#its literally utena gender

[apples4bapples]

Utena Princian Flag

Princian

A gender related to princehood, and/or the aesthetics of being a prince. It may be connected to masculine presentation and aesthetics, but it does not have to be.

[maggiecheungs]

“utena is a bit like a shoujo equivalent of evangelion” = a common and inevitable comparison that is admittedly not a bad elevator pitch, giving an idea of utena's symbolism and the genre tropes it engages without requiring an essay-length summary of its plot and themes

“utena is evangelion for the girlies” = SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UPPPP

[trinisasuke]

I was just trying to go through the transmasc utena tag to have some fun but now I'm upset

[thickest-antivirus-programs]

Omg genderfluid person who indicates current gender with those cequin mermaid whatever theyre called on their shirt

[the-best-bagel]

finished 2b's route and i did like it and i know there's like 30 more endings i need to get through and this is also probably bc im just coming off of revolutionary girl "hide every point of the show behind 3 levels of abstraction" utena but i kind of wish automata kept its cards a little closer to its chest

[hubristicassholefight]

Swordswoman showdown FINALS

Hornet (Hollow Knight) vs Xena (Xena: Warrior Princess)

(Better here in a "preferred character" sense, not "who would win in a fight")

Propaganda below cut

Hornet

Technically its not a sword but she wields a needle in a setting where swords do not exist and she wields it in an exceedingly swordlike fashion so. She counts; Girlboss demigoddess spider lady. She's been protecting an entire kingdom for longer than many of the other characters have been alive. She systematically kills her siblings for being too weak. She's simply the best.

#im pretty sure hornet can beat like. anyone in a fight.#have you ever fought hornet#its so fucking hard getting past her every time i play hk i go literally insane.

#i remember getting stuck on the first hornet fight on mt first play through and bring likr#''omg the boss fights in this are so hard!!!''#like what. you're not even half way through what are you talking about#you can't even DASH honey. you don't know what's diffcult or not in this game.

So, SPOILERS

but I feel like the "she systematically kills her siblings" part needs a little clarification. See, one of her siblings was used as a living prison for an angry god and that uh. Didn't work out for the sibling in question or anyone else.

This account is itself heavily abbreviated but it's likely that any other sibling Hornet encounters will be trying to take over as the god's new prison. She appears to challenge any sibling she sees to battle, in order to test their resolve against herself and her needle - would they actually have a chance against that god?

We never actually see her kill any siblings, but she does quite pointedly tell one of them that (to paraphrase) "My needle is lethal and I would feel no sadness in a weakling's demise."

Feels like a relevant quote. In any case, if they can't beat Hornet, it seems like her needle would be a far more merciful end than what the god would grant.

Anyway, a bit of additional material for @swordswomanshowdown :

As is the case for any cool swordswoman, it's not just her sword that's lethal, it's her with it. And Hornet's needle was custom made for her - the creators have said that, while other needles exist, hers was made specifically for her to wield, and its construction allows her to use her spider silk better in combat.

And another thing that I think makes her a good swordswoman: she's actually pretty thoughtful about how she uses it. There's a least one instance where she tries to warn someone off before fighting them! At the same time, when she does fight, she seems to enjoy it - during her boss battles, you can hear her laugh sometimes, as if exhiliarated. She's really got it all, as a swordswoman!!!

#HORNET SWEEP CMON PLEEEEEEASE#shes gay. shes the only sibling with a gender. shes a spider named HORNET. look like croissant. whats not to like

Xena

Warrior Princess

She wields a sword and chakram. Just had to submit a biconic swordswoman.

i love her. she made me gay as a kid. Anyway, her weapon of choice is her sword, she is obviously very good with it

#unfortunately i have to choose and i have to choose xena#a) utena had no warcry. b) xena fought gods. c) xena has kickass goofy comic book combat which is my favorite

xena didn’t just fight gods. she fucked up a girl’s life so bad that she (calisto) devoted her entire being to destroying everything that xena loved that ended up with calisto becoming a god in order to destroy xena, which didnt work because xena entombed her in lava. and then when xena and gabrielle encountered calisto in the (christian) afterlife (different from the greek one which they also fought her in), calisto dragged gabrielle to hell so xena became an archangel in order to save gabrielle and then sacrificed herself in order to undo all the harm that she did in calisto’s life and then when not!jesus (played by timothy omundson) revives xena and gabrielle, calisto impregnates xena with the reincarnation of calisto’s soul in order to end the cycle of hate. xena doesnt just fight gods. she creates and destroys them

#this isnt even mentioning her fighting julius ceasar several times#telling brutus that caesar is not his friend#xena and gabrielle’s souls reincarnating across centuries in order to kick ass and fall in love all over again#or the time xena became a god but tbh that ep is kinda ‘uhhhhh…..’ even if they did hire a consultant for it

#I think everyone here knows to vote for Xena. I think a couple people here might have some propaganda for Xena saved already#everyone remember that Xena/Gabrielle is CANON and that's a pretty big deal also#(does anyone have that Xena Loves Trans People interview around because that would also make good propaganda)

I love Xena ❤️ 😍 💖 ❣️

[saionjeans]

like it’s actually crucial to utena’s development that she is first presented as someone who is totally independent and refuses to conform to any kind of socially imposed rules. she’s a girl prince, her uniform is completely different, and everyone loves her for her radical swag. but almost immediately utena claims that she is a “totally normal girl looking for a totally normally boy” and that she is engaged to her Prince. and even the intro questions that, is utena deciding to be a Prince such a good idea?

