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beccatoriaSo, for reasons that are complicated and boring and not entirely unrelated to a reflexive pushback against yet another attempt to get me to watch A:TLA (which I DO want to watch one day, but the last time he pushed it, I went and watched the entirety of Gargoyles instead, so basically his insistence and my YOU'RE NOT MY DAD! childishness is leading to some rather interesting education in 90s animated telly), I finally watched Revolutionary Girl Utena.
Which people have basically been telling me to watch since I discovered I adored Martian Successor: Nadesico (another 90s anime) but was sort of hovering somewhere towards the lower end of my "to do" list of media because I have a complicated relationship with anime. I want to love it. I feel like I should love it. It's an endless supply of amazing, complicated fantasy/sci fi stories, without the same kind of budget limitations because they're animated, that tell complete season-long stories, so I don't have to cry when it inevitably jumps the shark, and the fact it's animated doesn't bug me at all.
That said, I find a lot of the tropes and stock characters really distracting and sometimes straight-up gross. Some of that I overcome through immersion in the series, particularly if it plays its surreal hyperreality sections well in the context of the narrative (Nadesico with its crew-of-misfits humour, Utena with its straight up magic realism). It's always tricky calling out things you find offensive (or even empowering) across cultural lines, not cus other cultures should get a pass at treating people badly, but because you lack context. While trying to work out some of my thoughts on this, I read a couple of really interesting articles about the way Western audiences interpret anime. One I found particularly fascinating was the fact that some of the Magical Girl series that are touted in the West as being strongly feminist are, in Japan, primarily aimed at adult men who fetishize the cuteness and even infantilisation of the main characters. Another complicated and fascinating area was the way characters that are commonly interpreted in the West as transgender or genderqueer would in Japan be interpreted as an assault on brutally rigid gender roles rather than cisnormative identities.
And like, how do you navigate that? From my uneducated position, I don't see that there's much conflict between a kid in Britain watching Utena and seeing someone affirmatively genderqueer and a kid in Japan watching it and seeing a girl assert her identity as female through nontraditional means. But I think it gets more complicated if you know something may have an actively negative connotation in its original context, even if that context is invisible to you before it's pointed out? Fortunately, I don't believe Utena is not one of those series that is misogynistic in its original context - or at least, not in the ways I outline above. But as we'll get to, there are things about it that leave me slightly uneasy, as well as things I think are completely fascinating.
It's essentially impossible to talk about, well, anything without spoilers, so if you plan to watch it and are strictly spoiler avoidant, it's probably best to skip the upcoming cut. However, I will do my best to keep this at a "review" level of spoilers for those interested in reading on.
The show throws itself into tropes and stereotypes and then undermines a lot of them. But there are also parts of it where I'm not sure if it's legitimately deconstructionist, or simply replicating with enough artistic gravitas it passes for deconstruction.
The most complicated character by far is Anthy Himemiya, and her presentation in the first 13 episodes is probably a good example of this. She's a beautiful object, literally being passed to the current winning duelist, and so we meet Utena, our brave Prince, determined to save her friend by chivalrously duelling to defend her.
This dynamic is absolutely examined, inverted, shredded, rebuilt and then destroyed again over the course of the series.
But Anthy spends this time essentially behaving as a hypersubmissive "ideal woman" with some "adorkable" quirks. It's not a narrative problem per se, because this trope is, once again, roundly subverted. The problem is that I'm pretty sure the show is expecting the audience to respond more favourably to the trope she's embodying than I did. Even if it's later revealed to be a trick, we're still supposed to believe that our heroine forges a powerful friendship with her during this time. I guess what I'm saying is that I think this whole section is narratively far less effective if the viewer doesn't buy the (gross) trope. So at the same time I'm impressed they later undermine it, I'm not sure how I feel about the fact they're obviously writing those early episodes with the assumption that the trope is a good enough way to code Anthy as sympathetic and appealing to me as a viewer.
Or like, this show has one of the most brutally honest (in many ways because it's so TOTALLY clear yet amazingly understated) depictions of statutory rape I've seen in media. It's chilling and sickening in its banality and pulls no punches with its condemnation.
