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 i've never seen utena and i want to become a better person
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Aug 22, 2023 16:03
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:44 |
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first timer, i know nothing about utena besides a few random images picked up through internet anime nerd osmosis. i watched revue starlight earlier this year (or late last year i don't remember) so i'm excited to see how much it inherited visually and narratively from utena. my main takeaway from the first three episodes is that i'm going to adore the visual elements of this show. weird theatrical artifice owns, and i guess utena is going to be coated in weird theatrical artifice. i love the scrollwork + spinning rose overlay, the shadow vaudeville acts, the fairy tale sketchy pastel backgrounds, the greek chorus insert songs during the duels, the overly staged scenes with the student council. the backgrounds are gorgeous. lets look at some:   i kind of expected these first two things, but i did not expect the amount of character comedy and s tier anime faces. definitely prefer them over wacky animal sidekicks in terms of comedy trappings, but either way they're both a fun contrast with the synth and bell chime apocalypse duels. 
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Aug 28, 2023 17:50
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narratively, the show establishes the only biographical information i needed to know 5 minutes into the first episode: utena is a hooper.
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Aug 28, 2023 17:54
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Julias posted:I like Wakaba, she's just a normal girl. it's wild how normal she is. i want to find out more about her and the student council member with the stop watch
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Sep 1, 2023 01:11
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Ohtori Akio posted:hes also very normal sick. normies ftw
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Sep 1, 2023 01:16
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Ohtori Akio posted:You really start to understand what this show is about when episode 5 rolls around and Miki walks in on Touga and Kozue all over his piano then Touga calls him a pussy with his shirt open. lol. the part where miki reflects on tougas words and his mindscape is touga getting progressively more unclothed/in more seductive positions is so good. good to hear that one of my favorite scenes from the first three episodes, touga saying 'Baby' like a creepy pervert while peering through ornate binoculars, is actually an important recurring theme for utena. 
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Sep 4, 2023 10:16
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my takeaway from the this set of episodes is that utena is way funnier than i expected it to be. https://i.imgur.com/FN8SwTx.mp4
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Sep 4, 2023 10:45
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as for the two student council members that get a bunch of screen time, all of the nanami scenes in this block are just ridiculous and i love her even if she's a piece of poo poo. hopefully she gets to make some more appearances before accidentally getting killed by chu chu or some other animal menace. miki really is a normie, but he gets a lot of melodrama and fun cinematic tics like the stopwatch and the piano motif that plays when he's embarrassed, so he's also cool in my book.
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Sep 4, 2023 11:04
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i've been watching witch from mercury and i feel like i should pause it until i finish utena. or maybe i should watch them in parallel and compare chu chu character arcs
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Sep 8, 2023 19:30
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Ohtori Akio posted:parallel imo will do. i imagine they drift apart thematically pretty quick but it's definitely wild how similar the setups are.
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Sep 8, 2023 19:53
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message to all the nanami haters out there
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Sep 11, 2023 23:52
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the mirrored window shots with juri and utena at the start of episode 7 are really cool. honestly the whole episode has some of my favorite staging in the show up to this point; i like how the majority of the episode is mostly static shots of juri standing around while people talk over her punctuated by brief outbursts of rage. the visual metaphor team also brought their a game.  
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Sep 12, 2023 00:30
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Ohtori Akio posted:the student council scenes are always really funny imo. thats what its like when overly serious teens sit and plot together for an hour a day yeah they rule. i'm really torn if this one where touga throws a million knives at miki is more or less funny than the one where they play uno
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Sep 12, 2023 00:34
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i thought it was interesting that saionji got a bunch of screen time again in the nanami episode, but after episode 9 it makes way more sense. they both have the same tragic fixation with touga that gives them incredible drive but ultimately leaves them completely pitiful.
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Sep 12, 2023 00:42
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sorry for picking on saionji two weeks in a row but the rest of the cast scooby doo gang running away from him after utena calls him a perverted idiot is too funny https://i.imgur.com/f9uop2m.mp4
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Sep 12, 2023 00:48
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i believe in the saionji redemption arc
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Sep 12, 2023 00:51
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Ohtori Akio posted:I love Nanami so so much and her being a hosed up little freak who's done serious bad things makes that more true, for me. i mentioned it before, but i really like the contrast between nanami and saionji. nanami owns because she gets to participate in all the wacky stuff while being awful and saionji owns because he's like forbidden from doing wacky stuff while being awful which is somehow even funnier. there's definitely a huge contrast between utena's conception of a prince (a self actualized person who is true to herself/to borrow from wakaba, a normie) and all the non-miki members of the student council (being a giant dickhead), so i'm really interested to see how these two ideologies continue to push against each other when our mysterious purple haired potential prince finally makes an appearance in the real world.