and at first, you assume that the intro is being sexist, and that they’re just undermining utena for wanting to inhabit a Boy Role, which is why she does experience pushback from authority figures who cannot stand that she’s disrupting unspoken social codes. utena is simultaneously resisting gender norms and inhabiting the role of prince to save other girls, and insisting that she’s normal and cis and hetero. so almost immediately it’s like. well okay, what’s going on here.

utena doesn’t seem to want to reject social norms, she just wants to inhabit a role that is generally denied to her. so the constant tension between people undermining utena’s princeliness and trying to get her to inhabit more feminine modes of presentation, and utena herself obstinately insisting that she doesn’t want to be “queer” (and understandably so!!! being 14 and closeted is scary!!! especially when the literal personification of patriarchy is making you constantly question everything you ever believed!) and that she’s “normal, actually” is… confusing.

which is why it’s so important that anthy straight up says “you can’t be my prince, because you’re a girl” because it’s the exact mantra utena has heard her entire life and pushed back against, and in anthy’s case, she’s also stabbing her with a sword (of hatred) as if to emphasize that being a girl means being doomed to suffer. so utena pushes against that, whether because she wants to be a prince, or anthy’s prince, or because she’s not a girl, or a combination thereof. and she manages to do what akio could not because she smashes the rose crest and with it, all its harmful trappings, and reaches anthy in a genuine gesture of love.

and even then, anthy still falls, because the idea that a prince could save someone else from their suffering has always been an illusion. and that’s when utena realizes that she cannot be anthy’s prince, not because she didn’t sufficiently transcend gender norms, or because her heart wasn’t sufficiently noble and true, or because she didn’t fight hard enough, or because she didn’t love anthy enough. no matter what she had done differently, it would have always been futile, because the designation of princehood has always been hollow. no matter how pure her intentions were, she was nevertheless participating in a system that relied on the exploitation and suffering of others to function.

she attached herself to it because it was the only path she had to achieve her goals, but that path was nonetheless chosen for her. even if it seemed radical, she was always emphasizing her normality, trying to impress that despite not conforming to a strict binary, she was still conforming to something. but when she leaves the narrative’s confines, she is also transcending the notion that she can only rebel against certain social codes on other people’s terms. she can define her own terms now, free of impositions. being normal has nothing to do with us.

[comradekatara]

i am very curious about your thoughts on various utena/atla character parallels… every once in a while i see you offhandedly compare like.. korrasami and utenanthy and i’m like HOLD ON this is so true! if you have any further ideas about that i would LOVE to hear them. i honestly don’t know how big the audience is for rgu/atla analysis but i am definitely part of that audience. 😭

yesss i can't believe you're literally the first person to ask me this lately i've been making rgu references on like, every single post i'm shameless!!!!! over the summer i even wrote (like 95% of) an essay comparing sokka and nanami (tldr; they are meat) and i have yet to revisit it (bc i'm scared tbh) but i will post is eventually that is a PROMISE (for an audience of 5 people). also before we go any further my utena blog is @saionjeans and we have fun there. also, i have some utena/atla crossover art here and here, so check that out if you haven't already. the rest of this post will be scattered thoughts because my nanami-sokka essay will be doing a lot of the in-depth analytical work and i don't need to rehash that all now. but also, because i have never not once in my life heard of brevity, i did write a bunch of mini essays anyway, because of course i did.

korrasami and utenanthy: love and abuse

i compared utenanthy to korrasami a couple times, most notably in this post where i talk about how meaningful their relationship is despite being (arguably) underdeveloped, and then in the tags i still have to acknowledge that utena and anthy nonetheless did it better 17 years prior. but i do think that there is so much to be said for utena-korra and anthy-asami as two young women who are both set up to be "special" but in a way that denies and restricts them from their own humanity, cloistering them away from the outside world and making them more vulnerable to abuse. i talked pretty recently about how asami's abuse is really shrugged under the carpet in a way that pisses me off if i think about it for too long. rgu does such an incredible job of gradually exposing that abuse and its effects on society, not as a deviation from the norm (of the nuclear family, of the romance, of the school, etc.) but in fact a common symptom of it. lok does not critique the nuclear family in any meaningful way despite setting up so many different areas through which such a critique could be facilitated (made worse by the fact that atla sets such a fantastic precedent). but anyway, enough about lok (and how she disappoints me).

2. miki & kozue and katara & sokka: siblings and memory

in my sokka-nanami essay i talk about how various characters can be read to embody various analogues, but how my focus in that essay is primarily to draw a parallel between sokka and nanami by using the framework for gender/patriarchal logic rgu establishes. however, i also talk about how azula can be read as a nanami (or even an anthy) figure, as well as how katara and sokka can be read as miki and kozue (katara = miki and sokka = kozue, obviously) (and note that kozue and nanami are significant foils/mirrors too). i mean, they even have a similar light blue (to signify naïveté, innocence, childlike wonder) versus dark blue (to signify cynicism, jadedness, resigned subsumption into harmful norms) color scheme going on. the Special sibling and the afterthought. (although before going forward i do want to be clear that i am in no way alluding to any incestuous undertones wrt katara and sokka, and i would even argue that the allusions to incestuous desire between miki and kozue are more complex and nuanced than simply reducing it to mere perversion. but that's beyond the scope of this ask lol)

