Chu Chu likes the music...

I don't understand it...



...but I like it too.

Chu Chu is a cheeky monkey

War on Aquatica

"And so it came about that the Mongs of Matterdom invaded Medusia."

I'm getting ahead of myself. But so does this story, with the Doctor, Sarah Jane and some manny called Professor Vittorio Levi already captured by the "unfeeling Medusians" when the story starts.

We then get a dump of backstory to fill us in, so I don't know why the writer bothered to begin in media res. Maybe he just got the paragraphs in the wrong order? The Doctor, Sarah and Professor Levi* are on the planet Aquatica where there are three "kingdoms" - Medusia, Matterdom and Phyllosia. They have been captured by the Medusians of Medusia who have snakes on their heads.

* Who, we are told, is "a zoologist, botanist, astronomer, anthropologist and amateur space traveller" so naturally he never uses any of these skills in the story and his only contribution (if we don't count speaking in a funny way) is to "bump [a] Medusian smartly on the nose."

Apparently "clever, even inspired, ideas of escaping had fallen flat," so Sarah suggests overpowering the guard that gives them noms and naturally that works so we can maybe get on with some actual plot. This is a bit like joining a Doctor Who TV story (a bad one) at the start of part four.

Someone dressed up like the Doctor, a manny who could be Professor Levi, and another manny who can't possibly be Sarah, run for it through some green.

Despite having only five pages to tell the story, the author takes the time to tell us that the planet Aquatica has a star called Kzul and is near to other planets called Velusia and Qlopth. While Aqauatica has a perfectly reasonable, Nationesque name, I don't know what these other names mean unless Velusia is a planet of velcro.

The Doctor, Sarah and Professor Levi have sleeps in a forest. Later the Doctor is woken up, so he will probably be grumpy like Gamma Longcat if he gets woken up by noises.

"The 'being' standing over him was amazing - like an apparition from a dream. His long silver hair fell like shafts of moonlight to his shoulders, and round the tall body a golden aura shone. His eyes were sapphire-blue, from which rays shone like strobes from a cinema projector. His robe was of rich purple, braided with gold and patterned with stars, circles and triangles.

'Peace! Be calm!' signalled the god-like creature."

This manny is Phyllos, who comes from Phyllosia and is "Master to the Phyllosians." He takes them to a cave where they meet his wife Dyonne.

"She was very beautiful, auraed also, and having silver hair; her eyes were blue and she wore a robe similar to her husband's, which glittered with stars, circles and triangles."

The accompanying picture looks like this:

Well it has been over a page since we last had some exposition, so it's time for Phyllos to explain that the greedy Medusians are stealing "glyt" from "the Mattermonks of Matterdom" and "Lumidolphs" from the Phyllosians. Phyllos and Dyonne, showing the kind of leadership that Captain Kirk would approve of, have themselves come to spy on the Medusians.

I have no idea what is going on in this picture.

They all go to Matterdom to see "King Chympanzo," getting there in less than a page.

"In the palace, King Chympanzo said: 'I am at my wit's end to know what to do!'

'Then why not combat the Medusians by using your pets, the Mongs, Your Cleverness!' Phyllos suggested."

Of course, how obvious. I do like "Your Cleverness" as a title, though, and it is ironic that the King is not clever or he would have already thought about using his Mongs. The King's speech sums up the idiocy of this storyKing Chympanzo:

"It is scarcely moral, Phyllos dear friend, to use them to attack the serpentine Medusians; but then - I suppose war never is. Indeed, even our females are bearing arms, and some of our children! It is a dreadful state of affairs!"

Apparently the Doctor helps Phyllos and Dyonne negotiate the subsequent peace treaty, which seems like a paper-thin attempt at justifying his inclusion in the story at all. This is a terrible Doctor Who story.

I have even less of an idea what is going on in this picture.

War on Aquatica is confusing and random, and not in a good way. The aliens are a mix of terrible cliche and jumbled up letters. The Doctor and Sarah do nothing interesting and who is Professor Levi anyway? It wouldn't make any less sense if it turned out he was really Sergeant Benton in disguise (he isn't, as far as I know).

And as for the pictures: the pictures are disorientating in the way they are suggestive of the story being told without being at all helpful as an aid to picturing all the stupid things happening in the plot. In fact, I haven't been as confused a cat since I saw this:

The most confusing thing I saw before that was a TV series that does "confusing and random" right, and so in that respect is the opposite of War on Aquatica.

