Utena - the big idea

In progress. The top-level overview ought to be the last part I write, because I’m continually learning as I work through my analysis. So it won’t be finished before everything else is. But there are aspects that I see clearly enough to write down now.

Utena is an allegory of male oppression of women. It depicts and symbolizes the patriarchy and the patriarchy’s sustaining cultural apparatus, which I call the system of control. The main storyline with Akio, Anthy and Utena shows the patriarchy attempting to extend its power, and in the process creating resistance that will eventually overthrow it. The minor characters show different aspects of patriarchal oppression and how people react to it, and their stories resonate with the main storyline in big and small ways, amplifying it. There’s more about it in the introduction.

Utena is a fairy tale and a myth. Its plot follows fairy tale formulas, and its purpose and air make it a myth. The prince story is an origin myth for Akio, Dios, Anthy, and Utena. The main storyline is a myth of them bringing about the end of an age. Each of the four corresponds to a given fairy tale character who has a similar story, and a given character from Greek mythology who has a similar personality and role.

the main storyline

See overviews of Anthy and Utena and Akio and Utena for their relationships, and Akio and Anthy with briefer analysis. The three relationships are intertwined, though I analyze them separately.

Akio is powerful and controlling, and has superhuman sex appeal that makes him nearly irresistible. The patriarchy is appealing. Anthy is powerful and abused; she accepts being abused because she accepts the patriarchy and believes it is right. Anthy’s seeming magic is her own power of miracles, focused on her goal of controlling others. She is able to teleport because we see only her image, not herself; it is a symbol of playing a role. Utena is individualistic and freedom-loving. And she is naive and confused; she instantly and determinedly rejects aspects of the patriarchy that seem bad to her (wearing the girls’ uniform, seeing Anthy as the Rose Bride) while naively accepting others that appeal to her (Dios as prince, sex as a gate to adulthood). Her rejection and defiance of the patriarchy give her the power of miracles that makes it possible for her to emerge victorious; her acceptance of it allows Akio to corrupt and control her. Over time she learns and overcomes her naivety, at first gradually, then quickly. Dios is a fiction created by the patriarchy to teach sex roles to children. He is a story that Akio, Anthy, and for nearly all the series Utena, believe in. Dios has nearly irresistible sex appeal, like Akio, because he was designed to. Akio gains his appeal from Dios, which is to say, from Akio’s own appealing lies. Except that to him they are not lies; he tells them because he believes them. He also says plenty of things he knows are false. He enjoys evil—the patriarchy enjoys being evil.

Akio is made of stars. Stars are people (occasionally specific people who I can identify). The patriarchy is made up of people.

Dios becomes Akio and turns to evil. The patriarchy is a story that has turned to evil. Akio knows about constellations: The stories of the stars.

Dios was invented to make the patriarchy appealing. He wants to rescue all girls. The patriarchy wants to control and exploit all women. Rescue is appealing because the exploited women feel helpless and want rescue. At the same time, Dios’s ideals are opposed to the patriarchy’s, and his story can create resistance to it. The patriarchy’s system of control is built on a contradiction, because its oppression creates a need for resistance, and the lies it tells to sustain itself inspire resistance. In the long run it is self-destructive. Utena depicts part of the process of its self-destruction. The implied sequence of heroes (below) will carry out the rest. Utena succeeds unknowingly and unintentionally in helping Anthy and escaping Akio, all due to Akio’s interference in her life, and that is why: It is really Akio defeating himself. Nevertheless, Utena is a hero; few have the beliefs and attitudes to turn their feelings of dissatisfaction into effective action. Utena’s fangirls admire her without truly understanding why, or truly wanting to be like her.

Anthy and Utena together stand for all women. They are opposite in most respects, symbolizing in the small that they are one whole, and in the large that a woman can be anything.

the overall plot structure

The three arcs of Utena are the three challenges of a formulaic fairy tale plot. See fairy tales - threes. Many of the challenges are themselves broken down into three smaller ones. From Akio’s point of view, he is the hero and must pass the challenge of each arc to gain the power he desires. From the audience’s point of view, Utena is the hero. To defeat Akio, she must pass the first two challenges he sets her; she must gain enough patriarchal power to combat the patriarchy. Then she must fail the third: To win she must leave the storybook world of the Academy. She must break the fairy tale pattern. To complete the fairy tale plot is to go along with Akio’s plan.