i know that some people might bristle at my comparing katara to miki (baby misogynist, little freak) but miki really exemplifies the trope of the "sunlit garden" in the same way that katara exemplifies that trope in atla. miki isn't the narrator of course (akio is), but the central motif of desire staked to an illusory formative memory since lost that defines a character's motivations and self-becoming is first properly introduced (not including the utena meeting dios intro) and defined through his obsession. in the same way, we are introduced to the world of atla through katara's formative memories, her desire that motivates her self-becoming also being an illusory formative memory, as well as a tale she longs to replicate ("the four nations living together in harmony"). katara, like miki, is defined by her naïveté and childlike innocence, her somewhat reductive desire to be noble and heroic, and her need to flatten everything into a clear-cut narrative wherein she is always its heroine. like miki, she resents her sibling for being transformed into a more cynical version of themselves in accordance with society's pressures (in kozue's case, it's the inescapability of patriarchy, whereas in sokka's case, it's... a lot of things), and longs for a time when they were "truly happy" and playing together (playing piano, playing in the snow, you get it).

both kozue and sokka heavily subscribe to patriarchal logic and comport and reduce themselves in accordance with the dictums of a world they consider truly inescapable. kozue seeks power within her limited frame, whereas sokka only seeks power insofar as it allows him to assume his very narrow role of protector, but they both assume those limitations to be ontological and fixed in a way that does not allow them to see past it. however, the lack of empathy both miki and katara refuse to attempt in understanding their worldviews, in no way making an effort to broach that misunderstanding instead of simply letting the chasm between them fester, nonetheless implicates them equally. after all, they too both adhere to their own limited worldviews, only in their worldviews they are fundamentally special and thus beyond reproach. sokka and kozue are both integral aspects of katara and miki's sunlit gardens, and their idealized return to a picturesque nostalgia involves a transformation (or regression) of sokka and kozue into their more innocent former selves. and sokka and kozue are in turn obsessed with katara and miki, the central figure around which their identity and actions revolve.

through this framework, aang thus becomes katara's anthy (aangthy, hehe), as the embodiment of katara's hopeful/nostalgic ideal of heroism, companionship, and the idealized promise of a distant irretrievable past. like anthy with kozue, aang "replaces" katara's longing for the softer, more innocent version of her brother with aang's friendship. like miki with anthy, katara possesses romantic feelings for aang despite his functioning as a replacement for sokka before he became a shell of his former self (or kozue before she became... sexually active). this is because katara, like miki, idealizes the patriarchal narratives that dictate that all significant relationships be either romantic or familial (or both). she wholeheartedly subscribes to this notion, hence why she attempts to subsume everyone who can meaningfully fit into her narrative framework as either a lover (aang, haru, jet, zuko for all of 2 seconds) or a pseudo family member (aunt wu, hama, pakku, toph, etc etc.), replicating those dynamics as many times as she needs to to make them fit within her two dimensional tapestry. and crucially, coming face to face with yon rha subverts that, because she recognizes the messy humanity spilling forth from the neat boxes she puts people in, and must thus contend with her own role in her narrative. of course miki, being a side character and not the narrator, certainly not the hero, does not get this luxury. and he must find a way to grow up anyway.

3. akio and ozai: patriarchy

there's something truly incredible about how both akio and ozai manage to inflict psychological harm upon every single character in their respective shows, even if they never interact with those characters directly. their reach is vast and spindly; it cannot be overestimated. and yet, ozai has only reigned for about six years. akio is only acting chairman of ohtori academy. they are not patriarchy itself, but merely its signifier. and obviously their modes of embodying patriarchy differ in many respects: a school is not a nation (despite the similarities), and a father is not a brother (despite akio being father-like). ozai is defeated by by being stripped of his technology of violence, whereas akio is not "defeated" in a literal sense (although i suppose anthy driving a car through his ghost and exploding him into a cloud of roses does make quite the statement), anthy merely leaves. and yet, in both instances, they are both forced to succumb to their own limited ideology regarding what constitutes power. if ozai lacks firepower, he lacks control over his subjects and the right to sovereignty. if akio's control is challenged, if people realize that they can just leave, that the ends of his world are entirely arbitrary, he no longer has the power to abuse and exploit and use others for his own ends.

the metonymic signification of patriarchy figured through both ozai and akio in dual ways further emphasizes their respective roles. ozai is both king and father, akio is both (acting) chairman and (acting) father. patriarchy dictates every aspect of [a patriarchal] society: from interpersonal dynamics to the nuclear family to the school to the state to the world. what makes both akio and ozai so brilliant in this regard is the fact that their influence is reflected in all these facets. ozai abuses every member of his family individually; controls them as a system; inflicts his (family's) propaganda onto the fn education system, rewriting history with (almost) no one to disprove him; inflicts his imperialist agenda both within the fire nation (ruining local economies through industrialization, forcing citizens to conform to restrictive roles, inflicting violence through occupation) and beyond it; he refers to the world as "my world," as if he is its creator, its owner, or its god. and in many ways, he is. akio similarly abuses everyone interpersonally (most notably anthy, touga, and utena); subsumes utena into his nuclear family system so that she cannot leave; uses the academy as a site of control in which adolescents are forced to comply with socially codified norms and thus made more vulnerable to the influence of adult authority figures (especially those who emphasize their individuality or inherent specialness when compared with the rest of the student body); operates ohtori as a sort of nation wherein patriotism is reified through the use of uniforms, affiliations, sociopolitical hierarchies, and an acting government (the student council); and defines himself as the creator/owner/god of his world. to be end of the world. to embody not an apocalypse, but a cage.

