Hair Symbolism in Utena

Not a very meaty post, but I haven’t found too many people talking about it in an explicit manner, much less point it out at all beyond the Utena/Anthy hair swap + student council design changes in Adolescence, which. Is a shame! Frankly it’s my favorite bit of symbolism from the entire show, along with the cars. Rest of the content under the cut

Long, straight, rigid forms represent masculinity in Ohtori, as curved, rounded, elegant forms represent femininity; this is reflected in the architecture of Ohtori Academy and other various symbols featured throughout the show (namely the swords and the birdcage, but there was also Touga’s masturbatory carrot that one time lol). This also applies to hair.

So far, I have down that:

Long/loose hair = arrogant, short-sighted, self-serving

Short/”done” hair = repression, ignorance, self-imposed suffering

Straight hair = Masculinity

Curly/wavy hair = Femininity

With this in mind, it’s interesting to note that Utena and Akio are the only characters whose designs incorporate aspects of both masculinity and femininity. Utena’s hair curls inwards at its tip, but is otherwise pretty straight. Akio’s hairstyle depends partially on the form he takes, but for the most part, it’s evident that the forefront of his hair is curly while the back hair is straight.

Furthermore, Anthy and Saionji’s hair looks... exactly the same. Which has some fascinating implications about Utena’s deconstruction of gender roles! (too lazy to find a bigger picture for Saionji lol. But it gets the point across). Of course, with themes of repression in the narrative, it’s also interesting to consider what Saionji having his hair tied up in a ponytail during certain scenes could signify. Though, we CAN surmise that, in Anthy’s case, it’s about her hiding the truth about her identity and masking her motives under the guise of a meek, subservient schoolgirl. But again, knowing Utena, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out there was something deeper than that going on in the writing.

There’s more, of course: Juri sports really, really, really tight curls when she’s just going about her daily life, projecting a cool and unperturbed facade, but when she has her hair down, you get some of the most emotionally charged scenes in the entirety of RGU. Tsuwabuki’s hair resembling Touga’s when he was young. Nanami’s hair hardly ever shown coming undone. 

Anyway that’s the post byyeee

Saw this, thought of the egg speech and now I'm like something something "the difference between the egg being nurtured and provided for so it will grow and someday break out of its shell and take flight" vs "the egg being seen as something only meant for consumption, to be broken and eaten" something something "how children are treated as possessions in our society" something something– [EXPLODES]

I'm thinking of Marcille's bloodied hands putting Falin's skeleton in place to get her back. Bone by bone. I'm thinking of their interlocked hands in their intimate moments. Finger by finger.

I'm thinking of Kabru's hands pulling on Laios' sleeves, his confession caught in his throat ready to burst. I'm thinking of the way Laios embraces him with his hand over his chest.

The princess and the witch

.

Alt. ver., transparent and closeup:

A girl who cannot become a princess must become a witch

miracles don't grow from flowers how could you forgive her? teardrops drip off daffodils yet you swallow all that's bitter

The Witch and The Devil

episode 1 / episode 39

back again

I do sort of wish western anime fans would analyze anime and manga from a framework of japanese historical and cultural context. Specifically a lot of works from the 90s being influenced by the general aimlessness and ennui that a lot of people were experiencing due to the burst in the bubble economy and the national trauma caused by the sarin terrorist attack. I think in interacting with media that’s not local to our sociocultural/sociopolitical sphere it’s easy to forget that it’s influenced and shaped by the same kinds of factors that influence media within our own cultural dome and there ends up being this baseline misalignment of perception between the causative elements of a narrative and viewer interpretation of those elements. It’s a form of death of the author that i think, in some measure, hinders our ability to fully understand/come to terms with creator intent and the full scope of a work’s merits

thinking about the nanami-wakaba parallels

So, I finally watched the Utena movie after making my sibling watch the show with me. We both loved it and there was something that I pointed out while watching that I wanted share with tumblr because I feel like this crowd would appreciate it.

So, spoilers, in the movie Utena becomes a car. After she becomes a car Anthy gets inside and starts driving, and as they go along, they take some damage and the first thought I had while watching this part of the film was this:

The crumple zone is an integral part of a safe vehicle. The damage sustained in an impact that causes it to crumple absorbing a lot of the force that could harm the person inside. This has become more well known because of how the shitty Tesla tank cars are death traps (or at least that’s why I know about it).

