Ask John: Can You Explain the Utena Movie?

Question:
I have a question on the Utena movie. I recently purchased it, and I must say I am semi-confused. The movie seemed to be put together very strangely and had no overall plot that I could see. Could you possibly explain to me the plot and overall idea behind the movie and this whole “other world” stuff and the relationship between the rose bride and the prince and what that has to do with Utena?

Answer:
The meaning and theme of the Utena movie are actually laid out in the film’s title, albeit a bit obscurely. The theme of the Utena movie is the apocalypse of adolescence, or the end of adolescence. Shoujo Kakumei Utena urges a revolution to change the world. This does not literally mean affecting change on the exterior world but actually revolutionizing one’s own personal world through growth and maturity.

The Utena movie makes much more sense to viewers that have watched the entire 39 episode television series because the second half of the movie is partially a thematic re-telling and sequel to the final story arc of the TV animation. The final TV series story arc deals with Utena’s evolution into a heroic savior and Anthy’s identity crisis as martyr, sister and individual. This theme of personal identity and individuality and one’s place in the world is the primary theme of the Utena movie.

The film is divided into two parts. The first half of the Utena movie focuses on Utena’s growth. The second part of the film centers on Anthy’s. In the first section of the film Utena appears very boyish because she is obsessed with her “prince,” Touga. As director Kunihiko Ikuhara has confirmed in interview, “The reason why Utena thinks she killed the prince, is because Utena realized that Touga was dead.” As she encounters Touga’s spirit through the film, she encounters her past and begins to let go of it, she becomes more feminine, shown literally by her hair growing out. Virtually as soon as Utena says good-bye to her past, she symbolically gives up her attachment to childhood and becomes an adult. As Ikuhara-san says, “By realizing that Touga was dead, Utena realized that she no longer needed a prince. And that was her departure from the girl’s world of dependence (on the prince) into a grownup’s world.” But as soon as Utena becomes an adult, she is suddenly separated from Anthy, who is still symbolically a child.

Throughout the beginning of the film Anthy is represented as still childish by existing as the rose bride. Like a child, she has no will or individuality or identity of her own. When Utena symbolically grows up, she is suddenly separated from Anthy, and the film moves into its second half- an analysis of Anthy’s desire to assert herself as an individual and come out from underneath the shadow and influence of her older brother. Paralleling Utena’s circumstances, Anthy is also obsessed with and emotionally controlled by the ghost of her past- in Anthy’s case the spirit of her deceased brother, her “prince.” Like Utena’s sword duals, Anthy must also face and overcome certain trials and duals in order to leave behind her past and its control over her life. Anthy’s symbolic trial that tests her resolve and solidifies her willpower and maturity is represented as a car race by which she literally drives away from her past and her childhood. And although in an “evolved form” symbolic of her maturation into an adult, Utena still supports and carries her friend Anthy through this difficult process of growth, by serving as Anthy’s car, her means to break through the boundaries of childhood.

The car race that highlights the second half of the film is the symbolic representation of Anthy’s years of maturation. Her attempt to escape from Ohtori Academy is symbolic of her attempt to leave behind the ties to childhood and emerge victorious from adolescence. The peer pressure and jealousy of Anthy’s adolescent years is represented by other people, stylized as cars, trying to destroy her. Her biggest obstacle, the weighty identity of being only recognized as Akio’s sister, the rose bride, is represented by the literally gigantic moving castle, and her brother’s pleas for her to remain nothing more than his sister instead of asserting herself as a strong willed individual person. When Anthy is first seen in the movie, she is a waifish cypher. At the end of the film, after emerging from the trials of youth, she is a woman capable of making her own decisions and having her own identity. After leaving childlike things behind them, at the conclusion of the film Utena and Anthy meet each other as naked equals, ready to charge forward into adulthood and a bright future.