#shoujo kakumei suletta

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Propaganda:

Utena: Iconic sword lesbian magical girl who has inspired countless over the years. She took on misogyny, gender stereotypes, elitism, abusive power structures, patriarchy- and she won!

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A key difference between Utena and G-Witch is the sheer omnipresence of parents in the latter show.

Not that they’re completely absent from Utena, they haunt the show, but for the most part, they’re never fully there, never quite embodied. They keep in the background, they’re faceless memories, photographs, voices you hear over the phone, corpses in coffins. It’s all very deliberate in terms of framing. Although the questions of maturity, growth and adulthood are central to Utena, adults in Ohtori can be counted on one hand, parents are out of sight, it is a boarding school after all.

G-Witch is very clearly a story in which family relationships are a huge deal, in which the adult world is a big deal, and though some parents may be dead, some of them are very much living and talking, fully in frame, taking quite a lot of screen time, too. Their presence is a lot more concrete, family names are also company names (sure the Kiryuus are rich but I couldn’t tell you much about them except what they’ve done to their children). I find that the parents tend to steal the show in every scene they’re in, especially Elnora/Prospera. Kids are pawns for them to use, or at least it’s the way things have been going so far, though cracks are starting to show.

Though Utena is definitely a source G-Witch draws upon, this is a game changer. Suletta is Utena-adjacent in many ways (including how oblivious and willingly unaware she is at times, a fact that is too seldom discussed), she has a mother with whom she has a relationship that gives off pretty bad vibes. Miorine only shares surface similarities with Anthy, and the fact that she has a dad instead of an older brother plays a major role in this.

From its inception, Gundam has always been interested in the relationships between parents and their children (except when the kids are orphans and even then…). I’m happy to see that G-Witch is doing interesting things with that theme too.

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