Holy this Tumblr poster knows her stuff!

Revolutionary Girl Utena is a franchise where Westerners often assume the two main characters Utena Tenjou and Anthy Himemiya are lesbians when the truth of the matter is that they are engaging in a doesiai relationship, particularly within the manga and TV series. In Adolescence of Utena their relationship is hard to argue as not being sexual – but again the film is a fannish re-imaging of the TV series.

Word the whole thing.

Thanks for sharing, whyknot!

Last edited by gorgeousshutin (09-05-2013 10:15:09 AM)

Ah, coming up against people who've gotten degrees in things you've only briefly studied...

I've always wanted to see someone go super in-depth into the culture and history that influenced Utena and that was an absolutely fantastic interpretation/explanation. She obviously knows her shit.

gorgeousshutin wrote:

Holy this Tumblr poster knows her stuff!

Revolutionary Girl Utena is a franchise where Westerners often assume the two main characters Utena Tenjou and Anthy Himemiya are lesbians when the truth of the matter is that they are engaging in a doesiai relationship, particularly within the manga and TV series. In Adolescence of Utena their relationship is hard to argue as not being sexual – but again the film is a fannish re-imaging of the TV series.

Word the whole thing.

Thanks for sharing, whyknot!

Except that Ikuhara has referred to their relationship as lesbian in interviews and has stated for the record that the movie is what their relationship always should've been in the TV series. Keep up with that heteronormative wishful thinking, though!

Yuri are titles that capitalize on overly fantasied and intentionally unrealistic depictions of (usually) sexual female relationships primarily marketed for male consumption. That is not to say gay men or lesbians cannot enjoy yaoi or yuri, or vice versa and any and everything in between - but they are in no way seen as genuine depictions of homosexuality in Japan by the Japanese public and as such should not be seen as insights or stories “about homosexuality” anywhere else.

This is also completely untrue. The primary demographic for yuri is female. Yuri Hime, the flagship yuri manga periodical, is and has always been marketed toward females, and many yuri artists are both a) women, and b) lesbians or bisexuals themselves. There are many true-to-life stories of female/female romance within the genre that definitely provide "insight" into the lives of lesbians in Japan.

To clinch the matter, the lesbian magazine Anise, which the article describes as "the most popular lesbian magazine in Japan"...ran from 1996-2003. This article and its opinions about yuri are thoroughly outdated, as further proven by the incorrect and now-obsolete Western notion that yuri was "usually sexual" in nature. That is not and has never been its connotation in Japan.

...and so it is that, even fourteen years later, the same struggle against endlessly recycled misinformation and the baseless, self-satisfying attempts to twist and whitewash Utena and Anthy's romance into something else must still continue. Will it ever end, I wonder?

Last edited by Aelanie (09-07-2013 10:06:17 AM)

Atropos wrote:

Aelanie wrote:

Except that Ikuhara has referred to their relationship as lesbian in interviews and has stated for the record that the movie is what their relationship always should've been in the TV series. Keep up with that heteronormative wishful thinking, though!

Because Ikuhara is totally trustworthy, 100% of the time, and was the only creative force behind SKU.

That's your rebuttal, really? Calling the project leader untrustworthy enough that you can safely ignore his repeatedly stated position, and implying I said things I never did about the creative staff? How do know he isn't giving voice to the concensus opinion? You don't. This is just more of the same old self-justifications. You want to believe what you want to believe, so you'll bend facts as far as you can and simply ignore the ones you can't.

Last edited by Aelanie (09-07-2013 09:03:34 AM)

What - other than "I want to dismiss it, but don't have a good reason to on hand" - does "the film is a fannish re-imaging of the TV series" mean in context?

There's some interesting material compiled there (and the asides are entertaining, if sometimes esoteric), but the conclusions and the emphases seem off, to me, in several places, not the least of which is prizing a 19th Century definition of a term over its contemporary usage. Also suspicious, is the pretense that girls and young women in Japan were only effected by the late 19th Century wave of repression as Japan attempted to integrate foreign (western and other) styles and technologies, while also appealing to vocal European mores (hence the sudden illegality of explicit homosexual behaviors and cohabitations of women and of men). This, before the meat and potatoes are even reached.

"More so than their visual style, the 49ers also brought with them wave after wave of controversies..." seems to want to say that the controversies were more significant than the visual styles developed by those authors, but it's not what it says and I'd suggest it'd be a false equivalence, in any case, as yes, something like Moto Hagio's more notable visual and narrative techniques are major developments in manga, and in comics globally. (And, no, Moto Hagio wasn't making strides in yaoi, a term which did not yet exist and does not, in particular, represent her work very well at all.)

Bara, as with Shojo, in this context aren't so much genres (or mega-genres) as they are directions for shelving the product. Manga done by a woman doesn't necessarily go in one or the other, or another entirely, but manga aimed primarily at one audience or the other is shelved and marketed together, the same way products aimed primarily at children are shelved together, or products aimed primarily at women or men are shelved together in a grocery store. Men's deodorant is not typically stocked beside tampons, with GI Joe, My Little Pony, and rotisserie chicken filling out the rest of the aisle. That's not the kind of policing the author of the essay seems to want, but the kind they're looking for isn't to be found so universally. Markets are an exchange, not diktats. Bara cannot police true gay masculinity any more than boy's love can be pigeon-holed as safe-proxy escapism fit only for socially-constrained young women. That's just silly.

In the actual essay, statements like "the comic book is unfiltered shojo material" are more dismissive than they are useful analytically. It's a way to remove material the author seems to be less interested in discussing, but she could do that much more honestly by just saying she wants to focus on the material that does interest her. Presenting a reductive and, in my opinion, misleading portrait of the material just to remove it from further consideration is weak.