Big Gay Longcat reviews Revolutionary Girl Utena

Revolutionary Girl Utena is a TV series that tells the story of Chu Chu, a cheeky monkey who is the familiar and friend of Anthy Himemiya.

Anthy has a handsome brother called Akio, but he is secretly End of the World, the baddy of the series who wants to do... something evil. I'm not sure what, but it doesn't matter as long as it involves him driving very fast in his car with other handsome mannys who sometimes take their shirts off.

Akio also seduces Utena Tenjou, who is the title character and so is, I think, the equivalent of Blake* in Blakes 7. She is a goody who wants to save Anthy from all the duels that other characters have been fighting so that Anthy will be their Rose Bride. Utena does this by fighting duels so that Anthy is her Rose Bride.

* Utena's central moral dilemma is similar to Blake's, in that she must choose between fighting to protect Anthy (being a "Prince") or being passive and letting Akio protect her (being a "Princess"). Blake has to choose between using acts of violence and terrorism to bring down the Federation, or else letting the obvious baddys of the Federation continue to rule. In both cases they choose the first option; the active, aggressive option over the passive, submissive option.

While the ending to Revolutionary Girl Utena is a bit more open to interpretation than that of Blake, I would say the two characters both come to similar ends - Blake is shot by his best friend Avon and dies, Utena is stabbed by her best friend Anthy and... dies?

And both were very close to their best friend before this.

Anthy ends the series by leaving Akio behind and going off with Chu Chu to search for Utena in the outside world, which thwarts Akio's plan because he needs Anthy to be the Rose Bride for his evil plan to work. Somehow. I think.

But what, you may ask, is Chu Chu's actual role in the story? Well, Chu Chu is my friend so here he is to answer this question himself:

Chu. Chu Chu. Chu Chu. Chu.

Thanks for clearing that up, Chu Chu. You are a cheeky monkey.

Truth: Duncan reviews Shōjo Kakumei Utena

Part Four - "The End of the World Saga"

SPOILER WARNING: This review will give away all of the ending to the series.

I haven't mentioned the Shadow Play Girls in my reviews before now since, even though they have been in the series since the very beginning, they have not until now played a significant role in the narrative. Their presence in the series at first seems no more than a quirky motif, as they turn up about halfway through each episode, perform a short Shadow Play that could be thematically linked to the events of the episode (sometimes this link is clear, other times you'd have to squint quite a bit to see it), and then vanish again without having interacted with any of the main cast. Until, that is, several episodes later - into "The Black Rose Saga" - when their Plays are maybe seen by Utena and maybe she comments on them.

Do they exist within the reality of Ohtori Academy or don't they? It is infuriatingly impossible to be certain either way... until now.

With almost no warning of what is coming, Akio, Anthy and Utena go to see a play, and it is a Shadow Play put on by these characters. In it, they provide the complete backstory of Anthy and Dios - the Rose Bride and the Prince - in a maddeningly allegorical style that raises more questions than it answers.

One thing the play does finally make explicit - to the viewers if not to Utena, who is not yet ready to make the link - is Anthy's secret nature as not the helpless victim she appears. This was subtly introduced very early in the series (she knows more than she tells Utena; but then at that point so do most of the main cast), and then made more obvious in stages that now, with hindsight, seem very much clearer.

The cleverness of this episode is that it gives us a better idea of what has happened, even though we still don't know what is really going on. And within the same episode, on top of the play, we get both a flashback and a dream sequence which add to this backstory and Utena's own history and involvement with Anthy and Dios.

Together the shadow play, the flashback and the dream sequence provide the audience with something so open to interpretation that I cannot help but impose my own view of what is significant and what it all means, and the same will go for everyone who watches this. In this respect it makes Revolutionary Girl Utena just what I was looking for - "another TV series as open to interpretation as The Prisoner."

There is, however, a significant weakness to the revelations of this crucial episode (one which perhaps invites more of a comparison to the piece-of-shit 2009 version of The Prisoner than the '60s classic), and it is that the plot of the series hinges on Utena's laser-guided amnesia: without this contrivance Utena would have been up to speed on the events at Ohtori Academy, including the significance of the Rose Bride, from the start of the series. While we just have to accept this as necessary for the story to play out the way it does, it is the weakest link in the otherwise strong narrative.