ozai and akio both fashion themselves the entire world, but it also makes them more vulnerable to resistance, to any mode of critique that points out the obvious: no, you're just one person, and the logic you use to dominate others is deeply, noticeably flawed. it's a logic that they exploit but that in turns exploits them, as they have so deeply internalized it that they can no longer immunize themselves against any kind of resistance. ozai claims that there is no room for an air nomad in his world, which is why aang defeating ozai through the pacifist values of his people and not through his greater power (which would nonetheless be subscribing to ozai's logic, and thus letting him win ideologically if not physically) is so crucial in shattering ozai's paradigm. just as utena, as someone who refuses to conform to the strict, arbitrary, and violently enforced norms of patriarchy, can so thoroughly disrupt akio's control by resisting him. just as anthy can by leaving. akio remains in his cozy little coffin, exerting meaningless control to uphold the hollow puppet of his ego.

people sometimes joke about how long it takes for zuko to recognize that the burning off of half his face was "cruel" and "wrong," but it's not that zuko didn't find it painful, it's not that zuko didn't fear his father, it's not that zuko idolized his father beyond reproach. he questioned his cruelty, in fact he did so constantly. he simply saw no other way to live. he had no conception of a world beyond ozai's defined limits, had no choice but to believe ozai's dogma and loathe himself for not sufficiently adhering to it. similarly, people often ask "if anthy could leave all along, then why didn't she?" because she, too, was trapped in a coffin of her own self-loathing. to leave an abuser is not as simple as simply stepping beyond the threshold and never looking back. first, you must locate the threshold. then, you must find the courage to look beyond it. i briefly touched on azula being an anthy figure before. well, i think that she is. just because she has yet to see beyond the threshold does not mean she does not find her limits. and yes, its not triumphant, and yes, her facade that masks her pain and fear is shattered, but ultimately, that breakdown is a good thing for her. because that's her first step to freedom.

4. the sunlit garden as mythmaking events

i talk previously in this post about the motif of "the sunlit garden" in rgu vs what i like to call "a mythmaking event" in atla, and i do want to elaborate on that slightly. i provided a link to a post on my utena blog going into what the sunlit garden "is" for each principal character, and atla has a similar mode of communicating these nostalgic desires and idealizations that motivate self-becoming, largely through flashbacks. for aang, it is quite obvious, as his memories of a before and after are (temporally, although not psychologically) fragmented by an entire century. that disconnect severs the two versions of himself quite neatly. those memories with gyatso and the other air nomads (as well as with child bumi, and with the mysterious kuzon) are his idealized past, his "sunlit garden," whereas the storm is his mythmaking event, the point in his life where his choices collide with his telos. there is no going back.

katara and sokka have a similar sunlit garden, their snowball fight being the last truly happy memory they have before the black snow falls and their childhood innocence is severed from them forever. kya's sacrifice and murder is katara's mythmaking event as she then chooses to assume the mantle of her mother who took her place, decides to become the greatest waterbender possible to compensate for surviving the genocide, and chooses to be a hero so that the collective memory and sacrifices of her people will not be in vain. like utena, she witnesses pain and suffering at a very young aged and is moved to become a hero so as to mitigate that suffering, even if her own formative tragedy can never be rectified. also like utena, she idealizes a seemingly utopian past wherein violence was more covert and thus presented itself as more ideal (the time of princes vs the time of harmony). her naïveté and persistent idealism are both her downfall and her greatest virtue. she refuses to accept the true state of the world to the point of blindness, but it is also that refusal to accept it that allows her to force the world into a kinder shape.

as for sokka, his mother's death was also a formative trauma, but his true mythmaking event is when hakoda leaves for war with all the other men of his tribe. hakoda tells him that "being a man is knowing where you're needed the most, and right now, that's here, protecting your sister." it's not a rose crest ring, but it may as well be. from that moment onward, sokka officially comports his identity into being his sister's protector, which is how he thus defines his manhood. and of course, being his sister's protector means being a martyr, because the precedent for "protecting katara" that has already been established is, well, dying for her. like aang being the avatar and the last airbender and katara being the last southern waterbender, sokka is thus defined by his necessity (ie, usefulness to others) as well as his isolation – not only the "last warrior/man" of the swt, but also via his own process of depersonalization and self-dehumanization as he attempts to fully embody his role as an eventual martyr.

zuko's mythmaking event is, of course, branded onto his face. in fact, zuko essentially assumes both katara and sokka's mythmaking events by first being irrevocably altered by his mother's sacrifice, and then being all the more transformed by his father's decree as he attempts to dictate what kind of man zuko needs to be. his "sunlit garden" is also shown to us in flashes: memories of a (literal!) sunlit garden, of turtleducks, of his mother's gentle guidance, of happier times on ember island, on his father's hand resting on his shoulder with pride instead of malice. it is unclear just how truthful these nostalgic memories are. obviously, his family was never actually happy. ozai had always been exerting control over them, even if his violence was once more obscured. we never see azula's sunlit garden, for instance (although i'd argue that she and zuko possess the same mythmaking events), and i cannot help but wonder whether it's because, like touga, she never actually had one.

finally, some honorable mentions must go to the following: toph, whose sunlit garden is also her mythmaking event, as she learns from badgermoles how to hone her gift and reject the rigid societal impositions that seek to limit, repress, and control her. hama, who never attempts to return to her sunlit garden in the swt with kanna, despite her freedom as established in her mythmaking event of teaching herself to bloodbend; she knows that she is irrevocably altered, and thus she can never go home again. appa, whose sunlit garden, of playing with the other bison at the southern air temple, occurs in conjunction with his mythmaking event of meeting aang and becoming the avatar's animal companion.

