girl-revolution-utena

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@/folkoftheshelf on Twitter has made a thread of fundraising links for Gazans. I’ve transferred the links here, please boost them as the conflict is worsening:

Help Ahmad Hassan and his family escape Gaza

Help Halla Morshed’d family escape Gaza

Help Dr. Yousef Alsweisi and his family escape Gaza

Evacuate Sohad’s family out of Gaza

Help Donia Tanani and her family escape Gaza (they are close to reaching their goal!!)

Help Zinh and her family escape Gaza (they are close to reaching their goal!!)

Help this Gazan family rebuild their lives (they are not close to their goal as of writing)

Help the Zack Family

Help Hala Jad and her family (they are at a 1/3 of their goal)

Help Walid and his family escape Gaza (they are close to reaching their goal!!)

Help Mariam Radi and her family (as of right now they are not close to reaching their goal)

Help Maha Abu Shammala evacuate the family from Gaza (they haven't met their goal as of writing)

Help Ronza Alaa and her family (they haven't met their goal as of writing)

Help Noor and her family evacuate to safety (they haven't met their goal as of writing)

Help Manar Abuqata get his family out of Gaza (goal hasn't been met as of writing)

Help Farah save her family

Help Ahmad’s family escape from Gaza to Egypt

Help evacuate Mohammed Harara’s family out of Gaza (they are halfway through their goal!!)

Help Dana and her family escape (they have almost met their goal!!)

Help Anas’ family escape from Gaza (goal has not been met as of writing, note that the money is in krona, 1 usd=11 krona)

Help Ibrahem Ra’fat Daher and his family evacuate Gaza

Help Hakam Albalawi save his family (goal had not been met as of writing)

Help Tabseem AbuJamie’s family evacuate (goal hasn't been met and only has two donations as of writing)

Rafah Masterpost

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watching gundam witch from mercury and it's just nice to see utena's impact

#also the series is pretty great but I have some doubts about the way it views earthians opression and their fight for freedom #revolutionary girl utena #rgu #mobile suit gundam #witch from mercury #gru

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27 years today since rgu premiered!!! rejoice for yuri that undooms itself!!!

#they look so pretty here :') #r: utena and anthy

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There's something so emotional about juri, miki and saionji helping anthy and utena to escape in the film. these broken kids standing up for each others against the akio, the one who upholds the system that makes their lives miserable... just makes me wanna cry

#adolescense of utena #rgu #r: duelists and anthy #revolutionary girl utena #r: duelists and utena #the three of them were still horrible to anthy btw #but I feel that this scene opens the idea to a future where they can form actual friendships or where the duelists actually #feel sorry for how they treated anthy

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i like how in after the revolution it’s consistent that when they’re not wearing their student council student uniforms, touga and saionji both possess the world’s most pretentious & faggy fashion sense known to man.

saionji still wearing the cunty gay turtleneck and at one point also puts his hair in a classy little side ponytail. touga graduated from turquoise blouses paired with white jorts over pink tights (an insane outfit btw, who wears this) to a fancy little peacoat and long flowy scarf combo. either way, they are both making CHOICES.

….good choices? well, that’s debatable. but certainly choices nonetheless.

#lmao #they are so funny omg #r: touga and saionji

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I think the ending of utena is really hopeful in an interesting and realistic way because like. Akio doesnt face justice. He doesnt die. He doesnt go to jail. He maintains his position of power. But anthy still gets out, knows her value, and has utena.

Because thats usually what happens. Stories where the victim gets to kill the abuser are nice wish fulfillment, but this shows that even if you cant get justice, you can still escape and be happy. And that doesnt mean she has to forgive him either! As someone for whom this is the case it is very thought provoking to me.

#others cool analysis

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i feel like touga is the only student in ohtori who's truly doomed...in the movie it's explained that his abuser wanted him to grow his hair long, and in ohtori it's super long, even though he can cut it now. also, in nanami's flashbacks to when they were younger, his hair is short. PLUS in the movie it's revealed that he's already dead. here's how i mix these together: because nanami's arc parallels utena's, not only is touga her prince, but he's also already had that conversion dios had from a genuinely noble person to akio, who can't move on from a traumatic experience to the point where he's made it a part of his identity. that's why the two memories contradict touga's appearance: like utena, nanami remembers touga in an idealistic way, not knowing about what he was actually going through. dios is never coming back; touga's dead. and like akio, he also tries to keep people trapped in ohtori with him (keeping nanami's transfer papers, asking utena to stay with him in the movie).

