SKU owes so much to Twin Peaks, and that's coming back.

Never say never.

I'd pretty much want a retelling or something new and different with connections, than a straight followup, though.

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

I'd pretty much want a retelling or something new and different with connections, than a straight followup, though.

While new material would be great, I wouldn't mind a retelling with polished animation.

Can we please not? It would only be a disppointment in some way or other. Utena does not need to be revised or "improved". Let it remain as it is, undefiled.

barafubuki wrote:

I don't see anything wrong with making a new series. It is not like it will devalue what currently exists. Plenty of other shows have done this (Sailor Moon, Hunter x Hunter, etc.), and fans would be free to choose the version that they prefer.

Sailor Moon Crystal was a mistake, and is inferior to and disrespectful toward the original anime, which (whatever Takeuchi wants to believe) is what actually made Sailor Moon successful as a franchise.

There is already a large number of fans who do not like the movie.

Those people have bad taste and their opinions can be safely discarded.

That hasn't taken away from the TV series at all in my opinion.

It's the opposite: their slavish devotion to the details of the series is why many of them refuse to accept the movie as the breathtaking piece of artistry that it is.

While Utena as a story is a masterpiece, there are many problems with the animation.

In your opinion. I personally have always loved Utena's animation, which is stylistically elegant even if there was not always the budget for technical fireworks. Even then, there are no glaring issues, and the show has impressive sequences when it needs them. (The movie is, of course, a tour de force of excellence in all ways.)

There are plenty of people I know personally who won't even give Utena a glance simply for the way it looks.

Bad taste as well as shallow, opinions discarded. New fans have always been entering, and doing so without superficial sensibilities needing to be placated. They were rewarded for their open-mindedness, which is as it should be.

An Utena TV Series that was essentially the same but looked like Penguindrum or Yuri Kuma Arashi

Please no. I do not want today's computer-generated moeblobby stylistics invading Utena's hand-drawn angular lines and art-deco influence.

If it were to be redone, I also envision Ikuhara turning up THE GAY. As a queer person myself, I wish it wasn't danced around so much in the TV series.

After Yuri Kuma Arashi, which amazingly managed to be a show about yuri that delivered almost nothing substantial, and was largely a string of one-sided molestations, I'm not sure I trust Ikuhara to try to go "full gay" anymore. (And I say this as a rabid yuri fan of nearly 20 years.)

Leave Utena alone. It does not need more, it does not need improvement, it does not need revision. For 17 years it has rightly been regarded as one of the greatest works anime has ever produced. Don't meddle with it.

Last edited by Aelanie (10-12-2016 01:38:55 AM)

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

I'd pretty much want a retelling or something new and different with connections, than a straight followup, though.

That would pretty much be guaranteed.

Ikuhara has stated that every version of SKU is deliberately different from the previous version.

Ergo...

The manga is not the TV series is not the movie is not the movie manga is not the stageplays.

All of them have common characters, setting, and theme, but the events and narratives are typically changed with each new version of it.

If SKU were to ever see another 39 or so episode series, it would not be a remake of the show we already love. It would be something that resembles it, but deliberately altered to stand alone as its own narrative.

loslac wrote:

You all have really good points. Honestly I think that the re-release that will soon be coming out may spark interest for a retelling.
Improved animation, less repitition to some extent, and less dancing around the love between Anthy and Utena.

I think the repetition is one of the show's best features. It reuses footage rhythmically, almost ceremonially.

And, I like the dancing around, for that matter, because it really takes its time to spell out for us just how flat ignorant and very very young Utena really is. She doesn't really know anything. And, if it went to a much more sexual relationship immediately, given the eventual reveal of extreme power and age difference, Anthy could come of astonishingly, perhaps irrecoverably bad.

loslac wrote:

Also I realize that sexual behavior between Utena and Anthy would be pretty f'ed up! I mean they are 8th graders ffs!

I don't think the sexual exploration of junior high students is uncommon. Especially when there are raging hormonal changes happening with the body about that time. I remember stumbling across, essentially, a sexual education comic in a Japanese comic magazine targeting 4th graders. I told my Japanese friend I couldn't believe it, but she didn't blink an eyelid at the material and said it was important for them to have sex safely when the time came. *shrugs* Japan just doesn't have the puritanical history that Americans have when it comes to sex.

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

loslac wrote:

You all have really good points. Honestly I think that the re-release that will soon be coming out may spark interest for a retelling.
Improved animation, less repitition to some extent, and less dancing around the love between Anthy and Utena.

I think the repetition is one of the show's best features. It reuses footage rhythmically, almost ceremonially.

I agree. I love the repetition. It's quite poetic. I think why people find this frustrating is because they aren't looking at the repetition as a principal of design, or as a flower of rhetoric. They don't think it moves the story forward, because they are so used to Hollywood romps. They are looking for substance, when the goal was style. If they took a moment to look at it stylistically, perhaps they would realize how beautiful it was.

http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/Figu … tition.htm

Aelaine wrote:

Please no. I do not want today's computer-generated moeblobby stylistics invading Utena's hand-drawn angular lines and art-deco influence.

There are a lot of things I want to say about the animation, because there are numerous flaws with it. I'm not talking about "technical fireworks" I'm talking about things that are, in fact, wrong. I just don't have the time or the energy to lay it out here right now.