So all I could think as I was watching Anthy drive Utena, taking damage along the way, Is how every dent and scar on that car was keeping Anthy safe. Even when she wasn’t human and wasn’t in control, Utena was protecting her. She was built to protect Anthy.

hater alert! far too many people say that juri’s character arc ‘isn’t about her being sad about being gay, it’s about being sad about unrequited love that happens to be gay’ and. well. that is not true and by saying that you are completely flattening the brilliance of juri’s character arc which literally culminates in her being able to accept her own lesbianism despite her unrequited love, despite all her shame and self-loathing, despite this pursuit by Some Fucking Guy to try and ‘save’ her from these feelings. like if you think juri’s entire character is just ‘sad about shiori’ how do you appreciate even a modicum of the emotion packed into that final juri duel. it is both about shiori and, even broader, her lesbian identity and what that means to her intrinsically as a person, removed from romantic relationships and just purely as like. you know. Who She Is. the idea that even when juri’s locket is cut from her neck she is still a lesbian that’s still who she is and she cant change that and, crucially, she doesn’t want to even as she is agonised by these feelings. that’s why she forfeits the duel!!!! she’s clocking out she’s quitting she’s saying no!!!!!! this is me and ive got to be ok with that this is me and i can accept that this girl might not love me and i can keep living despite that. like. god im so normal arisugawa juri im so sorry that no one understands you and your intrinsically unapologetically lesbian storyline like i do

Touga and Saionji, two Very Good Friends

why is utena's uniform black? within the show, the color white represents the prince, or the idea of princehood, which is why utena wears a white rose in the duels, and why dios' (and akio's) uniform is white, and by extension why the student council uniforms are too. so the fact that the main color utena wears is the opposite of that is significant. i think the black of utena's uniform is mainly meant to stand in contrast to the student council, to show that she's not like them, that she's an outsider. it's also important that it's in contrast to the prince's uniform; she's playing a role she can never really fill. she cannot become a prince, and she doesn't really, truly, want to either. or she wouldn't, knowing what it really means. her uniform is a way of expressing her masculinity, and whether she realizes it or not, the way she does that does not entirely line up with being a prince. it exists outside of that. this is of course a good thing.

the red accents are interesting too, because it's a color very heavily associated with akio and anthy (and touga, obviously, but i don't think that's directly relevant when it comes to why utena wears it.) in this way utena's outfit also works as a sort of inversion of akio's outfit when he's not playing prince: red vs black shirt, black vs red pants (or shorts in her case.) then there's the red of anthy's rose bride dress. red accents are present in the white uniforms of the prince and the student council too. the dresses utena wears in episode 3 and 33, as well as the girl's uniform, are also white (or very close to it) with red accents. the sweater she wears in episode 37 is entirely red. utena's rose bride dress does not have any red on it, unlike anthy's, and it isn't white either; it's pink, a combination of the two colors, like her hair. i'm not completely sure what all this means, but it's interesting that the moments utena wears colors closer to white, to the prince's color, are the very moments she's the least masculine and "princely" (the two are seperate, but in these cases connected.) perhaps white is not just the color of the prince, but the princess as well? is red the color of the witch, then?

in the movie, utena's uniform is both black and white and does not have any red until she's in her dueling outfit, where she gets red stripes between the black and the white, as well as on her epaulets and shoes. and here anthy's rose bride dress is no longer fully red, but mostly white with red accents like utena's uniform (if white is the prince's color, does this reflect anthy's more proactive role in the movie? is she not playing utena's saviour in many ways here?) an important part of the movie's ending is anthy and utena both shedding their clothes entirely, and their roles along with them. so whatever meaning the colors may or may not have held, they're free of that now.

Thinking about how parents usually say "don't get into a stranger's car" and how the implocation is that they are going to kidnap you, kill you or assault you (or everything). And Akio uses his car for abuse, either doing it there or driving the victim to the place where the abuse is going to happen. In some cases, even though he is a stranger, the victims know he exists and is an authority in the school. In others, he grooms them and gets them to trust him, so he makes sure that the warning no longer applies to him.

His power as an adult and how, with his car, he has more freedom than the kids. He can go wherever he wants. He uses the car as a private space where he doesn't need to respond for his actions. And if the kids want to go somewhere that is not inside Ohtori, they need him to take them. They have to get into his car to be able to grasp a little freedom.

This just makes me want to read more about youth liberation and how young people are a class in contradiction with adults.