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[absolutebirth]

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Absolute Destinty: Analysis is a biweekly blog analysing Revolutionary Girl Utena as a I conduct my third watch-through in summer 2024. My three priorities are to A) create a guide suitable for following along with a first watchthrough which is spoiler-free enough to not have the show spolied but which might highlight hints toward the cumulative storyline, B) knit together a full analysis of Utena which tackles the show's main themes, with an emphasis on my personal interests of surveillance, spectacle, and power, or the questions who sees? what do they see? and who decides? and C) maintain a section at the end of each blog post with the intent of pointing out, for people who are on their second or third watchthroughs, my favorite allusions to the End of the World.

Each post will be, following my favorite quote from the episode, split into 7 sections:

Episode Summary: what it says on the tin

A Wider Gaze: An attempt to put this episode into the wider view of the show as a whole, contextualizing the development of characters, themes, and relationships in Ohtori academy, and then taking that wide view of the show and applying it to the world as we live it-- the world outside of Ohtori academy.

Institutionalized: Drawing from The Shawshank Redemption (1994), here we look at how the characters in each episode have found themselves embedded in Ohtori, enacting actions against their own better interests for fear of leaving behind a comfortable confinement.

The Eye That Fucks the World: Donna Harraway describes ubiquitous surveillance as "the god-trick of seeing everywhere from nowhere" and goes on to say that "this eye fucks the world." Revolutionary Girl Utena is a story about being watched, not only by the viewer on the other side of the camera but, as we will eventually find, by another eye-- which certainly has intentions to fuck the world. Here we see how this ethos of watching and being watched plays out, episode to episode.

Who Decides Who Decides?: Ohtori is a world of power. As the student council squabbles, power shifts between them are some of the most significant developments in each episode. Here, we check in with the power balance, what changes it, and what that means for both Utena and Utena.

Saito Solace: A piece of Saito's manga art from The Gallery At Empty Movement, to finish off the spoiler-free section of the post.

(SPOILERS) The End of the World: The section for those in the know and my kicking-my-feet giggled realizations about the clues Ikuhara leaves us throughout the first 35 episodes. I don't want to say too much here, because I don't want someone who isn't looking for it to read too much, but suffice to say that Utena is certainly one of those stories where hindsight is 20-20.

In terms of my own background, Utena related and otherwise: I was born and raised in the northern Midwestern United States and moved out east for college, where I'm majoring in "data economy" (a self-made amalgamation of economics and computer science) and ethics. I was into anime in high school, mostly grew away from my obsession, but recently viscerally remembered the awe inspiring masterpiece that is Utena and decided it was probably once again time to think about Anthy at least twelve hours a day. My favorite other pieces of media are Disco Elysium, Against Me!'s album Transgender Dysphoria Blues, Don Delilio's novel White Noise, Infinite Jest, Neutral Milk Hotel's In an Aeroplane Over the Sea... in terms of other seminal pieces of lesbian liturature, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and everything by Alison Bechdel, but especially Dykes to Watch Out For.

My favorite Utena characters are and always have been Mikage, Anthy, Nanami, and Saionji (in that order) but I hold a soft spot for every single one of them and the spider-thin lines connecting them emotionally and thematically. I believe thinking about the duelists in terms of right and wrong or our id-pol concepts of oppression hinders a reading of the show, just as a flat understanding of those things hinders meaningful connections and community building across the false lines the patriarchy creates, so I generally find myself more sympathetic to Touga, Mikage, and Saionji than others may be. Finally: I suspect, although I haven't cracked their code, that the Nanami episodes are the most significant in the entire show.

The first post, for the first episode, will be posted this Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024.

[absolutebirth]

READ THIS ON NEOCITIES @ ABSOLUTEBIRTH.NEOCITIES.ORG

I watched Revolutionary Girl Utena for the first time on my parents thrifted green velvet couch, HDMI-plugging my Dell laptop into the TV to stream on 9anime (HD to the youtube mirror's fuzzy graphics), and after every episode I would slide onto the floor, pull my laptop toward me, and search up Vrai Kaiser's Utena analysis. I felt an overwhelming amount of pity for those who went into Utena without that sort of guide. It's a beautiful show without a second thought, sure, but like its older brother NGE, analysis is what takes it from a surrealist shoujo with the conventional twist of a lesbian relationship to one of the greatest pieces of feminist television of all time.

THIS WAS ALL WELL AND GOOD, BUT SO IMPRESSED WAS SHE THAT THE PRINCESS VOWED TO BECOME A PRINCE HERSELF ONE DAY

On a first watch, it's difficult to do much more than take in the beauty and strangeness of Ikuhara's mind. Kaiser's analysis is what saved me from immediately needing to rewatch all 38 episodes, what prepared me for the End of the World and let me leave episode 38 feeling like I understood the foundations of Utena and so could confidently say that I was, of course, obsessed.I did rewatch it a few weeks later with a friend, in the insufferable sort of way RGU fans are likely familiar with, pointing out every piece of color parallels, half explaining the shadow girl snide remarks, gasping at early-show visual parallels and giving my friend just a quick "no, no, nothing."

About five years later, it's time for my third rewatch, this time with my girlfriend. There isn't anything quite as dyke-ish as watching Utena with a girl you're enamoured with. It's the sort of thing that makes you feel really, deeply connected to all those late 90s, early 2000s lesbians wearing Sailor Moon t-shirts over chunky long sleeves, introducing their own college girlfriends to Revolutionary Girl Utena, sitting on a tan corduroy couch in their parents basement. There's something cosmic in the simple timeless genius of a show like that. Since I began to read theory and smoke weed, I've only become a worse movie-watching partner, and so to spare her the misery I've decided to focus my analysis outwards, into a resource like Kaiser's.

BUT WAS THAT REALLY SUCH A GOOD IDEA?

This blog aims to be, starting 5/22/24, a biweekly Utena watchthrough with analysis for each episode, with the end goal of both allowing anyone following along with the blog to participate in a communal rewatch and creating a future resource for anyone who wants to read along with something as they watch Utena for the first time, like I had. I also aim to make a trigger warning resource for Utena, because the currently available ones seem to me to be flawed to the point of unusability. If there are any other first-watch resources you wish had been around on your first watch-through, let me know! I can be reached in the comments section of any post, at my email wittctm108@proton.me or at my personal tumblr, @carbootsoul. My About page has more information on my Utena biases, the lenses I'm the most inclined to view the show through, favorite characters, general personal background, post format, and more-- if you're interested in that sort of context, please check it out. Otherwise, stay tuned. Smash the world's shell.