all of these events are depicted through flashbacks wherein the consecutive shots between flashback and present day mirror the character who is having the memory in the past and present, overlaying their younger face onto their current face with identical framing. i'm too lazy to compile a bunch of screenshots here, and i couldn't find the post i'd seen previously that had done so, but if you're as familiar with atla as i am, then you already know exactly what i'm talking about. this device is so effective particularly because it exercises restraint. every flashback in atla is crucial because it signifies either a sunlit garden or a mythmaking event that motivates the character its focalizing in the present day. atla is economical with its flashbacks, but not withholding. like with rgu, flashbacks in atla are used with a specificity of purpose, and illustrate their points in clear, precise ways. just because atla is not as overtly metatextual with its central themes of narrativization, nostalgia, idealization, bias, and storytelling, does not mean it is not present, and in fact, overt. ranging from katara's role as narrator to the fire nation propaganda aang attempts to correct in school, the use of memory and illusion is crucial in illustrating how atla functions as a narrative about heroism, legacy, and challenging dominant myths through preserving cultural memory under an imperialist regime.

5. final thoughts

obviously, i could go on forever. there is simply no limit to my ability to unpack and dissect these two shows (hence, my sideblogs dedicated to doing so). i haven't even talked about zuko as an analogue to saionji with regard to their latent homosexuality, misogyny, violence, and struggle to conform to a patriarchal ideal. and i barely touch on katara as an analogue to utena with regard to their naïveté, heroism, myopia, persistence, and somewhat misguided desire for justice (through her terms specifically), although like kozue and nanami as mirrors wrt sokka, her traits that i describe when comparing her to miki also map onto utena in many ways – except of course, utena, unlike miki, is also the "hero," and thus has the same destabilizing revelation regarding the banality of evil that katara undergoes in "the southern raiders." moreover, i only discuss one central motif in utena, because i think the sunlit garden is the trope that maps best onto the thematic work atla is doing, but i'm sure that there are many more frameworks i could compare. and yet, i only have so much time, and only so much space in which to ramble. so hopefully, for now, this suffices. however, if there any specific areas in which you would like me to elaborate, you know that i shall always be happy to do so.

[silvermoon424]

I feel like this Anti-Madoka/Anti-Dark Magical Girl rhetoric comes from a place of feeling like series that embrace being girly and feminine are punted to the side in favor of stuff that, even if done right, appeal to more men for its more touchy subject matters. More Anime fans in the west will fawn over Madoka far more than they ever would of Pretty Cure or Sailor Moon outside of nostalgia for the latter.

That's honestly a really good point. I'll be real, I've seen my fair share of male PMMM fans fawn over the series while disparaging the traditional magical girl genre- even though PMMM takes many beats from traditional MG shows and is ultimately a reaffirmation of the genre.

I've actually reblogged a couple of posts from other PMMM fans pointing out that it's not cool for PMMM fans (especially male ones tbh) to shit on the genre and shows that gave birth to PMMM in order to uplift PMMM. I also feel like these fans would really appreciate shows like Sailor Moon, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Princess Tutu if they actually gave them a chance. The latter two in particular are pretty similar to PMMM in tone/complexity.

It really is a shame how a lot of men aren't willing to give "girly" media a chance because they assume it will be inferior. There's literally a term for this that you can look up on TVTropes for examples: Girl Show Ghetto. Meanwhile, stuff like shounen anime (traditionally aimed at men/boys) generally has broad cross-gender appeal and some of the most popular series were even created by women.

Shoutout to all my boys who buck that shit and unapologetically enjoy magical girls and feminine media, you guys rule.

[ousama]

i’m going to try and argue in good faith here but i’m just not sure why you’re touting utena as a show that’s so entrenched in sexualization of its characters when it goes to avid lengths to skirt around displaying sexual topics in a way that is exploitative. TW for mentions of CP

if you’re uncomfortable with ikuhara’s other works - yuri kuma arashi specifically, then that’s valid and fine. i still think talking about it as “softcore porn” is a reductive way of speaking about it, and doesn’t acknowledge the work and what it was trying to say, but much of my criticisms of that particular show (and other ikuhara works) rest upon the same discomfort and i find a lot of it gratuitous.

but that doesn’t explain how rgu as a work is informed by those same missteps, especially when it precedes YKA. there is deliberate emphasis on anything sexual being an act of violence (that is not gratuitously portrayed) perpetrated through abuse and manipulation. nearly all of the sexual content of this nature is told through metaphor. only a few times is the audience ever exposed to it directly, and this event is never sexualized in any way shape or form.

so i’m not sure where you’re getting this “sexualization of minors” thing from in a show where the entirety of its identity is how young people are coerced into gender roles, often through cyclical sexual violence. when its climax and resolution are its sexually abused girls finding solidarity, comfort and unconditional love in one another. i’m deadass trying to figure in what instance a character is sexualized in this show, and where this happens repeatedly.

if its a matter of ikuhara just being a weirdo to you, then fine, because i do think authorial intent and input matters to an extent (even though he was really just a fraction of RGU’s production). do we scorn sailor moon then, along the same lines, even though you could also view the show and not see explicit sexualization of its minor characters?

how do you argue RGU is a show sexualizing its characters because of its creator, but FMA, an anime that wears its political themes on its sleeve, is somehow uncorrupted by the racism of its author? you like one piece, and that has repeated problems with sexualization and sexual harassment committed by one of its protagonists, that has an author that works closely with and venerates a man that owned so much child porn he was thought to be a distributor at some point?

