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Here's to hoping Ikuhara doesn't get budget cut for a random 5 episodes in the middle of the show like he did with Penguindrum. I want to like this show.
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Jan 2, 2015 02:26
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 18:10 |
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The dub of Utena is great and super 90s, Rachel Lillis (Misty from Pokemon) as Utena is wonderful. Also, the sexuality isn't downplayed like at all, the biggest changes are more timing based, characters tend to say a lot when their faces aren't on screen and very little when they are to match the lip flap. There were plans to completely localize it under the title Ursula's Kiss but that never went through because Central Park wanted to ensure the ridiculous integrity of the ~original masterpiece~. The Japanese is obviously superior because lol 90s central park dubs, but I love watching it in English because of just how perfectly 90s it is. The performances by the end aren't terrible and actually sort of fit the mood pretty well. Crispin Freeman plays like 4 characters and talks to himself QUITE a bit. Utena's dub in Japanese is very ridiculous though, and is even talked about today. Not many people catch it because they don't speak Japanese but it is very purposefully overacted to make it seem like a Takarazuka stage play, which is especially apparent with the Shadow characters. It's part of the aesthetic that I think the English dub captures pretty well. There is literally 0% subtlety in either dub. The biggest difference between the two tracks is that the music is WAAAAAAAAAAAY louder in English, which makes some of the dialogue unclear. Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that the subtitles available on most rips of the show are just Dubtitles, so even if you watch in Japanese you won't know the difference unless you speak Japanese. laplace fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 16:23
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Robert Denby posted:I guess this thread is the best place to ask this question, but what demographic was Utena even made for? It's way too disturbing for kids or young teens, has a bunch of wacky cartoon shenanigans going on, and is metaphorical and needs to be read on more than just the main plot line. Here's a link to the rightsholder's website. It's amazing and 100% a real thing that was going to exist. Here's a writeup about it. Utena's demographic was targeting fans of Twin Peaks, which was a massive success in Japan. This is not a joke, Ikuhara talks about it on the commentary.
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Jan 4, 2015 16:38
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The roses are there as both an intentional visual symbol and an aesthetic choice to mirror screens used to mask actors on stage during complicated moments. If you ever have a question about "why is this here" in Utena, the answer is either "it means something really overt" or "it's to make it look more like a play"
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Jan 4, 2015 18:01
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Well, the subway imagery in Penguindrum is deliberate to tie the story to Night on the Galactic Railroad and the Sarin Gas attacks. The thing about Ikuhara motifs is that they're all really overt. Penguindrum was an adaptation of Night on the Galactic Railroad in everything except name.
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Jan 4, 2015 18:21
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Penguindrum has structural problems and a stretch of being extremely ugly but is somewhat charming in its attempts to be extremely overly strange. Sailor Moon goes from being a story about a magical moon princess to transgender warriors fighting off helldemons from space. So basically, just like Utena.
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Jan 5, 2015 15:17
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aers posted:Ikuhara had nothing to do with Stars though! I know, I'm just saying if you are interested in Sailor Moon, know that it goes very strange places. Edit: Holy poo poo that OP is grating and awful
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Jan 5, 2015 19:18
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Well, that was unfortunate.
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Jan 6, 2015 17:43
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It's neither cute, fun, or cool. It is also not psychological. It's mostly just dumb.
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Jan 7, 2015 00:04
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Just want to say as a gay person who has lived in Japan the Japanese attitude to homosexuality is pretty dire so the bullying comparison is pretty overt and apt, even though all of the characters are seemingly lesbian bears. This show mostly is just bad writing, though, so don't think too hard about it.
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Jan 8, 2015 14:13
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Some people regard it as a sequel set in the world Utena revolutionized, one last go before she can fully break the cycle, hence why Anthy seems to "know" stuff. It's not meant to be viewed on its own.
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Jan 9, 2015 14:09
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My biggest issue with this show so far and penguindrum to a large extent are just the fact that it requires so much extra-textual knowledge to grok that it doesn't really construct anything on its own. It might have a narrative intent but all it comes off as is Ikuhara screaming at the audience "LOOK AT ALL THIS STUFF THAT ISN'T IN MY SHOW!!!" which is like the definition of tell, not show. Something that I think Utena did well that sets it apart from other Ikuhara stuff is that even if you don't know it's all about takarazuka or stage plays it still constructs its motifs, symbols, and themes without the necessity of outside knowledge. Penguindrum and this don't. In order to understand them, you need to understand that Ikuhara is writing it to ~revitalize the yuri genre~ through a reimagining of a horrible series of bear attacks in Tokyo. In order to understand Penguindrum fully you need to know that its culturally referencing Night on the Galactic Railroad through a weird story about the aum shinrikyo's sarin gas attacks during a very specific period during the 90s. Without that knowledge, huge parts of the show and its functional elements sort of fall apart. Essentially what I'm saying is that analysis is pretty good but it doesn't solve the narrative problem that about 90% of the reading is outside what the text is presenting.
