my comic for the final episode of utena 25th anniversary. this is the most important show in my life.
if I had to name it, it would be "what history has given me"
i hope you enjoy
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oh my goodness gracious. 25th anniversary of revolutionary girl utena today... first episode aired april 2, 1997. do you think theyre having tea and laughing together
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Catradora AU where they live in 1997 and Adora is somehow watching "Revolutionary Girl Utena" as it airs.
Look, I don't even know anymore. I just thought about drawing a short story that I daydreamed about one year ago. It can't get any more on-brand for me than this.
Merry Christmas, and happy 25th year anniversary of Utena's episode 39. :)
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25th Anniversary: Zettai Shinka Kakumei Zenya
Because anime used to be an ultra-niche hobby in America, there are only a few that I had access to back in the 90s and early 00s. VHS tapes with subtitled episodes were expensive, about $25-30 for a tape with four episodes, so anything I bought had to be researched very carefully to make sure that I would be getting something good. The ones I did end up buying and liking became formative to my development as a fan of Japanese popular music, as it was through the music of shows like Sailor Moon, Fushigi Yuugi and Magic Knight Rayearth that led me to artists like Ayumi Hamasaki, X Japan, and T.M.Revolution. Shoujo Kakumei Utena, or Revolutionary Girl Utena, was another one.
If you were a fan of Sailor Moon, as I was, Utena would inevitably crop up in a list of recommendations, though in hindsight, besides director Kunihiko Ikuhara, the two have very little in common. Both fall under the mahou shoujo, or magical girl, umbrella but Utena's execution and influences are pleasantly unconventional, from its plot line to its eccentric, game-changing soundtrack. While anime like Cardcaptor Sakura and Wedding Peach employed regular, time-tested music for its score, themes, and image songs, the Utena team hired psychedelic rocker and musical innovator J.A. Seazer who catapulted the sound of this unique world to singular heights. When it came out, nothing sounded like the music from Utena, and its first soundtrack, Shoujo Kakumei Utena Zettai Shinka Kakumei Zenya, or The Eve of the Absolute Evolution Revolution, illustrates the variety of styles and breathtaking depth to come in subsequent collections.
The album, released July 24, 1997, is the first original soundtrack from the anime and collects music from the series's first arc. The music reflects the show's (relatively) lightest arc, from its iconic titular opening and closing themes, sung by 90s seiyuu-queen Masami Okui, and Luca Yumi respectively, to its orchestral cues, through to its duel choruses. Three distinct genres make up the whole of the soundtrack and remain stark in their differences, yet all work together to comprise the bits and pieces of the show. There's the commercial piece, the one that will draw in casual listeners with a fun, chart-topping single; the cues, composed by Shinkichi Mitsumune, which set the theme and tone, drawing from French Baroque and Classical styles that characterize the visual world of the anime with its 18th century aristocratic influences (or at least, the kind popularized in anime like VERSAILLES no Bara), including its music, making for a world bright with dainty string quartets; and the duel choruses, a wholly imaginative space where J.A. Seazer combined opera and hard rock to soundtrack the eerie, bizarre world of Ohtori Academy's constant handling and mishandling of its Rose Bride. It’s the music that really brought this world to life, enchanting its look and feel, while distinguishing Utena from other anime. As a growing fan of the Baroque and Classical French era, including its music, this music just clicked with me when I discovered it in grade school -- totally worth the $30 I spent on a VHS from Suncoast with 4 random, somewhere-in-the-middle-of-the-series-so-I-had-no-idea-what-was-going-on episodes on it!
The soundtrack for the movie re-telling, Adolescence Mokushiroku (Adolescence Rush), is another essential collection from this series, though there were several more soundtracks released from this series and its several story arcs comprised of cool, strange, genre-defying sounds. This one is still the most important. You can find more information about this album here.
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