Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

First thing’s first. I don’t usually like anime. I generally struggle to have empathy for two dimensional drawn characters. However, Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie is a major exception to this. The movie is both very gay and very weird. I absolutely loved it. I’ve never seen a WLW movie (or any movie) where the lead character transforms into a car in the third act and I am here for it.

Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie is sort of a continuation of the same name and sort of an alternate universe retelling. The film follows Utena, who attends a strange school with a focus on duelling. Utena gets drawn into this when she realizes the prize to winning a duel is a girl named Anthy. Initially as a way to protect Anthy from shitty men trying to win her, Utena takes up a sword and becomes the school’s champion. Surrounding this main plot is a whole lot of weirdness. It soon becomes apparent that whatever reality Utena and these characters inhabit isn’t the “real” world. As Utena continues to fight against those who want to win Anthy, she also starts realizing the strangeness of the world she inhabits.

Initially, I held off on watching Utena because I was told that while present, the lesbian content remains largely subtext. Turns out, that was in reference to the television show. The movie is incredibly gay. The first line Utena has is flirting with a girl. And in the first fifteen minutes, Anthee kisses Utena and then Utena draws a magical sword from Anthy’s cleavage. Apparently, the film was allowed to be more explicit than the television series and is subsequently more mature. Generally, I am in favour of this as it allowed onscreen gayness and more mature themes. I do think that maybe the onscreen depiction of child molestation and the shots of nude women who have neither nipples or labia were a step too far though.

Visually, Utena is a masterclass. This is a beautiful film to look at. Utena really uses its animation medium to tell a story that would be difficult or impossible to do in live action. Utena is a surreal genre film full of visual metaphor. Much as the film is overtly weird, I respect that the surreal visuals do generally assist in depicting the movie’s themes. The prime example of this is the bit where Utena turns into a pink sports car. While yes, this is incredibly weird, it is also something that has a point. Utena turning into a car is a way to change the focus to Anthy as the proactive character. Through the film, Anthy is very much a damsel in distress. But Car-Utena gives Anthy a chance to literally get in the driver’s seat and be the driving force of her own liberation.

I’m not sure how well Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie works as a standalone film. I absolutely spent a lot of the runtime looking up what happened in the anime to see if it made any of the events make sense. But hey, I did that with the Twin Peaks revival too and I’d seen the original series. Even without framework of the original series, Utena: The Movie is a gloriously gay, surreal visual treat of a film with themes of adulthood and female liberation. I’m still not a general fan of anime but I’m make an exception of visually stunning, surreal stories about sword lesbians who turn into cars.

Overall rating: 9.1/10

Other WLW films in similar genres