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Revolutionary Girl Utena
Revolutionary Girl Utena (also known as 少女革命ウテナ, Shoujo Kakumei Utena or SKU) is an anime/manga series from the mid-1990s that is widely considered by the shoujo-ai fandom to be the very pinnacle of the genre – A fact that seems extremely bizarre once you realize that the series only has one confirmed lesbian and mostly consists of yaoi and heterosexual incest. What is certain about this series, however, is that it is almost universally regarded as a total acid trip and has amassed a large following from the bowels of the internet hellholes that are DeviantART and tumblr.
The series tells the story of Utena Tenjou, a pink-haired girl who lost her parents in an accident at a very young age and was then saved from her misery by a mysterious prince. These events led Utena to her somewhat unorthodox life-goal of one day becoming a prince herself.
Story
Student Council Arc
So, there's this girl name Utena. She gets kicked out of school after school or travels between them or something. Anyway, she's fourteen and just started going to Ohtori Academy. She sees Anthy getting slapped around by Saionji and stands up for her because Utena may be a loud moron, but she's not an asshole. Saionji challenges Utena to a sword fight. Utena brings a wooden practice sword, while Saionji pulls a steel sword out of Anthy's chest. Utena quickly realizes this is not a kendo match when her 'sword' is chopped in half 10 seconds in. Utena therefore cheats, wins, and finds she is now is forced to live with Anthy who says that as the Rose Bride, she is now "engaged" to Utena and has to do whatever she says. Anthy will not go away.
There's a secret society who all want to take control of Anthy. They are made up of the Rose Duelists and all of them see this as serious business as they sit there at their meetings and brood over Utena and how much it sucks that she's there. The rest of the "arc" is made up of various duelists challenging Utena, losing and going off to stew. Touga gets a huge crush on Utena after she kicks his ass and tries to flirt but fails so he creeps on her instead.
Black Rose Arc
Gay Evil Utena and Gay Evil Anthy sit in their black tower of gayness and grow black roses in their fish tanks to turn everyone evil and gay and make them fight each other. If they can kill Utena and the other duelists, then they can take their place and go be the rose bride and prince only gayer! As part of the evil plan everyone trips balls, sees their worst fears, and eventually collapses from exhaustion as the acid trip wears off.
Oh, and the black tower is actually a memorial lined with plaques/coffins containing the corpses of all the students who died last time this part of Ohtori Academy collapsed in a huge, mysterious fire. Somehow nobody ever talks about this. Ever. Oh, and Gay Utena and Gay Anthy also died in the fire and are now angry ghosts trapped in Ohtori Academy forever. We also learn that Akio fucks his sister. Yay?
Akio Fucks Everyone Arc
Akio's Fiance is dead. So what? He's fucking everyone else instead! Oh yes... the headmaster of Ohtori Academy is fucking the students and nobody gives a damn. First target: Touga. He likes it and is into it, but he still likes Utena! Oh the angst. Touga decides to go be gay elsewhere after warning Utena freaky things are going down. Well, Touga was being used to try to make Utena back down and it just coincidentally turned him gay so Akio decides to fuck his way through the student populace in order to encourage them to do his bidding and destroy Utena (or turn them all gay, whatever). Ok, so we see people getting into Akio's big, red sportscar and then they make orgasm faces and noises as they ride in the back seat while he rides on the hood and nobody is driving the car even though the engine is revving and running and holy crap what am I watching?!?
Akio realizes that fucking everyone else is failing, so he fucks Utena. No bones about it, there's a hotel room, there's bed sheets and there's Utena giving zero fucks about losing her virginity at 14 while she contemplates what's for lunch as a thinly-veiled sex metaphor.