At the same time, though, I was never 100% comfortable with the level of objectification and sexualisation in the series, especially when so much of it is supposed to be critiquing that, and then...I'm not sure when it becomes presentation instead of criticism. And I'd tell myself to be more generous, except then I watched the movie they made after the end of the series. It isn't a sequel, it's essentially a reimagination, and they gave the anime's director (Kunihiko Ikuhara) complete creative control. And basically I feel it's pretty exploitative in its treatment of sexay chicks making out. And while I know a lot of the complicated stuff from the series just couldn't be done in an 80 minute movie, I still felt that they dumped...pretty much everything that made Anthy so complicated and turned it into a straight-up rescue-the-princess storyline. Albeit with chicks that TURN INTO FUCKING CARS WHAT. And then found out the director does indeed proclaim himself to be a feminist, and I'm sure believes that, and he's certainly produced some work to back it up, but also makes weird comments about not wanting guys touching "his" girls (with regard to the queer content).
On the other hand, I know that a lot of the writers room dynamics that stopped that from happening in the anime series probably came from Chiho Saito, the woman who wrote the manga (comic) version and was one of the writers on the series. She apparently threatened to quit the project if there was unambiguous homosexual content (err, between the two main characters, that is. There IS unambiguous homosexual content with regards to several other characters).
So like, on the one hand, I have a raftload of reasons why I actually really enjoy the subtextual, ambiguous relationship Anthy and Utena have in the anime (which I can explain if anyone cares?), and think it tows a difficult line pretty well, I'm sort of...wondering if we got that because it was a bizarre tug of war between a guy who wanted to fetishise lesbians and a homophobe, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Anyway,look. I've kind of...spent all this time talking about how complicated I feel about this show and I feel I'm doing it a disservice because, well, because it's really fucking interesting. Like it genuinely is. It's also incredibly complicated and very symbolic and surreal.
I feel it manages something very few series manage; namely it makes me feel like the series is coherent while still leaving a lot to my personal interpretation. And I don't feel like it's lesser for that, or like the creators didn't give a shit.
It's clearly work with something complicated to say, and something that I think, most of the time, is worthy of consideration and thought.
It's about that brutal, violent meeting of idealism and reality, and I suppose the brutal, violent meeting of childhood and adulthood is a good place to tell that story. I would personally have found it easier if it was set in a High School/College Academy not a Middle School/High School Academy, but, well... It's anime.
It kind of hard to talk about the rest of what it's about without gigantic spoilers. Though I suppose it's cryptic enough if I say it's maybe about Jesus, if the crucifixion was so traumatic, it turned her into Judas.
Whatever else it did, it gave me so many thoughts. I read a ton of stuff after I finished watching it. Like stuff about anime in general, about feminism in Japan and in anime, about Revolutionary Girl Utena specifically...
I think...if you have tried watching anime before and the format isn't your thing, then this won't be either. But if you have watched it before or if you haven't and want to some, give this a shot.
The last thing I'll say is that if you watch this, for the love of god, watch the subbed not the dubbed version. I am not usually picky about that kind of thing. I often watch the dubs even when I know they're sorta shoddy and just deal with the not-so-amazing voice actors because I'm lazy. I'm a terrible person and I mutilate art.
But in this case, please, please, please do not do that. I actually went back and rewatched the episodes I did watch dubbed when I realised what a terrible mistake I was making. The problem is that Anthy, a pivotal character, whose emotional arc completely depends on being able to tell whether she means what she's saying or she's faking it via her tone of voice, is voiced by an awful voice actress. I don't know if she's just plain bad or had weird direction or what, but she acts like a cheerful, vacant Stepford Wife the entire time. Like during explosively personal, painful scenes, she's like...Barney the Dinosauring, "I'm sorry! I caused you so much pain! Silly old me!" Argh.
Just...for your own sanity, use the sub.
Also, I have discovered that Welcome to Night Vale and Revolutionary Girl Utena make the most beautiful mashups. I am completely obsessed with the perfection of this tumblr. It honestly makes me feel like I understand RG:U better. Which...probably tells you something about its storytelling style.
Anyway.
It has been too long since I posted, and now this post is also too long. So I bid you all sweet dreams.
Which people have basically been telling me to watch since I discovered I adored Martian Successor: Nadesico (another 90s anime) but was sort of hovering somewhere towards the lower end of my "to do" list of media because I have a complicated relationship with anime. I want to love it. I feel like I should love it. It's an endless supply of amazing, complicated fantasy/sci fi stories, without the same kind of budget limitations because they're animated, that tell complete season-long stories, so I don't have to cry when it inevitably jumps the shark, and the fact it's animated doesn't bug me at all.