#ok I want to die now #others cool analysis #character: kiryuu touga

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Word of God/movie backstory aside, it suddenly came to me that there is one other gap of knowledge that has probably contributed to a significant part of the alienation between Touga and Nanami, and it's something that existed throughout all of Nanami's life, so it's given that she wouldn't truly notice it: Touga knows they're adopted, Nanami does not. I think that makes a big difference.

Touga's backstory is bound not to be the exact same as the movie (After all, Nanami isn't even there with him), so I'll let myself speculate a bit. Their biological parents could have died, they could have abandoned them or sold them, or the siblings could have been removed from their care, and unless Nanami was brought in later to wherever Touga was, it's safe to assume that he spent at least 5 years with his original parents. He has memories of a different family, and of losing that family. Nanami doesn't even know about any of it. She doesn't realize there is a side of her brother that she never got to meet.

"Blood" is very important to Nanami. Blood is what Nanami uses to try and reassure herself that the parents who are cold and distant to her, and the brother who's grown cold and distant too, have an eternal unbreakable bond. It's very brittle though. Nanami constantly fears being replaced, discarded or harmed by her family. Most often by Touga, who ironically, happens to be her only blood relative there.

Her anxiety can be very easily explained by her experiences with how she was treated growing up in the Kiryuu household, but I do wonder if there's some subconscious parts of her that tap into these knowledge gaps too. I already felt like it was there, in the way her love for her brother is as protective as it is possessive, and how to protect him from harm, be it real or perceived, she can go feral, often shooting wildly at whoever she thinks is to blame, always hitting the wrong targets; and so maybe, I thought, it is possible that her anxieties are also tied to these repressed early childhood memories. Ones of once having a family, and then losing that world, being thrown someplace unfamiliar. Vague mostly forgotten memories fueling her fear of abandonment, working like a constant little nagging at the back of her head signaling to her how little blood ties really matter in the end.

"Blood" doesn't matter to Touga in the same way. He doesn't hold into a rose colored view of it. He knows by experience how easily those ties can be severed, how fickle they are. That's why when he found a little girl in a coffin, a little girl who spoke of there not being anything eternal, of how those you care about are bound to leave you, and questioning what's even the point of living then, he couldn't give her anything. He couldn't save her. He didn't know the answer for himself either.

#others cool analysis #from adoptees testimonies we know that they always experience trauma from the separation even at an early age so this makes a lot of sense #r: nanami and touga

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Utena's hair in her "backstory" looks like Anthy's as the rose bride and the crown is the same as the rose bride's. Also the ring is an "engagement ring" (engagement, bride, you get what I'm trying to say)

The narrative (Akio aka the embodiment of the patriarchy) introduces this idea that Utena was a princess/rose bride and thus she will continue to be one: she is a girl, her only options are to be a princess or a witch, and a rose bride in either way

But just as the backstory is false, the ideas it introduces are false. There is no prince riding on a white horse and never was, the ring wasn't an engagement ring, Utena wasn't a princess/rose bride. Even though society tried to make her one (the backstory, Akio's grooming), she is not.

At Ohtori, all girls are like the rose bride, but there is an outside world. Girls are like the rose bride not because they are predestined to be from birth, but because Akio/Ohtori/the narrative forces them into these roles.

More on the hair style: Anthy's hair is pinned up, made to look sort of like a bob/short hair, to resemble her hair as a young child (shorter) while in the present her hair is long. The illusion of eternity that Ohtori perpetuates (her hair is made to look like it's the same as when she was younger but in reality it's grown)

#others cool analysis #r: utena and anthy

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hi hi, i just finished utena and im looking to read about it and some good analysies (videos are okay too but id prefer text for the most part). do you have any recommendations by chance?

