Anime The Sequel Manga After the Revolution
They're selling it as this mixed-continuity sequel, so I guess I can't complain about the OOC-ness. Still, in character or not, the cast comes across as flattened versions of their prior incarnations. Worse, that plot is more weak than purposely vague. The way Miki answered Kozue in the final chapter is pure cop-out. There are better continuation fanfics than this drivel, which is sad.
Anime If you want to say something, say it, don’t pull a The Walrus Was Paul!
As this series repeatedly demonstrates, Brother-Sister Incest is messed up, yet it appears itself to be the product of Brother-Sister Incest between Neon Genesis Evangelion and FLCL, going halfway between the former’s mostly solemn tone and messages and the latter’s wackiness, resulting in comic reliefs used when least appropriate, (Ikuhara’s Author Avatar obnoxious monkey that could and should have been replaced by, say, a conventional cat or a dog, and the Big Lipped Alligator Moments during student council assemblies).
Ikuhara seems to have wanted to discuss serious themes and messages, but insisted The Walrus Was Paul, adding heaps of opacity (Miki’s watch, songs played during duels) to genuine symbolism (the tower juxtaposed with Akio’s seductions and the egg Nanami lays), resulting mostly in an incoherent mess.
The series takes about 2/3~ to become genuinely good. Up until that point it suffers terribly from unrelatable immature and somewhat flat characters who undergo little to no Character Development (and later some Aesop Amnesia, to make matters worse) (Nanami gets special mention as truly intolerable), excessively long Stock Footage including Transformation Sequences (that continue even after that). When it finally starts Growing the Beard it feels far too little and far, far too late. Additionally, unlike Neon Genesis Evangelion, the small budget was not used to create compelling minimalist animation, just bad animation for too large a portion of the series.
Worst of all, the creators of the franchise decided to deconstruct prince/ss tropes. Not only are most of these tropes mostly irrelevant for modern viewers, they seem not to really understand in full how these tropes work, displaying the same kind of ignorant appropriation Westerners often do when ‘using’ themes and tropes from other cultures. I would have been happy had this series been about samurai and Yamato Nadeshiko, or a live-action French one, but as it is, it is very much a disappointment.
Ah, well. At least the ending was somewhat cathartic, and the comedic filler episodes were genuinely good.
7/10
Anime How to recommend Utena
If you are willing to really jump into cold water as I did, I am going to give you something to ease the jump. Certainty.
I need you to listen to track from the sountrack of the original Series. It is called "Poison". Knowing the context in which the Track is used triggers a wild range of emotions for me. Most of all, disgust, tension, fear, hope and empathy.
If you want to understand why people who have watched Shoujo Kakumei Utena all the way through are gushing about it, especially on TV Tropes, you have to understand one thing.
For most male audiences, it is fucking painful to slog through.
You will change the language to japanese (which is a good thing).
There is this word in German, 'Faustregel', and it has the same meaning like the english 'rule of thumb'. 'Faust' = fist. There was this gag among my friends of the 'Faustregel of anime': "If you'd be be more embarrassed by someone walking in on you watching this, than by someone walking in on you watching anal fisting porn, don't bother."
To be honest, at first, the promise of romantic lesbianism was the only thing that kept me hanging on. It took really, really long before I was hooked. My stubbornness, my longing for context and my hope that it would become good at last were the engines that drove me forward. I regularly skipped the intro and outro, most of the fights, and each time I saw nanami. But then, all of a sudden, it became better. In the third arc at last you get everything you wanted all this time. Namely: Context, Progress and the feeling that you did invest your time the right way.
I won't talk flaws because they are subjective as all hell. You will spot more than enough. What I will say is that they made me ashamed of liking this Series. There shouldn't be such a thing as guilty pleasure. That's unhealthy.
Utena is hell of a ride, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
I'll hereby give you the assurance that it is indeed good. And it WILL affect you on some level. Do you have what it takes? Do you have the self-awareness of your own sexuality, that it does not "make you girly" and "not a real man" if you watch it? Do you have enough Energy, enough Curiosity, enough courage to be vulnerable and enough open-mindedness to not dismiss it until it gets good?
PS: my initial review was 1800 words long.
Anime The movie manga
I refer to it as 'the movie manga' because like the movie it's titled "The Adolescence of Utena" and that would be confusing. I haven't watched the entire movie, but a few differences I can note is that it doesn't have room for side characters. Or cars.
But more importantly: It's wonderful. Sensual without pandering, beautifully drawn and really something to think about. Watching the show or reading the other manga is required (because otherwise you'll have no idea what just hit you), but after that this reinterpretation is really recommended. It's less than 200 pages and really makes the most out of them, focussing on Utena and Anthy and how they see the world. If you want to understand Anthy better: pick it up. If you thought she was horrible: still pick it up, it's awesome.
Anime Decadent, not Feminist
I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I was disappointed to watch a decadent show, not the great Feminist Fantasy that Writing and Fighting for Love and Justice claims as is. Aside from how repetitive and formulaic the story is, I found myself actually feeling Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy alongside my mother by the end of the show because most of the characters were either unpleasant or miserable without subtlety.
While I did like Juri and Wakaba, it didn't change the fact that I found none of the characters particularly relatable and that the show felt decadent much unlike the following works, all of which deal with The End of the World as We Know It, genocide, and/or the loss of loved ones. In fact, I found Count Bleck from Super Paper Mario, Scar from Fullmetal Alchemist, Anton Herzen from Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, and Sigma from Tweeny Witches far more sympathetic than the boring Damsel in Distress Anthy had always been. I only continued to watch until the very end because I wanted to see Akio, who had made me angry to death, face poetic justice. The Grand Finale left me unsatisfied because I didn't get to see him subjected to a Fate Worse than Death where he loses all of his wealth, gets his beauty tarnished, can no longer speak forever, is run over by his own Cool Car, and gets a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown by the Swords of Hate, the World's Strongest Woman, and the angry parents of his victims.
While I love Feminist Fantasy works like Moribito, The Beast Player, Princess Knight, and Tweeny Witches, I don't think that the show lived up to its fame as one of these because it seemed to believe that Real Women Don't Wear Dresses. Anthy is the weak one in a dress in contrast to Utena, a knight in a modified boy's uniform. Whenever Utena becomes feminine, someone weakens her by manipulating her into conforming to gender norms. Enforcing gender norms is bad in itself, of course, but Princess Knight and Brave show that a girl can be both feminine and strong. But when Utena asks Anthy about femininity, Anthy replies, "In the end, all girls are like the Rose Bride" — an Extreme Doormat Stepford Smiler Damsel in Distress who stands around looking pretty and obeying her master. No other character I've ever seen was that pathetic, not even traditionally feminine ones like Queen Elinor from Brave and Atelia from Tweeny Witches.