I wish I could put into words why the show has stayed with me for this long. I think the fact it transcends its genre helps; although i have watched a bit of anime in my time, I've never fit the standard anime fan description. But SKU hooked and held my attention because it was different, and I've always had my head in the clouds. SKU made those clouds more fascinating than ever.

I'm twenty-six and I've never grown up. When I first saw SKU when I was seventeen, I think I knew then I probably wasn't going to. So, the main theme of being stuck in a loop and going around endlessly the same while the world changes around you...I can go with that. People have always been alien to me, hence why I found very quickly that Mikage and Nanami were my favourite characters. I identified with their isolation from others even when circumstances put them in the middle of things. So...yeah. I this show, and it's because I can empathise with their situations...and because I hope that one day I too will be able to break free of them.

yeah, the comparison is also a reason I love both series. I've seen a bit of Haibane Renmei, too, and all three of those series take place within an enclosed world, which in at least two cases the main characters eventually break out of.

Utena is a miracle for me. As a charecter,Utena is... just a girl,but a real hero. I think she will be the same outside the Ohtori Gakuen, in the REAL world. Yes,she had belived in a fairytale,which killed her, but she   crashed the illusions.

Last edited by Blacky (05-03-2008 11:39:08 AM)

Utena was one of the first Anime that I ever saw that wasn't being whored out on Foxkids or the like. I loved Tenchi Muyo, Digimon and held a liking for Outlaw Star. It was the first mature Anime series I ever saw and I was too immature at fourteen to really understand. When I finally saw the second half of the Red Rose Collection, it was something like a memory I held on to through my hellish adolescence. There are reasons why Anthy drew my attention, reasons I wasn't ready to deal with because I was still going through the things that made me much like her.

Even now, as I walk parts of my life that are much like Jacob's Ladder, I find the more I know of Utena, the more I see without benefit of reading through the UE scripts or fandubs on YouTube, the more I feel like I can come out of the cage I had entered at birth and almost escaped once and am still trying to escape. The one where my self doesn't matter, the one where people would heap shit upon me whether I smiled or screamed, the one where I would be a child forever and finally be a good mother, a good wife and yet still be Cassie, the weird but cool girl who still watches "cartoons" and still reads "comic books" and yet can tell you tidbits about almost any subject.

Utena is therapy to me. It is helping me crawl out of a Hell I had thought was my fate and find a new one, one where I can hope to be a fiction writer, a small business owner, the founder of a revolution and a wife and a mother, but not one usually thought of. It is also the fever dream I don't ever want to wake from... and yet the one who inspires me to wake and write of it.

God, I want a beer. (I don't smoke)

Last edited by Anthiena (05-03-2008 02:00:20 PM)

The question, What Is Utena {to me}, comes down to three very simple facets of the story, which when considered, are the very reasons why everyone connects with the series on both personal and philosophic levels.

The series, first, much like one of its sources for inspiration, the novel Demain (Hermann Hesse--the source for the 'Student Council Credo), is that the exploration of the series is one of personal evolution, the struggle to move from adolesence into adulthood. It goes far beyond this however. The kinds and categories of experiences covered by the plethora of primary and secondary characters within Utena are experiences which every single person has endured, undergone, and watched their friends go through and undergo. The love triangles, role confusions, issues of virtue and sacrifice (which i will explore further later) personal alliances and conflicts, even the humiliation Nanami both tries to cause and suffers through, are places where almost every single person can say, 'ive been there' or 'ive seen that'. As such, not only are we able to view our lives retrospectively through the lenses of each character and their experiences, we suddenly are given a window from which we can view 'the other' in their part within our experiences. Understanding is the root of compassion, forgiveness, and overcoming our wounds and moving beyond our feelings. {No person living in western society today could possibly have endured the experiences of childhood, adolesence, and the emergence into adulthood without some kind of psychologic scarring}.