For all that the series has shunned familiar narrative conventions since the start (or used them only to subvert them), it has now left even the conventions of its own first three arcs behind. The legacy of The Rose Signet episode is that subsequent events must be coloured by the interpretation the viewer puts on them. While all reviews are, by their nature, subjective, I suspect that the rest of my review will be even more so.

Anyway, the plot continues: Utena's penultimate duel of the series is with Touga. Touga, who was the principal antagonist of the first story arc, has undergone significant character development and is now almost a tragic figure himself.

Touga has fallen for Utena but, like the boy who cried wolf, he cannot convince her he is serious because of his past manipulation of her. Nor can he entirely give up being devious, even though by this point it is obvious he is not nearly so subtle or cunning as his mentor Akio is in playing with Utena's affections.

Touga duels Utena hoping to defeat her and thus save her from having to go on to some sort of confrontation with End of the World. When he (inevitably) loses the duel, his final warning to Utena remains infuriatingly cryptic and vague.

That night, thinking she has fought her last duel, Utena finally sees Anthy and Akio together, with Anthy naked in Akio's planetarium. This is a superb cliffhanger, and it is at this point that the anime trope of concluding each episode with a post-credits next-time trailer gets the Utena deconstruction treatment. Each episode prior to this has seen Utena and Anthy, in voiceover, discuss what is coming up next time. But this episode:
Utena: "Oh Anthy, I just can't forgive you for what you've done."
Anthy: "Miss Utena, don't you know how much I've always despised you?"
This isn't dialogue from the next episode, it's a way of underlining the cliffhanger by showing us the two characters' thoughts.

Utena is clearly devastated by this revelation, but she doesn't react aggressively . The only outward show of her emotional turmoil is that she takes her ring off, a subtle but significant sign because she has never done this before. Utena even joins Akio and Anthy for breakfast, but doesn't know how to cope when they act as though nothing unusual has happened between the three of them.

Utena seems much more upset with Anthy than with Akio, even organising to go on a "date" with him that day, and while this might be because Akio has so seduced her that she cannot be properly angry at him, it is also that Anthy's betrayal of her (as she sees it) hurts Utena on a more fundamental level.

And so, even though she has won the last of the Rose Bride duels, taking off the ring means Utena cannot reenter the dueling arena to meet End of the World and bring the world revolution; she cannot claim the prize for winning. It takes a meeting with Miki, Jury and Nanami, once rivals but now her friends, for Utena to sort out her feelings and make friends with Anthy again.

That night Anthy attempts suicide by jumping off the roof of the high tower they live in, and is saved by Utena. The tone of this scene is dark and disorientating, as it is not a scene we have seen before in the series and the characters' voices are distorted with a dream-like quality. While we have seen the torment of Anthy the Rose Bride in fantastic scenes before now, this is the first time we are shown how she suffers in a semi-realistic way - with no physical symptoms her pain is mental, perhaps akin to severe depression, and Anthy feels she cannot live on with its constant presence. Utena swears to help her, resolving to stick with Anthy and go through with the meeting with End of the World. They go to the dueling arena for the last time.

End of the World is the name of the penultimate episode, which you might have thought they would have saved for the finale. But of course it refers to the fact that in this episode Utena at last sees that Akio is End of the World, although their dialogue indicates she guessed this "a long time ago" but was merely in denial.

Akio insists that Utena must give up her ambition of being a prince to become his princess since he is her prince, the one she has been looking for all this time. This brings the duality of Utena to its final crisis - until now she has wanted to both eat her cake and still have it; to be both a prince (to Anthy) and a princess (for her prince, but also for Akio when she allowed him to seduce her). Now she must choose to be one or the other.

Akio dresses Utena in a dress, reminiscent of the Rose Bride dress Anthy wears (and the one familiar to viewers from the first credit sequence Truth), and insists Utena hands over her sword to him since, he says, it is not appropriate for a princess to carry a sword. Also, if Utena surrenders her sword to Akio, he will gain the power to bring the world revolution, not her. Her prize will instead be to spend eternity with her prince. Happily ever after?


Utena refuses for the sake of Anthy, as if she is not the prince then she cannot save Anthy, who would continue to be the Rose Bride "forever and ever" as Akio admits. So Utena resolves to be a prince, giving up her chance to be a princess. Akio responds by turning off the projector, revealing the dueling arena and his own rooms to be one and the same, just disguised with the magical trickery of this McGuffin.

