Forum - View topicRevolutionary Girl Utena (TV).
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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Has anyone seen the Blu-Ray edition of this? I was tempted to buy it but it is Japanese-only with no subtitles. And it is like $200 or more. It would still be worth it even though my Japanese comprehension is so poor.
I liked the story and all the aspects that everyone is discussing here, but I always was put off a bit by the seemingly fuzzy image on the DVD and wonder if the Blu-Ray version looks better. Of course, it could be it is supposed to look that way, but compare the much crisper look of the Movie (which is a much inferior story) to the series. Other than that, spoiler[Akio should be de-balled for seducing Utena]. |
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Mylene
 Posts: 2792 Location: Indiana |
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It's not a Blu-Ray edition, it's a remastered DVD edition. I have it. No reason to get it though, Nozomi is releasing it with subs (and carrying over the old CPM dub) later this year. Much more affordable, and you'll actually be able to understand it. |
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Tris8
 Posts: 2114 Location: Where the rain is. |
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This whole thing contains SPOILERS so don't read if you haven't seen the series. Also the movie.
I've been thinking about the Black Rose saga, and the more I think and think about it, the less I understand =/. The boy Mikage wanted to save, Mamiya, died in the fire long ago, but it hints that Mamiya was actually Anthy in disguise to trick Mikage in to dueling Utena. But wait.... it shows us at first that Mamiya looks exactly like the prince in Utena's memories/fantasies, and that he looks identical to the prince that Anthy sacrificed herself to save. But then it reveals that is not what Mamiya looked like, that Mikage's memory had been distorted over time and he had forgotten not only what Mamiya actually looked like, but what had actually occurred the night of the fire. And then, at the end of the Black Rose Saga, Miki and Utena go to the building where the Mikage Seminar had been and Miki can't remember what it was called, but he says there was an accident there but no one got hurt. So that means Mamiya and the 100 boys never existed? Man this is confusing!!! So I have several questions. Was Mikage just a spirit? Also, why did Mikage think Mamiya looked different than he 'actually' looked? Is it because Mikage had idealized Mamiya and believed that saving Mamiya would save himself, effectively making Mamiya Mikage's prince? And at first, they showed that everybody died in a fire set by Mamiya except Mikage and Mamiya's sister, then the 'truth' was revealed that Mikage set the fire. Why did he set the fire? And if what Miki said was true and nobody died, did he in reality only set a fire in his mind? The more I think about this, I notice more and more symbolism and metaphors, but every 'answer' I come up with just brings up exponentially more questions. |
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Brent Allison
 Posts: 2444 Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA |
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Akio invented ghostriding the whip. I know that neither Keak the Sneak, E-40, nor anyone in any Bay Area sydeshows have confirmed it, but that's just because they don't want to give credit where credit's due. If no one likes the movie, it's because Anthy is a bad storyteller. It's her fantasy version of the events in the series, after all. The Black Rose saga had a point beyond being duelist-of-the-week. It was to resolve issues of consciousness, (collective) memory, and self-realization through imposed and recovered agency. Also it existed to give my weekly seminar on anime from literary, sociological, and anthropological perspectives a name. FWIW, everyone here is invited to participate in the Mikage Seminar at the University of Georgia, sponsored by UGAnime. We meet Wednesdays at 5:30 in the new Tate Student Center lobby. [/plug] |
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Tris8
Posts: 2114 Location: Where the rain is. |
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Dang, I really wish I live in Georgia right now =(. But you think the movie is Anthy's version of events? To me the movie was so different from the series, though the core theme of spoiler[ escaping a world of illusion still came through clear and strong.] Almost a little too clearly in the movie actually. I don't know if it's because I watched the movie in english dub and the series in sub, but the movie seemed to have many lines pointing out the painfully obvious, and a few lines that were downright hilarious in their ridiculousness. Even so, I thought the movie was worth watching for any Utena fan. So you have a group that meets every week to discuss Utena? I am so jealous. Wish there was something like that here. |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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Actually he was. Mentally, but it still counts 
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Brent Allison
Posts: 2444 Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA |
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Not quite. It meets every week to discuss what UGAnime is watching, which right now includes The World God Only Knows, Beck, Pandora Hearts, Michiko to Hatchin, Kimi ni Todoke, and Welcome to the NHK. The forum needed a name, and being the big Utena fan I am, I chose The Mikage Seminar for Critical Media Analysis. My leading it actually counts as "public service" towards getting tenure since it's involvement with students in academic-related activity. I still have to take notes for 2.5 hours during showings before the seminar, so it's not quite as easy as it sounds. For more shoujo and josei-oriented fare, that happens on Sunday afternoons. A very small group of us are still watching Nodame Cantabile and we just wrapped up Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne. We'll probably replace Jeanne with Ayashi no Ceres or the 2nd season of Honey and Clover, although if anyone has suggestions for something that isn't on the list of previously viewed shows, feel free to do so. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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I just got the second tranche of remastered DVDs from RightStuff. No (new) surprises at all, just the same as before with much better video.
