#and then for the rest of the episodes it's like Zettai!!! Unmei!!! MOkushiroku!!!!

[ryuki-blogs]

I love when robots change form instantly, one frame to another. It's like... oh, you CAN do it in one second. But all those other times, you just like showing off, don't you.

[iphisesque]

top 5 reasons to watch utena?

in no particular order:

the music: surprise bitch utena is a musical! aside from the intro, the ED, and zettai unmei mokushiroku, pretty much every episode has an original song, usually but not always during the duels (some of the most iconic being ammonite, missing link, and dona dona). the OST is also absolutely amazing, composed by j.a. seazer and featuring absolute bangers such as hikari sasu niwa and shi no aphrodite.

the character dynamics: i have said before that the characters of utena come in endlessly duplicated sets of three from the original akio matrix, with each character still maintaining their uniqueness: juri is a girlprince like utena, but she's closeted rather than oblivious; touga is an akio, but his youth and trauma prevent him from achieving his same position, and so on.

the symbolism: utena fans are perhaps right behind evangelion fans when it comes to annoyingly overanalyzing symbolism, and i love that for us — the colours and the car and the prince and the stars are pretty basic symbols, but others like the stopwatch and the animals and the hair and the cooking have broader interpretations, and it's fun to theorise about them.

the themes: much has been said about utena's commentary on gender and race and abuse and love and family and capitalism, and all that is present, but the most basic barebones message of utena is a coming-of-age one, about breaking free of societal demands for teens and young adults to find who you really want to be and what values you want to embody for yourself, which i found really inspiring on my first watch.

the cultural relevance: especially if you already like anime and shojo, you have been exposed to utena already, whether in direct reference or in inspiration: it's a cult classic of the magical girl and deconstructionist shojo genres, containing lots of references to previous genre cornerstones, and with its main creatives ikuhara and enokido as well as the rest of be-papas going on to work in more prestigious anime.