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Hi friends I would like to watch Utena with you all, my first time. I like the balance of serious things together with the kawaii and funny moments. I like that Utena isn't completely serious all the time and has a girlish and childish side, considering they are in junior high. So for me the sub and original VA does a good job. Chu Chu is getting a lot of screen time and Anthy really drives that home that it's her good friend, so I predict it will turn out to be an important character to the plot. The Mukoshiroku song was great the first time, but when it happened again exactly the same way the second time it sold the show for me. My dumb kid self was too insecure and bounced seeing all the flowers imagery but now I'm digging it. The setting is well done and exciting, even Saionji was irredeemable but the tidbits in episode 3 make me think he might have some partial justification for his anger toward Anthy? We'll see
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Aug 30, 2023 07:41
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:29 |
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I can't wait to finish this show and join the allegory club
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Sep 1, 2023 06:33
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Episode 6 rocks. I'd been expecting the show to be all drama like eps 4-5 but I like the gags more. I'm assuming the allegory is geopolitics and Anthy is probably India because of how she looks, Touga probably America by how he acts, Nanami is England getting attacked by bulls and kangaroos, Utena is probably the concept of revolution Only spoilering that because I might not have considered that interpretation at all yet, if it weren't for prior watchers in-the-know hinting at it. I couldn't place all the references in Miki's story, and his twin sister in eps 4-5 but if I knew more about world history then maybe I would. It did help me in episode 6 especially the last small bit where Tsuwabuki saying stuff about quitting trying to be her big brother and getting along as their little brother instead, and all three suddenly one happy family. If I watched it blind I would have thought "okay I guess they were going for so random ha ha?" but instead I thought "yeah, that's something that would totally happen" Not looking for anyone to confirm or deny. I see the "Understanding Utena" recommended video on YouTube and will look at it after the show's over
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Sep 5, 2023 21:58
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Well if y'all insist, how else can I respond but Oh yes, Baby. It just so happens I was playing a certain video game and it dawned on me who Miki and his sister really are. I think. I was playing a musou game, and it's an early level so they were emphasizing that the territory is split 50-50, as is typical for musou games. The two lords of the respective territories were having a heated debate. Somehow that clicked for me "oh hey Miki and his twin sister. They must be a country split 50-50." So naturally I thought of North and South Korea. They're near India and one side has makeout sessions with America. It all fits! Except it doesn't all fit. I don't think their relations with all the (I'm assuming) European countries make sense. Then I remembered Miki's ongoing thing, the stopwatch. Punctuality. Oh duh, he's Germany  So now I'm predicting that Miki's part in the story will be way bigger in the future. And given that, I don't think Anthy is who I originally thought either. Given that they're all fighting over her and an all powerful sword comes out of her bosom, I have my suspicions. Really not clear on Utena and Chu Chu's real identities though. Why would Chu Chu stick around Anthy like that? Hmm...
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Sep 6, 2023 05:01
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Ep 7 was interesting, Jury has a lot of anger and turmoil. I like how the fight brought out Utena's weak side and how she's trying to live up to this memory of the Prince, which apparently means a lack of resolve. Also huge, huge burden off my mind knowing which mammal order Chu Chu belongs to.
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Sep 11, 2023 20:02
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Ep8 noticing a bit of slippage in art quality in some spots They must have completely redone those scenes in the remaster right?