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Sep 20, 2023 06:59
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chrome line posted:I love Nanami because she's a hosed up weirdo, I love Wakaba because she's normal. this x100 chrome line posted:This almost feels like an ending to the show, do people have any thoughts on where the show could go from here or what they'd think of it if episode 12 was the end? we sort of have our happy ending at the end of episode 12, but the apocalyptic duel music continuing to play over anthy and utena's reunion is such a tonal shift compared with the same scene in episode 1 that it makes me feel uncomfortable more than anything else.
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Sep 20, 2023 07:07
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Julias posted:For once, I actually caught up on time! Just a few general thoughts: without doing any actual research, it looks like chu chu's eating habits have a very strong correlation with anthy's happiness (see the picnic in 11/chu chu's spread at the end of 12 vs chu chu barely nibbling a singular cracker in the student council meetings). it's very hard to get a gauge on anthy's real feelings up to this point so maybe chu chu kind of works as an approximation.
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Sep 20, 2023 07:14
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Ohtori Akio posted:boke lol but also true
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Sep 20, 2023 07:16
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i resisted the urge to gif saionji getting owned while wearing all denim (lol), instead have some happier moments: https://i.imgur.com/fjf9WYw.mp4 https://i.imgur.com/hjMi7YD.mp4
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Sep 20, 2023 07:23
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yeah i should have been more specific with my lol. saionji's fit is ridiculous but owns hard. touga throwing saionji's precious treasure into an incinerator .1 seconds after he leaves is the real funny.
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Sep 20, 2023 07:38
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The General posted:You're right because the network hosed around with the Clerks cartoon, and aired the clipshow as the first episode instead of the second. So it wasn't even clipping things that had happened yet. clip shows are cool when they tell us we should be trying to reframe what we've seen in a new context, and that's absolutely what episode 13 does. heck you could argue that's largely what the next two episodes are doing as well through the updated shadow plays, new musical cues, and repurposed visual metaphors. speaking of repurposed visual metaphors, my absolute favorite scene from this week is this one. it's so unsettling to see the fairy tale rose twisted into an act of violence. 
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Sep 27, 2023 02:34
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chrome line posted:I love Anthy just drinking all the milkshakes, it's so fun. lol i didn't notice this the first time. that owns chrome line posted:Not in a bad way though, the school just never feels real and this only amplifies that in some ways the way everything feels so unreal gives me major twin peaks vibes and it's one of my favorite aspects of the show so far (although for utena i think it's a consequence of all the staging + theatrical elements vs the more dreamlike nature of twin peaks).
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Sep 27, 2023 02:35
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Ohtori Akio posted:the ending sequence is nasty lol. i watched with sub and dub and the sub is definitely better for a lot of these big lines. these words will haunt me for eternity 
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Sep 27, 2023 02:36
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couple random thoughts: 1. the confessionals own!!! 2. the crematorium underworld, the (somehow scarier) planetarium in the heavens, and the student council playing pretend in between them should be a fun dynamic going forward. 3. the clipshow reframes the first 7 duels as creepy rites of passage for utena, so i'm very interested to see how these new duels end up fitting into the greater context of the show. from what i can tell from the first two: they are focused on broken relationships instead of (hopeless) goals. utena barely cares about them, maybe because she is preoccupied with pondering her confusing relationship with anthy by moonlight. 4. https://i.imgur.com/sSgqD92.mp4
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Sep 27, 2023 02:58
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Sleng Teng posted:Let's not forget the most important part of this latest batch of episodes: new version of absolute destiny apocalypse (warning: controversial opinion ahead) i wanted them to switch to this full time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNK9wP35gZg
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Sep 27, 2023 19:17
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episode 16 (Operation: Oh! Anthy Himemiya is a total weirdo who keeps a cow in her backyard!) stands out to me because conceptually it's pretty similar to the episodes around it, except nanami's obsession/delusion is a personal issue and not based on a relationship. as a first time watcher i don't really know if there's a thematic or narrative reason for the placement outside of the perfectly valid 'nanami + funny = good episode' logic, but it will be cool to look back on when i have more context.