Apocalypse Arc
Akio tries to tell Utena she can't be a prince because he tapped that ass, and thus she is a she. Angst ensues for a few episodes until she realizes not being a virgin makes her more powerful somehow and Akio fucked himself over by fucking her. Anthy gets tired of sexing her brother, is raped by him from now on instead. She tries to become an hero to get away from this shit but is saved by Utena. All the duelists fight Utena again and fail. Juri gets out of dodge because she feels something bad is going on. The incredible cancer boy comes back to fight Utena and DIES. Akio drops the act and tells Utena he's the prince and Dios and not Dios and not the prince and evil but not evil because he's a victim of greedy people and circumstance and is a bastard while begging for her to understand and just give up. Makes perfect sense. Utena fights Akio, Gets literally backstabbed by Anthy then stabbed by a hundred swords and apparently dies in the process but redeems Anthy and destroys Akio's chance for World Revolution. Ohtori Tower collapses in an earthquake and Utena's body is nowhere to be found.
Akio starts looking for new duelists to start over again. Anthy says she's leaving to find Utena, but once away she calls for the Party Van to have her brother hauled away and learn all about raep from the other end of it. The end.
The Movie
Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie, also known as Adolescence of Utena or 少女革命ウテナ アドゥレセンス黙示録 (literally "Revolutionary Girl Utena: Adolescense Apocalypse") in Japan, is the result of someone having the brilliant idea to make a retelling of the original anime several years after it had finished airing.
In order to condense the story to fit into a 80 minute film they basically removed everything that made the series good and replaced it with a 20 minute scene of Utena turning into a car to defeat an already dead Akio.
Characters
Main Characters
- The pink-haired 14-year-old girl (srsly, she's 14) who is the main character of the series. She's loud, gets bored in class, refuses to wear women's clothing, pals around with a gal whose presence is pocky-fueled madness incarnate, and has no clue what she's doing for most of the series. She just sort of goes along with all the crazy crap that happens to her as if to say "Eh, why not?" and never really stops to question what the fuck just happened until it's far too late for any questioning to matter. Lives with Anthy which really isn't fun as she's not a great cook, clings to Utena all the time, and pretty much needs constant protecting. Oh, and Utena is also an orphan with a special ring that relates to her past for extra special Mary Sue points. Such a strong character.
- Anthy is a mysterious Indian girl who is also known as the Rose Bride, the object of obsession for pretty much everyone at Ohtori Academy. She is completely subservient to whomever is the current champion of the duels, she is also very slappable. This slappability is considered a bonus as she's annoying as fuck due to having no spine whatsoever until the very end of the series and even then it's debatable if that's growing a spine or pussying out and walking away. When not getting slapped around by the current duel champion she is sucking Akio's dick and/or crying. The only times she ever really smiles are when gardening or playing with her "monkey mouse", Chu-Chu.
- Some argue that Anthy is the anime series' main antagonist due to the fact that she's a witch and literally stabs Utena in the back.
- Anthy's brother/lover/pimp and the reincarnation of Prince Dios or some shit. Really, it's not super clear for the most part until the Mary Sue pileup hits at the end.
- Ok, here we go... he's 26 so he's about a decade older than everyone else. He has set himself up to marry into the family owning Ohtori and changes his name to match. He then fucks his mother-in-law to be and poisons his fiance. What a cool guy. He then sets up a secret society to make teenagers fight each other for his amusement, stepping in to seduce them all as he figures out who is the toughest and would give him his best shot at his mysterious goal. Between all of this he fucks his sister over and over and makes money off the hundreds of students. It turns out he's been doing this repeatedly for ages. Once people figure out he's bad news and everything goes bad he takes his sister, flees/pretends to die, changes his name and tries it all again next generation. Turns out he's actually immortal due to a curse from where he was unable to save an actual princess and failure leading to torches and pitchforks as well as a curse on him and his sister. Now he does these duels to try to find a new princess and "save her" and take the nobility and strength she no longer needs to break down the door where the power of the Prince Dios he used to be is sealed away, but he is destined to screw it up every single time because he's cursed. Duh.
- In the movie Akio plays a much smaller role and has been turned into a poseur and complete pussybitch. He literally kills himself by jumping out a window after he realizes that Anthy was actually awake and going along with it while he was raping her. Srsly.