They fight.

And then, when it looks like Utena will win, she is literally backstabbed by Anthy.

This is the cliffhanger ending to the penultimate episode, and it is superbly done.

Anthy's betrayal of Utena and where her loyalty ultimately lies has been foreshadowed since the same source as Utena's dress - the Truth end sequence. Her pose and look as she holds Dios (or Akio?) are the same as when she stabs Utena.

Anthy's motivation for siding with Akio in the end is revealed in the final episode Someday Together We'll Shine: she believes Utena cannot be her prince because she is a girl. Utena then spends the episode proving her to be very wrong.

But before I talk about the ending of the series, I'm going to make a small digression to talk about Jury, since I earlier called her "a failed Utena." Here we have seen Anthy backstab Utena, and while Shiori's betrayal of Jury was not quite so literally a backstab, the circumstances are comparable and the two characters' (Utena and Jury, I mean) different reactions to their betrayals defines them and illustrates why Utena is the hero of the series and Jury (who is in so many ways as admirable, if not more so, than Utena) only a supporting character. Jury never recovers from the event; she is unable to move on emotionally and has become bitter and jaded - when we first meet her she duels Utena to "disprove the power of miracles."

Jury has been twisted by her experience and is no longer heroic, even if she is not actually a bad person. It takes her second defeat by Utena before she can move on (and grow up), and then she no longer wants to duel since she recognises that her motivation for doing so was not pure.

Utena too sees that her initial motivation for dueling was not a pure one - she thought of it as a game, a chance to play at being a prince with the duelists of about her own age, in effect: children. In denial about it when first challenged about it by Akio, Utena now accepts it as the truth, but it is a sign of her maturity that she goes on to accept the challenge of continuing to play the prince even when the stakes are her own life and Anthy's soul. Neither Akio nor Anthy see this, and if Anthy hadn't stabbed Utena then perhaps Utena wouldn't have seen it either.

Akio has the Sword of Dios. His goal: to open the "Rose Gate" and so gain the power to revolutionise the world. As he proceeds towards the gate, "the million swords which shine with human hatred" are summoned and begin to gather around the dueling arena. This is a stunning sequence, and shows that this series (unlike some other anime I could mention) hadn't used up all of its budget before the end.

Akio can't open the gate with the sword, and it breaks. With his gambit having seemingly failed, he chides Utena (who has spent the first half of the episode lying on the ground in pain) for struggling on uselessly, and gives away that if she could open the gate then she could use the power to save Anthy. Akio gets a cocktail (does it matter where from?) and watches Utena struggle painfully to the gate, thinking she struggles in vain - after all, if he couldn't open the gate with the Sword of Dios, what chance does she have with only her bare hands?

The answer to this is both wonderfully symbolic and a callback to the recurring sequence of Utena opening the gate to the dueling arena - the water from her tears opens the gate.

Inside is a coffin, and (mirroring the coffin the young Utena hid in until found by Dios) inside the coffin is Anthy. Utena reaches out to save her.

Symbolism?

I think so.

When the gate opened, the entire dueling arena began to collapse, and just when it looks like she has been saved, Anthy falls away from Utena into the darkness. Utena thinks she has failed, and then the million swords stream down towards her, from which there is no escape. Fade to black.

Now I've seen some doom-laden, bleak endings before in my time, but this... oh, wait. We fade up on scenes of high school life, and the Shadow Play Girls discuss (in  voiceover, of course) what they will do when they leave school.

Eventually, just when this looks like a total non-sequitur to the preceding scene, they discuss Utena, and each has heard a different rumour about why she is no longer around at the school. This is followed by brief scenes of the other characters getting on with their lives. Utena does not appear, but we do see Anthy, back in her school uniform.

Akio thinks no revolution has occurred, and plans to begin the Rose Bride duels again for another futile attempt at getting him the power to revolutionise the world. Anthy knows differently, and leaves him, and Ohtori Academy, in search of Utena. She is no longer the Rose Bride.

Now, given how open the series is about Akio being a stand in for Lucifer, it is not a stretch to compare Utena's actions in the finale to Jesus - she sacrifices herself to save Anthy, here standing in for the whole human race in Christian mythology. So at the end Anthy turns her back on Akio and goes looking for Utena, believing that they will meet again. "Someday Together We'll Shine."