yeah!! i tend to mostly hang around tumblr for that; i'm not sure which utena blogs you’ve already found but theatricalnebula and saionjeans both have rlly good analysis tags

idk what topics specifically you’re interested in but here's a grab bag of some tumblr posts i like: sunlit garden, bird symbolism, shadow girls, aesthetics, juri gender, episode 11, kozue (& miki)

for when you inevitably start a rewatch, or if you just wanna read something episode by episode: I enjoyed vraikaiser’s watch-along blog, they do an extensive blog post per episode with sections on e.g. the shadow play of the episode and whatever anthy’s up to with the context of someone who’s already watched the show before. [caveat that with text that long there’s inevitably gonna be a bunch of takes i disagree with lol but it was a fun read]

also the palace perspective is really good, it’s a ~20000 word essay series mostly focused on nanami and all the sibling relationships in the show. heavy content warning for discussions of abuse/incest in that one for obvious reasons (the writer also has a tendency to take the bleakest possible interpretation of things that are ambiguous in the show)

as for videos, i’ve watched a couple but so far i don’t think they really measure up… i'm sure there's good ones out there but i've been burned by bad nanami and anthy takes too often to venture back in just yet.

if anyone has recs feel free to add them! :)

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adolescence of utena movie of all time for lots of reasons but I love when they get a little computer world with it (aesthetically) like yessss we are escaping art deco world traveling through cyber intervening space to the real world it’s so. something. I love the 90s

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I decided to rewatch Episode 26 (Miki’s Nest Box (The Sunlit Garden - Arranged)) which was a bit of a horrible decision to watch at this hour but also made me realize something. This is the definition of dude trust me analysis. There is one scene in the entire show that features both Kozue and Nanami. Within that scene, there are only a few angles that show both of them

This wide shot places the camera at an angle and position in which Kozue and Nanami are both visible, but pillars are placed between them. While there is no physical blockade between them, the view visually separates them, creating an artificial barrier. While they are capable of coming together, the narrative as presented to us prevents it. Not to mention that their conversation after this point is focused on Akio, or “Daddy Long Legs” *retching noises* as Kozue refers to him.

In the second, while Nanami is approaching Kozue, Kozue is walking away and out of frame to Akio. There is no barrier separating them - real, imagined, only perceived at a certain angle - but it’s too late. They are on different paths now thanks to Akio’s influence. After a shot of Kozue and Akio in silhouette walking into the night, the scene ends. Their moment is taken from them. In conclusion Akio is clearly actively trying to separate Kozue and Nanami and I have never overanalyzed anything in my life

#others cool analysis #r: nanami and kozue

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trans people : if you're trying to raise money for food or afford gender affirming surgery , feel free to share all the ways people can donate

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i love how during nanami’s drive she’s like “touga you gotta listen to me this guy is fucked up i just saw him performing some of the most horrifically unspeakable acts of violence” and akio is like [chuckling smugly] “hmmm….. what you saw….. yes, of course, a child’s mind is clouded by their limited perception….. and yet…. what you think you saw is merely an illusion…… due to solipsism.” and nanami doesn’t even pause to consider it, immediately she’s just like “what the fuck is this evil freak talking about.”

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una cita amb orxata <3

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what if akio aint even had a last name until he got with kanae, or even was the behind-the-scenes influence for the creation and the rise of the ohtori family. theres no reason to think akio would take on the same surname as anthy especially bc when the audience was introduced to him he was already called akio ohtori... maybe kanae was engaged to some other guy & akio stole his identity, like how mikage was manipulated to believe mamiya was this composite of anthy + ‘real’ mamiya, kanae too could have very well been lead to believe akio was her ‘fiance’. which came first the ohtori family or akio himself. who knows, its like the chicken v. egg its a fascinating thought esp cuz akio is the only main cast example of what an 'adult' in series is. akio’s adulthood is a facismile, a child's perspective of what makes someone an adult. a red vintage fancy car, authority w/ no discernable , extremely arbitrary , responsibilities, and copious sexual and psychological power. akio grooms touga, utena, anthy, and the other duelists into the chase for eternity, the chase for endless arrested development that ultimately is designed to exclude them from ‘adulthood’. after all, what did he tell utena? a child has no understanding of the ‘values’ , the ‘treasures’ adults hold dear.

ironically, he repeats this cycle of dueling over + over + over again. seeking the god-prince that he himself claims never existed in this world. arrested development, thy name is akio ohtori

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nanami being the most important character to ever exist moodboard