"The film is a fannish re-imaging of the TV series" apparently means, "the film re-envisions the TV series through the perspective of how the majority of the fans chose to interpret the material. "The perspective of how"? No, that's just "how." Adding "perspective" there is just stretching it out and devalorizing that "how." "Chose to interpret"? No, they interpret it that way or they don't. It is not necessarily a choice, any more than another understanding is a choice. Again, these are just ways to stretch the thing out and to be dismissive regarding positions the author does not share. But, then, do "the fans" share them?

Show of hands: Who watched the TV series and thought movie-Akio is what Akio has to really be like? Who watched it and thought "Touga must, truly, be dead, and he's really a nice, nice guy. And that Miki, when will his sister stop trying to make them both live in the past as a happy pair of locked at the hips children?"

I love movie Akio. I'm frilly-shirted Tou! boy's one true fan. Even I know that the majority of Utena fans, in Japan, outside Japan, anywhere, don't watch that TV show and come out with movie Akio in their brain.

It feels odd to even have to put this into words, but, "Utena relies on the strength and importance of pre-War shojo and doesiai" is bullshit. If it relied on those things, all markets, including the young girls to whom it was originally marketed, would require a full understanding of those historical positions, and please, think back to what you understood of 19th Century gender and sex roles in 1894 when you were age twelve to fifteen. While those historical modes may inform some scene or ambience in SKU, and maybe they do, the show isn't reliant on them or it would have failed, because too few people would be interested in that kind of historic ethnography, brightly animated, with a monkey in a necktie. It might be reliant on 1990s' (Japanese) gender and sex roles, but not 1890s'. I just don't see it.

That it's a pre-War and post-War statement or concern is silly, and the idea ignores the kinds of strides that were being made not only post-post-War (despite bringing up the 49ers), but also, pre-reform-and-repression Japan, and the kinds of developments occuring in Utena and alongside Utena, in regards to animation aimed at girls in Japan and the progression of the magical girl genre and the cross-dressing knight trope.

Aelanie, Atropos, let's let this one drop, and chill, yeah?

But, please, everyone, keep comments geared towards moving the discussion forward or into interesting places, not on each other or Ikuhara's potential untrustworthiness unless it's functionally relating to the discussion.

I don't see the movie as a "fannish reimagining" at all; rather, I see it as a piss-take on the concepts and characters of the show - albeit a loving one. The exaggeration and simplification of characters is an inevitability of the movie format, but it also seems like a conscious decision - the characters are all exaggerations of their common fandom perceptions.

So Anthy becomes manipulative mentally and sexually; Saionji is a rabid maniac; Touga is a gorgeous and noble prince; Juri is a kind, tormented soul; Shiori is an evil haterbitch; Miki is an incestuous sociopath; and Akio is a pathetic rapist. Sorting through the dregs of SKU fanfic, this is exactly the characterization you're going to find - and it speaks to the brilliance of the Be-Papas team that they were able to make something interesting and beautiful with them.

Atropos wrote:

Sorting through the dregs of SKU fanfic, this is exactly the characterization you're going to find

That movie really gave the fans what they want, eh?

Q: Was there resistance to the movie's stronger romantic elements, and if so, how did you overcome it? - Cryssoberyl A.
A: No, there wasn't. I tried to do in the movie what I wasn't able to accomplish in the TV series.

Yep.

Last edited by gorgeousshutin (09-07-2013 05:29:49 PM)

Aelanie wrote:

gorgeousshutin wrote:

Q: Was there resistance to the movie's stronger romantic elements, and if so, how did you overcome it? - Cryssoberyl A.
A: No, there wasn't. I tried to do in the movie what I wasn't able to accomplish in the TV series.

Yep.

Portraying them as a lesbian couple, as he couldn't in the TV series because of Saito Chiho, yep. Glad you finally came to your senses.

That's what I and the tumblr poster were saying all along - that U & A were NOT portrayed as a lesbian couple in the TV series.  Whatever the reason behind it, that was how it happened for U&A 's good friends TV portrayal.

Aelanie wrote:

As long as you acknowledge that it should've been, and only wasn't because of creative obstructionism, that's fine then. But you do realize that completely invalidates the mythology that article builds up around what their relationship means. Its only meaning is that they should've been a romantic couple but weren't allowed to be due to outside forces.

What "should've been" in SKU was neveer what I've entered this thread to talk about: my up posts are all solely focused on what "actually happens" in SKU. 

Also, I do believe someone owes me an apology for the following baseless accusation

Keep up with that heteronormative wishful thinking, though! emot-rolleyes

crystalwren wrote:

If this is the same with Japanese television, then the Akio sex scenes would have slipped by the censors much more easily than would a more graphic depiction than the romantic content between Anthy and Utena. Mind, this doesn't take into account the Akio/Touga/Saionji scenes. One wonders if yaoi content and yuri content are subject to different societal conventions in Japanese media.

As far as I know, in 90s Japan and Asia, it was yaoi that is considered more gritty/non-child safe than yuri.  Utena and Anthy not allowed to be blatant bisexuals in the TV show likely has more to do with fear of alienating  straight female anime TV watchers that was their main demographic.

Last edited by gorgeousshutin (09-07-2013 05:54:09 PM)

Aelanie wrote:

Then perhaps you shouldn't have gone along with the article in touting their relationship as descending from the deep heritage and cultural ritualism of doseiai, since you've just now admitted that was never the creative intention behind what we see on the screen.

What's actually ended up being presented onscreen - the way the characters interact, the way its visually and aurally presented - do display strong influence from traditional doseiai works.  The poster was not wrong to say what they did, because they are analyzing the show from what's actually shown within the episodes themselves, without mentioning what Ikuhara did or did not intend for the show.

Nor do you have any right to slam your baseless accusations at that poster or myself, for that matter.