If you don't choose that interpretation, and I see Utena as being Christ-like without being Christ, then the ending will probably come off as ambiguous, if not melancholy - Anthy has been saved, but what about Utena? Is she dead?
For me the answer comes from the music which, like in Fall Out, has added so much to the experience of watching Revolutionary Girl Utena; suggesting but never spelling out. The music which plays over the final closing credits is an upbeat, na-na-na version of the opening music to the image of Anthy leaving Ohtori Academy. It says to me: how can this not be a happy ending?



In conclusion: Revolutionary Girl Utena is a wonderful series. Either you've seen it and you know that already, or else you've seen it and you've read all this anyway, or else you haven't seen it and I've totally spoiled the whole plot for you. If it's the latter then watch it anyway. I'm going to watch it again.

Revolution: Duncan reviews Shōjo Kakumei Utena

Part Three - "The Akio Car Arc"

While researching this review (on Wikipedia, naturally - this is the blog of a cat made from socks, not an academic paper), I found that Revolutionary Girl Utena is usually divided into four story arcs, the first two of which I covered in my previous reviews. Personally, I would be happy enough to divide it into three because, while there is a very clear dividing line at the start and end of "The Black Rose Saga" separating it from the storylines that precede and follow it, I think the third and fourth 'official' arcs do not have a distinct boundary.

I have finally decided to split my review into four parts, corresponding with the usual four arcs, because I wrote up to the end of the third arc back in March and then left this post in draft form since then. Part Four will follow if and when I get round to writing it up.

In "The Akio Car Arc," Anthy's brother Akio emerges as the principal antagonist for the remainder of the series. He manipulates Saionji, Miki, Ruka (the boy from Jury's love triangle, and also a great fencer), Jury and Nanami into further duels with Utena, after first giving them a ride in his car.

The car is symbolic of the threshold between childhood/adolescence and adulthood, and goes with Akio's title of "End of the World" (referring to the "World" of Childhood). Once they have ridden in Akio's car they are - symbolically - adults, and are ready to face the still adolescent Utena.

One of the things that particularly impressed me about the series is that it justifies the ages of the principal characters, rather than the protagonists being adolescents simply because that is the age group of the target audience. The duelists have to be adolescents because... adults wouldn't act like that. It is probably not a coincidence that Neon Genesis Evangelion is the only other TV series (that I know of) which does this, and in both cases it adds strength to the series.

So is it really possible for something as simple as a 'magic' car ride to rid them of all their childhood hangups and emotional baggage, and allow them entry into the world of adults (represented by Akio)? Of course not.  They are all manipulated by Akio, fooled into thinking that one last duel with Utena Tenjou will solve all their problems and give them what they want.

The storyline involving Nanami is particularly well done, because it manages to turn her from the bullying comic-relief that we, the audience, can love to hate and laugh at when things go against her (which they inevitably do), into a genuinely pitiable character whom we cannot help but feel sorry for when her world is turned upside down by Akio's machinations.

Jury's plotline also has a strong conclusion, which I feel it ties in with themes of the series as a whole, and which are only obvious from the point of view of having seen the entire story. In brief - I see Jury as a failed Utena, whose betrayal by the one she was closest to has made her jaded and unable to move on emotionally. Utena has yet to face the same trial at this point in the series so I will say no more, though I may return to the comparison between their characters in the final part of my series review.

Utena wins all these duels, of course. But just when it looks as though there is only Touga and Akio for her still to fight and overcome, the series takes a different direction. This is "The End of the World Saga," and it begins when Akio seduces Utena - who is still completely oblivious that Akio is "End of the World" or even that he is involved with the Rose Bride duels at all.

After this... it gets weird.

Continued in Part Four.

Let's Live Life Heroically: Duncan reviews Revolutionary Girl Utena

Part Two - "The Black Rose Saga"

Ten episodes form the middle arc of the series, and while an ambiguous ending to the arc seems to render it superfluous to the overall story of Revolutionary Girl Utena, I personally find the themes and the character development in these episodes to be the strongest in the series.

A teacher named Mikage wants to kill Anthy and then make a terminally ill boy, Mamiya, into the Rose Bride in her place - the powers of the Rose Bride presumably allowing him to survive, though Mikage's motivation is less important than the means he uses to achieve his ends.

