A friend of mine showed me the opening and ending, and tried to explain the ending to me saying that He (Dios) was trying to play two girls at once (Utena and Anthy) and i thought to myself..." Uh...ok??" so i found the movie and was like.... "what??" and then i found Ohtori.nu.. and i was saved, then got the series and finnally was enlightned!

I never trusted her to tell me about any anime ever again....

I was in my favorite Japanese pop culture-junk store one day browsing the DVDs and came across a box with a pink-haired girl holding a sword on it.  "'Revolutionary,' eh?" I thought to myself.  "Revolutionary how?  French?  Russian?  Anyway, looks like shoujo, which means I have to give it a shot."  I'm sure I did more research and such, but that's what sticks out in my mind when I think of how I first got interested in the series.

Wow, I feel like a real Revolutionary Girl baby!
I just finished watching all of it and the movie yesterday, and absolutely fell in love.  I related on so many levels I thought I was going to explode.
I was introduced to anime when I was 14 by a girl that wanted to be a prince.  In so many ways she was like Utena, going as far as when she was little, she decided that she wanted to be able to save a princess!  We dated for a while, and I found myself becoming doll-like, personality-less, without color.
Eventually we both found the Akio to change us, except for she turned into a Princess, like he wanted.  I still manged to excape from my coffin, but she wasn't.  I suppose she's happier that way, but she'll always be my prince in my memmories.
I don't think an anime could exsist that's as similar to me as this one.
I even found out my dad isn't my father the same way that Namine thinks Touga isn't her brother!

I guess I should chime in...

I actually saw SKU and thought it looked absolutely ridiculous when I was in the video store here, and the whole Sailor Moon connection didn't do anything to endear it to me. With a roll of the eyes, I completely dismissed it.

Then my brother (who is the closest thing to a real prince I've ever seen) told me he had this movie for me to watch one day. I dragged my feet over it once I found out that it was SKU, but I took the time to ask around about the movie. Anyone who'd seen it warned me off, comparing it to the end of Eva (show and movie), and saying that my head would explode and that I shouldn't watch it because I would die in horrible agonies of confusion. Now, for those of you familiar with Cats, the musical, this is my soul mate. *grins*

When you let me in, then I want to go out
I'm always on the wrong side of every door
And as soon as I'm at home, then I'd like to get about
I like to lie in the bureau drawer
But I make such a fuss if I can't get out

So naturally, I really wanted to see the movie then. I had to prove that I was macho. There was no way a movie was going to confuse me to the point where I couldn't pull an interpretation out of it! (To my credit, at the time I hated all of Eva except for the end and the movies, because I couldn't remember the characters at all but I could understand the themes and emotions touched on in the ending. Also, serial experiments lain was my favorite anime.) So I did the unthinkable and approached my brother, telling him I wanted to see the movie.

Well.

That was an eye-opener. I watched it, and then I watched it again right after it had finished playing. I've only ever done that with three movies-- Adolescence Apocalypse, The Last Unicorn, and Blood: The Last Vampire. I was hooked. The rest, I guess, is history-- watched the series, decided I liked it more, held myself back from devouring all the analysis on EM, finished the series, finished the analysis on EM, met Gio, came on board when she retook the site (her friend would have let it die anyway, I don't feel guilty about taking it back), and well here we are with this nifty forum.

Neat, huh?

Thank you, dear. You're a sweetheart.

The last post to this thread was 2006...it's not 2011 and I'm pretty sure I'm at least fashionably late but...

I got into Utena recently (like 5 months ago, less, even) after seeing an AMV on youtube, it was for the movie, actually. But I thought I'd watch the series first. And poof! Yeah....

I came for the femslash. I stayed for the crazy symbolism, the intriguing characters, and the kick-ass online community.

I've been a devout Princess Tutu fan for a few years, and back in May 2007 discovered TV Tropes and promptly spent like a week doing nothing but clicking and clicking and clicking.

Time passed.  I went through phases of forgetting TV Tropes existed and bludgeoning my brain with it.  I just kept hearing how similar the two series were, in fan communities and on forum threads.  So, in December 2008 I sat down with my 11-year-old little brother to watch.

