Racing Turtles

The heavy surrealism in RGU used to frustrate me as a new viewer, but now, I think it's such an integral piece of Ikuhara's storytelling. Because to me, the absurdities of Ohtori Academy perfectly capture how it feels to live under an abuser.

We as outside observers naturally question why there's a baseball game happening during the Student Council meeting, or how thirty cars can magically spring up in the middle of the dueling arena. And yet, the characters hardly bat an eye. Utena initially struggles to make sense of the duelists, the Rose Bride, and the Castle Said to Hold Eternity, but the more she becomes absorbed in this system, the more normalized it becomes.

We viewers fall for this, too! Show someone almost any Utena scene out of context, and they're going to have questions. Did that guy drive his car through a second-story window? Why is this boy boxing with a kangaroo?? Where the hell did all those swords come from???

"Yeah, don't think too hard about the logic. That's just how things are at Ohtori, you know?"

It's debatable to what extent the characters can perceive the visual symbolism that Ikuhara presents to us. Nevertheless, Ohtori remains a very weird place. But abusers possess the sinister power of normalizing behavior that any outsider would find absurd and unacceptable. They can — quite literally, in Akio's case — project their own version of reality onto their victims.

When Anthy gives Akio her glasses at the end of episode 39, she's rejecting the version of reality that he's convinced her to believe. Through Utena's sacrifice, she can finally see her circumstances for what they truly are.

The exit to Ohtori was always there for Anthy, but like so many real life victims of abuse, sometimes the logistics of leaving aren't what's keeping you trapped. An abuser can make themselves your whole world, and sometimes the greatest challenge can be realizing just how small, confining, and batshit crazy their rules really are.

Abandoning the life an abuser has made for you can feel impossible from the inside. But then you catch a glimpse of something beyond, something that makes you look around and ask, "How did I think any of this was even remotely normal?" And suddenly, leaving starts to feel like the most natural thing in the world.

no but can we actually acknowledge how crazy it is that wakaba literally leaves ohtori’s sprawling rococo campus to go to shopping. and the thing we see her holding at the grocery store is quite literally a STEAK. and the steak shakes in her hand as she considers the precarity of her very tentatively afforded “specialness.” and how steaks are a very deliberate obvious symbol of how exploitation and abuse reduces you to an object of consumption like livestock, like meat. no one ever wants to talk about the wakaba nanami foiling but they’re literally SOOOOOOOOO. crazy

the thing about Revolutionary Girl Utena is that on any day where she doesn't have a duel she is presumably still tearing it up on the b-ball court

Mondays: Free throw practice

Tuesdays: Cardio drills

Wednesdays: Swordfight with someone whose worldview and/or neuroses are embodied in the events of the fight itself

Thursday: Ohtori Academy vs. St Ignatius Non-Yuri Catholic School (Go Shooting Stars!)

one of rgu's best takes about rape and incest is that rape and incest are not deviant. they are exceedingly normal. they are, in fact, the logical extension of patriarchal romance and the patriarchal family -- the same logic that underpins those structures facilitates abuse, rape, incest, and csa. many people, even those who nominally understand the idea of rape culture, conceive of rape as a deviation from cultural mores, and even more people view incest as an aberration, a twisting of the Family (which is Good) into something unnatural and evil. but rgu correctly identifies that rape and incest are outgrowths of patriarchal society, not alien intrusions upon it. incest is merely a symptom of the problem which is the patriarchal family itself. rape and domestic abuse are merely symptoms of the problem which is patriarchal & heteronormative romance and society itself. rather than rape being deviant, it is resistance to patriarchy which is deviant; rather than incest being abnormal, it is a girl holding out a hand to another girl in pain which is abnormal. because 'abnormal' does not mean 'bad' any more than 'normal' means 'good'. "fall in love normally, get married normally, have a normal family, and have a normal life -- but normal has nothing to do with us!"

This guy is doing Borges to Utena. It's very good. Grudgingly I will link you to it.

something i didn't really notice until my latest rewatch is that utena's response to her depression being especially bad is still to curl up in a dark and/or claustrophobic space. sitting between two pieces of furniture while hugging her knees with the lights turned off.. like damn she really didn't ever leave that coffin, huh?

[image description: a still from revolutionary girl utena of utena in the position described above]

I hope this makes sense. I am open to suggestions and critiques.

Inspired by: a juri post and a miki post by @horse-girl-anthy, the boy princess by @iztarshi, the Palace Perspective, and a post that calls Juri a "boy shaped girl" and Miki a "girl shaped boy" but I cannot for the life of me find it (if someone can, please send it to me)