Mikage has black roses and black rings, dark mirrors of the roses and rings of the Student Council duelists, with which he can control victims into acting as duelists on his behalf. Mikage's first victim is the fiance of Anthy's brother Akio, newly introduced to the series at this point.

The rest of Mikage's victims - none of whom manage to defeat Utena, of course - are all minor characters from the first story arc, now fleshed out and given backstories, motivations, and development of their own. At the same time their storylines also see development for the main characters whom they have a connection to.

Kozue is Miki's twin sister and their story is now shown from her point of view, with her living in the shadow of Miki's piano genius being the cause of her drifting apart. She hates Anthy for now being the object of her brother's attention, so is easily manipulated into becoming Mikage's agent. Further, because of her connection with her brother, she is able to draw a sword from Miki just as Utena draws the Sword Of Dios from Anthy. Not that this helps her to win though.

Shiori is the other girl in Jury's love triangle. Having been in the shadow of Jury's accomplishments for her entire life, she stole a boy from Jury just to get back at her, not realising it wasn't the boy that Jury wanted, it was her.

It was about this point that the pattern became clear to me, that just as the Student Council duelists were the overachievers, the 'beautiful people' as we used to call them at my school, the Black Rose duelists are drawn from the ranks of the ordinary mortals, the supporting cast in more ways than one. This is made even more obvious when you consider who the rest of the Black Rose duelists are.

Tsuwabuki is a boy, noticeably younger than any of the other regular cast members, who is devoted to Nanami and has previously been seen in the humourous sub-plots about Nanami (who has functioned as comic relief throughout much of the series). His attempts to win her attention, no matter how hard he tries, are futile and he ends up as a Black Rose duelist wielding swords drawn from Nanami's heart.

Wakaba is Utena's 'ordinary girl' friend, who is sucked into becoming a Black Rose duelist because of her unrequited crush on Saionji (which was almost directly responsible for Utena becoming involved in the duels back in the very first episode). Saionji was expelled from the school after his last duel against Utena, and ever since then Wakaba has been secretly sheltering him since he, apparently, has nowhere else to go.

I find Wakaba's storyline to be particularly tragic because of the desperate importance she places on being near Saionji (who would never, ever see her in the way she wants him to), and how easily manipulated she is as a result of that. 

The last of Mikage's pawns is a character who, unless I was not paying enough attention, isn't even named on-screen until now. Keiko is one of Nanami's three minions; the girls who make up her clique and follow her around basking in the reflected glory Nanami possesses because she is sister of the student president. Her desire to get close to Touga ultimately leads her to become a Black Rose duelist, drawing a sword from his heart.

Mikage is by now out of pawns and out of time - Utena, though it has taken her a while, finds out he is behind the Black Rose duelists and challenges him to a duel. But when Mikage is defeated it seems that all his work is undone in such a way that it is as if it never happened; the 'Mikage Seminar' building where he was based becomes a burnt out shell - and apparently has been all along.

I have a particular dislike for the overused trope of 'it was all a dream,' but Revolutionary Girl Utena cheatily subverts this by only undoing the events - while all the character and relationship developments of this arc remain. The result of this is that "The Black Rose Saga" is not an inessential part of the series, for all that Mikage and his Black Rose duelists are never directly referred to again.

Furthermore, in the background of these episodes, events have been taking place that are of paramount significance to the rest of the story - the introduction of Akio, the gradual building of his part, and the relationship between him and Anthy. This begins with the subtle (or at least I found it so) suggestion of incest,  and goes on to the revelation that they have, together, been manipulating Mikage from the beginning.

The (partial) undoing of the Black Rose events serves to hint at some of the weirdness that is to follow in the remaining episodes of the series, almost breaking the viewer in gently for what is still to come.

Continued in Part Three.

The Absolute Destiny Apocalypse: Duncan reviews Revolutionary Girl Utena

Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a little princess, and she was very sad, for her mother and father had died. Before the princess appeared a traveling prince, riding upon a white horse. He had a regal bearing and a kind smile. The prince wrapped the princess in a rose-scented embrace and gently wiped the tears from her eyes.

"Little one," he said, "who bears up alone in such deep sorrow, never lose that strength or nobility, even when you grow up. I give you this to remember this day. We will meet again. This ring will lead you to me one day." Perhaps the ring the prince gave her was an engagement ring.