In the Student Council arc, Akio tests Utena to see if she is a candidate to “revolutionize the world.” Akio’s challenge is to find a passing candidate whose power he can steal. Each passes their challenge. Touga’s victory in episode 11 shows that her power can be stolen, and her return victory in episode 12 shows that her power is great enough. In the Black Rose arc, he relies on the professor-like Mikage to train Utena’s heroic power of miracles until it can “break the seal” on the Power of Dios, that is, until it is strong enough to be worth stealing. Akio’s challenge is to train her while ensuring he will be able to control her. He gains enough control in episode 17, and each passes. In the Apocalypse Saga, Akio aims to marry Utena, because under the patriarchy a husband has final control over his wife. Each fails their challenge, but only at the very end.

Living and dead. In the Student Council arc, Utena confronts the power of living members of the patriarchy. In the Black Rose, she confronts the power of the dead, which is greater. Being possessed by a black rose depicts the dead controlling the living. In the Apocalypse Saga, she finally faces the power of Akio himself, the patriarchy as a whole. Each time, Utena learns enough in the end to surpass the power she faces.

Utena is not too bright. See comparisons - Utena’s planlessness. She wants to be a prince and doesn’t have a plan to do it. Akio exploits her inchoate desire (that he planted) and gains control over her, convincing her that the duels are exercises of princely power to protect Anthy. Metaphorically, society controls its members by assigning them roles to play, as Akio assigns Utena the role of prince. When Utena plays the role, she does not think about what it means, even at the end. The point of a social role, as I see it, is to free the actors from needing to think; just follow the script. It’s real. My own parents, I gather from what I’ve been told, married and had kids not because they thought about it, but because that was what came next. Part of Utena’s message is: Hey, stop and think about it. Utena’s surreal symbols are examples of Brecht’s theater concept of the Verfremdungseffekt (Wikipedia), whose purpose is to get the viewer to think. Utena is not good at thinking and makes many hasty decisions, but does become more thoughtful with experience.

Anthy is as important as Utena. It’s just that the Rose Bride is required to be passive—actually, to appear passive, since she carries out many plots invisibly behind the scenes. Anthy’s progress lines up with the plot structure too, though less neatly. In the duel of episode 12, Utena’s miracle is to convince Anthy that she is a prince. Utena’s story is more convincing—the story she depicts by playing the role of prince. Anthy intervenes to depower the Sword of Dios so that Utena can win. In the Black Rose, Utena realizes that Anthy can’t quit the Rose Bride role, leading to her let’s-help-each-other promise of teamwork at the start of the Apocalypse Saga. The two are definitively in love, though Utena does not realize it and Anthy cannot act on it. Akio sets them so firmly at odds that Anthy backstabs Utena. Utena is unbothered and still tries to rescue Anthy, and it is the most convincing role-playing ever. Anthy decides to leave the Academy.

repeated highlights

Akio’s power. In each arc, one episode depicts Akio’s increasing control over Utena. In each, the Student Council platform has a drooping end, symbolizing that Utena has fallen to sexual temptation. In the Student Council, it is episode 11, when Touga defeats her by playing the prince she desires. In the Black Rose, it is episode 17, when Utena (unconsciously attracted) seeks out Akio as a friend. In the Apocalypse Saga, it is the Second Seduction when Utena takes Akio as a lover.

Utena’s power. In each arc, one episode foreshadows Utena’s approaching final victory. In the Student Council, it is episode 12. Symbols show that Utena is a prince even as she tries to be an ordinary girl, and she uses that patriarchal power to free herself from Touga’s patriarchal trap. In the Black Rose, it is the cowbell episode 16. Utena frees Nanami from the cowbell, a patriarchal trap set by Anthy. Nanami is given a nose ring and immediately trapped again—it is not enough. In the Apocalypse Saga it is episode 29 with Juri. Juri’s locket is a patriarchal trap that Juri set under intense pressure to conform. It traps Shiori and Juri herself. Utena shatters it in the duel, and Juri and Shiori are set free. It changes Juri’s mindset, and that is enough. In the final showdown, Utena breaks Anthy’s patriarchal trap, and in the epilog Anthy chooses to leave the Academy.