so what makes RGU so uniquely terrible compared to these other works? i think there are criticisms that can be levied its way, and that goes doubly for the movie, but i think arguing its “sexualizing minors” and is therefore an unimportant piece of art is just bad faith and reeks of you having never actually watched or more importantly understood it. and i hope you can see how incredibly frustrating that is to people who have seen themselves so fully in it to have it reduced to something its not simply because you presumably didn’t bother to engage with it’s actual themes and messages.

im not reading all that why are you people so obsessed with my opinion on an anime poll. get a life. the constant harassing of a real life lesbian over its thoughts on a cartoon lesbian show really is not a hill worth dying on. what does literally any of this have to do with me, a single person mind you, saying i prefer one show over the other

[scarletlotus182]

So, I have an oddly specific question: I got into Witch from Mercury because I'm an Utena fan, and now I'm (slowly) watching 0079, and am finding that it holds up pretty well, but I'm not sure if I want follow it up with its sequel, and since I read that some of your favorite Gundam characters are from Zeta, I was curious about its appeal, and if there are any caveats I should consider in watching it?

First of all, Hi! Hello! Welcome to fanbase!

Personally one of the biggest appeals of Zeta to me is that it shows how messy the aftermath of war can be. Without spoiling 0079 too much, it basically develops the Federation more after the war with Zeon in a way that I think is really interesting.

Kamille is also one of my favorite protagonists in Gundam. Unlike Amuro, Kamille starts out as an angry teen looking to hit back at the world and ends up really maturing over the course of the show. Where Amuro learns to bottle stuff and become the soldier the federation needs him to be, Kamille goes from a kid looking to pick fights into a very kind and thoughtful protagonist.

As for caveats, there's two big ones I want to share. One being that Zeta is basically the middle series in a trilogy and because of that the tone is a little more bleak because the story doesnt conclude the same way 0079 does. In fact, ZZ Gundam starts literally days after Zeta, to give you an idea of how things go.

The other caveat is that this era has a lot of uhhhhh dated views on gender and things to say about women sometimes. I think it's still a lot more progressive than people give it credit for and the female characters are all fantastic, barring, like, a couple- but be ready to roll your eyes every time someone starts talking about what a "Man's Job" is.

[iwtvdramacd18]

hi goat hi uhm some questions :D 4, 11, 15, 19, and/or 31? and of course, 40 :)

Hiiiii Dre <333

4. Say you’re recommending the show right now, how would you pitch it?

IWTV has quickly risen up to Utena levels for me where I'm so in love with it that I can't properly explain WHY it means to much to me and why I like it so much in like a proper way I'd just have to be like: listen. Trust me. Maybe show a clip....the one they used on Norton (dabble in fucker) was actually a really good example of like great Louis scene but also removed enough from any sort of spoiler context

11. Has your favorite episode remained the same since you first finished the season? 

It has not! Somewhere between my rewatches episode 6 has become my firm fav episode, I think before then it was the first ep.

15. What were your favorite costumes? 

Recently I've been thinking a lot about the Dubai matching funeral fits

19. What was your favorite dialogue of season one? 

Very predictable of me but "62 and a half kilograms" "...what?" Love how it tells us so much about Louis and Armand but like in this very veiled and constrained way

31. What’s your most anticipated season two storyline?

I want to know like. How Armand and Louis are still together/ if they did part and got back together later? There's literally so much stuff there like. Claudia constantly haunting the narrative with it too.

40. If you made any fanworks of your own, what are your personal favorites? Throw yourself some flowers! 

In terms of fics Prey Drive and Wolfkiller might be my favs right now kinda in terms of wow I really did that? I pulled that off? I was so scared especially for Wolfkiller that it would turn out bad but they didn't!

Fanart wise honestly idk I've drawn so much... I'm quite fond of this armand piece even tho its not like the actual version of it and its still not done haha

And then also the Louis outfit lineup too!

Aaaaand the snarling Lestat and Armand (and Louis) set

[sinkableruby]

owarimonogatari ge spoilers. rgu spoilers too i think

himemiya anthy and oshino ougi are both girls who exist for guys

and yeah i hear you thinking what, misogyny ?! toxic masculinity ?! thats not a big part of ougis arc and yeah it isnt and also other gender stuff BUT. the spirit is still there!! and i have to say it in that way first to do anthy's part justice

bc they Are both people who exist solely for others sake. their ability to define their own existences have been taken away from them. they have no agency! anthy obviously but also ougi has never had agency. ougi was created by araragi to do certain things he couldn't do himself, and this was literally the sole purpose of their existence. if ur in that situation what are you gonna do? not do it? and probably like, cease to exist bc the universe's internal coding is a total asshole? you don't have a choice, you just gotta accept the burden.