One thing odd I did notice is that on the English track the audio gain shifts noticeably when it shifts to the Japanese canon segments. For example in the march up to the duels. I don't recall the previous editions having that problem, but it is minor. Anyway, this should be in any collection. |
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Tris8
Posts: 2114 Location: Where the rain is. |
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Kurtvonnegut'ssister
Posts: 1 |
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I personally consider the movie to be a different canon from the series, and certainly a shallower one to boot. That being said I don't think the first series is necessarily a romance between Anthy and Utena, although the movie pretty much scraps that idea and says, "LESBIANS! LOOK AT THEM BEING LESBIAN ALL OVER EACH OTHER!!" I think the show is a little different, though, more complex.
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9860 Location: Virginia |
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Error
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EricJ
 Posts: 876 |
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(And while I don't indulge in necro-posting over five years, think it helps for the young folk to know the classics...)
Maybe it was the standard Kunihiko Ikuhara riffs, but when the show came out around the same time as the Ikuhara seasons of Sailor Moon S/SuperS were just catching fire, I still can't watch the show today without cracking up at the comparison that struck me at the time: Suppose an anime producer had hired Haruka and Michiru to create an anime series from scratch....After lots of scratching around on notebooks, what show would they personally (and oh, just a tad autobiographically) have come up with?: - Two incredibly rich, handsome, privileged elite high schoolers with a destiny to Save the World from the Growing Conspiracy, - The two heroes, one one tomboyish, the other elegant, would naturally be talented, geniuses, and spend their time fighting challenging sword duels with their rivals, which helped the two share a deep passionate, um, interest for each other, - Usually involving lots of long, petentious speeches about Sacrifice and the Growing Battle, while rose petals fly about in every direction, - And a cute ditzy blonde underclass girl with a struck crush would follow them around wherever they went.
(It's just so completely, utterly, artistically posturing in every shot and every symbol and every line of dialgue, I can't watch five minutes without thinking "Y'know? They would make this....Always did strike me as darn snots."  )
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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(Incomplete preview edited out.)
Last edited by MaxSouth on Sun Mar 22, 2015 7:59 am; edited 1 time in total |
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MaxSouth
Posts: 1363 |
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Full dissection of the project:
Concept/setting/storytelling: 1) this project is one of the most overt shoyo ever: viewers might get roses, princess and princes overdose pretty soon. Even name of one of main heroines contains "Princess" word in it (in Japanese). And of course, this story has to include significant memory loss case; 2) the setting is not believable: there is no reason for duelists to participate in those duels, there was never evidence of super powers coming to winner (male striptease on car's bonnet in the last third of the series could possibly convince only insane people), there is nothing they want "revolutionize" the world for, and no one else in whole thing has an idea what was this revolution nonsense all about; 3) ridiculous theatrical fake duels with real swords that somehow cause no harm (until the very end, where a lot of miraculous corpse-moving happens). And authors can not decide whether duels can happen at any time between ring-holders as they wish so, or they are scheduled by "End of world" letters; 4) the framing of storytelling is that most of it highly repetitive -- both in events and visuals: basically a third of average episode is re-run of animation sequences from previous episodes. Heavy on story/duel-of-the-week pattern, and repetitiveness is trade mark of many old anime; 5) one of main themes of this anime is incest and unhealthy relationships between siblings. Possible lesbian feelings are hinted, but nothing more. Concept of friendship is questioned, made to be nearly non-existent. Another major theme is loss of innocence -- nearly all of youth is shown to be mean and corrupt, at least to characters' age the story covers. Finally, theme of women breaking free from being objects to own and command; 6) this is one of the rarest anime where humans are not sterile, they have desires and even have sex; 7) blue-haired lad's change of heart about participating in duels makes no sense. There was never a danger of Utena banning the glasses girl playing piano. And, whoever the "broom" will be, it will not make the glasses girl free; 