The story is a condensed version of the animated series\manga, where this new student named Utena Tenjou enters in the exclusive Otori school passing by a boy but after meeting her old love interest that after donating her a rose and a ring, from this point she's been involved into a dueling wars against the other students for conquering the "rose bride"; a mysterious fascinating girl sister of the school principal.
The story is well realized with a heavily influenced plot by Gnosticism, Shintoism, Kaballah and other religious\mysticism points presented in the story, like Rose symbolism, numerology and other things; it's pretty addicting to follow despite the short pace. Some parts of the story aren't that well explained here, like how Anthy Himemiya (the rose bride) is tied physically and spiritually with Dios or what in reality Dios is, or if the characters are, without a better term of comparison, "alive" or "dead" entrapped in this place (or better say, non-place), but everything will come to a sort of realization when the story ends.
The characters are all well realized, especially the main couple and Toga, with a modification in the relationship between Utena and Anthy from being simple friends to a real couple, but the other characters in the story are briefly presented or just marginalized as extras between the duels.
Another changes are some minor things and a new end from the movie that i will not going to told here, but if you know that scene you know.
The art direction by Chiho Saito it's really beautiful, with a great emphasis on human characters making them extremely charming and the environmental design is left in a abstract place expect for the key-plot areas of the school (the principal tower, the rose garden, the duel arena in the sky) giving to all a dreamy, liminal like world where the Utena stories happens.
Overall, a pretty good manga that i recommend warmly!
