In which Utena turns into a car, and I’m surprised by it.
So I watched the movie last week or so and didn’t blog about it. But I feel like I should dump down some thoughts on it here or Later Me, or whoever feels that reading my scattered notes on Utena is a worthwhile thing.
I feel like I went into this movie about as well-prepared as humanly possible. I’d seen the whole series. I knew that Utena was gonna turn into a car that Anthy would drive out of the end of the story. Pretty much everything made sense to me. And I could tell that it wouldn’t really make much of that to someone coming to this cold.
I hadn’t read the manga and I think there was one scene that was a callback to that – there’s this horrible little scribbly alligator-thing that cavorts with the horrid demon mouse-monkey beast Chu-Chu, and then the both of them hassle Cow-Nanami, who does not really otherwise appear in the film at all. That sequence definitely would have made someone who’d never seen the series expire in a pile of WTF. I laughed my ass off, because it recalled all of the “let’s kick Nanami around for comedy purposes” episodes to mind in all their absurdity.
The set design was amazing. The whole school was just these fragments floating around. It felt like the set from an artsy play. Or maybe more appropriately an artsy opera. They also all kinda reminded me of rose trelises in retrospect. Which is not exactly significant; I think by episode 2 or 3 I had concluded that the main thing a rose signifies is that “you are watching Utena”, but it’s a lovely carrying through of the theme if it was intentional.
The car TF scene didn’t surprise me. And yet it did. I’d expected it to be relatively brief. But it was a lengthy sequence, about as long and lovingly animated as the “climbing to the arena” sequences in the show. And now that I think about it, it.. *checks on youtube* …it had the same music as the “climbing to the arena” sequences.
So yeah now that I think about that a hell of a lot of the show unpacks in my head to give meaning to this. This is the music that plays before a duel. Everything immediately after it is a fight for the hand of the Rose Bride. But there is nobody to fight. And nobody to be the Rose Bride’s champion. So there’s nothing left for her to do but get into this beautiful pink car and get on the road to the End of the World.
And then pretty much the entire rest of the movie is the Duel To End All Duels. Except instead of being played out in the arena with swords, it’s a lengthy running road battle on that lonely highway we saw Akio drive down so many times in the third arc of the show.
Another thing that surprised me about the car TF scene: It didn’t mean at all what I expected it to mean. Going in, I knew Utena was going to turn into a car. I knew this the moment I tweeted my intent to watch the show. “Don’t start with the movie”, people told me. “It’s dense and confusing and all I got from it was that it’s about a lesbian who turns into a car and WTF.” So I watched the show. And the show taught me that, in the world Anthy inhabits, cars are bad news. But when Utena turned into one? It played the music you hear before she goes and kicks someone’s ass. A whole season’s worth of work went into making that transformation surprising, even if you knew it was coming.
Overall I want to read this as the final arc of the TV version. And maybe of the comic, as well; I should either read it, or read synopses. At any rate: the situation in the show is that Anthy is trapped in this little bubble of a fake world, with a shadow play she’s amusing herself with to distract herself from the perpetual pain she’s in. And has grown, apparently, to cherish. The first arc? Utena proves to be powerful enough to get through the series of challenges Anthy throws in her way. So Anthy dreams up Evil Utena and Evil Anthy and makes them fight Utena for a second round. Utena vanishes, and Anthy unhappens all of that in a fit of pique. But Evil Anthy (Akio) sticks around, and throws everyone at Utena yet a third time. And then sets himself against Utena, attempting to corrupt her and prove her unfit to absolve Anthy of all the sins she’s being punished for here in this little fantasy world of pain and spikes. Utena wins. Sort of. And that’s the end of the series.
But Anthy’s left alone at the end of the series. I found that hopeful, because I felt like she’d been freed of the whole princess in distress narrative.
And then here’s the movie. It makes next to no sense without the TV show to prime you for it. It expects you to have invested a few days of your life in compressing all of that story into your head. It expects you to know that cars can take you down a lonely highway to the End of the World, that the Ultimate Destiny Apocalypse presages a duel. And perhaps to know that the lyrics to that song end with something about “walking to the end of the world”, if an alternate translation I found online is to be believed. It expects you to know a lot of things, so I feel it’s appropriate to consider it as the fourth arc of the show…
And Anthy’s back in her prison. She wasn’t free. Everything is more stylized and fragmented; the whole thing goes by so fast. It doesn’t take the time to dwell on the details because you should already know them, please. And this time she gets out of the story the way everyone’s been promising since the very first episode: by going to the End of the World, and breaking out of the shell. Which she does. And this time she’s able to bring Utena with her. It’s close. She burnt Utena up last time, and she nearly does this time. But we end with the two of them naked on the remnants of Utena-car’s chassis, holding hands, free of the roles imposed by Princely and Princessly clothing, vowing to build a new world in the empty wasteland outside the bubble of Anthy’s prison.
But, you know, I think that as they say that, they were driving towards the castle again. No exit. No reality. Just an endless series of illusions to be trapped in. At least now Anthy’s got someone who loves her.
I’m sure that eventually she’ll use Utena up just like she did the last prince. But it’ll be nice until then.
Or maybe I misread that shot. I returned the DVD and don’t want to go looking for it on Youtube.
I think I’ll treasure that ambiguity in my reading of the movie’s end. Realityfuck stories are better when you’re not quite sure about the ending.
I wish they hadn’t whitened up Anthy for the movie, though.
A few days before writing this, the ex-with-benefits jokingly proposed taking the car trip down to LA for some sunlight that we keep on toying with doing… but only if we cosplayed as Anthy and Akio. I’m pretty tempted to break out the purple dye. I’ve got a sewing machine, and there’s tons of cheap halloween costumes available to cut up…
hahaaaa!~ i’m glad you had a mindfuck time and enjoyed the art design. the graphic nature and older animation style really pulled me in with the long er pacing of scenes and repetition. by the time i watched the movie as well, the music and “cars being bad news” had made vivid imprints on my memory. it sounds like you enjoyed it decently!
do the braided up anthy hair and find some random tiara/diadem and go nuts. just don’t try to half mast it on the hood down the highway!
Well of course I’M not gonna sit on the hood of the convertible. I’ll be Anthy. The *ex* is gonna be Akio. And the one driving.
I’m sure it’ll be a great thing to do while barreling down the Pacific Coast Highway!
more seriously, yeah, the repetition is part of the fun. I made a point of watching all of the opening and end credits of EVERY EPISODE just to see what would happen if I let it sink in, given that I was already enjoying the very relaxed pace compared to most American cartoons.
I am pretty damn glad I listened to you and the other people saying “OMG you’ve never seen Utena ITS AMAZING WATCH IT”, even if I did take two years off between the first arc and the rest…
(which is probably fairly appropriate to the whole Utena experience anyway, given that I seem to recall hearing that it took a LONG time for the later seasons to make it over here.)