they're very silly and goofy and sinister and smiley about it of course but like. i'll say it now a lot of those smiles are not happy. i mean you look at the light novels oshino "ppl are so dumb i have to laugh at them but im crying when im laughing" ougi (edgelord ougi confirmed? LOL ok ok not really) oshino 'araragi theorizes her smile was poignant bc she knew how short her life would be' ougi like yeah ok. get a life, literally. lol (note this is also. for those who have read it. what ougi stay is about. and what my next big thing is going to be about. this is what the significance. anyway)

and anthy does the same thing! all this fucked up shit happens around her and To her and she just watches it all with the same smile like nothing's wrong. the parallels are insane you guys you cant make this shit up. anthy smiling like nothing is wrong during the duels before slowly realizing she doesn't want to be separated from utena is the same as ougi smiling while about to be erased forever even though she doesnt want to die. its parallels!!!!!! even where ougi's situation gets a little muddied with her being Literally araragi (even though she is still the part of him that he ejected and pushed all this work onto and still just exists for him at first so i wouldnt say this is a point against my analysis here), it still very much applies. and that part of 'being him' can loop back around and extend anthy if you want it to. she does whatever her fiancee wants her to, is molded to and reflects them. a reflection-- is that not, in a very big sense, what ougi is for araragi? you could even say that for anthy, the fiancee of the rose bride's attempted domination of her is a way to dominate the femininity within them, to quell and control it. (if this doesnt make sense my excuse is that i havent finished watching yet. but i think it does make sense, and a lot of it, actually)

theyve both got their Roles to play, and play them they do. anthy, the rose bride, and ougi, the culprit, the bad guy. i think about that 'bad guy' framing a lot too btw. when ougi is talking about her unfazed appearance when faced with Forever Death Via Black Hole, shes like 'don't you hate it when in mystery novels the bad guy is so calm in the face of their comeuppance? yeah that sucks so just letting you know im terrified 👍. gotta wonder what happens when your matter gets erased completely yk. like whats that gotta be like lol.' (not even exaggerating at all really) (also shes so funny she relates everything to mystery novels bc she loves them thats so sweet and real i love that :)) (and then she proceeded to say 'nah i think the culprit should kill themself instead' but i wont get into it)

theyve also both got those cute little interests come to think of it. anthy loves like animals and stuff and ougi loves their mysteries. are these two the Same Character (joking) (but really they should hang out)

theres a line in one of the short stories that summarizes it really well, describing ougi as 'a puppet who had come to life.' and yeah, basically. it's implied to be after the ougi dark resolution so there i have even more ✨textual evidence✨ but like fr. its an incredibly apt description for ougi. if yotsugi is a doll, then ougi is a puppet, who has gained agency (and thats the thing, rgu and monogatari are giving these agency-robbed characters agency, thats what ougi dark did, and im like p sure thats what rgu is going to do i havent finished it lol but i did get sorta spoiled on the ending so i think its gonna. in monogatari... its more rocky i feel. its not cut and dry, its not like whoops you have agency forever completely now. its like you Kinda have it. you Maybe Mostly have it. it's complicated i'm writing about it)... i wonder when yotsugi will get her agency, but part of me wonders if nisioisins plan is that she wont. because she's a doll, she's too stuck, she's fixed to what others need her for, she can't work by herself. she hasn't "come to life" yet like ougi has (being a corpse might do that to you)

anyway uhhhh i'm right good night

[cruelsister-moved2]

God your post about how people treat masculine women in media and irl hit the nail exactly on the head. I also keep seeing these people rejoice when a masc woman is forced to present femininely bc it's now "genderfluid rep" or whatever which makes me feel kinda sick ngl bc it's so clear that they think being a butch dyke is a shallow uncomplicated gender experience but being forced to be feminine is more moral/attractive/complex. Haruka Sailormoon is like one of my favorite fictional characters ever but the amount of tepidly queer sm fans who openly hate butches while championing heterosexuality and gender conformity under a thin veneer of progressive language make me want to lose my mind

YES to everything!!! the weird delight when a masc woman does something feminine is actually so uncomfortable and it's like... they've literally BEEN being gnc every day of their life but it's not enough for you until its watered down to just like a generic androgyny its so weird anddd i think combined with the belief that butch women are doing that as some kind of statement and denying them the understanding thats afforded to other women that like they sometimes just do the stuff they do because they enjoy it and it feels natural. thats actually my favourite thing about haruka (and i liked it about utena too which actually comes out n SAYS it when wakaba is like "but this IS what's normal for you", and that still went massively over ppls heads) like she is so casually masculine and like she's just like that. not only is butchdykery so much more complex than whatever tepid futch androgyny people would prefer, even if it wasn't its like literally just how people are helloooo like butch lesbians arent there to be controversial and make a statement ... you should not be responding to the denigration of the gendered boundaries someone has set for themselves like ever in any context anywayyy. but let alone in the group whose boundaries people are probably the most determined to deny (not that people don't do this with all gender nonconformity but theres nothing like the desperation with which people want an unapologetically masculine women to make just one concession to femininity). the whole 'compensating for short hair with big earrings and winged eyeliner' girlboss in menswear industrial complex is why butchness is uniquely predicated on not JUST the embrace of masculinity but also the exclusion of coercive femininity completely at the same time like it's really hand in hand and its to do with a wider social labyrinth of coercion that every woman navigates so you can't just brush it off with choice feminism type platitudes because ummm we live in a society

[lesbiandatekaname]

The Revolutionary Girl Utena show does a lot to deconstruct the narratives of saviors. Who wants to save who, why they think they want to do it, and why they actually want to do it. Princes and brides are the aesthetic coating, as well as being a very handy device to further delve into dynamics the series wants to explore (that being gender and its roles). A lot of people want to "save" Himemiya or their respective Rose Bride, but this is a destructive path for both parties.*

This can, at times, feel rather bleak. The benefits of some relationships can feel like subtext of the subtext, that these characters would be better off if they had never met each other. This is fine. RGU still offers a complete conclusion of its narrative thesis, and there is still value in analyzing that subtext.

