly encapsulates Anthy's dilemma and complicated feelings.
• Stealth Pun: The names of the girls in Nanami's entourage are Aiko, Keiko, and Yuko. Written just a little differently, their names are I-ko, K-ko, and U-ko, as in the beginning of director Kunihiko Ikuhara's surname.
• Stock Footage: The series has many sequences that are repeated over and over, including the story of the lonely princess, Utena climbing to the arena, and Akio's highway scenes, just to name a few. The show has both pragmatic and thematic reasons for this. To the first point, the show had a limited budget; but to the second, it serves the theme of revolution, as in revolving - doing the same things over and over again - empty movement.
• Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: Anthy is frequently cornered by Nanami's Girl Posse after school and slapped for things that aren't her fault, usually over her association with popular male students like Saionji. Nanami herself takes part in this during her introductory episode, where she persuades Anthy to wear a special dress to a ball, which dissolves when she engineers someone to "accidentally" spray champagne over it. Good thing Utena saves Anthy's dignity with a dress made from a tablecloth.
• Stock Sound Effects: The "creaky metal door" effect is used in the sequence of Utena climbing to the duel arena (and even opening her locker!)
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The Student Council arc is cheery on its face, and has more silly, low-stakes episodes than the arcs to follow...until the ominous, plot-advancing, and foreshadowing-heavy episode 9, which establishes the very important coffin motif. The audience learns that Utena's loss of her parents as a little girl made her give up on life. She climbed into a coffin before the prince found her and saved her. Later in the episode, Anthy is in a coffin, too - and much, much later, the show implies Anthy has been in a coffin all along.