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Jan 10, 2015 23:35
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I know these things, I've gone to school in Japan and read the stories and learned about the gas attacks. It's still an issue though, because it makes the show itself not a complete product on its own. I don't think this show is really worth analyzing at all and it is early, but my point was more "This show might not stand the test of time like his other work" because of how much specific information it requires and honestly how even its target audience is slowly being distanced from it.
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Jan 10, 2015 23:57
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Here's an anime blog explaining the origin of most of the story and its references/metaphors in a much more in-depth way than I have effort to do. The big thing is just that the characterization and a lot of the reasons why characters do things or why things are represented with certain symbols are direct callbacks to Galactic Railroad, and it takes a lot of themes and loaded symbols wholesale from the story. It's not that you can't understand the story or appreciate it to some extent, its just that a lot of the stuff in the show relies on its really overt narrative mirroring in order to function on a deeper level. Stuff like the importance of Scorpions and fire, and the "meaning" of Shoma's disappearence at the end of the show. While it isn't necessarily 100% required for grasping what the show is doing, the show doesn't exist in a vacuum and it doesn't really do much to construct its own symbols. My point is mostly that Ikuhara has fallen into a habit of voluntarily sacrificing the ~narrative integrity~ of his shows for the sake of making sort of overt, unnecessary references to other things when he could just... construct poo poo on his own perfectly fine, as evidenced by Utena. Edit: There's other things that make Penguindrum sort of a love letter to Japanese literature, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing -- some of the literary references don't really get in the way of its narrative in the same way that NOTGR's do, but a lot of them do create issues where there is a huge amount of narrative strain on making highbrow references rather than actually assembling a story. laplace fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 00:09
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I'm just pretty sure that people who don't know that Ikuhara is trying to "Revitalize the yuri genre" will just read this show as weird lesbian furry rape. Which to be fair, isn't incorrect.
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Jan 11, 2015 02:32
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Paper Triangle posted:It's been awhile since I gave up on being an English Lit major but isn't this like the definition of "the discourse" or "intertextuality" or something that all my professors said was A Good Thing? From an academic perspective intertextuality is only good if something actively engages in a discourse or the things its referencing help strengthen the structure that is already there. When things reference other narratives (especially for very specific cultural references) in a way that doesn't necessarily strengthen what is already there or only function in arbitrary ways its still seen as unnecessary and essentially only weakens the greater work. In Penguindrum's case, the references really only serve to justify some plot elements rather than to say anything, so it's a little weak. The classic example of a text that is intertextual and works is James Joyce's Ulysses, in that it functions as a novel on its own and constructs its own symbols, but still is related to The Odyssey -- The thing that makes this good is that it makes a point of acknowledging this and making this reference important. Intertextuality is great when it's saying something, essentially, but when things are intertextual either just for the sake of being seen as high-brow or just to borrow symbols and themes without having to construct them on their own, it's considered poor writing. Essentially, it's just bad to use Intertextuality and discourse as a means of shorthand to get out of actually writing a narrative. I'm not really saying this show is that far down the rabbit hole yet, but I think that Ikuhara has veered dangerously close to that in the past. I like him when he's being creative on his own and that's where his strengths are. Edit: To get even worse academia, in pomo writing (which Ikuhara tends to ascribe to/fall under) outside texts technically don't exist and things are referenced in their own contexts because their author is "dead". I don't necessarily ascribe to this but take that how you will. This was way too much of an effortpost for what essentially was just me explaining that I don't want Ikuhara to be lazy. laplace fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 02:54
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One bear could kill 10,000 people easy.
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Jan 11, 2015 23:57
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Once again, that writeup would be nice if it weren't for the fact that he goes AH YES BIRDS, LOADED SYMBOL OF FREEDOM without the show actually constructing that theme at all whatsoever. So yeah, kinda twisty.
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Jan 14, 2015 20:59
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