Revolutionary Girl Utena leaves an impression that is simultaneously gutting and hopeful. Whether the ending is tragic or redemptive is, in some ways, left to the audience. Now, a portion of that audience has banded together to contribute art and writing to Absolute Destiny Post-Apocalypse: An Utena Future Zine. Guess whose poetry closes out… Continue reading New Poem in Absolute Destiny Post-Apocalypse: An Utena Future Zine
Tag: revolutionary girl utena
Personal Apocalypse in Revolutionary Girl Utena
Recently, I sat with my pastors and a few other congregants after church as we had one of many ongoing discussions about the #MeToo movement. We based our discussion on an article by Nadia Bolz-Weber called “We’re in the midst of an apocalypse. And that’s a good thing” published in The Washington Post. If you’re… Continue reading Personal Apocalypse in Revolutionary Girl Utena
Transcendence and Subtlety in Queer Ships
Queer erasure and censorship in media isn’t a new problem. Although things have certainly changed in recent years, overt representation of queer women in cartoons (and anime to a lesser extent) is still pretty sparse. Where it does occur, it’s sometimes embedded in some type of spiritual or transcendent narrative in which the transcendence of… Continue reading Transcendence and Subtlety in Queer Ships
Loving Anthy and Loving the Other
In my last post about Revolutionary Girl Utena, I compared Utena to Jesus Christ on the basis of her being an unexpected revolutionary who does, in a sense, break the system she challenges, but not in the way that the other characters (or the audience) expects. After reflecting on the series a bit more, I… Continue reading Loving Anthy and Loving the Other
Someday, Together: Revolutionary Girl Utena’s Already/Not Yet
I don’t know what it is with me and all these eschatological/shifting eras themes I keep running into, but they come at me harder than Nanami at Touga. Revolutionary Girl Utena is a classic anime series for a reason–actually many reasons because it’s so layered in symbolism that it swings the door wide open for… Continue reading Someday, Together: Revolutionary Girl Utena’s Already/Not Yet