Tropes T to Z

• Take Our Word for It: Steadily less of the action of the duels actually appears on-screen during the third arc, with imagery of Akio Cars mysteriously standing on end or zooming around the arena under their own power taking focus from the sword-fighting. (Also the budget was getting stretched pretty thin.)
• Teacher/Student Romance: Between Akio and the many students he seduces. The "romance" part is tenuous at best, since whole basis of these associations is sex with the intent to manipulate. He can put on a show of romance if his target is valuable enough, like Kanae and Utena are, but it's all calculated.
• Tech Marches On: Akio's omnipresent car includes a car phone. Back in 1997, this luxury helped emphasize how rich and important he is, but the ubiquity of mobile communications tech today may make it difficult for modern audiences to pick up on this.
• Tender Tomboyishness, Foul Femininity:
  • Downplayed for Juri and Shiori. Juri's skill at sword-fighting and leadership position in the fencing club could be tomboyish traits, but not for her. She is a Lady of War - poised, fierce, and unforgiving. But she has an Achilles' Heel that renders her emotionally vulnerable and inclines her to passive behavior. Shiori on the other hand is very delicate and feminine, but emotionally vicious against apparent friends and foes alike, and never holds back in a fight.
  • Played with and deconstructed for Utena and Anthy. Taken at face value, Utena and Anthy are stereotypes of "tomboy and girly girl" - Utena takes the role of the knight in shining armor, and Anthy is the feminine princess that needs her help. Utena isn't just tough, though. She is also very affable and sweet to the emotionally isolated Anthy, and tries to bring her out of her shell. The audience gets a clearer look behind Anthy's mask than Utena does, and these glimpses show Anthy as jaded, passive-aggressive, and covertly involved in a larger game than the one Utena is playing. The narrative does not demonize Anthy for any of this, not even for acting against Utena's best interest. Anthy can see the self-serving hypocrisy that underlies Utena's prince act better than she herself can.
• Temporarily a Villain: The Black Rose duelists are normal (or at least morally gray) people around the school who have a really, really bad day and get manipulated into thinking that the best way to fix things is to revolutionize the world. Once Utena defeats them, they forget about the duel and everything that lead up to it, restoring the status-quo. Well, mostly - for some, the experience seems to clear the air about their personal problems somewhat.
• There Are No Therapists: Subverted with Mikage, whose 'seminars' involve him listening to the problems of the character attending, similar to what a therapist or counsellor would do. The problem is that he takes advantage of their insecurities to make them fight for his cause.
• Toilet Humor: This trope is surprisingly common and driven by Chu-Chu. It will eat anything (including desiccant packets, apparently) and suffers the digestive consequences. Chu-Chu also gets Snot Bubbles on a few occasions, including a huge, exaggerated, wet one...which of course pops and drenches it in goo.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Utena, a brash, sporty girl who wears a boy's school uniform, is "engaged to" and develops a deep friendship with Anthy, a demure and shy girl who wears a Pimped-Out Dress as the Rose Bride. Neither of them play this trope entirely straight considering that Utena actively avoids being labeled as One of the Boys, and between herself and Anthy she is The Heart, a role that typically goes to the girly-girl. Anthy is a housekeeper par excellence and a Caring Gardener, yet she has a performative approach to other womanly tasks and pastimes. She is a skilled pianist but doesn't seem to take any joy in it; she knits a whole sweater in a day and never touches the craft again. She pointedly averts Feminine Women Can Cook. Utena is a better cook than she is.
• Toplessness from the Back: In the final third of the show, the Stock Footage for the trip to the dueling arena shows Anthy disappearing from within her normal school uniform and reappearing naked for a moment, though only her bare shoulders from behind are shown.
• To the Batpole!: The arena ascension Stock Footage sequences involve both travel and transformation, with Utena climbing up a column either by stairs or an elevator to reach the high platform where the duels are fought and magically gaining Bling of War to supplement her usual outfit as she makes her way there. The sequence changes slightly between the first and second arcs; the third arc has completely new and highly elaborate animation.
• Tragic Hero: The burden that the prince must carry will eventually crush anyone who takes on the role. Dios, Mikage, and Utena all approach the prince role with noble intentions that eventually go wrong and prove their undoing.
• The Tragic Rose: This is a given considering all the parallels to The Rose of Versailles (a story about the French Revolution is necessarily tragic.) Utena received her Rose Seal while mourning for her parents as a young girl. Anthy, whose unhappiness and trauma is revealed to be deeper and deeper throughout the show, is the Rose Bride - she herself is thorny. The rose signet ring marks characters as participants in the bizarre and inhumane dueling game and they wear roses when they duel; all the Student Council members deal with their suffering in ways that hurt themselves and/or others, while the Black Rose duelists are recruited explicitly for their pain.
• Transformation Sequence: Utena's outfit gains "princely" trappings during the arena ascension stock footage that precedes each duel. It is animated in a style reminiscent of Magical Girl transformations, which many of the staff members would be familiar with as Sailor Moon alumni, but there is one major difference - there is no distinct change in identity. Utena is still Utena while she fights, she just has cooler clothes that signify the role she wants for herself.
• Triumphant Reprise: The very end of the show has a unique medley of the show's sad theme "Aphrodite of Death" that gradually swells and shifts from minor to major scale. Immediately afterwards, it breaks into "Rose & Release", which is Masami Okui scatting to the tune of the opening theme. After everything that happened, it is incredibly joyous.
• Two-Teacher School: Teachers are so peripheral to the narrative that they rarely get any screen-time, even though they exist. Akio is the only authority figure who really matters.
• Unnecessarily Cruel Rejection:
  • Saionji posts the love letter sent to him by Wakaba on the school bulletin board for everyone to mock.
    Saionji: Oh, I remember. For that incredibly stupid... I mean, for that cheerful letter, the best thing to do with it... was use it to give everyone a nice laugh.
  • When Shiori finds out about her friend Juri's crush on her, she delights in tormenting Juri about it, both by verbally mocking Juri and parading her new boyfriend Ruka in front of her. As Shiori has always been envious of Juri, holding Juri's unrequited feelings for her over Juri's head makes Shiori feel powerful.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: This trope is unavoidable in a series where the line between the literal and the symbolic is so blurry. The more "special" the narrative considers a character to be, the more weirdness will go on around them—which they will probably not react to. While most characters demonstrate indifference to the strange, nobody rivals Utena's incuriosity about the sudden, supernatural-level craziness in her life. Upside-down castle in the sky? The local jerkass says it's a trick of the light, and that's good enough for her. Anthy stonewalls her questions about what being the Rose Bride means or what the rules are for the duelists, and she backs off and doesn't pry. She accepts what people tell her at face value like the gumption-filled, glass-half-full protagonist she is, and in time, there's a price to pay for her naiveté.
• Valley Girl: In the English dub, an unnamed Ohtori student never really seen onscreen speaks with an exaggerated valley girl accent. Most of the time she's relating gossip about Shiori and Ruka. Apparently, "the whole school's talkin' about it."
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: An in-universe example. The play put on by the Shadow Girls is a skewed account of what happened to Dios, seemingly based on the lie that Anthy made up to keep Dios safe, blown out of proportion so that she looks like a villain. After watching the performance, Utena has a dream about her childhood that gives a different, more sympathetic look at the story, but she can't remember most of it when she wakes up.
• Villain-Possessed Bystander: In the Black Rose arc, side characters who aren't involved in the dueling game temporarily become duelists after having a "counseling session" with the Arc Villain Mikage. This is an interesting example of the trope because Mikage doesn't do much to them directly. He encourages them to talk, and once they get into a suitably id-driven frame of mind, he gives each one a rose signet ring so they can access the dueling arena. Any other power they have, they take from the student council members via sword-pulls (that are played for horror and depicted as physical violations.)
• Villainous Breakdown: Inverted. Instead of having a dramatic meltdown upon losing his second duel against Utena, Touga simply sits down in a chair and spends the entire next story arc in an apparent dissociative state. Real Life Writes the Plot—his voice actor temporarily left to work on other projects. It also had the benefit of making his re-entry in the third arc all the more dramatic.
• Villainous Incest: The series focuses on incest a lot and treats it as unhealthy in ideation and abusive in practice. And still it manages to slow-walk Akio and Anthy's relationship carefully enough that when he reveals just how awful and controlling he is to her, it's still shocking even though incest is bad and the show's perspective is that it's harmful. In a sense, Anthy and the viewer are in the same boat—lured into a false sense of security by an abuser, who up to that moment mostly seemed charming.
• Villains Out Shopping: Gray-and-Grey Morality is in force, so in the case of the student council members, instances of them doing mundane things serves the goal of humanizing them at first, but after a while it's more about demonstrating their character development instead. This is reversed with Akio, who does all kinds of mundane things...with Utena. He is openly sinister on his rides to the End of the World, when he's alone with his sister, and eventually even with his fiancée, but if Utena is around, he's the very soul of bonhommie.
• Visual Innuendo: The architecture of Ohtori Academy, and particularly the dueling arena, is chock-full of psychosexual imagery:
  • To enter the dueling arena, Utena travels through a narrow, slit-like door flanked by two gates and topped with a large rose design. The whole effect looks very much like a vulva. A similarly yonic door exists near the base of Akio's tower, where the student council meets.
  • The duels take place on a high platform supported by a single pillar, which is rather phallic, but taken as a whole it resembles an abstract rose—the spiral staircase winding around the pillar like thorns on a stem, broadening into the circular dueling arena like a bloom. The staircase ends in a gate, which is again yonic. In fact, in the later arcs it spreads wide so the Akio car, a very masculine symbol, can pass through it.
  • Akio's tower is a persistent phallic image throughout the series, fitting as Akio is a seducer who embodies controlling masculinity.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 9 has a different tone compared to the episodes that came before it. It's stark, ominous, and heavy on flashbacks, including one of 7-year-old Utena more-or-less consigning herself to death before her parents' funeral, which is the first hint that there is more to the story of the grieving princess than first indicated. It also features Saionji kidnapping Anthy and attempting to kill Utena, and it has a higher concentration of symbolic imagery than any episode to that point.
  • Episode 33 is a recap episode, and besides reviewing the events of the plot arc, it focuses on Utena doing incredibly mundane things such as commenting on a TV variety show she's watching, or telling anecdotes about meal-prep gone wrong. But where is she? Who is she telling these frivolous stories to? Why does she seem so uncomfortable? She's on a date with Akio. They're at a hotel. They're having sex.
  • Episode 34, in which the Shadow Girls interact with the main cast for the first time and casually reveal the actual backstory, giving insight into why the core characters became the people that they are. And it's horrifying.
• Wicked Witch: The first mention of a witch occurs late in the series, but it is important.

