Review

What Utena Has Meant to Me

Warning: spoilers ahead - lots of them

It was the magical year of 2000. I was 13 years old, and my mom had taken me to Blockbuster to rent a couple of movies. I had recently discovered anime so I headed straight to that section to choose between the vast selection of 12 different videos. Amongst the images of scantily-clad, buxom cops and catgirls, an angry-looking girl with pink hair and a sword caught my eye. I took it home along with Fushigi Yuugi and Akira. That weekend was going to be a wild ride.

When I first put it on, I almost wanted to turn it right back off. The sharp animation style was off-putting. The heavy-handed use of borders and roses seemed tacky. But a girl who wanted to become a prince after being impressed by one, rejecting the role of a damsel in distress, resonated with me. I'd always been a hard-headed tomboy myself. I kept watching.

The VHS cassette had four episodes. By the end, I felt like I barely understood what I had watched and was desperate to see the rest. Blockbuster couldn't help me, and so began my journey into the wonderful world of online fansubs. I had to settle for profoundly low quality at times, but I tracked down every last episode.

The show took every princess fairytale I'd grown up with and smashed them. The girls in the show were all looking for a prince of their own, but the only character in the entire show that lived up to that archetype was Utena herself. The boys, no matter how charming or sweet at first, were ultimately all serving their own agenda. Utena's original prince was the show's villain in the end. A manipulator, a rapist, and an overall sadist. The romantic tale from the opening of the show was revealed to be an act of manipulation.

Watching Utena's many falls in the show was so painful. I remember feeling a sense of betrayal in the episode where she gives up and wears the girl's school uniform (and the predictable sense of relief when she overcomes, wins the duel, and resumes her cool princely aesthetic.) Her manipulation by Akio was excrutiating. And yet, she didn't let it break her. She didn't give up on Anthy, regardless of confusion, silence, and betrayal. Utena was willing to do what no one else would. And in the end, she sacrificed herself - for her friend, to defeat the man who had hurt her and others, and for her own beliefs.

Utena never has much throughout the show. She has no family, she never finds real romantic love, she has only her friends - and to them, she gives her whole self. Utena served as one of the few characters I could see as a role model. Her strength never required cruelty, it was always tempered by compassion. She refused to follow the rules of what is considered ladylike, and refused to change who she was. Anthy followed every rule of what it meant to be feminine, and thus her entire existence was caged, even her personality. Utena defied the expectations of others to follow her own path and, in doing so, surpassed those around her. By freeing herself from the expectations of what a girl or woman should be, she was able to liberate not only herself but Anthy as well in the end.

2022 - circuitghost