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Sep 12, 2023 23:24
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Guys I found it The allegory is us Saionji is Lowtax, Touga is Jeffrey of YOSPOS. Utena is ADTRW mods. Anthy is the concept of true love. Chu Chu is you and me, the posters Mind blown. I need a sandwich
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Sep 19, 2023 01:31
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They packed so much into eps 11-12  Great BGM leading up to and during the Touga rematch. Character development! My reactions mostly mirror what's already been said- Nanami: On the one hand cat killer  But on the other her duelist outfit is badass  Anthy: Kiiiinda an rear end in a top hat now, didn't like what we saw of her. Do I understand Saionji now? Touga: All according to plan until he underestimated how bad she wanted Anthy I guess? I wonder if Anthy's crying made the sword lose its power Wakaba-Utena is just 
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Sep 19, 2023 11:54
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Lol the show suddenly became a grimdark edgefest, it really bristles my Choo Choos (in the good sense of the word)
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Sep 27, 2023 18:46
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ep16: what the gently caress is this ep17: Agreed that the fights are ending way too fast, I thought they'd be the focus but feels like something bigger brewing
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Oct 5, 2023 20:42
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EP19 THAT TWIIIIIIST wakaba noo
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Oct 10, 2023 20:08
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If you pay attention to the opening you already know the third act is about flying horses and jousting
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Oct 14, 2023 18:57
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ep23 they skipped the mokushiroku song gently caress this show
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Oct 16, 2023 23:48
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I'm thinking Mikage's bits are about reproduction. His solution to finding eternity is reproduction. He wants to reproduce badly but can't with Tokiko so needs to find alternatives. The fingers pointing at things include: the cats outside the window increasing from 1 to 3, the tea replaced with Tokiko's lipstick, the gay researchers holding hands, the framed butterfly turning into a leaf and then a chrysalis, and finally the scene with Tokiko and Mamiya in the rose greenhouse. His first choice is sexual reproduction (cats, tea + lipstick) so he tries giving Tokiko tea in exchange for sex. She turns him down so he looks toward other ideas. The gay researchers holding hands represent some kind of asexual reproduction but it's kind of unclear. The fact it flashes on screen so fast means he probably disregarded this idea? Maybe since they're researchers it's like reproduction through ideas, aka memes from the Selfish Gene by R Dawkins. But maybe this isn't "big" enough for Mikage's ambition. So it seems he's settled on the self reproduction kind of similar to roses, and similar to a butterfly I guess? and he shares some vision with Mamiya, and they both believe they can keep the roses blooming again and again by destroying something first. Ep22 21:34 "That for a plant to bear fruit, its flowers have to die." He's creating a self perpetuating machine where the roses will grow, and then be destroyed to give way to ??? which in turn will grow roses and start anew. The shadow puppet robot is like an alternate universe version of him, without the ambition, where he could have been happy just making friends with the monkeys around him and enjoying the moment.
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Oct 17, 2023 05:27
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I figured Nanami's egg was referencing the student council's refrain about being chicks breaking out of a shell and the world is the egg. So she kind of accidentally made her own world-within-a-world insulated from all the other problems going on. Also these kids are good drivers  Major Operation posted:This one is Olympia by Edouard Manet Neat I am learning
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Oct 29, 2023 09:58
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I appreciated page 8 for its long effort posts about Utena, I resisted posting page 9 for a day to keep em there longer  but someone had to do it
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Oct 29, 2023 18:52
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Nice summaries of 28-29 goons, I think this stuff is going over my head during my watch because I got caught up in my original theory of what the show is a metaphor of, and with these new themes they're introducing, my theory now feels wildly off base. ...or does it?... Anyway those Ruka episodes were brutal. I'm glad he turned out to have a heart of gold and was helping Juri by sexing up everyone at school, it was all for her sake
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Oct 30, 2023 20:33
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The Akio's POV part makes me think they're saying Akio is in all of us. Our dads had to give our moms their Ohtori Akio at some point to give birth to us. And then that passes down to some degree to the offspring. Even though the Akio doesn't necessarily show all the time, unless you're Touga, he's still waiting to rear his head at the opportune moment. (I guess that implies Akio is mostly in males and not females by birth, but I'd be surprised if this 1997 show dug into that question too deeply.)
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Nov 12, 2023 14:00
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Oh unless that's the entire point of the show When Utena decided to be a "prince" and unknowingly awakened the Akio in herself. So like maybe all those scenes of Akio and Anthy sex it's actually Utena being Akio? Probably not though?
