Forum - View topicUtena - movie vs. TV series.
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BeanBandit
Posts: 303 Location: Canada |
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Having just watched the film version of Revolutionary Girl Utena last night I was wondering how it compares to the TV series? I only ask as with the first box set to be released next month I'm thinking of cancelling my pre-order for it having watched the film. I know this series has a large following but I found that despite the excellent animation, the film was extremely hard to follow if not outright incomprehensible. I've seen other anime that have had alternate film retelling's that have lost me (Escaflowne for example) but have had good TV anime and had to ask if Utena was any different?
Any guidance would be apprenticed. |
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HyugaHinata
 Posts: 3505 |
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Having seen both, I'd recommend the series much more highly; character development is a much stronger focus (almost a given, as it's 39 episodes long).
It's a very avant-garde take on many well-known Western fairy tales. |
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Spastic Minnow
 Bargain HunterExempt from Grammar Rules  Posts: 4629 Location: Gainesville, FL |
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The movie is a bizarro impressionistic beast of a movie whose main purposes seem to be to screw with your head and hammer home a couple of the metaphors of the series. It's more like a fever dream and commentary of the show than any sort of real adaptation.
The series succeeds or fails on its own merits and faults. I'm not a huge fan of either but I can appreciate that the importance and relevance of the movie to the series is maybe even less than Escaflowne or other movie adaptations.. |
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Aylinn
 Posts: 1684 |
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The movie is a different version of the same story, more bizarre and difficult to follow than the TV series.
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ailblentyn
 Posts: 1688 Location: body in Ohio, heart in Sydney |
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Ditto and ditto. The series is not incomprehensible.
And the day would come when you would kick yourself for cancelling that pre-order. (What with it being an LE and everything.) |
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Charred Knight
 Posts: 3085 |
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The movie ends with two hot naked lesbians bobsledding down on the frame of a car. Unless the tv series ends the same way than the movie is superior.
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Tris8
 Posts: 2114 Location: Where the rain is. |
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I've seen both the movie and the series for Utena and I have to agree with the opinions above. I'm not a huge fan of the psychological genre but I thought the series was amazing. Definitely worth seeing, so even if you do cancel your order borrow it from someone else. And the relationship between the Escaflowne movie and series is a perfect comparison for the Utena movie and series. Both movies change a lot of key details and are confusing.
If you like mysteries and dramatic dueling with mind blowing secrets behind them, you'll like Utena. |
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Jen526
 Posts: 124 |
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I'll add a vote for the series being far superior to the movie.
That said, I feel like I should throw out a warning from my personal experience. I was very close to dropping the series after the first arc, and was really surprised that all the gushing I'd ever seen for the series never mentioned that the entire first arc is a bit of a slog if you don't know what's coming. If you're like me, you'll get to the end of the first box from RightStuf and wonder what the big deal is. It wasn't until about halfway through the next arc that I started to get a feel for what they were doing... establishing a typical, repetitive shoujo premise in the first arc, and then revisiting the same basic sequence again, with increasingly dark layers of metaphor, in the subsequent arcs. In the end, it's quite an amazing piece, but don't be surprised if the first set doesn't rock your world. |
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Sanosuke_Inara
 Posts: 1662 |
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As much as I love the series, I've actually never seen the movie. Since Rightstuf is gonna re-release that as well, gives me something to look forward to even after I get all the new sets.
But anyway, I agree with Jen's above post. Utena is one 'a those shows that admittedly isn't too amazing in the beginning, but eventually does get really freakin' good. And, unlike a lot of shows out there, once Utena gets good, it doesn't let up or loose steam--it only gets better as it goes along. Been a while since I've seen it, but I still remember various scenes(especially those damn highway ones,  ) made me seriously think about what the underlying metaphorical meanings of the happenings in the show all meant--it's a helluva lot deeper than one might think.
I'm sure there's stuff I missed, since I've only seen it once and that was over a year ago, so these new releases'll let me decipher all of this stuff again. |
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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IMHO your mistake was watching movie before TV version. Series is easier to follow, while movie is so strong concentrate of all ideas that it's easy to get lost if you don't know what to pay attention to.
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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The series is superior in every way except the visual art, and you get to see Utena naked. Other than that I don't see the point of it.
There's a newly mastered DVD coming out for the series and if they did clean up the video then I am going to pony up the $60+ per season they want for it. I would have preferred BD for that price. |
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Sanosuke_Inara
Posts: 1662 |
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 I pre-ordered the 1st one for $30 and the 2nd for $37(both excluding shipping).
And there were pics in a different topic a while back that I can't find ATM that compared the two DVDs, and these look far superior, so don't fret on that front. |
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naninanino
 Posts: 680 |
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Never watch the movie versions without seeing the series. Big mistake. It's for people who already like Utena, so it's natural that you wouldn't like it. That goes for pretty much every anime in existence, with some rare exceptions like the first Gundam movies maybe. If you're going to pursue watching anime movies, I suggest that you pick the ones that aren't related to a series.
The series is an anime classic, which I think was quite amazing with the exception of two horrible filler episodes. The movie scraps pretty much all secondary character development and takes much more liberties in its presentation. Anime movies based on a series -> fans only |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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Hm. OK, $74.98 for the first two seasons. Third not announced yet. Given that you went to the trouble to put not one, not two, but THREE tags around the word "far" I guess I'll go ahead and put in an order. |
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Sanosuke_Inara
Posts: 1662 |
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