Secondly, just as the series functions on a psychologic level of personal reflection, it functions equally on a sociologic level, as a reflection of adolesence and the emergence into adulthood. Adolesence is regarded both psychologically and sociologically as the coming to terms with the definitions and roles of ones' self as an adult within the confines and restraints of current society. There are a million conflicts which can arise, most of which center around role confusion and social function during this time, and the series makes a strong effort to examine them as much as possible. Particularly, with regards to the various gender roles available to women, ("Witch", Princess, Prince) and of course the ever present role of men strictly as Prince, (and perhaps a secondary role available as Scholar, i.e. Miki and Mikage, who share very different characteristics from the other explicit male princes of the series, Touga, Saionji, and Ruka. Akio is a whole other subject.). Struggles to understand how one fits, and the larger consiquence of understanding what roles are "socially available" is a very valuable exploration, both in the academic sociologic picture, and equally on a personal level when considering one's place in life and how to Evolve beyond it.

Third, is the philosophic level, at which point there are a few very different subsets of characteristics which the series first takes on. First, of course, is the morality tale, of virtue, and sacrifice. Referring back to adolesence, one could argue, in the process of evolution, one must sacrifice in order to grow. The safety of the egg must be discarded in order to emerge, else, one will die inside their own shell, never being existentially birthed. The nature of this safety is different for everyone, and could be sexual, could be motivational, could even be one of ethos, as a sacrifice of virtue. This is made evident in the fact that every single character in their journey is forced to sacrifice something of value to them in the process of their journeys. The second value is the value of the examined life. Both implicitly by plot structure, and explicitly reflected in Mikage's "deeper" interviews, every character is forced by circumstance to evaluate them selves, their environments, their emotions, their connections, and their values---forcing us the viewer to do the same about our lives as present and our past as refected in what we are wittnessing. Lastly, there is the 'spiritulal' or archetypal exploration, concerning the very nature of 'good' and 'evil' or 'god' and 'devil', as explored by Dios/Akio, and the situation is obviously not one of black and white answers, and one must consider further, the role of "traditional" ethos (as represented by Dios the archetype of the "traditional prince") within the modern age. This will lead many viewers to reconsider their personal theology and ask a lot of questions which would otherwise been left unconsidered.

In a sum total, the series forces the viewer to examine the totality of their life in all concievable environments, and does so very entertainingly, too. After all, "it is only true if it makes us laugh" and "if it forces us to weap then it must be true". Utena accomplishes both, "with style".

Utena has two major messages to me. 1. It's better to get what you need instead of what you want.  2. Friendship has the power to make anyone braver.

I was a combination of Anthy and Wakaba in middle school. I was mousy, weird, and severely bullied until I got a courageous and outgoing best friend a lot like Utena who protected me. The anime really struck a chord with me because of that. We're close friends to this day. Yeah, a lot of anime emphasizes the power of a group of friends, but it's rare and wonderful when you get a great story about two ultra close ones.

An exquisite work of philosophy and psychology, of course. Since I, in all my pretentiousness, adore those things, it is quite an interesting thing to watch an anime where these two are so tragically and sorrowfully yet tenderly intertwined. The artistic aspect of SKU is very exquisite, in every form of it, from the way a scene is portrayed, an event is executed and how a characters' persona and emotions are conveyed. I like the rich philosophy and psychology aspects a lot as well, as they subtly yet in somewhat of a concealed manner tell the deeper meaning of everything. It's also a very eclectic piece of work, drawing inspiration and creating events or characters that parallel a lot of other pieces of art, literature, mythology, philosophy and a lot of other things, which I find quite intriguing and well done. And the dear characters, of course. I like how they are all portrayed in their adolescence, being sophisticated and elegant yet having their own problems and desires and struggling to solve them. All the characters are riveting and emotionally beautiful. Thus, mostly it is a very sophisticated, theatrical and very rich in many forms of wisdom anime for me. It tells the deeper meaning of many things and has so much knowledge on many subjects. Overall, it is a tragic tale of many things I adore, so that's why I apparently like this one.