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Nov 12, 2023 14:13
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I wouldn't go so far as "all sex is rape" but more alluding to what other commenters said about Akio being a kind of Lucifer figure which can represent a host of different things, foremost being selfishness at the expense of others So when they push sex onto, and/or coerce sex from others for selfish reasons or as a means to an end, like gaining power or status, that's when they're Akio. And that's easy to have in the setting they're in, where there are limited ways to cement their influence over peers (if that's their goal), and Akio's way has proven to be extremely effective in furthering that goal for some characters Said characters aren't always Akio and I think it's easy to point at the Akio appearances and say "this character is an evil villain 100% if they were ever Akio even once" but I don't really subscribe to that, I lean toward the take that he's in all of us, maybe dormant most of the time yes, but there still, and something individuals have varying degrees of self awareness toward. And some may even embrace that side despite knowing all about it which yeah could help paint that individual as a villain I apologize for the "dads and moms" off the cuff comment which I wrote way past midnight, but at the same time I still see what I was getting at, that procreation is inherently selfish (touched on by this show too). Even if both parties want it, well, we don't know how that'd be depicted in this show (yet?), so I just assumed there's a little bit of Akio showing up even then
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Nov 12, 2023 22:02
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I'm going to regret smashing this can of worms open even wider, but I gave some more thought to the dads and moms scenario. Sorry to those whom this rubs the wrong way, but I actually think Akio fits here better than I thought (This is going far off the rails and I apologize for that, but I feel the need to point it out, and salvage some thinking points from my earlier bad comment) Right now we're laser focused on the sex aspect, but if we stepped back and looked at the procreation part as a whole, it's really easy now IMO to see how Akio fits into the picture Let's compare the dad's and mom's mental calculus: Dad: - Do I want the sex? Yes/No - Do I want a child? Yes/No Mom: - Do I want the sex? Yes/No - Do I want a child? Yes/No - Do I want to strap a boulder to my body for many months? Yes/No - Do I want to experience the excruciating pain of childbirth? Yes/No - Do I want to risk irreversible and painful changes to my most sensitive physiology? Yes/No - Do I want to lose a year of my professional and social life? Yes/No Back to Dad: - Is it easy to disregard Mom's sacrifices and fail to pull my own weight as a companion alongside her? Yes/No So IMO that temptation is always going to be there. The unfairness is kind of baked into the process by nature or God or what have you, and I'm obviously not suggesting every father will run out, or desires to, but the fact that the option exists for him and not her means that Akio is lurking
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Nov 12, 2023 23:08
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So I guess I have a fluid and nonspecific interpretation of Akio (convenient for goalpost moving and shoehorning him into my arguments ) but I'm not expressing it well. IMO he doesn't represent one single thing like "rape" nor specifically "desire to reproduce at the expense of another". To me he's broadly an embodiment of general temptation/coercion and using that to gain influence over others, along the lines of what Big Leg said. Keep in mind he's been revealed as End of the World at this point, and has had at least an indirect influence on every single character in the show. So I don't think it's limited by gender. I think it's very possible for even someone as noble as Utena to have some Akio in the depths of her psyche. I absolutely do have Mikage in mind with a lot of where these thoughts are coming from, as I interpreted his arc as relating to reproduction specifically. Reproduction as an ultimate goal for many humans is how I took it, and that is why sex in particular has an outsize power when wielded as such, as people and society are programmed around sex to some degree. That's why Akio manifests as this sex object so often, but I don't think he always has to be, it's just a reflection of how humans are
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Nov 13, 2023 01:33
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(By now most of you are sick of reading my posts but I'm fascinated by this show and gonna  - hopefully it's entertaining to someone)After ep34 I really have no clue what's going on. Week after week my theories are being shattered and I don't know up from down anymore Beginning of ep34 I resigned myself to the sex and penis theory. I'd been resisting it, but in ep34 it's so in your face, the 10 seconds of penis tower at the beginning and then the reveal of the Witch's Tower threatening to steal the students away, that floating vagina sucking up those school uniformed sperm But within the same episode I no longer even think that's a clean metaphor. It explains why they're dueling each other sure, but doesn't explain why the sperm seduce each other, make friends and everything else. Why the Rose Bride and Prince are hanging out in the school instead of in the Witch's Tower I'm getting the feeling it's supposed to be an "everything" show where every theory can find an episode that supports it and another episode that contradicts it Like all the poo poo we talked about re: Akio past couple days? Ep34 he's so docile and not really doing anything, in fact seemingly getting along pretty well with Utena, and turns out he is the prince after all so like  And all along we'd been assuming he had control over Anthy, but turns out it might be the other way around?? Or some codependency, cuts both ways?? Any first time watchers have a better grasp on things, or are you all as lost as me? Everyone saying ep34 is mindblowing: there is certainly a lot of infodump happening here and I'm overwhelmed. Any hint as to what mindblowing parts I might want to pay extra attention to?
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Nov 13, 2023 23:29
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I'll probably come up with a convoluted theory and interpretation and piss some people off at some point, but now is not that time. Instead I'll just say: what a beautiful ending
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Nov 26, 2023 22:39
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| # ¿ May 22, 2024 11:29 |
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Thanks fam same to you
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Nov 26, 2023 22:48
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