8) of course, the show can not be honest about serious things like death. Blue-hair fencing guy left deathbed to shortly attend school and fence again with noble and romantic desire to help his love to let go of her past tie with the wicked girl friend? Sounds great, but people who are close to dying are not able to fence at all. So it is just a fairy tale within a fairy tale; Characters: 1) almost all characters are nasty, horrible people. Even the cute Tsuwabaki boy was turned into mean character one time. Utena is bad sinner, too, but she has shown human weakness for feelings, so it is forgiveable. Blue hair boy Miki is stupid, though presented as genius, and others are just plain nasty folks. Huge glasses princess girl is robotic doll, that turned out to be pretty bad person, too. Green hair guy would be reported to police and in jail right from very beginning of the story; he is just criminal. In moments where Utena normally communicates with most of those people and even feels compassionate are not quite believable. Those people are not the likes anyone would be around, ever; 2) it is weird that the Rose Bride girl, apparently a magical being/witch, has to wear glasses (huge size; stylistically bad); it is quite random. Such creatures should be usually perfect in basic physical qualities; 3) one of the characters is blue-hair one called "Mickey", which sounds more like a dog name, than a name for a pupil in that supposedly elite class school. At least, they should have used "Miki", which is Japanese name. Besides, the characters has female (not even boyish) voice, which for that age means this character is either female transvestite, or was castrated in childhood, or has serious medical condition. But those reasons are not part of the story, so this character's believability is ruined. Unfortunate habit of old anime that is, thankfully, mostly gone since 2000s; 4) blue hair's sister character story -- how it is told for the most of that episode -- is not believable. First, if her brother got ill, the reaction would not be calling his name since the girl is old enough to understand his state, that he can not go with her (measles is very severe for children). Even more: she would be much more decisive in her performance for both herself and her brother. In the anime version, however, she ran away and never played piano again just because of this phony story. The girl was made to be three years old mentally. If she had medical condition that would stop her from being developed mentally, it is one thing. But the anime does not mention that at all, what make this whole character and her actions not very believable. However, in the end much more sensible version of the story is uncovered buy grown up sister herself, so it is not really a negative part of the anime; 5) mutant rat (that turned out to be monkey) Chu-Chu is probably inspired by Russian animation character/doll Cheburashka. In the story retelling, Utena-film, there is even crocodile Gena-like figure along with Chu-Chu (it tries to eat the monkey). Visuals: 1) colour palette of this anime is such that you could immediately see how old it is even from a single screen shot. Those hues just are not used any more ever since 2000s; 2) details, even in characters (let alone backgrounds), are so scarce that even cheapest production of today would probably look not worse. Also not rare for anime of 1990s; 3) horribly overboard hair styles that have roots in the insane 1980s, and thin tall legs also give out age of this anime. Utena's friend in frontal view has hair locks growing right from her ears; 4) eyes of characters in profile view are either flat or sunken, instead of bulging, so they look very weird. And, again in profile view, they are placed too far from the face's edge (too deep); 5) overly protruding in profile noses (especially in the second half of the anime) is a trade mark of style of 1990s. Foreheads are sometimes too short. 6) flickering was definitely a thing before the infamous epilepsy scandal. It looks horrible; whoever first thought it was a good idea, was very wrong. It is amazing that it took so long for industry to understand that the flickering is a disaster; Sounds: 1) very specific sounds of "shoyo magic moments" also expose how old school the project is; 2) some strong songs. Though opening song is outdated in sound, which is, of course, very 1990s. Performance style is common with many songs of the time (for example, with Just Communication by Two-Mix from Gundam Wing anime opening); 3) some of the music in the latter third of anime does not match it at all. Resume: Despite profound weaknesses of this project, it still earns "Very good" due to some unusual decisions authors have partaken, themes explored, some visual treats (like shadow play/silhouette theatre), some great songs. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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I will never make a favorite character out of one that drowns a kitten just because she is jealous of it. |
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