1176: Absolute Destiny Apocalypse

At the insistence of my good friend Lynette (well, all right, she mentioned it a couple of times and I was intrigued) I have been watching an anime series called Revolutionary Girl Utena, also known in various places as Shoujo Kakumei Utena and La fillette révolutionnaire Utena.

Utena, as I shall refer to it from hereon, is clearly from a very different period to the anime I have watched to date. It has a very distinctive “’90s anime” appearance to it, particularly with regard to character proportions and design — everyone has chins that could cut glass, and all the girls have inhumanly long legs, a fact usually accentuated by their clothing — but it still makes use of a lot of common non-realistic “stylized” features that we see in modern anime, particularly with regard to facial expressions and the way people move.

Thematically, it’s also of a genre I haven’t really explored before — technically, it could be described as a “magical girl” anime since Utena regularly gains special powers accompanied by special effects and recognisable catchphrases, but it’s a lot more than just Pretty Girl Fights Crime. No; so far I’m only relatively few episodes into the whole thing but it’s very clear that there are a lot of things going on.

A friend of mine described Utena as being “like a fever dream” and that’s absolutely true. There’s a curious sense of surrealism about most of the episodes, with fairly mundane activities juxtaposed with obviously fantastic happenings that only certain characters are aware of. The whole thing is also absolutely riddled with imagery and visual metaphor, some of which are more obvious than others and most of which only contribute to the strange, surreal feelings of things not quite being what they seem.

But you probably want to know what it’s all about, right? Well… as I say, I’ve only seen a few episodes so far so I can’t comment with full authority on everything that has happened, but here goes.

Utena is a statuesque high school girl who habitually dresses as a boy. The reason for this is that when she was younger, she was helped by a kind “prince”, who gives her a ring with a rose signet and tells the young Utena that it will “lead her to him”. It transpires that there are other people out there who wear the rose signet on their rings, and they’re at Utena’s school. Specifically, they’re the student council, who appear to have some sort of special relationship with an unknown entity, person or organisation known as “End of the World” and are keen to “smash the world’s shell to bring about revolution” as dictated by their creed. (“If it cannot break out of its shell, a chick will die without being born. We are the chick. The world is our egg.”)

Key to the plans of the Student Council is the “Rose Bride” Anthy Himemiya, who also happens to be a student at Utena’s school — and who appears to share some characteristics with the “prince” from Utena’s past. Anthy, for the most part, appears to be a normal girl, but whoever is “engaged” to her “possesses” her and can make her do anything they want. Through a series of unfortunate happenings, Utena becomes engaged to Anthy and then proceeds to protect her from the other members of the Student Council, who all have their own reasons for wanting to possess the “power of Dios” that Anthy contains.

The interesting thing about the series so far is that no-one is really outright “evil” — there are plenty of obnoxious characters who are unpleasant or dislikable, but they all appear to have their reasons for doing the things they do. In fact, there are several characters who, despite being on the Student Council and thus at various points taking the role of “antagonist”, are actually rather sympathetic and/or likable. It’s really cool, and I’m looking forward to finding out the truth behind some of them.

Anyway, given that I’m only partway through the series’ first story arc, that’s really all I can say for now, but I will say that I’m enjoying it, even if it’s currently very confusing and bewildering. I get the impression that’s entirely deliberate, though — I wonder how many answers I’ll have by the end of it all?