That said, I find a lot of the tropes and stock characters really distracting and sometimes straight-up gross. Some of that I overcome through immersion in the series, particularly if it plays its surreal hyperreality sections well in the context of the narrative (Nadesico with its crew-of-misfits humour, Utena with its straight up magic realism). It's always tricky calling out things you find offensive (or even empowering) across cultural lines, not cus other cultures should get a pass at treating people badly, but because you lack context. While trying to work out some of my thoughts on this, I read a couple of really interesting articles about the way Western audiences interpret anime. One I found particularly fascinating was the fact that some of the Magical Girl series that are touted in the West as being strongly feminist are, in Japan, primarily aimed at adult men who fetishize the cuteness and even infantilisation of the main characters. Another complicated and fascinating area was the way characters that are commonly interpreted in the West as transgender or genderqueer would in Japan be interpreted as an assault on brutally rigid gender roles rather than cisnormative identities.
And like, how do you navigate that? From my uneducated position, I don't see that there's much conflict between a kid in Britain watching Utena and seeing someone affirmatively genderqueer and a kid in Japan watching it and seeing a girl assert her identity as female through nontraditional means. But I think it gets more complicated if you know something may have an actively negative connotation in its original context, even if that context is invisible to you before it's pointed out? Fortunately, I don't believe Utena is not one of those series that is misogynistic in its original context - or at least, not in the ways I outline above. But as we'll get to, there are things about it that leave me slightly uneasy, as well as things I think are completely fascinating.
It's essentially impossible to talk about, well, anything without spoilers, so if you plan to watch it and are strictly spoiler avoidant, it's probably best to skip the upcoming cut. However, I will do my best to keep this at a "review" level of spoilers for those interested in reading on.
The show throws itself into tropes and stereotypes and then undermines a lot of them. But there are also parts of it where I'm not sure if it's legitimately deconstructionist, or simply replicating with enough artistic gravitas it passes for deconstruction.
The most complicated character by far is Anthy Himemiya, and her presentation in the first 13 episodes is probably a good example of this. She's a beautiful object, literally being passed to the current winning duelist, and so we meet Utena, our brave Prince, determined to save her friend by chivalrously duelling to defend her.
This dynamic is absolutely examined, inverted, shredded, rebuilt and then destroyed again over the course of the series.
But Anthy spends this time essentially behaving as a hypersubmissive "ideal woman" with some "adorkable" quirks. It's not a narrative problem per se, because this trope is, once again, roundly subverted. The problem is that I'm pretty sure the show is expecting the audience to respond more favourably to the trope she's embodying than I did. Even if it's later revealed to be a trick, we're still supposed to believe that our heroine forges a powerful friendship with her during this time. I guess what I'm saying is that I think this whole section is narratively far less effective if the viewer doesn't buy the (gross) trope. So at the same time I'm impressed they later undermine it, I'm not sure how I feel about the fact they're obviously writing those early episodes with the assumption that the trope is a good enough way to code Anthy as sympathetic and appealing to me as a viewer.
Or like, this show has one of the most brutally honest (in many ways because it's so TOTALLY clear yet amazingly understated) depictions of statutory rape I've seen in media. It's chilling and sickening in its banality and pulls no punches with its condemnation.
At the same time, though, I was never 100% comfortable with the level of objectification and sexualisation in the series, especially when so much of it is supposed to be critiquing that, and then...I'm not sure when it becomes presentation instead of criticism. And I'd tell myself to be more generous, except then I watched the movie they made after the end of the series. It isn't a sequel, it's essentially a reimagination, and they gave the anime's director (Kunihiko Ikuhara) complete creative control. And basically I feel it's pretty exploitative in its treatment of sexay chicks making out. And while I know a lot of the complicated stuff from the series just couldn't be done in an 80 minute movie, I still felt that they dumped...pretty much everything that made Anthy so complicated and turned it into a straight-up rescue-the-princess storyline. Albeit with chicks that TURN INTO FUCKING CARS WHAT. And then found out the director does indeed proclaim himself to be a feminist, and I'm sure believes that, and he's certainly produced some work to back it up, but also makes weird comments about not wanting guys touching "his" girls (with regard to the queer content).
On the other hand, I know that a lot of the writers room dynamics that stopped that from happening in the anime series probably came from Chiho Saito, the woman who wrote the manga (comic) version and was one of the writers on the series. She apparently threatened to quit the project if there was unambiguous homosexual content (err, between the two main characters, that is. There IS unambiguous homosexual content with regards to several other characters).
So like, on the one hand, I have a raftload of reasons why I actually really enjoy the subtextual, ambiguous relationship Anthy and Utena have in the anime (which I can explain if anyone cares?), and think it tows a difficult line pretty well, I'm sort of...wondering if we got that because it was a bizarre tug of war between a guy who wanted to fetishise lesbians and a homophobe, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Anyway,look. I've kind of...spent all this time talking about how complicated I feel about this show and I feel I'm doing it a disservice because, well, because it's really fucking interesting. Like it genuinely is. It's also incredibly complicated and very symbolic and surreal.
