what is revolutionary girl utena?

Revolutionary Girl Utena often shortened to utena or rgu is a revolutionary (pun intended) series. it was created by Kunihiko Ikuhara after he worked on sailor moon and decided they were not letting him make it gay enough (i am only kind of joking). While Revolutionary Girl Utena has a ton of media this shrine is mainly dedicated to the anime and movie since those are the ones that have stuck with me the most.
The plot Rgu is… hard to explain? Mostly blandly put its about a girl named Utena who wants to be a prince dueling the student council of her school for the hand of the rose bride named Anthy who grants the power to revolutionize the world. except its so much more than that! Its about misogyny and queerness and cycles of abuse and the power of a narrative! Most of the show is metaphorical but also not metaphorical and really it is quite trippy and incomprehensible at times even after a few watch throughs. Rgu is so many things and i feel like no pitch is going to capture what makes the show worth watching while not overselling it and still acknowledging its flaws of which there are many. Its a bit rough around the edges and not for everyone! But if it hits for you it really hits!

why I like rgu

I don't really know how to explain my love for rgu without sounding pretentious or sounding like im blorbofying the characters without understanding the underlying themes? So im gonna do both! This is my tank goddamn it :P
Rgu is really everything i gravitate towards in a piece of media. Its surreal, its weird, but you can tell its being purposeful in those aspects vs just trying to be confusing. Its a deconstruction of fairytale archetypes that actually gives meaningful critique of them! you can craft 5 million interpretations of every weird imagery its just so much fun to spin around in my brain and analyze. Not even touching on the visuals, sometimes they are pretty jank yes but other times they are like the peak of 90s anime aesthetic. Also the music is good.
My favorites are as follows,
fav episodes are probably ep 7 as its what really hooked me on the show, episode 17 because they do toxic yuri so well, ep 23 because it exploded my brain, ep 27 because honestly all nanami episodes are fire but that one in particular strikes a great balance of silly shenanigans and character moments, and finally ep 49 because ngl i did cry.
Fav characters are probably juri (as maybe hinted by the two favorite juricentric episodes), shiori because i am nothing if not the number one supporter of womens wrongs and toxic yuri, and saionji because he has given me so many good reaction gifs. Honestly while most of the cast are not great people they are so easy to get freakish about. Except akio fuck akio (he is an amazing villan).

rgu references in other media

revolutionary girl utena is all your favorite media if you belive in your heart. seriously thought it has had a massive impact on particularly the yuri and magical girl genres but really you can find homages to it all over the place. here are some of the ones ive found if you know any send them to me id love to add them in. spoilers ahead!

the pokemon sun and moon anime

this one is pretty straight forward lilly and mallow are dressed like utena and anthy. its super cute though :).

she-ra and the princesses of power

in the final episode of she-ra catra pulls adora out of her dream referencing the last episode of utena where utena atempts to pull anthy out of her coffin (though in she-ras case catra is sucsessful) the shots are almost identical and the story beats are quite similar. (image credit to r/shojokakumeiutena).

there are a few other utena refrences in she-ra notably in save the cat where adora is holding catra in the same pose utena holds anthy after she pulls the sword out of her chests (its the most popular utena pose so it makes sense that it was included).

gundam the witch from mercury

witch from mercury has so so many utena parallels woven within its story. this is probably because Ichirou Ookouchi wrote the show and he also wrote the rgu light novels , its super fun to try and spot them and draw parallels. the whole enitial setup of dueling for a bride was very utena. i also really like the second ending having gundam aerial (or maybe calibarn?) doing the classic utena sword in chest.

Neat rgu things

some awesome rgu websites, posts, and videos for your enjoment

the entire anime! if you havent already watched it all of utena is free on youtube! this links to the sub which i highly recomend but the dub is also on youtube free as well

the entire movie! while its not ideal the dub of adolecence of utena is on the internet archive (as is the unsubed japanese version if you happen to be fluent) you can also find the sub pretty easily on piracy websites.

Empty movement! a phenomenal website for all things utena they have so many cool things. particularly if you want to read the light novels this is where you can find a good fantranslation of them. also they have tons and tons of rad fanmade content compiled.

Something eternal! Run by the same folks who made empty movement something eternal is a pretty rad rgu fan forum. they host a ton of cool community events which is the perfect way to get more involved in the fandom. i need to get more active over there but maybe we will run into eachother!

amvs and animatics a small hoard of rad amvs and animatics of both the serious and silly variety

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