- Utena's prince from her memories and a literal immortal. At least 100 years ago he was a prince who would help the needy villagers by doing princely things, but they eventually demanded so much help that he used up all his prince powers. When the people demanded he come save their princess anyway, Anthy drugged and then seduced Dios so he wouldn't be able to leave her bed and so he failed to save the princess. For this the people burned his sister alive as a witch and killed him along with her. The people's hate was so strong that they laid a curse on the pair of them so powerful that they were returned to life but were cursed for all eternity, as Anthy became an actual witch and the noble prince Dios aspects of her brother remained dead, and all that was left were the negative aspects of his personality, which eventually became Akio.
Student Council
- A ginger bishie with no real purpose beyond being eye-candy for fangirls. Cocky dude who might be gay or bi but is sort of confused about it. One of the few people who actually likes having sex with Akio. There's tons of Yaoi of him and Saionji, some of which is drawn by the actual artist who created the series. By the way, the yaoi is a troll done by a bored creator as Saionji "isn't gay" although he rides Akio's dong like the rest, and clearly came in the infamous "camera-flash = orgasm" symbolic threesome with Akio and Touga. In the movie it turns out that Touga was dead all along and was being molested by his adoptive dad.
- A green-haired pretty boy who lives mostly for being pretty, being good at swords and slapping around Anthy. He actually is a huge ball of insecurities who totally isn't gay you guys and really did care for Anthy and is not an abusive asshole, he just doesn't know how to show his emotions so STOP calling him an asshole you guys. Anyone who isn't a fan knows he's just an asshole they slapped some sad backstory on to try to make him into less of an asshole.
- Touga's little sister who harbours very obvious incestuous feelings for her brother. Animals hate her, probably because she once murdered a cat because her brother paid more attention to it than to her. She's jealous, bitchy, annoying, spends all of her time preening and wonders why the other characters hate her. Even Touga barely puts up with her and mostly tries to keep her away from him so she doesn't bug the crap out of him, too. The fans all hate her for being a bitch who kills kittens.
- In one episode she learns that her and Touga are not blood-related, this leads to her going absolutely crazy because her blood-related incest fantasies about her brother have been ruined by the knowledge that they aren't blood related. At the end of the episode, however, it's revealed to the viewer that Touga was merely trolling and they are blood-related after all.
- She turns into a cow in one episode after wearing a magic cowbell. The episode was pointless filler, as are all her episodes. Honestly, her only real role was to be a hate magnet and get trolled to hell and back by Chu-Chu after bullying Anthy. Nanami's only appearance in the movie is a pointless callback to her scene as a cow.
- The series' only confirmed lesbian and the only duelist who's actually better than Utena. She is only defeated in her first duel with Utena because of a literal miracle, and she forfeits in their second duel because of fucking miracles. She's mature, kind, patient, and not a total airheaded whiny bitch like half of the females in this series. Sadly she doesn't feature very much in the series and her girl crush is a giant bitchslut who fucks around behind her back and wants to see her hurt. Poor Juri always gets the short end of the stick.
- An effeminate boy in a sea of hunky twinks. If you ignore his penis he is a female from his mannerisms to his clothing. He spends most of his time playing piano, arranging flowers, brushing his pretty hair and being super dainty. He's not gay, he's totally lesbian for his twin sister who happens to be just like him only a loud-mouthed slut who has fucked everyone in the school since he stopped wanting to play doctor in the bathtub with her. We guess he wants a turn on the academy bicycle, too. His only non-incestual heterosexual crush is on Anthy (of course) but only because she plays a piano tune that takes him back to a time when he and twin sister would innocently 'experiment' together before he realized that twincest is generally frowned upon.