I feel it manages something very few series manage; namely it makes me feel like the series is coherent while still leaving a lot to my personal interpretation. And I don't feel like it's lesser for that, or like the creators didn't give a shit.
It's clearly work with something complicated to say, and something that I think, most of the time, is worthy of consideration and thought.
It's about that brutal, violent meeting of idealism and reality, and I suppose the brutal, violent meeting of childhood and adulthood is a good place to tell that story. I would personally have found it easier if it was set in a High School/College Academy not a Middle School/High School Academy, but, well... It's anime.
It kind of hard to talk about the rest of what it's about without gigantic spoilers. Though I suppose it's cryptic enough if I say it's maybe about Jesus, if the crucifixion was so traumatic, it turned her into Judas.
Whatever else it did, it gave me so many thoughts. I read a ton of stuff after I finished watching it. Like stuff about anime in general, about feminism in Japan and in anime, about Revolutionary Girl Utena specifically...
I think...if you have tried watching anime before and the format isn't your thing, then this won't be either. But if you have watched it before or if you haven't and want to some, give this a shot.
The last thing I'll say is that if you watch this, for the love of god, watch the subbed not the dubbed version. I am not usually picky about that kind of thing. I often watch the dubs even when I know they're sorta shoddy and just deal with the not-so-amazing voice actors because I'm lazy. I'm a terrible person and I mutilate art.
But in this case, please, please, please do not do that. I actually went back and rewatched the episodes I did watch dubbed when I realised what a terrible mistake I was making. The problem is that Anthy, a pivotal character, whose emotional arc completely depends on being able to tell whether she means what she's saying or she's faking it via her tone of voice, is voiced by an awful voice actress. I don't know if she's just plain bad or had weird direction or what, but she acts like a cheerful, vacant Stepford Wife the entire time. Like during explosively personal, painful scenes, she's like...Barney the Dinosauring, "I'm sorry! I caused you so much pain! Silly old me!" Argh.
Just...for your own sanity, use the sub.
Also, I have discovered that Welcome to Night Vale and Revolutionary Girl Utena make the most beautiful mashups. I am completely obsessed with the perfection of this tumblr. It honestly makes me feel like I understand RG:U better. Which...probably tells you something about its storytelling style.
Anyway.
It has been too long since I posted, and now this post is also too long. So I bid you all sweet dreams.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-17 12:30 pm (UTC)One thing though.
"One I found particularly fascinating was the fact that some of the Magical Girl series that are touted in the West as being strongly feminist are, in Japan, primarily aimed at adult men who fetishize the cuteness and even infantilisation of the main characters."
My understanding is there are some shows for men and some shows for teenage girls? And I THINK Utena is the latter? Along with like Marimite and Strawberry Panic and Rose of Versailles. But I watched one of the former by mistake once, I've forgotten the name, and the difference was quite marked. Like even the animation was different. (Boobs. In a gross way.) But IDK, I didn't do a lot of reading around this so I may have it wrong.
no subject
Date: 2014-03-17 11:02 pm (UTC)For reference I found the post that got me started on that train of wild and erratic interwebbery, and it is here. It's a Western someone's slideshow about feminism and anime and a Japanese someone's response. It's the response I found interesting.
But absolutely, I agree, I don't think Utena IS one of those shows. Though the commentor mentiones Madoka which I know I've seen generally well-received by people (though I have zero experience with it myself) as a show that she considers to be aimed primarily at older men. I think (and may be wrong) that it's not always just overt OMFG BOOBIES sexualisation (though I know that happens in shows that also play to the omgs-adorable! tropes), but like, also fetishisation of certain types of hypercuteness and helplessness?
Yeah, though, I wasn't trying to draw a direct parallel, so much as it was an interesting tangent that was illustrative of my curiosity regarding how my interpretation would stack against the original cultural context. I also guess I found the notion that the Magical Girl genre is responsible for both creating empowering narratives for women and creating a subgenre that is actively exploitative, interesting, complicated and confusing.
Without drawing a direct parallel (cus I don't think it'd be accurate or appropriate), it did in some ways remind me of my uncertainty surrounding Saito and Ikuhara and their respective agendas...
Massively fascinating show, though. Definitely worth a rewatch. I'm pretty sure it's the sort of thing I'll want to rewatch later, like in months or years, when I have an understanding of the story, but also distance, to see how it holds up.