Director: Kunihiko Ikuhara
Screenplay: Yōji Enokido
Based on the manga by Chiho Saito
and the Be-Papas
Voice Cast: Tomoko Kawakami as
Utena Tenjou; Yuriko Fuchizaki as Anthy Himemiya; Aya Hisakawa as Miki Kaoru;
Kotono Mitsuishi as Jury Arisugawa; Kumiko Nishihara as Shiori Takatsuki;
Mitsuhiro Oikawa as Akio Ohtori; Takehito Koyasu as Touga Kiryuu; Takeshi Kusao
as Kyoichi Saionji; Yuka Imai as Wakaba Shinohara
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
Even into the 2010s, the United
Kingdom never got Kunihiko Ikuhara's
seminal 1997 series Revolutionary Girl
Utena as a release. MVM
nonetheless released the 1999 tie-in film as Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie. This film is a thirty nine
episode story condensed into less than ninety minutes, which does prove an
obvious issue for a first form of this franchise to see. I however am
externally grateful to them for this curious decision as I've now seen Adolescence of Utena, which eventually
doesn't become something under the series' shadow but something greater. The
result in just ninety minutes is a surreal one-off that ties Ikuhara's work, a franchise with a huge
significance for LGBT anime and manga fans, LGBT themes being discussed in a
major project in the series, and is tied to even Japanese avant-garde art and
the films of Shūji Terayama in some
of Ikuhara's creative choices.
Ikuhara, alongside likely
directing episodes of Teenage Mutant
Hero Turtles, cut his teeth in the anime industry through the Sailor Moon franchise, which is notable
as it deviated from the original Naoko
Takeuchi manga with the nineties anime franchise its own huge cultural
beast. Reolutionary Girl Utena was
his seismic powerhouse, let loose and still having a profound effect today, to
the point most people probably don't realise it's based on a 1996 manga created
as part of a circle involving him called the Be-Papas.
Trying to assess a full plot is
going to be an issue as this is a retelling of a series, but sticking to the
film's form alone, it can be boiled down to this: in a school existing out of
time, an ever shifting entity like a living M.C.
Escher painting, sword duels between students are taking place with the
prize for the winner being the "Rose Bride" Anthy, who is explicitly
for this film a figure who will be with the victor even in bed. The titular
Utena, a new female student, discovers about these duels and intervenes out of
indignation and by pure accident, having accidentally found a ring important to
her is a symbol of dualists, winning a duel when provoked and thus tying
herself and Anthy together.
You cannot talk about any Utena, even just the film, without
considering just how significant it was for LGBT fans as, ironically alongside Sailor Moon which had a lesbian couple
awkwardly dubbed as cousins in the American export, this is a love story about
two young women. Utena in this film is hostile and pining for a male friend,
but the romance between her and Anthy grows over the course of the film. It's
explicit in the film at the beginning what is intended in how Utena is
introduced in the first scene, very short pink hair and dressed in boy's
clothes, before their slowly growing romance blossoms and becomes the crux of
the narrative. A lot of people to this day speak of how much of a watershed
moment this franchise was, such as Erica
Friedman, a proud gay former publisher of yuri (girl's love) manga, a
writer on the subject, and who got to present Adolescence of Utena at the Frameline Film Festival in San
Francisco, the British LGBTQ Film Festival and the Tampa LGBTQ Film Festival
back in the early 2000s1.
Coupled with this, and still felt
profoundly even in this abridged version of the series, is the delusions and heteronormative
trap of fairy tales. The "prince" who rescues the princess as in old Disney films aren't good, either an
illusion or an unhealthy concept, the back-story
of Anthy with her brother having a dark, incestuous aspect as Ikuhara never pulls his punches in
dealing with adult subjects in bright colours, especially as this back-story is
elaborated on further in the television series. The only good prince is Utena
herself, who decided to become one even if she eventually reveals full length
feminine hair in contrast to her masculine dress. Set in an ever changing,
shifting fantasy school Utena whilst
beautiful to look at constantly reveals the artifice throughout, a place that
is an illusion that eventually crumbles in shadows and horrors.
Significant to this is how
gorgeous this production is. Ikuhara
is someone I call "pop surrealism" because for me, the
"pop" is his use of bright colours, very clear symbolic motifs (roses
here) and the energy of his work that can juggle comedy to drama, such as the
abrupt cameo of a character Nanami but only in a gag segment as a cow stood
against very serious subject matter. This is the only theatrical film Ikuhara has made - a production even
co-produced with Sega, which is
likely explained with them collaborating on a 1998 Utena Sega Saturn game - and it's stunning to witness in the
quality and the early use of computer animation which thankfully gels.