This was all well and good, but so impressed was she by him that the princess vowed to become a prince herself one day. But was that really such a good idea?

In a quest to find another TV series as open to interpretation as The Prisoner, I have turned to Japanese anime, where there is no shortage of the incomprehensible symbolic - Neon Genesis Evangelion springs immediately to mind. But I don't want to review that series for... reasons. Besides which, I hadn't seen Revolutionary Girl Utena before, so was coming to it fresh and (relatively) spoiler-free.

Revolutionary Girl Utena is a 39-episode series from 1997. TV Tropes describes (unless it gets edited, in which case: described) it as "the Neon Genesis Evangelion of the Shoujo category," that is to say it is a deconstruction of that genre. Now I'm not knowledgeable about shoujo anime as a genre, but that's not the point. Because hand-in-hand with the "deconstruction" label goes "symbolism" and "open to interpretation" and this series has both. Lots of both.

Part One - "The Student Council Saga"

Roses. Roses everywhere.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The quote I opened this review with opens several of the episodes, giving the backstory of Utena Tenjou and a key to her motivation: although a girl, she seeks to assume the - traditionally male - role of a fairytale prince, coming to the rescue of princesses and maidens in distress just like the prince who once came to her in her time of need.

In the first episode Utena encounters such a maiden in distress when she becomes involved in the duels for the "Rose Bride." Utena's ring, given to her by the prince, entitles her to enter these duels and her challenging the senior student Saionji to a fight for humiliating her friend Wakaba is interpreted as such.

Upon defeating Saionji, Utena discovers that, under the rules of the duels, she is now engaged to Anthy Himemiya "the Rose Bride" who, in an instant, drops her abusive relationship with Saionji and moves in with Utena.

While this wouldn't be the first series I've seen with issues in the translating/subtitling, the use of the word "engaged" (and thus connotations of heterosexual marriage) seems deliberate because it parallels Anthy's status as a "Bride." And while it is in keeping with Utena's self-chosen 'male' role to be engaged to a girl, none of the other duelists object to or comment on this unusual arrangement - to them, Utena is now "the Engaged." Also, there was already one other female duelist involved - Jury. More on her later.

It's probably worth commenting on the most obvious weirdness to manifest at this early stage: the dueling arena itself, which is a platform accessible by a secret door that only opens to the wearers of the rose rings and then up a ridiculously long spiral staircase. Above it is an enormous, upside-down fairytale castle:

As Utena ascends to the dueling arena the 'Absolute Destiny Apocalypse' song plays. Get used to this song if you're watching the series, because you're going to hear it a lot. There are a couple of versions of it, and the accompanying visuals do change twice during the series, but it's still a lot of repetition. I never got bored of hearing it, because I found that it helps build anticipation of the duel to follow.

Utena faces, over the course of the episodes that make up the first story arc, a series of duels against opponents who are all, like Saionji, members of the Student Council - an elite body made up of all the overachievers: student vice-president and captain of the school kendo team Saionji (who gets a rematch that he also loses), and then:

Miki - a genius pianist who has already composed a famous song.

Jury - captain of the school fencing team.

Nanami - younger sister of the student president and the school bully.

Touga - president of the Student Council.

One of the things I like best about the series is the way the duels themselves are shown. They are all quite short, considering the importance placed on them by the narrative, and I think there are two reasons for this.

The first is practical: for all that the designs in Revolutionary Girl Utena are amazing (if obsessed with roses), the animation is obviously comparatively cheap - no opportunity to reuse an existing sequence is passed up - and I imagine that the fight sequences must have been relatively expensive (I've seen cheap fight scenes in other anime series - they usually consist of lines and  lines).

The other reason, the 'in story' reason, is that victory in the duels is determined in advance by the confidence of the duelists backed up by the righteousness of their cause, and not by their skill. Thus it is what happens in the build-up to a duel that is important, not the action in the duel itself.

There may be a third reason, though it's one I'm not sure of, and that would be to subvert other anime series that heavily feature extended, sometimes multiple-episode duration, fight sequences. Either way, I'd take a short and to-the-point scene over a drawn-out, set-piece combat any day.

Collectively the Student Council are presented as a sinister body who want to "revolutionize the world," as shown in the oft-repeated 'lift scene' where their ominous theme music plays and they chant their catchphrase speech:
"If the egg's shell does not break, the chick will die without being born. We are the chick; the egg is the world. If the world's shell does not break, we will die without being born. Break the world's shell! For the revolution of the world!"

