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Spoiler Warnings: including the end to the series

Alright, let’s just start from the beginning. Kunihiko Ikuhara took over as series director for Seasons 2, 3, and 4 of the 90s Sailor Moon anime. Ikuhara eventually left after Season 4 after feeling displeased over the lack of creative control.

Rumour has it, he originally wanted to do an avaunt-garde Uranus and Neptune movie, where Tuxedo Mask gets killed off and they both ride off on flying horses into the castle in the sky. I can’t say whether that’s true or not, but it stands to believe that his dislike of Tuxedo Mask was true.

Regardless, he left to form his own creative group to produce the series Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Hey, have you ever experienced something only for it to become permanently tattooed into your brain? Utena was one of those series for me, and has remained one of my favourite anime ever since.

Let’s just get this out of the way, you guys are fucking liars. Fans of the series will often pitch the show to others based on how immensely queer it is, but... it was made in the 90s, so no it isn’t, not unless you count the two lesbians in the show, none of which are the main characters.

Part 1: Utena

Out of the whole cast, Utena is the easiest character to talk about and understand her motivations because... well, she’s stupid, she’s a simpleton. This is a character who is perfectly comfortable identifying as a girl, while insisting on wearing a boys uniform and referring to herself as a prince.

This is where I might lose some people because I never interpreted Utena as a lesbian, I always thought of her as asexual or demisexual. Regardless, she defies gender norms without identifying or conforming to any specific labels and it's supposed to be that way, Utena is just Utena.

Utena was orphaned as a young child and couldn’t find the will to live until a prince came to save her, and wanting to emulate him became her reason for living. When you really think about it, she doesn’t have any sort of support systems or a real reference for familial love and being a part of a family unit.

The end result is that Utena is very passionate and determined with strong beliefs in chivalry... but she’s also naive and inexperienced and very easy to manipulate... look, okay, she gets raped. An adult man fucking rapes her, okay? There’s an episode where it’s just one long build-up until she gets raped.

Part 2: Becoming a Prince

The thing about Utena’s attempts to become a prince is that it’s a role that she is acting in to fulfill a narrative about her life. She wants to be brave, selfless, chivalrous, and to save people because to her, that’s what a prince is. But deep down... she wants to be praised and admired for those actions...

See, with the loss of her parents, it stands to reason that she is seeking validation and approval to the closest thing that she has to it, the prince whom she admires and emulates, and that is why she’s so desperate to meet him again. Fatherless behaviour, as they say.

A thing to understand is that a world built on ridged hetero-normative ideals where all girls are princesses and all boys are princes, if you defy your role, there is going to be consequences.

Part 3: Being a Princess

Okay, so, long story short, after meeting some unknown criteria, only by possessing the rose bride will one of the characters be able to obtain the power to revolutionize the world, whatever that means.

Now, Utena is understandably upset by this at first because she finds it distasteful for one person to posses ownership of another person. People are competing for ownership of another human being...

So, umm, yeah, Anthy is a slave. She’s a slave, you guys. Do you see where this is going? No? Anyways...

Utena is stuck being engaged to Anthy because if she doesn’t participate in the duels, one of these other individuals, who think of Anthy as a prize to be won, will literally own her and absolutely mistreat her. That means she can’t back out, even if she isn’t pleased with the situation.

Flash forward a bit and... Utena loses, and it’s been revealed that the friendship she formed with Anthy to have been all been an act. As she had been with all the other duellists, was performing to Utena’s expectations of her. If Utena wanted to play the prince, well, she played the helpless princess.

That means we don’t know fucking anything about Anthy at all by this point! Utena was just projecting her desires onto her.

Part 4: Uh oh!

Okay, the first arc plays out in a very standard cookie cutter fashion, with Utena fighting the rest of the student counsel and this is intentional. It’s to prime the audience and set their expectations, that Utena is going to win the tournament, become a prince, and free Anthy, riding off together into the castle on a flying horse!

Hey, look, girls can become princes too! Girl boss! Empowering! ...Right?

This is where we can talk about the Manga. The Manga, TV series, and Movie are all completely different. In the Manga, this exactly happens, with Utena achieving her goal, inheriting the power of Dios and becoming a true prince.

The Manga plays it’s themes completely straight without expecting more from the audience. This makes the Manga useful in understanding the show, but it’s also not as interesting and way less talked about.

Unfortunately, I think this breaks some people’s brains a bit. See, the audience, understandably, wants Utena to become a prince. After all, why shouldn’t she if she wants to? That is, until you start thinking, what is a prince? Why is it more valuable than being a princess? Why is this system built to take advantage of some and grant entitlements to others?

Part 5: Yikes!!!

The second arc introduces Akio and is for all intensive purposes where the real show begins.

Umm... let’s just lay it all out. Akio is an adult man who eventually invites a 14 year old girl with no parents or living relatives, to live in his home under the pretext of it being for Anthy’s sake, and starts to... groom Utena... into being his child bride...

Actually, let’s take a step back for a bit. What happened? How did we get here? Why were Utena and Anthy mad at each other instead of Akio? Why was Utena’s final words apologizing for pretending to be a prince as everything crumbles down around her?

Right, okay, remember what I said earlier about Ikuhara and his alleged dislike of Tuxedo Mask? Turns out the whole point of this show was to make a point about how being a prince is a bad thing. Oops! Sorry!

Part 6: All Princes are Bastards

"...why?"

Ultimately, Utena fails once again and Anthy has to be the one to free herself by wanting to believe that things could be better. When Utena professes that she is going to win Anthy so nobody could hurt her, that is a problem. This is someone still trying to control you, no matter how well-meaning they may be, and is likely just setting yourself up for more abuse. That is what ultimately got Utena killed because it eroded the trust Anthy had in her.

The thing is, this is not a system designed for benevolence, it’s designed for power, and the victims of that system will not believe you if you say you will be benevolent with it. It’s only when Utena finally approaches Anthy as an equal that Anthy’s hope for something better returns to her.

It’s easy to understand why this went over a lot of our heads when we were younger because let’s be honest, it’s privilege. It’s not a whole lot different than "All Cops are Bastards", trying to reform them is like trying to repurpose a gun into a bandage. Or a sword, in this case.

Part 7: Ya'll didn't get it

"Whoopsie Daisy!"

Now, why am I writing all of this? Because you keep fucking it up, that’s why.

See, that is an outstanding foundation to inspire a story, and it can inspire any story you could possibly imagine. The problem? Well, you guys just keep fucking it up. A lot of people don’t come to that conclusion, they just think becoming a prince is cool, and their mind fizzles out after the first arc, to where all that's left is just a basketball playing sword lesbian.

They saw a slave and someone who essentially just wants to be a cop, and thought that it was oh-so-romantic. I guess that ending means nothing, then?

And yes, you get what you want in the movie though, it's cool.

But wanting to "revolutionize" the world isn’t a good thing. It’s a carousel, it’s an eternal state of arrested development. This is a series that talks about the use of systems created for power and domination being inherently harmful, it's bad, and unless you can understand that, you’ll keep fucking it up.

You have to be the type of person who hates Tuxedo Mask.