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More ppt2 art

And then the horribly cropped reference photo below

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Hey there

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keep the banana cool and fresh!

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Revolutionary Girl Utena - Name Games (pt.1/?)

I’ve gone on about a bunch of Bleach characters and how Kubo Tite is a big wordplay nerd who likes to find names that really suit his characters.  It’s fun because his word choices are a little more obtuse or carry certain double meanings than most of his contemporaries working in shounen manga.  But if there’s anyone who’s done a similarly great job with really loading up their character names with implicit, character defining imagery, it’s Kunihiko Ikuhara, creator of Sarazanmai, Yurikuma Arashi, Mawaru Penguindrum, and of course Revolutionary Girl Utena.

So, starting at the top…

[天上]Tenjou [ウテナ]Utena 

 …is our main character.  Her surname, [天上]Tenjou is written with the kanji for [天]“Sky”/“Heaven” and [上]“Up,” which together just kind of reiterate the point in order to mean [天上] “The Heavens” or to be super literal “Heaven Above.”

The name [ウテナ] Utena is written in Katakana* but is clearly meant to evoke the word [台]Utena, meaning either “Tower,” “Stand”/“Pedestal,” or “Calyx.”  This is important because these all describe a core idea but under different contexts.  A tower and a pedestal both serve the same purpose, to allow a thing to be elevated upward, but on different scales: one elevating a whole person upward above other people or buildings, and the other elevating an object upward to a person’s reach from the floor.  A Calyx is the part of a flower where the stem ends and a flower bud begins, it is again a structure the elevates an object upwards, and like a pedestal does so presentationally.  So, Tenjou Utena’s name means very literally…

“Tower to Heaven”/“That Which Elevates Up to Heaven.” 

*if you’re not familiar, Japanese is one unified spoken language, but it has different written forms.  Kanji are the ideographic characters borrowed from Chinese, and each conveys in and of itself meaning as a word, and often more than one meaning and with distinct pronunciations for each.  But Katakana and Hiragana(collectively just called Kana) are syllabic and phonetic, meaning each character only denotes sound, but not meaning.

I guess I should point out that I’m not going to let this slip into being a full blown Utena series analysis because that’s more than I’m ready to buckle in for right now, and I’m sure you all don’t want to sit down to a whole dissertation.  But I’ll try to cover some of the specific meaning besides literal translations as well…

In this case meaning that Utena’s name referencing a flower calyx is of course a direct play into the whole show’s giant overarching use of the rose as a symbol.  as The Calyx, she is what uplifts and presents The Rose(Bride). 

The reference to “The Heavens” is also closely interrelated to the later story character Akio and a series of interrelated Judeo-Christian themes surrounding him.  There is also the more overt fact that he, being the final boss, resides at the top of the observatory tower; a place he explicitly mentions is the highest place on the school campus.  “The Heavens” as a theme are also represented in the reverse fairytale castle, which is a visual representation of the abstract goal for the duelists.

Also the over all reading of her name as “Tower to Heaven” may also be a direct reference to the Tower of Babel and the moral of that myth; that attempts to reach heaven, and to defy god, are to be met with wrathful punishment in the form of being unable to comprehend other people.  Comprehension in the context of Utena being a matter of interpersonal relationships, rather than language.

[姫宮]Himemiya [アンシー]Anthy

[姫宮] Himemiya does just literally read as “Princess” and moreover the indiviudal kanji are actually just two different words also each meaning “Princess.”  This kind of construction is actually pretty common in Japanese compound words; I think it’s a hold over from adapting the written language from Chinese.  Her name wouldn’t read “Princess Princess” just as “Princess” but with emphasis.

And supposedly the name [アンシー]Anthy is actually derived from the term Anthesis, derived from the Greek [ἄνθος] meaning “Flower,” and the suffix [ησις] indicating an event.  In botany an Anthesis is the period of time when a flower is in bloom; not the season for the flower as a species, but the day-to-day time at which an individual flower is actively open.  So, her name isn’t actually one that would have understood meaning even in Japanese beyond just the “Princess” part, but for what it’s worth her name does basically mean,

“Princess in Bloom“/“In Bloom Princess”

or 

“Princess of the Blossom time”

Ikuhara’s absolute peak sensibilities as far as building a nuanced language of interrelated symbols and icons are unmatched.  He’s a master of revisiting established themes from new angles, giving them genuine depth and complexity, and a master of pacing that actually builds an appropriate learning curve.  Some of his more recent series are a bit too short to really do his style justice, but Utena is a wonderful gradual escalation from a truly unassuming first story arc into a finale that operates almost entirely on the level of metaphor and nearly totally abandons the literal.

next post…

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Its from that meme

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Love her

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"Chainsaw and Knife would be friends" okay sure I agree on S1 Knife and Chainsaw being friends however consider: they hate eachother and used to street fight against the other (when teenagers)

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2007

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no way he got the four plush

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my fave ship dynamic is when I see a pairing and go "wow what a car crash!" *grabs popcorn*

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Ami & Yumi expressing their friendship 20/50

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ive been studying for tests recently, which left me not able to doodle as much sadly 😔

ive watched perfect blue recently and i decided to combine it with my current hyper fixation of white lily cookie. i thought about doing pv, but i draw him enough already. i was going to actually color this, but i got lazy and left it as a doodle.

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HAPPY DESSERT PARADISE UPDATE NIGHT RAAAAAHHHHH