(Any variations in the speech can be put down to translating/subtitling discrepancies.)

However, each member of the Student Council is an individual and they all have very different reasons for participating in the duels, rooted in their backstory and motivations that come out in the episodes prior to their dueling Utena. This helps to ensure that, with one exception, they do not appear villainous.

Miki is growing more distant from his twin sister Kozue as the two of them grow from children into adults, and he sees Anthy as a substitute for Kozue because Anthy shares his interest in the piano - an interest that Kozue has lost as she grows up. But Anthy is not his sister, so the relationship he seeks (by seeking to become engaged to the Rose Bride) is doomed to failure because what Miki really wants - a return to a lost childhood brother-sister relationship - is not possible with Anthy. This is why he loses to Utena.
It does not, however, stop him from growing into friendship with Utena and Anthy, beginning the process of subverting the Student Council's status as hostile antagonists to the two protagonists.

Jury's motivation is more complex than Miki's or Saionji's, and difficult for me to summarise, but it seems to be the case that, as the unrequited member of a love-triangle, she is also dueling for the enigmatic power of the Rose Bride to return her to a more innocent state, before adolescent emotions caused this love-triangle to complicate her life and lose the object of her affections. But winning the Rose Bride wouldn't accomplish that so, despite her greater skill with the sword, Jury loses to Utena by a "miracle" or a lucky fluke.

Nanami only becomes involved as a duelist once her brother Touga's plans are underway and require her involvement. She is jealous of anyone - any girl, that is - that could come between her and her brother, and when he begins to pay attention to Utena and Anthy then she sees dueling them as revenge. Nanami is easily defeated by Utena, since her motivation is so petty.

Touga, however, has been playing the long game compared to the other Student Council members (though not compared to other characters in the series) and has sown seeds of doubt in Utena's mind that he may be the prince she met when she was young. Because of the way Utena's amnesia works (as with the rules of the duels, it works how it needs to to serve the plot. To be fair to the series there is a certain amount of justification for this, though it does basically come down to "a wizard did it") he gets away with it, and with Utena conflicted between her goal to be a prince and the pressure on her to conform to her chromosomally assigned role as a princess, she loses to 'Prince' Touga despite his motivation being naked lust for power.

Utena loses a duel for the first and only time in the story, and responds by abandoning her 'prince' role immediately, even donning a girls' school uniform instead of her usual boys' uniform (as an aside - while Utena's usual outfit is a "boys' uniform" in that it has shorts instead of a skirt and lacks anything obviously girly like puffy sleeves, it is not a uniform that we see anyone else wear at all during the series. This is either a clever subversion or else just something they didn't think through, but I don't know which).

Like Saionji before her, Utena gets a rematch against the challenger that defeated her, and manages to sort herself out - with help from her friend Wakaba - in time to take advantage of this.

Touga, now wielding the mystic "Sword of Dios," a perk that comes with being engaged to the Rose Bride - it gets drawn out of her chest (symbolism!) by "the Engaged" prior to each duel - makes use of a power of the Bride and Blade, one that Utena didn't even know existed, to charge it up (another subversion of the usual form of these things, where power-escalation is the norm, is that Utena never makes use of this power in subsequent duels). Touga still loses, because Utena's motivation is so much purer than his.

The first story arc, 'The Student Council Saga,' closes with Utena and Anthy reunited. They make a perfect Yin-Yang pair as protagonists, with their complementary opposite qualities of Utena's active, fiery, aggressive (and, of course, traditionally masculine) Yang and Anthy's passive, shy, traditionally feminine Yin qualities that make her a victim and unable to defend herself.

They are so complementary, in fact, that this alone could make the audience see them as a natural couple and so root for Utena in the duels, without asking why Anthy is the Rose Bride and what exactly this means. Utena doesn't ask this important question either, which I find to be a minor niggle with the series - tempting as it is to assume Utena (and hence the audience) wouldn't get the answers even if she did ask, it is obviously a plot requirement that the answers don't come out too soon.

A few tantalising hints are thrown out in episode 13 (which consists principally of flashbacks to scenes we have already seen - an anime staple, I understand, allowing for a cheap 'filler' episode) where two men, one of whom appears to be the prince from Utena's backstory, discuss the story so far.

Continued in Part Two.