Moreover, if anyone thinks that Utena is somehow this shinning example of a perfect work devoid of CGI, you are fooling yourselves. The TV Series and the Movie both utilized CGI. What is more, the CGI used in Utena feels much more out of place than many modern shows that blend the two mediums together. I am not a fan of over reliance on a computer, but there are things that computer generated imagery can do demonstrably better (i.e. particle systems, displacement maps, etc.). Computer usage does not also entail an end to stylization. I love the look of stylized matte paintings that add a hand crafted feel to otherwise overdone 3D animation. (Side story: The only thing that keeps me watching Star Wars Rebels is the superb writing and the gorgeous matte paintings. Otherwise, I would have checked out a long time ago for such jarring 3D animation. I almost didn't give it a chance...) While the multi-plane camera produces a gorgeous effect, I have also seen it done wrong. What I am trying to say is that the parallax achieved in the snow forest scene in Wolf Children is a perfect example of doing 3D right.

Just because a computer is used as an aid, it does not imply that animation is no longer hand drawn...that is what cintiqs are for. Moreover, computer usage does not dictate the style of the figure, or that characters appear moeblobbly, a stylized choice you seem to abhor. And lastly, a new incarnation would not invade or tamper with your beloved original series.

I speak as an animator.

Last edited by barafubuki (10-12-2016 06:36:22 PM)

barafubuki wrote:

computer usage does not dictate the style

You're right, it does not. My point though, is that any "remake" of Utena would be at great risk of having its style compromised by the modern aesthetics of commercial anime, which is all too often...

moeblobby, a stylized choice you seem to abhor.

I don't abhor it, but again, it is a style that has become far too prevalent, erasing older styles and marginalizing deviations from it. This has been the case for some years now, and as a lover of many different styles and varieties of animated aesthetic, I consider this unfortunate at best. Ikuhara's own recent works have fully bowed to those stylistics, especially YKA.

I speak as an animator.

I here omit a sarcastic remark about how much more you must know than professional, career Japanese animators. Rather, I appeal to your supposed knowledge by suggesting that in that case, you must surely know how expensive and difficult animation is, and that without a wealth of talent and money - especially difficult to acquire for a derivative/remake project - the results can be disastrous. Again I point to the the debacle that was Sailor Moon Crystal before an injection of Precure budget and experienced staff mitigated the issues. I admit to not hating the third season of SMC, even liking parts of it. Even then, with such a drastic improvement, I still consider it in no way a worthy descendant to the original.

Happily, I consider the chance of a late-coming addition to the Utena franchise quite soundly impossible. Ikuhara is a very smart man and knows he caught lightning in a bottle with Utena. It is clear from his comments in interviews that he considers it his masterpiece and, I'm sure, has no desire to try to revisit or improve upon it, especially without all the members of the Be-Papas on board, which would be a very difficult thing to resurrect. So, despite ill-considered dreams to the contrary, Utena and its legacy will remain thankfully undisturbed.

Honestly, at this point, you just sound like an elitist.

If a desire to see a beautiful and excellent thing be left alone, untrampled by ill-advised attempts to milk more from it than was ever intended, makes me an "elitist" in your eyes, so be it.

On a different note:

loslac wrote:

Also I realize that sexual behavior between Utena and Anthy would be pretty f'ed up! I mean they are 8th graders ffs!

These are not fourteen year olds, whatever number has been officially assigned to them. If you watch anime for any length of time, you will soon come to realize that like many anime and manga characters, the cast of Utena are victims of what I like to call the Five Year Rule: for any anime/manga character whose age is officially stated, add five years to that number to arrive at a more realistic age that more closely matches what they actually look and behave like. The cast neither looks nor behaves like their official ages, but now add five years. Both mentally and physically, Utena makes far more sense as a nineteen year old, as does this age adjustment on the rest of the cast in turn. Again, this is nothing unusual; anime and manga characters are routinely assigned numerical ages much younger than they look and act. This has to do with - to put it charitably - Japan's "fascination" with the time of youth and the state of being young.

Last edited by Aelanie (10-12-2016 06:46:17 PM)

I made no dictation. As directly solicited in the original post, I have given my honest opinions on the subject - born of passionate conviction, certainly - and no more. My only stipulation about "what Utena should be" is that it should be what it is.

Last edited by Aelanie (10-12-2016 06:57:40 PM)

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

"I will omit a sarcastic response," is leading, on its own. It's a form of attack pretending to be patience or kindness.

No, it was me candidly admitting that I had felt a strong temptation to do so, but instead I simply pointed the impulse out as an observation, and then tried to turn it into something less abrasive. I think you know me well enough, DD, to know that if I had genuinely wanted to carry through with an attack, I probably would have. In this case, I recognized it as unwarranted.

Last edited by Aelanie (10-12-2016 08:58:03 PM)

Unpopular opinion: I don't think Utena and Anthy's relationship should be made more explicit in a remake. I like it the way it is, that a person can decide whether U & A are more than friends, and can be correct either way. Also, I feel like them being in love kind of spoils the 'prince' message for me. (I feel like a prince should try to save the girl even if s/he doesn't love her, and the idea that Utena couldn't save Anthy could be chalked up to Utena not being 'princely' enough, even though the intended goal is that princes don't exist, period. But that's just the way I see it.)

Could a remake happen?: Maybe, but I would either want the show either redone in a new animation style keeping the entire story/script/events intact or a straight up sequel.

There's a big fallacy in fandoms when it comes to new versions of works. Part of it stems from the misuse of the words "remake". Ultimately, unless you're doing a shot-for-shot thing, a remake of anything other than a video game is going to be significantly different no matter what. I'm not an Eva buff (unfortunately) but Rebuild of Evangelion made it very clear that a "remake", in anime terms, becomes much more like a totally different continuity, under the right hands. Utena having come from the same time period, art movement, and sharing staff, a new Utena project would almost 100percent be a very different story. And I would love that.

Yet there's always people who say something like, "why remake it? you can't improve it", which is silly, because we ALL know that art doesn't work like that. Obviously, improvement would never be the goal.