Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Utena's Revolution
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Oggers
 Posts: 392 Location: Ontario, Canada |
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There really isn't anything else out there that's quite like Revolutionary Girl Utena. I'm not sure if I could call it one of my all-time favourite anime, exactly, but it's definitely the anime that's given me the most to think about in terms of its themes and character arcs. It's pretty telling that people still find new things to talk about regarding Utena over 20 years after it first aired.
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Cryssoberyl
 Posts: 250 |
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Great conversation, though I have always disagreed with the following:
The movie is not a sequel, it is a fully alternate continuity of the type that was popular in multimedia franchises of the period, which would have multiple alternate versions of a story in different formats, with manga, TV Series, OVA, and Movie versions all separate continuities. (See Tenchi Muyo and Escaflowne for some other high-profile cases, among many other examples.) I also disagree that the movie wants or needs details from the series plugged into it. In fact, I argue the opposite: that leaning on the series as a crutch leads you to misunderstand the key differences in setup the movie is presenting. I assure you that, dense and multilayered as it is, the movie is fully comprehensible as a coherent interlocking web of character motivation and interaction all on its own without "help" from running back to the series to fill what you perceive as gaps. For this reason, I actually encourage people who've never consumed the franchise before to watch the movie first, while they can still enjoy and appreciate it independent of the dogma of the series with which people so zealously want to overlay the movie. (Also no mention of the importance of Utena to the formation of modern yuri as a cohesive commercial enterprise, but that's as usual.) |
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Engineering Nerd
 Posts: 908 Location: Southern California |
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To be frank, as much as I love to recommend Utena to many new anime fans, I am not sure some of its plot points would sit well with modern audiences (you know which ones I mean. Maybe I shouldn’t, because Utena largely is till way of ahead of its time and has aged gracefully
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Dumas1
Posts: 95 |
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I first watched Utena with a university anime club about twenty years ago. They'd started the series the previous semester, so I came in somewhere around halfway through the Black Rose arc if I'm remembering right. They may have capped it off with the movie towards the end of the school year. Yeah, there's a reason that club eventually stopped running anything longer than a single cour.
Anyway, I eventually bought the DVD sets and watched the entire series. Streaming wasn't a thing yet, so it's a major testament to how great the series is that I went to some lengths to see the whole thing. I grabbed the Blu-rays during some Rightstuf sale or other, so I'll probably get around to starting a rewatch of Utena after this current season ends. |
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Hellsoldier
 Posts: 869 Location: Porto,Portugal,Europe,Earth,Sol |
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It's Utena and Sailor Moon that contributed for Yuri's commercial solidification, despite Sailor Moon not being a centrally yuri affair (having, like, one couple). With that said, I find the experience of watching the series, with its 39 episodes, to be mych better than the experience of watching the movie. Same as with Escaflowne (26 episodes, in that case). |
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omiya
 Posts: 1868 Location: Adelaide, South Australia |
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Seeing a clip of the performance of 輪舞-revolution from Animelo Summer Live 2008 (Minori Chihara dueting with original singer Masami Okui) encouraged me to visit Japan and experience such live shows myself.
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Cryssoberyl
Posts: 250 |
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Indeed. Utena, Sailor Moon, and of course, Maria-sama ga Miteru, are what I and others regard as the three founding pillars of modern yuri. |
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Stampeed Valkyrie
 Posts: 869 Location: PA |
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Its been awhile since I have watched Utena. Like some other my exposure to it was from a College anime club. I was fortunate enough to pick up the release from Nozomi before they went out, just never got around to rewatching it.
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gsilver
Posts: 662 |
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I wonder how many Rose Crest rings I still have from the various editions of the show I picked up over the years...
And, yes, it's still a bit painful remembering how the fancy Bluray box got heavily delayed because of the ring while the standard sets were easily available. I wanted the boxed set! But anyway, it's really awesome to see This Week in Anime revisit one of my favorite shows, especially with this week's participants being more into it than in the last appearance. Utena has been my favorite anime since, well... the first rewatch. There's a whole lot to unpack in the show, and while I may not have quite 'gotten it' on the first viewing, it's faired very well over time. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2280 |
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I actually think it’s one of the few anime out there just overall that handle its subject matter tastefully, even with how dark it can get. I will heartily recommend that folks watch it with some kind of captioning turned on, however, because there’s definitely untranslated signage that is thematically important/relevant that you miss if you’re a dub-only viewer. That said, I’m of the opinion that good friends don’t let friends watch Utena alone, so I like to at least point them in the direction of sites like Josei Next Door for their episode-by-episode spoiler-free breakdowns just because Utena is DENSE with meaning. |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1882 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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I have the Ultra Edition Blu-ray set. Got it while it was on sale a few years ago. Prices for a factory-sealed copy are insane now. Still haven't watched it, though, and I currently don't own a working Blu-ray player. (My older Samsung BD player only reads DVDs and CDs now. My newer Samsung's HDMI out seems to be kaput, same as my PS3 Slim's. Will probably be getting a Sony BDP-BX370.)
I've only seen the whole series in Tagalog-dubbed form, based on Enoki Films' "Ursula's Kiss" localization. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4878 |
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Utena stands alone. Easily one of the most important anime series ever made, and an experience I'll never forget. I watched it some time after seeing Penguindrum, and I'm kind of glad I did things in that order, because I was already used to Ikuhara's idiosyncrasies and able to better appreciate them at work in Utena. This is about the only series where I went out of my way to get the limited-edition set, because I needed those booklets that came with it. Now I just need to find time for a rewatch.
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