Here it's notable how much Ikuhara was influenced by Japanese
avant-garde art. Probably one of the trademarks of this tale, found here, are
the silhouette girls, schoolgirls entirely as black shadows (without any
features) in school uniforms, who act as a Greek chorus, even acquiring a salacious
videotape involving Anthy and her brother. One of the most striking sequences,
when the leads fully connect, is literally staged on a pool supported on top of
a tower full of roses. The other pronounced choice is J. A. Seazer, an experimental composer whose trademark is combining
theatre and rock music who Ikuhara
explicitly hired for the television series to compose songs for. With his
trademark chorus singing to acid rock guitars, Seazer's only other anime contribution was to the notorious independently
made Midori (1992). Beyond this,
he's famous for his work in live action cinema with Shūji Terayama, the experimental filmmaker who is tragically under
seen and whose work clearly inspired Ikuhara
in hindsight for myself, productions like Pastoral:
To Die in the Country (1974) very much psychodramatic and surreal films
with bold visuals and choice of colour. The Seazer
music here, especially in the few duels seen, is exceptional as is the score by
composer Shinkichi Mitsumune.
Also of note is screenwriter Yōji Enokido, who deserves a lion's
share of the praise as, as I look into his career, whilst it is smaller than
other's he's made a career of idiosyncratic work. Penning the story for FLCL (2000) in particular on his resume
immediately suggests someone very comfortable with surreal and unconventional
storytelling, and considering he also penned the TV series, it's for the better
the person who worked on the TV series tried to compact this into a smaller and
more subjective piece.
Does the film actually work
though, especially as I have never seen the series? If we were talking about
just the first three-quarters, it's a gorgeous piece to watch, but a curiosity
only from Ikuhara. Things change
considerably in the final act, starting for me from a sequence in an elevator
involving water, which brings on from there and onwards a level of great
emotional relevance to the characters barely touched upon that cannot help but
over take me. Then the divisive final sequence happens, and Adolescence of Utena becomes
incredible. I cannot spoilt it, because just describing the scenes in a
sentence isn't the same as watching the finale as I have learnt thinking of
this film over the years, that a character is turned into a car and the final
act is a car chase to escape into the real world.
It is one of the most surreal
things I have witnessed, where even the mech animators hired were baffled infamously
why they were hired for a Revolutionary
Girl Utena film themselves. The result also happens to be one of the best
things to have been done in theatrical anime, an exceptional short in its own
length of animation, spectacle, emotional power and symbolic power. The car
metaphors in the film are strange but a) Ikuhara
has been quoted in being inspired by a craze for supercars in the seventies
which he viewed as a juvenile fantasy2, connectable to the dangerous
fantasy of fairy tales and found in the TV sereis, and b) there's loaded
symbolism in Anthy's brother and his madness which we eventually see being
connected to his desperate search for car keys, fearing if they cannot be found
the "car" will rust.
The finale is something to behold
when, if considered, the symbolism is simple and understandable with a
spectacular result. The leads must traverse the perils of a fairytale castle,
now a monstrous hundred wheeler that can crush cars underneath, to find
happiness. Even if happiness is in a literal wasteland, as it is no longer the
delusional fantasy, reality is found and the ending sequence turns the Adolescence of Utena beyond a curiosity
in Kunihiko Ikuhara's career, but a
crowning gem.
And thankfully, it has lasted.
This franchise is still held highly to this day, to the point that arguably
this work is just as monumental to anime in the nineties as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Bebop (1998-9) are, the kind of
show that has been itself an influence, as can be attested to Stephen Universe creator Rebecca Sugar admitting this for her own
famous work3. At the time, this was followed by an absence from
Ikuhara in the industry, still working on other projects as well as in other
mediums, but never directing any titles throughout the 2000s. Thankfully, in
2011 we got Mawaru Penguindrum,
leading to a trilogy throughout the 2010s alongside Yurikuma Arashi (2015) and Sarazanmai
(2019). What the 2020s will lead to for him will be of interest and baited
anticipation. For myself, until the TV series itself, this is a pretty big
title in my own personal fandom to finally have seen, and by God did it exceed
expectations.
=========
1) HERE
2) "When I was little there was a supercar boom. Maybe because of that,
even now such a car is something that satisfies childish desires in the adult
world. A car seems like that sort of thing. As you grow up toys tend to
disappear quickly from your life. Even if, as a child you wanted a model of
robot, when you’re an adult these sort of things that you want seem to
disappear, isn’t that so? Well, you may want something like a house, but
obviously, it’s a little different from wanting a toy. My idea of a car is
something that is exceedingly close to an adult’s toy..." - "Be-Papas
Interview". Animage. 20 (1): 4–13. May 10, 1997. [Found HERE]
3) HERE
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