Black Rose / Akio Arc
- Akio's fiancee who becomes a duelist in the second season and is then presumably murdered by Akio and Anthy. Akio also fucked her mom. She lacks a brain and does not realize that she is actually being used as a cover for the fact that Akio is a sleezeball who will fuck anyone he pleases. She's completely oblivious to his personal actions and, if not totally oblivious and brain-damaged, must be there for the money only.
- Gets about 2 seconds of screen time in the movie and not much more in the series. Total throwaway character.
- A 13-year old shota who develops a crush on Nanami and becomes her personal bottom bitch. Episodes that feature him as a major character tend to be about him being all angsty and going through puberty. Becomes a duelist during the Black Rose arc and gets his arse kicked by Utena.
- Juri's jealous "friend" who wants nothing more than to make Juri suffer. She once attempted to steal Juri's boyfriend (although it was later revealed that he wasn't actually Juri's boyfriend) and, upon finding out that she herself was the actual object of Juri's affections, gloats about how she has complete control over Juri's emotions.
- In the Apocalypse arc it's revealed that she had been polishing Ruka's sword every day since he got sick and had to leave school. And in yet another shocking twist, it's later revealed that the sword she was polishing actually didn't belong to Ruka. Then who was sword?
- In the movie Shiori is arguably the main antagonist since Akio is a complete pussy who commits suicide half way through the film. She also has a relationship with Touga that wasn't present in the anime and she eventually turns into a car. Yes, a car!
- The second biggest slut in the series, beaten only by Pimplord Akio. She wants to fuck her twin brother and is constantly trying to get his attention by sleeping with fucking everyone. The funny part is that he doesn't notice that she wants to fuck him so nothing ever happens despite sexual tensions all the way to the moon and back.
- In the movie she threatens to slit Miki's throat with a razor blade. Hawt.
- Utena's bisexual BFF who is constantly attempting to defenestrate her. Has a crush on Saionji and NTRs her childhood friend. She is the incarnation of every single pocky fueled hyperactive otaku on the face of the planet and will glomp anyone she wants while squeeling loudly. The squee sound is actually a warning siren to run the fuck away before she lands on your back like a drop bear and clings on while squeeling. Every fan either wants to be her or to kill her. Pointless fanservice.
Souji Mikage (a.k.a. Professor Nemuro)
- A pink-haired bishie who's essentially Utena's evil counterpart during the Black Rose Saga. He attempts to kill Anthy so he can turn his personal shota into the new Rose Bride. He also murdered a bunch of young boys and is actually already dead or some shit. It's like someone made a gay horror film version of Utena and set it loose in a PG-rated hentai. Mostly screen filler. Same for the shota.
- The former captain of Ohtori Academy's fencing team who had to leave because he had cancer. Comes back during the Apocalypse arc and joins in on the duels after manipulating both Shiori and Juri. Collapses during his fight with Utena and is later reported as dead by the Shadow Play Girls. Has no real personality outside of everyone talking about how amazing he is.
Other Characters
- Mysterious space aliens who regularly crash their ship into Akio's cocktower. Or maybe they are just the school's drama club. They serve as narrators and put on bizarre plays prior to most duels. The plays are actually there for the audience to help them understand what the fuck is going on and not typically seen by the characters in the show so, arguably, these are breaking the Fourth wall and are not real characters. For some reason people still count them as characters and like them. Then again, who dosen't like plays about monkey-kidnapping robots? One of their plays is literally about cuckolding.
- While their names are never stated in the series itself, they are listed as A-ko, B-ko, C-ko and so on in the credits and other official material. How very original.
- Anthy's half-mouse half-monkey pet whose cheeks look like tits when he's eating. It's actually a hamster but hamsters are boring so they took a hamster's traits (mouse-like thing that can cling and climb like a monkey) and smashed it together into a nonsense critter because this is anime, damnit, and doesn't need to make sense. Serves no real purpose other than looking stupid and trying to be comic relief amid the psychadellic madness.
- Some Argue that Chu-Chu is really Anthy's familiar whom she sends out to get revenge on those who have screwed her over. The fact that every Nanami Filler episode (where she gets the shit trolled out of her) ends with Anthy greeting Chu-Chu and wondering aloud where he has been is given as evidence of this.
