I wish I had been on this panel! I did a whole paper for a class on the deconstruction of patriarchy in the Utena movie! ;_;
One of the things that I never see mentioned is that I think there are some really close parallels between Song of the Wind and Trees (1970s shounen ai manga set in a French boarding school) and Utena. They both take place at boarding schools, they're both love stories between a naive innocent "outsider" and an "insider" who is deeply enmeshed in a really bad system and an abusive incestuous relationship. And they're both stories about how impossible it is, in the end, to rescue someone else. (I think it works better in Utena because the over-the-top emotions are in subtext and surrealism and not "And then they move to Paris and then Gilbert gets addicted to drugs and then he throws himself under a horse-drawn carriage.")
I'm just now rewatching parts of the series after ten years, and it's amazing some of the things that I never noticed it when I was watching it for the first time -- I think I never noticed just how deep some of the secondary characters are.
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One of the things that I never see mentioned is that I think there are some really close parallels between Song of the Wind and Trees (1970s shounen ai manga set in a French boarding school) and Utena. They both take place at boarding schools, they're both love stories between a naive innocent "outsider" and an "insider" who is deeply enmeshed in a really bad system and an abusive incestuous relationship. And they're both stories about how impossible it is, in the end, to rescue someone else. (I think it works better in Utena because the over-the-top emotions are in subtext and surrealism and not "And then they move to Paris and then Gilbert gets addicted to drugs and then he throws himself under a horse-drawn carriage.")
I'm just now rewatching parts of the series after ten years, and it's amazing some of the things that I never noticed it when I was watching it for the first time -- I think I never noticed just how deep some of the secondary characters are.