The movie, however, shows that liberation is still not an individualistic feat in the world of Utena. Himemiya escapes Ohtori due to the assistance of Utena, but the difference is that she is the one driving (literally). She doesn't need to play into that strong independent trope, she can have others be there to help her and even be the vehicle of her escape, but she is fully in control.

*The "princes" in these relationships do indeed use their relationship with their bride to gain power, whether on purpose or inadvertently, so they still gain a positive the other may not but the rigid adherence to these narratives is still harmful to them to. The patriarchy hurts everyone involved, even those who gain from it.

[64space]

been having some thoughts about the execution of revolutionary girl utena compared to the execution of wonder egg priority. lining those two shows up together is like comparing apples and oranges but they do share some similarities, but what i’m going to be rambling about under the cut are the differences between them based in my personal preferences. to preface this, i think utena is, objectively, a good and well written piece of media. i can count the amount of scenes i actually enjoyed from it on one hand, however. and wonder egg was fumbled terribly, but its concepts had astounding potential if it just had more episodes to execute them and conclude them in a satisfactory way.

the reason why i procrastinated on watching utena for years wasn’t because of the list of trigger warnings (i have very specific triggers that, surprisingly, weren’t ticked off by any in the warnings), but rather because of the art style and aesthetic choices. for a ‘90s anime, it felt a lot more like ‘80s cartoons on my mom’s VHS, and that vibe alone was an equal blend of secondhand nostalgia and downright unsettling. but what bothered me more than the art style was the aesthetic choices right down to the school uniforms and the design of the school itself. to set the backdrop for the relationship between a girl prince and a witch, there are obviously some fantasy elements to the world, but i just... did not enjoy it. everyone meshes in with the world perfectly except for utena herself, who feels like a girl from the real world who was isekai’d into a fantasy world at a very young age and now has a maladaptive optimistic hero personality to cope with her trauma. the characters feel like characters more than people, and while their traumas are plausible and real, everything is portrayed so allegorically that it imbalances my attachment to them as people because their personalities are so exaggerated and fairytale-like. no one talks like that. no one acts like that. no one dresses like that. with all the development that went into the school as a metaphor for abusive systems in itself, and the fantasy-like atmosphere in a high school setting, it felt... empty, like a treasure box decorated with a clear and concise design that i can admire the artistic merits of, but the actual contents of the box are full of fake flowers being eaten by plastic worms. for me, representative/allegorical concepts are only digestible when they’re balanced with the characters’ peoplehood and development as people instead of solely as characters and narrative devices. revolutionary girl utena did not balance that.

one similarity between revolutionary girl utena and wonder egg priority is that both stories mainly follow a 14 year old girl who is socially ostracized because of one specific trait (utena herself being gender-nonconforming, and ai’s reason being said as her different colored eyes, but everyone who watched wonder egg priority knows that her relationship with koito was coded as a trial romance between two girls.) wonder egg showcases the characters as 14 perfectly, while, again, revolutionary girl utena barely does that. bring in the thermian argument here and say “well, fourteen year olds say pretentious stuff and believe it to be true,” and apply that to utena. but then look at the conversations in wonder egg priority. even with their downright absurd circumstances (particularly neiru and kotobuki’s), their pretentiousness has basis in reality, and is contextualized in explicit ostracism from that reality while still having the desire to partake in, or acknowledge and reject it.

wonder egg priority acknowledges 14 year old girls as teenagers, a developmental age between children and adults. the way this is expressed allegorically is through frill, who is LITERALLY the manifestation of what two adult men think a 14 year old girl should be, based on data and expectations. the four protagonists, however, deal with themselves how mentally ill 14 year old girls would do so, realistically to their circumstances. by helping others, it distracts them from their own problems or it leads them down the line of resolve. both shows acknowledge that in order for trauma to really get better, it’ll look a lot worse when the issues are actually confronted instead of repressed before it ever gets better. though, while trauma traps people in different ages than they really are, utena’s narrative doesn’t allow them to experience these traumas as 14 year olds outside of the context that their trauma is pedophilia and that they go to school. in terms of character development and execution, they are portrayed with similar degrees of agency as any adult fantasy character. this is where the allegorical execution loses its significance, while also being a genius narrative device. we are meant to see the characters as adults before it settles in with the uncomfortable realization that they are young teenagers. (still doesn’t help that the way characters are drawn in RGU doesn’t have them look their age, but oh well.) wonder egg delves into realistic traumas with exaggerated representations, which is more accurate to how a 14 year old girl would experience their own trauma and the trauma of those around them. the wonder egg girls put themselves through too many responsibilities for their age, and while they may see themselves as more capable than they are, the audience sees them as their messy selves, away from any polished, fairytale narrative until around the episode where ai confronts her parallel self. my main problem with that was the way the latter half of the show was rushed, so anything weird and unexplained and overly allegorical could be easily resolved with an extended run time of the show and a balance of character/world development and characters being people.

from a narrative perspective, revolutionary girl utena did what it intended to do. it was wrapped up perfectly for the kind of story it followed, and the pacing was long enough to cover what was important in all subplots while also miserably dragging on to the point where that drag was immersive to the misery of the characters it followed. wonder egg priority was rushed, fumbled, and a season longer than 12 episodes was unsupported by the budget. my opinion on these two shows mostly boils down to personal preference. while i did enjoy wonder egg priority far more than i enjoyed revolutionary girl utena, the latter had far more time and thought put into its execution that its artistic merit cannot be ignored, and i acknowledge it as one of the best written stories i’ve ever seen. the development of characters as people felt really lacking, though.