Review: No ride is wilder than Adolescence of Utena

I still think of myself as a relative newcomer to the world of anime, even though I've been pretty fully immersed for a good number of years at this point. But I still have a lot to learn, and a lot of blind spots. To the point that, when GKIDS announced it was releasing Adolescence of Utena in theaters, I didn't immediately realize it was a re-release of an old movie. And that said movie is related to a very significant manga and anime. When I asked my husband if he's heard of Revolutionary Girl Utena he was like, "Yeah, of course." Well.

But now I've seen the movie, and my god, what a ride.

I'm going to do my best to summarize what this movie is about, like what happens in it, but ultimately, that really does not feel like the point with Adolescence of Utena. There are some movies you watch because you want a rich story and fully-developed characters. Then there are movies where you're there for the vibes, to watch girls kiss and maybe see one of them transform into a car. You know, the ultimate act of queer love. We've all been there.

Utena is the pink-haired heroine of our story, and a new student at an academy made up of all these floating, shifting buildings. Above it all, there's a massive rose garden platform where Anthy Himemiya lives. She is deemed the Rose Bride, and is the prize for an ongoing tournament where various paricipants duel for the right to be betrothed to her. I'm not entirely sure why or how, or what else comes along with being engaged to Himemiya, but she's beautiful and cool, so that seems like enough reason to fight, I guess.

That bit of the plot is pretty understandable, but it's everything lurking around the edges that starts to get a little confusing. At some point, it's revealed that there's an "outside world," which seems to be a desolate wasteland. Some of the characters have come to this school specifically for the tournament, and they have these magic rings that appear on their fingers to mark them as duelists. Himemiya's brother is the chairman (I think of the school), but in some flashbacks we get additional backstory that make him out to be a total creep (I think).

This movie probably makes a lot more sense if you're familiar with the series or have read the manga. At least, I assume it would.

And you know what? It just did not matter at all!

This movie is so gorgeous. The art direction is done by Angel Egg's Shichiro Kobayashi, which I wonder if I would've been able to guess just by looking at it, had I not known beforehand. The way this world and these characters are realized is jaw-dropping, so many beautiful vistas and dramatic compositions. I was so hypnotized by the shifting bits of the school.

And the vibes are just immaculate. This is such a perfect movie to put on the big screen for Pride Month. I wondered if the queerness was going to be kind of hinted at or subtle, but no, these women kiss so early on in the movie, and the final images are even more explicitly gay. What with the car transformation, I thought maybe I was finding here what so many others saw in Titane. 

So even with the borderline nonsensical storytelling, Adolescence of Utena is an easy recommendation for me. It's so out-there, weird, cool, and doesn't really feel like anything else I've seen. Plus it's only like 85 minutes, so it's a speedy ride in additional to a crazy one.