Utena’s progress. In each arc, one episode shows Utena gaining insight, foreshadowing the end of the series where, by the Buddhist interpretation, she gains total insight into the patriarchy and vanishes from the Academy, and by the Christian interpretation gains the knowledge of good and evil (and recognizes that Akio is evil). In the Student Council, it is (again) episode 12, when she realizes that she does not understand Anthy. In the Black Rose, it is episode 23, when she realizes that Anthy can’t quit the Rose Bride role. In the Apocalypse Saga, it is episode 37 when she drops her ring.

Utena loses and regains. The opening sequence establishes a motif that runs through the series: Separation and rejoining. One example is Anthy and Utena separating after their origin as twins, and rejoining at the Academy, then being separated by Akio and rejoining after they leave. A symbolic example is the change of generations, the Buddhist samsara or cycle of death and rebirth. The example I want to point out is, at each arc’s climax, Utena loses and regains her self-perceived princehood. In the Student Council arc, Touga makes her an ordinary girl in episode 11, but by the start of episode 12 she is unconsciously playing prince again. In the Black Rose, she beats up Mikage, an unprincely action. But in the duel she is a prince. In the Apocalypse Saga, Utena becomes a princess when Akio takes her sword, but she steals it back and soon after declares herself a prince. Each time, her hair length shows the loss and recovery.

major symbols

As you should expect in an allegory, Utena is built of symbols.

Everything on the screen is an illusion. I think the most fundamental symbol is from Buddhism: The audience is not awakened in the Buddhist sense, and therefore everything we see is an illusion—a Buddhist belief. Utena is aimed at those who have not seen through the lies of the patriarchy, which create social illusions. Utena over and over calls itself a fiction—it is a stage play, it is a fairy tale, it is a myth, its reality is unstable, the shadow plays which point at the truth are stories projected on the wall, the foundational prince story is an unreliable memory of a dream. Animation itself is an illusion. And yet it is possible to reason out the clues and piece together the truth, and see through the illusion. Utena likes to offer clues that our first impression of events is not what’s really happening.

In particular, Utena’s power of miracles is an illusion. Like other illusions, it is promulgated by the patriarchy—in this case, through Dios.

Symbolic correspondences. The primary characters have primary symbolic correspondences. All characters have a variety of minor correspondences too.

There are many details that don’t fit into the chart. For example, Utena is only Jesus in her role as prince; when she plays the role of an ordinary girl, there is nothing special about her. In another example, Dios is not only Adam who is corrupted by Eve, sometimes he seems to be God.

I think it’s likely that the blank boxes under Buddhism could be filled in if I knew more. And I’m displeased with the word “witch” for Anthy. It comes with European-origin cultural baggage. The Japanese word is majo, a more general word though it typically does mean Western witch. Anthy is tied to ancient symbols, and practices an ancient form of animistic magic. I tried “shaman”, but decided that it’s no better.

Reversals. In Utena, the patriarchy projects an upside-down world view, where the truth is reversed. Being upside-down, like the castle in the sky, is a symbol of it, and reflections are related because they are mirror images. The world works in reverse: Glasses obscure the wearer’s vision. Silly shadows on the wall tell fictional stories that point to the truth. The winner of the dueling game is a loser who will be murdered. Anthy commits terrible crimes but is blamed only for things which are not her doing. Characters behave in reversed ways: Kozue aggravates her brother because she loves him, Touga exploits his friend Saionji, Anthy loves Utena but stabs her and leaves her to die. The story of Utena is about coming to see the truth, reversing the reversal. As Utena’s victory nears, symbols with established meanings suddenly mean the opposite: Being flat on your back is a victory (episode 37), being down is a sign of triumph (episode 39), and other examples like open and closed eyes.

Half one, half the other. A revolution is a transition from the old to the new. A successful revolutionary comes from the old and moves toward the new, and is necessarily part of both. Utena stands with one foot inside Anthy’s cage to reach a hand to her—and risks being trapped with her—and one foot outside to allow the two of them to escape.

In the term critics like, Utena is a liminal character. She is half in the patriarchy and half outside it. She desires good Dios and evil Akio. She rejects the exploitative girls’ uniform, but accepts the exploitative lie of sex as a gateway to adulthood. She is part unshakable good, and part tempted to evil. She is part child and part adult, as symbolized by her red shorts. She is part girl and part boy. She is part docile princess and part indomitable prince. She is part victim and part victor. At the start of the story, she is popular and lonely. At the end, she is literally on the edge between life and death and figuratively both alive and dead. At that time, she is knowing and unknowing: Symbols imply that she has no illusions about the patriarchy, but her words say that she does not understand Anthy who is one of its aspects.