  "Women who can't be princesses have no choice but to become witches."

  • In a story so full of repeated phrases, this line is said only once, and yet it is very impactful. Why does Anthy have no friends? Why do people, even friendly, regular people like Wakaba, seem so comfortable blaming and attacking her? Because the only role available to her is the role of the villain. Rescue Romance is implied in the interaction between the prince and the princess, and Anthy is the prince's sister. No matter how much she may love him, he cannot make her into a princess. She saved the savior and broke the rules, and there is no other option for her but to be a witch.
  • There is a noticeable overlap between feminine helplessness and feminine villany in Utena. Those who are forced into powerless for long enough may seek to gain power through unscrupulous means. It's also brilliant commentary on stories, because writers (and people) have traditionally been unable to imagine women outside the "Madonna/Whore Complex".
• Word Salad Lyrics: Most of the show's insert songs are the work of J. A. Seazer, a composer active in Japan's counter-culture going back to the 1970s. His lyrics read like laundry-lists of esoterica, as in the below example on the topics of geology and early life on earth:
  Astrologic eras, primeval oceans, erosion, deposits
  Three billion years, birth of life, geologic eras
  Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian
  Stromatolite, bacteria, collenia
  Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous
  • Most of the songs featured in the TV series are new arrangements of songs from Seazer's existing body of work, which Ikuhara (as a long-time Seazer fan) picked out based on their relation to the plot and its themes. One such song comments on the binary principle and the gender binary. The duel songs for the final arc plus Mikage's are all original compositions, but they are no more straightforward than any of the songs that came before.
• World of Symbolism: Much of the series' bizarre imagery and plot points can be chalked up to this; the series relies on Jungian archetypes to explain immortal power struggles, with surreal landscapes and a bewildering sword fighting tournament set in an ostensibly modern, ordinary world. It also uses fairy tale archetypes and motifs to examine and deconstruct gender roles, especially ones that are prevalent in shoujo series. The story itself starts out as an off-kilter but sensible enough school tragicomedy, only working its way up to full allegory by the end.
• World of Technicolor Hair: Characters are more likely to have outrageously colorful hair than not, highlighting their specialness and importance to the plot. In contrast, most of the background characters, and named characters who are supposed to be more "normal" (Wakaba, for example) have brown or black hair. Hair colors include:
  • Utena, Mikage: Pink
  • Anthy: Purple
  • Akio, Mamiya, Dios: Lavender
  • Touga: Red
  • Saionji: Green
  • Juri: Orange
  • Nanami: Canary yellow
  • Miki: Light blue
  • Ruka: Dark blue
  • Kozue: Indigo
  • Shiori: Raspberry
  • Kanae: Pale green
  • Mitsuru: Dark yellow
  • Chigusa (from the visual novel): Teal

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The absolute destiny apocalypse.