Let it be known that asking me questions of ask.fm is like is a sneaky way to get me thinking about topics you’d like me to cover in a blog post…this was originally an ask.fm answer, then grew too large for the ask.fm and so became a tumblr post, then kept growing and became more of a philosophical manifesto/personal story than I had originally intended, and thus here we are. To begin, I know I’m treading on sensitive ground here and so, of course, I’d love to hear feedback in the comments. [1] For me, this is very much still a topic I’m learning about and pondering through. But here’s where I am right now.
Revolutionary Girl Utena
Revolutionary Girl Utena: Reflections on the Girl
This is the third in a series of three posts reflecting on the various roles of Utena Tenjou, the titular character of Revolutionary Girl Utena. These posts are adapted from an academic paper I wrote in Fall 2014. These posts assume the reader has completed the anime and thus contain spoilers. Citations will be noted in footnotes at the bottom of the piece.
Happily, the discussions of the previous two posts lead quite nicely into the topic of this final post. As you’ll see in the body of the post, I think Utena is such a tightly woven character that it is essentially impossible to discuss her heroism or role as the agent of change in the story without discussing the fact that yes, Utena is a girl. A girl prince.
Revolutionary Girl Utena: Reflections on the Hero
This is the second in a series of three posts reflecting on the various roles of Utena Tenjou, the titular character of Revolutionary Girl Utena. These posts are adapted from an academic paper I wrote in Fall 2014. These posts assume the reader has completed the anime and thus contain spoilers. Citations will be noted in footnotes at the bottom of the piece.
I am of the opinion that Utena’s unique role as the hero is directly related to her unique role as protagonist—not only does being the protagonist set her up as the de facto hero of the story in a traditional sense, but her unique place in the narrative paves the way for a reimagining of what it means to be a hero.
Revolutionary Girl Utena: Reflections on the Protagonist
This is the first in a coming series of three posts reflecting on the various roles of Utena Tenjou, the titular character of Revolutionary Girl Utena. These posts are adapted from an academic paper I wrote in Fall 2014. These posts assume the reader has completed the anime and thus contain spoilers. Citations will be noted in footnotes at the bottom of the piece.
By way of introduction, the thesis of my paper was, in essence, that the character of Utena deconstructs a trio of archetypes and reinterprets each of them in her own identity. This is from the first section of the paper, which details my thoughts on Utena’s narrative role as the protagonist of the story.
Poll: Revolutionary Girl Utena Posts
Update: Thanks to everyone who voted! You can still vote if you wish, but it looks like the plan will be to just route the posts through the Utena Project page. You might see one or two pop up on the front page if I think the episode is really significant, but if it happens, it’ll be only rarely.
Hey, guys! This has been something that’s been bugging me the past couple days, so I thought I’d bring it up to you, my readers. As you hopefully know by now, I’m currently watching Revolutionary Girl Utena and planning to write episodic posts for each of the 39 episodes.
So far, the plan has been has been to just date the posts a while back so that they don’t all cascade across the front page of the blog, but~! I’m putting a lot of effort into these posts and I do want people to read them, if they’re interested. The posts are primarily for my own processing, but still! So, let me know via this poll—or let me know in the comments—what you’d like me to do!
EDIT: Oh, and don’t worry about hurting my feelings and voting that you don’t want to read them at all! Like I’ve said, these are mostly for me, so I want to know what you guys think about reading them.
Mage in a Barrel 