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Oct 3, 2023 08:24
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the use of shadows and negative space in this arc so far owns a lot.  
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Oct 3, 2023 08:28
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Ohtori Akio posted:Nanami is epic bitch............ this. respect the cowbell nerds https://i.imgur.com/B2pK3W2.mp4
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Oct 3, 2023 08:33
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i think it's neat that utena is more invested in talking with the shadow play troupe about the legal age to donate blood than she is with the duels currently. i'm sure it's way healthier that she now confronts her insecurities by having personal conversations with this guy:
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Oct 5, 2023 21:53
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Ohtori Akio posted:kind of a toss up who's the worse therapist between him and mikage i'm tired of these perverts. they just hide in the darkness instead of proving their point by slapping people or having sex with miki's sister
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Oct 5, 2023 22:01
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Sleng Teng posted:I demand more elevator sequences, a longer staircase walk w/extended version of absolute destiny apocalypse, and 3x more student council gags seconded. also a multiple act shadow play
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Oct 5, 2023 22:51
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the 2 wakaba episodes are my favorite so far; shoutout to whoever decided to make them so hot and red and sweaty and uncomfortable. there's a lot of really cool editing decisions that stood out to me (the jump cut from wakaba locking the door to the title card, the music cutting out during wakaba and onion knight's meeting, the bird calls slowing down when saionji talks about anthy) and it's insane how all of them get reused in the heartbreaking final scene. i think everyone else summed up how cool these episodes are so i'm just gonna fill this message with aesthetically nice pictures of the color red.  
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Oct 12, 2023 01:24
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i actually really liked 21 a lot. my sympathy for keiko is endless after the way she is treated by the main cast. even ignoring nanami, anthy falls asleep when they meet during the plot/lore dump, touga doesn't say a single word to her the entire episode, and utena can't even remember her name. maybe they don't appreciate your sick rollerblade + party dress combo, but i do. it feels like spending an episode on a formerly nameless background character is the final destination on the royalty ---> normie spectrum we've been moving through this arc, so i'm guessing we might be in for a bit of a formula shakeup next episode. just a thought on general arc themes now that we've made more headway through this one: the first 12 episodes are about what it means to be a 'prince'. this arc comes from the other side and examines what it means to have a relationship with a 'prince' (maybe more specifically: can a relationship with a 'prince' actually be healthy?)
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Oct 12, 2023 01:29
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Ohtori Akio posted:the image of saionji almost being normal is so wild. ego gone, shacked up with a nice girl, acting domestic? obviously it can't last. but it's a beautiful little temporary comfort. that scene rules. like every 10 seconds it shifts wildly in tone between a side of saionji we've never seen before (wacky, peaceful, gracious, stuff you mentioned) and it's all wrapped up in this vague threat that somehow wakaba is also keeping him hostage.
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Oct 12, 2023 01:31
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Ohtori Akio posted:keikos a queen. and youre right about the change in approach i think that's a big reason this arc is so much less utena-centric. she just isn't as important to what it's saying! it's a really neat approach. utena has the unique distinction in the main cast (at least currently) of playing both prince and follower, so it's not even weird that she'd just be sitting on the sideline internalizing all these conflicts Ohtori Akio posted:subtextual insecurity is so badass this
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Oct 12, 2023 01:47
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apologies for the 1000th post, but it is necessary for miki and nanami's response to juri's 'it's a shame you losers can't change who you love' speech to be a part of this thread
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Oct 12, 2023 01:51
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chrome line posted:I definitely agree that the thematic focus has shifted. The first arc is about Utena and all the members of the student council and what they wanted, and this is about the different relationships people have with them, and how what the princes want can hurt those around them. I guess if you want to say the first arc is about being a prince, this one is about being a princess. Or maybe about aspiring to be those things yeah that's a better way to phrase it! i'm interested to see if the third act will be some kind of synthesis of the two or something else entirely.
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Oct 13, 2023 19:06
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:44 |
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keiko is going to be pretty high on my duelist fit tier list if nothing changes before the end of the show.
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Oct 13, 2023 19:11
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