With so much to love, where to begin?
The shadow play girls, A-ko and B-ko, lend a child’s simplicity to every episode, strangely deepening it as only children can; or maybe they really are aliens? Nanami with her cowbell, Nanami with her egg, Nanami crushed repeatedly by elephants: she’s a foil, rich with absurdity. Wakaba and Utena are true friends, and the student council members actually develop into individuals rather than remain as personality quirks; as individuals, they share in moments of intimacy with Utena that are natural and unforced: whether it’s Juri offering Utena a sword, Utena grieving over Wakaba, Utena with Touga the night before their final duel, or Juri and Miki playing badminton to clear Utena’s head before her last duel. Then there is Utena with Anthy. There is the greeting each night before sleep, and Utena’s faithful offer of friendship; the strange scene when they drink tea and eat cookies, promising to do so in ten years; and every single time Utena bows as a prince over Anthy’s body to withdraw her heart-sword. There is also the closing sequence for the final episodes.
There’s a plot, too, developed in four movements, with exposition, development, recapitulation, and revolution; it’s a delightful symphony.
The Student Council Saga revolves around the exceptional people of Ohtori Academy. This is the original heroic history, focusing on the duels of the men and women who make things happen. But exceptional people exact a cost from the world around them: the “ghosts” of the Black Rose Saga seem to feed on the resentment, frustrations and pain of the “lesser” folk left littering the landscape in their wake. Such a history is necessarily revisionist, but not automatically revolutionary. This is left to the Akio Ohtori and End of World Sagas. Here we see the origin of Utena’s decision to become a prince, and it’s Anthy. Suffering Anthy with the eyes that are both contradicting and beseeching, flat and deprecating and clinging – frankly, such a collection of opposites as to inspire delicious rage, as seen in everyone around her, and especially in Saionji and Akio. But never in Utena. In Utena, Anthy inspires pathos, the kind that spurs her on to be a prince. Now let it be said once: I am allowing myself a bit of poetic license; Anthy’s eyes are the usual anime eyes, and if there is depth in them, it may be imagination and nothing more. So be it. Imagination paired with love has fed the fire of revolution since the origin of the species.
Why does Dios show Anthy’s suffering to Utena? Maybe he intended that it merely move her; but young Utena, confronted with Anthy’s torment and Dios’ helplessness, finds the stirrings of the heroic within her. Ah, now that repeated narration makes sense: The travelling prince enjoins the princess never to lose her strength or nobility, even when she grows up…. “This was all well and good, but so impressed was she by him that the princess vowed to become a prince herself one day. But was that really such a good idea?” Dios, the prince, gives Utena the rose signet ring that allows her to participate in the duels. Then true to the fatalist he is, he adds, “And yet I’m sure you will forget all about what you have seen tonight. And even if you do remember this, you’re a girl. Eventually you will become a woman.”
I love most that these are the words that spark the revolution. Utena very nearly does forget. She is a girl becoming a woman, and there are magnificent men all around her who want to be her prince. Touga uses romance to confuse Utena: is she in love with the prince who came to her in her childhood? Is his love her object? Akio uses sex and the power of Utena’s orgasm against her, which prove much more potent. Even Anthy can’t believe that Utena will remember after that, and says so, as she runs her through with a sword. “You remind me so much of Dios when I loved him. But you can never be my prince, because you are a girl.” Which brings us to the revolution.
Human beings build prisons as “necessary evils.” For reasons that are well-detailed in the plot, Anthy and Akio build their prison together; if there is any doubt that Akio is a prisoner, too, the movie dispels it. Ohtori Academy is a habitable prison, but habitability does not obviate suffering. Anthy suffers. She loved a prince once; but when eternal torment came, she became someone who lives, but no longer loves and lives for her prince. Having lost the object of his love, Dios changed too, and became Akio.
How does one escape from a prison where one is pierced by a million swords of hatred? Suicide comes to mind; but when Anthy does attempt it, in that pivotal episode, it is Utena who catches her, closing off that route. The only way out is through revolution; it requires remembering the past in order to change the present. Utena remembers what she had almost forgotten: she decided to become a prince when she was confronted with Anthy’s suffering, and she is resolved to be Anthy’s prince in the present. Playing off Dios’ words, Utena is a woman, so she will NOT forget. The ironic truth is that Anthy’s prince had to be a woman. Which is not to say that Anthy’s prince had to be a lesbian: Juri hates the very sight of Anthy. Anthy’s prince had to be a woman who remembers to love longest, even after the best men forget, with Akio as the proof.
Anne Elliot expressed it best: “I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe [men to be] capable of everything great and good…so long as you have an object. I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone." Utena is Anthy’s prince, even when existence and hope are gone; that’s why she accepts back the letter from End of World which she had torn up and which Anthy patched. For Anthy, there is no other prince in whom she can believe, except the one who does not forget to love beyond hope and even existence. No one is more surprised than Anthy, when Utena breaks the seal of the Rose Gate and pries open the coffin with her bloodied hands, reaching out to her with unhesitating and heroic devotion. Utena falls, convinced of her failure, but Anthy is set free from her prison.
Is Utena still alive? Logic says no, for who could survive the piercing of a million swords of hatred? But Anthy says yes, and goes out (with Chu-Chu) to look for her prince – “Someday, we will shine together.” The revolution is complete.
After 1000 words, there are no obligatory remarks.
Grade: A+
