As much as I love the TV series, I could never get into the manga. Is it worth revisiting?

Lady Chani wrote:

The white Animerica edition is flipped. The blue edition is unflipped.

Good to know, thanks Chani!  What I have are the first three volumes of the Animerica edition.  It's easy to tell part from the regular Viz second edition since those are smaller.   One of these days I'll get all five volumes.  I should track them down before they're all out of print.

I'm a big fan of the manga. (+ the movie manga) Why?

The art is gorgeous. The different take/explanation on Akio/Dios is very intriguing.
The ending is mucho beautiful.
The Touga/Juri is funny. Touga=pretty pretty.
Miki...aw...more adorable than ever.
Akio with dark hair. So flippin' hot.
Anthy so mysterious, so passive aggressive. *glomps*
ChuChu, much bigger. And rounder. Looks like a dif creature. Also has a more developed personality. One that hates Saionji even more!
Utena (er orange hair?!) but apart from that...so damn princely.
Characters that don't appear in the anime/movie!
Weird licking of the cheeks!!
Even more drowning!!!

Yeah I love the anime the most, but the manga is awesome. And didn't it come first? So it's like the original incarnation/imagination of the characters and plot? And outfits. Er...is that correct?

sharnii wrote:

And didn't it come first? So it's like the original incarnation/imagination of the characters and plot? And outfits. Er...is that correct?

Neither the anime nor manga were the "original" in Utena, whether you're talking about the series or the movie. Be-papas laid the foundational framework of the story and characters as a team, and then Ikuhara did (mostly) what he wanted with the anime, and Saito did what she wanted with the manga.

Ikuhara wanted to make Utena/Anthy even more blatant in the TV series, but he was trying to keep Saito - who objected to the idea of their romance - from noticing that he was doing it anyway.

Note, I don't think Saito is a homophobe. Her commentary suggests she was mainly worried about the profitability of a girl/girl romance in a shoujo project. I guess she relented after the TV series was such a blazing success, because Ikuhara got to do exactly what he wanted with the movie.

With all that said however, it's important to note that Saito Chiho was the last person to be recruited to the Be-papas, and I think it can safely be said that most of Utena's concept and themes originated in Ikuhara's mind.

Anyway, the result is as you see. Very, very different versions.

Last edited by Aelanie (03-08-2009 08:03:16 PM)

RadicalSam wrote:

... there were so many differences to the tv series at the time. and juri in love with touga XD didn't notice that either

There were a lot of differences. That one detail where "Juri was in love with Touga" isn't exactly what it seems. From Volume 5, Bonus Chapter 1 (Fukaki Ruri Iro no Kage / Deep Azure Shadows), Touga surmises (in his conversation with Ruka after the sparring session with Juri) that Juri didn't really love him; instead Juri saw Touga as a replacement for Ruka's loss when he stopped going to school.

sharnii wrote:

... Utena (er orange hair?!)...

Blonde (or orange if you like) hair on Utena would explain the "pink hair" seen more often in Saitou's other illustrations of her. Pink would be equivalent to blonde hair (like Naoko Takeuchi's coloring of Chibiusa's hair). ^^ A similar rendition showed her with yellow hair instead.

sharnii wrote:

(er closing posing in the elevator doesn't count )

Does too!

I read the manga before seeing the series and even just from that I got strong hints of an attraction between Utena and Anthy and I also surmised that the relationship between Akio and Anthy was incestuous. Since I don't think I am particularly tuned in to that sort of stuff I am genuinely surprised that no one else picks that up from the manga. I was not at all surprised when I later saw the series depicting both of those things.

Juri on the other hand....