☞ Symbolism Guide
- Towers and swords symbolize PENIS.
- Flowers symbolize VAGINA.
- Duels symbolize sex.
- Cars symbolize cocks and adulthood.
- Anthy symbolizes battered woman syndrome.
- Akio symbolizes the patriarchy.
- Akio ripping open his shirt and then jumping on the hood of his moving car symbolizes that he is an attention whore.
- Akio's Car symbolizes his PENIS.
- Ohtori Academy symbolizes the prison of childhood and adolescence.
- Utena disappearing from existence symbolizes the freedom of adulthood.
- Utena having sex with Akio symbolizes the fact that this anime was made by paedophiles.
- Miki's stopwatch symbolizes cubic time.
- Nanami getting chased by a boxing kangaroo symbolizes that the creators of this anime were on drugs.
- Nanami turning into a cow symbolizes that the creators of this anime know we all hate her and hate her, too.
- Nanami laying an egg symbolizes that the creators of this anime had no idea what to do with this character on top of hating her.
- Utena turning into a car symbolizes nothing, the director literally said that he "just wanted to turn a girl into a car" despite the fact that cars are desired by men and men "Enjoy" them best when they enter them and push them to their limits. It could be worse. This could be all the Fire-hoses, snakes and bunt cakes from that one episode of Sailor Moon
Ursula's Kiss: The attempted 4kidsification of the series
At one point there were actually plans to make a butchered English adaptation of the series called Ursula's Kiss and market it towards children. These plans, however, were ultimately scrapped once the license holders finally discovered that the series includes moar incest and innuendo than the average hentai anime.
Hipster Utena
Last Thursday some idiot decided that Advice Dog wasn't already a dumb enough meme and began to contemplate ways to make it even worse. They eventually came up with two awful ideas, and then they decided to combine both of those already awful ideas into something even more awful. The result was Hipster Utena, an Advice Dog variant that features Utena wearing hipster glasses and saying typical "ironic" hipster shit. Like all other Advice Dog variants, it's complete shit and deserves to die in a fire.
Gallery / LSD Simulator
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Believe it or not, this is one of the least bizarre things in this series. -
Still less gay than most of the art here. -
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The face of incest and kitten murder. -
The cowbell of Karma. -
Mooove bitch, get out the way! -
Nothing gay here... -
Nope, not gay.
-
Oh hai, I heard you're under 18. Be friends? -
Nope, no lesbians here. -
Touga's Wet Dream (DOES NOT ACTUALLY HAPPEN) -
He's just cursed to suffer eternally, that's all. -
Still no lesbians here -
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The most feminist anime of all time. -
Akio's ultimate fantasy. -
When Utena's voice actress died, Paheal paid tribute by featuring this lovely image. -
Nanami proudly displays her Cowstian Dior cowbell and her udders. -
Saionji lays eggs from his anus.
External Links
- In The Rose Garden - A forum dedicated to the series.
- Utena: Texts from Last Night - A tumblr dedicated to combining Utena screenshots with Texts From Last Night. Surprisingly funny if you've seen the series.
See Also
- Feminism - This anime contains actual feminism, not Anita Sarkeesian-style pseudo-feminist bullshit.
- Madoka Magica - The only other magical girl anime that's worth watching.
- Steven Universe - What Utena would be if it were made by Americunts.
- Anthony 'A-Log' LoGatto - A high profile fan of this weebshit.
- Incest
- Yaoi
- Yuri
- Neon Genesis Evangelion
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Revolutionary Girl Utena is part of a series on Visit the Anime Portal for complete coverage. |
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Revolutionary Girl Utena is part of a series on Visit the Sex Portal for complete coverage. |
| Featured article October 29 & 30, 2015 | ||
| Preceded by Doug Winger |
Revolutionary Girl Utena | Succeeded by Bob Ross |