Anthy is similar; she has to be for Utena and Anthy to fit together into a whole. She is half grounded in reality as she manipulates others perfectly, half floating in the storybook world as she believes Akio’s lies for children. Under Akio’s control she is evil; when seeking Utena, she is implied to be good. In the end, a mythical parallel says that she joins Utena in being half dead and half alive.

Utena’s world as a whole is the same. Good is light and evil is dark: The world is half light and half dark, or half day and half night. Shadows show us the darkness. See the shadow line and, for a narrower example, skirt shadows. All characters other than Akio are mixed good and bad. But each leans toward one side: Of the six duelists, half are good at heart (Utena, Miki, Juri) and half are bad at heart (Saionji, Nanami, Touga).

Even Akio’s actions against his victims are half-good. He presents illusions that can lead his victims toward truth. See miracles - the allegory - the patriarchy is self-destructive. For the entire series, Utena wobbles back and forth across the narrow line between victory and defeat. See regret and thoughtfulness for the self-counteracting sex date effects, and regression to childhood for more examples.

Compulsory heterosexuality (Wikipedia) is depicted as one of the patriarchy’s main tools. It affects Anthy, Juri, Kanae, Miki, Nanami, Saionji, Shiori, Touga, Utena, Wakaba, and likely others. It is not an all-powerful tool; it traps Juri in its heavy pressure, but she does resist some of its effects. Utena finds that the world is complicated and people are all different.

The power of stories. The patriarchy’s lies are stories, or you might say cultural narratives. The patriarchy is powerful and seems indestructible. Its power comes from inventing stories like the story of Dios, intended to teach patriarchal sex roles to children. Dios’s power, the power of miracles, is the power of stories. Utena is a story of using the power of stories to defeat falsehoods supported by the power of stories—to overthrow the patriarchy using its own tools.

It’s kind of self-indulgent. Ikuhara the storyteller is talking up his job.

the sequence of heroes

Utena claims in its title to be about revolution, but it is a revolution of step-by-step change. Utena initiates a revolution but does not carry it far. Each step of change, Utena’s and the later ones, is brought about by a hero who has the power of miracles—to weaken the patriarchy is a miracle. Each hero at first inspires the next, and then the next hero must move beyond their inspiration to create a new change in the world, in a cycle of inspiration followed by disillusionment. In Utena’s allegory, it means that seemingly-impossible change is brought about by people who believe that the change is possible and make it so by effort.

In the long run, the step-by-step changes will transform the world. It’s a slow-motion revolution.

Dios, the past hero. Dios’s goal is to save all girls, and (as The Tale of the Rose euphemistically puts it) kiss them: In his presence they miraculously become princesses who are under his power. The underpinnings of the patriarchy are themselves miraculous, which is to say, seemingly unrealistic. He exploits them sexually. He is able to save many individual girls, but not all. He is corrupted and (according to Akio) becomes Akio, whose goal is to deceive all girls to keep them under his power for exploitation, sexual and otherwise. Akio seeks the power of miracles (which he calls the Power of Dios) to make his patriarchy eternal. In reality, Dios is a fiction and Akio’s memory of his own origin is false (forgotten and false memories are a theme of Utena)—but see Utena’s prince is not real for evidence otherwise.

Dios’s goal is partly selfless, partly selfish. Utena is the same in that respect. Akio is purely selfish.

Utena, the present hero. Inspired by Dios, she gains the power of miracles. On her journey, she learns of the value of teamwork, people working together to help each other, unlike Dios who unilaterally exercised power to rescue girls. She struggles with the ideal of teamwork, partly because it is a new idea and she is not deeply invested in it, and partly under Akio’s pressure. In the final episode she becomes disillusioned with Dios and, without realizing or intending it, miraculously achieves teamwork with Anthy; see Sleeping Beauty.

Wakaba, the future hero. In the final episode, it is intimated fairly plainly that Wakaba achieves her goal of becoming special, and becomes the next hero, inspired by Utena. In retrospect it’s possible to make out subtle foreshadowing starting as early as episode 1. There are hints that Wakaba’s “best friend” may be the hero after Wakaba.

Jay Scott <jay@satirist.org>
first posted 14 November 2021
major update on 24 September 2023, a complete rewrite except for the sequence of heroes (which is only slightly revised)
updated 8 March 2025