I thought it was the weirdest, most proudly out-there thing I'd ever seen.  By the time Miki came into the room to see Touga with his shirt half-open I was rolling on the floor and declaring I LOVED THIS SHOW HOW FREAKING CRAZY CAN IT GET!

Then I went ahead and watched the last two episodes of season 1 without my brother, so he stopped just in time for it to get really dark and sexual.  I still won't let him watch it until he's at least 14.

I became entranced, and had to pick my jaw up off the floor again and again.  I remember in January, watching the last episode at 6:00 in the morning before I had to leave for school, crying.  For reference: I've never cried at any other anime or movie, music, book, you name it.  The only non-real-life thing that had made me cry before was live theater.

So I sort of went from thinking everyone involved was on LSD to sobbing, and it bamboozled even me how something could make me feel that much.

In 2005, when I was a sophomore in college, a good friend decided to hold weekly screenings of Utena for people who hadn't seen it yet (read: most of us).  I attended whenever schoolwork would let me, and although I liked what I saw, I ended up missing a lot, and was also distracted by other fannish obsessions at the time.

Two years later, she and her then-girlfriend got me involved in an Utena fan-LARP, which prompted me to re-watch. Then I started writing fanfic (among other things, that LARP was the main reason why I'm so obsessed with Ruka; his player was that epic), discovered Empty Movement and the forums, and the rest is history.  I'm currently taking my housemate through the series for the first time, and have introduced it to several other friends as well.

Utena was the first anime that I ever watched from beginning to end, and although I haven't seen many others, it is still my favorite.

I started watching Utena when I was 20. Interesting enough I was looking for a yuri anime series. I asked around if Utena was good or was it yuri and people just couldn't agree; some said that it was an awful series, other told me it was a classic, some said it had yuri and some said it didn't. I remember thinking "either it has yuri or it doesn't, what's the confusion". I only understood the confusion after I saw it, Utena practically leaves everything to interpretation.

Anyhow, I read the manga and then saw the anime... and understood about 20% of the whole anime. I think I understood so little of the series because I was so enthralled with Tenjou Utena that I didn't see any other character; so focus was I on Utena that I thought Anthy was an angel of light all the way until the second time I saw the series. Anyways. I found this site read your thoughts saw the series again and understood it better, by that time I was officially hooked.

Huh, I must have missed this thread first time around.

I saw the Utena VHS at the local comic book shop back in--I think it was 1999. I was 11. This was back when CPM had only released the first thirteen episodes. This particular shop was the only place in Amarillo you could rent anime at the time, and they rented a ridiculous amount of fansubs (illegal, I know, but this was before high speed internet and widespread access to this stuff; this was a godsend to me). I was plowing through Fushigi Yuugi and MKR at the time. Utena looked interesting, and, since "from the creator of Sailor Moon" was splashed across the front, I was even more intrigued.

So I developed my wild, crazy obsession with Utena at that age.

I was always a deeply cerebral kid, already struggling with gender roles and the nature of 'reality'. I devoured fansites, and ended up being introduced to my favorite author--Hermann Hesse. I read Demian sometime in junior high school, and loved it. I finally found a website that would send me the fansubs for the rest of the series on VHS--I still have them.

I was Utena for Halloween that year. I had a crappy costume thrown together from an altered collared shirt, some red trim, etc, and a ratty wig from the costume shop. I wish I could find some pictures. Of course, NOBODY knew who I was, and that disappointed me. When I tried to explain what I was "noble woman prince", I was thinking in metaphorical terms, but the people who asked me... were not. And this is an incredibly conservative part of the country I was living in.

Last edited by Trench Kamen (01-23-2011 01:58:32 PM)

I got into the show relatively recently as well - early 2009 - when I was a high school senior. I've wanted to watch the series for AGES before that, but never got the chance to sit down and finish it I saw the description for Utena and was really attracted to it because I like to examine portrayals of gender roles, and I thought it was a very interesting way to highlight those issues. I'm so glad I checked this masterpiece out, and has been trying to convert others to watch it ever since. (Alas, my plan of getting my mother - a gender studies professor - to watch it with me was met with lukewarm success. She thinks it's boring - we're into half of the Black Rose Arc already! )