Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie
 Mike Toole  rates it:    

A few studios-- SUNRISE in particular-- have a long-established trend when it comes to adapting popular TV series' into feature films. The usual practice is to simply retell the basic story of the TV series, with alterations both major (Escaflowne: A Girl in Gaea) and minor (Macross: Do You Remember Love?). I like this trend, because the film version tends to have more of the same stuff that made the TV version excellent, but I also dislike it, because it can come off as a stale and uncreative approach to constructing a film. For better or for worse, that seems to be the approach that BE-PAPAS, the creative collective formed by the likes of Kunihiko Ikuhara and Shinya Hasegawa, has taken with Revolutionary Girl Utena.

In the case of Utena, I'd have to say that the movie benefits from this approach. The film kicks off with a fantastic establishing shot of Ohtori Academy, which looks sort of like what M.C. Escher would draw after downing a fifth of bad bourbon. Ohtori is the same bleached, weirdly baroque school that it was in the TV series, only it's larger, more convoluted, and better presented. There's a new student at Ohtori, name of Utena Tenjou-- she's a teenaged girl who wears boys' clothes, she's seeking her mysterious old friend, Touga, and she has in her possession a ring with a rose crest, the purpose of which isn't clear to her. The rest of the cast soon appears-- chivalrous but lascivious Touga, angry and disillusioned Jury, watchful Miki, exploitative Shiori, and well-adjusted Wakaba. Oh, and there's also Anthy Himemiya, the mysterious "rose bride" who tends to Ohtori's fabulous rose gardens-- and her possessive "duelist", Saionji.

The story of Revolutionary Girl Utena: the Movie has similarities to the TV series, chief among them Utena's relentless pursuit of the story behind Anthy. But there are also a fair amount of differences-- Jury is even more bitter in the film version, still pining after the manipulative and self-centered Shiori. But Ruka, Jury's unhappy rival in the TV series, is replaced by the much more benign Touga. Akio, the headmaster and shadowy enigma in the Utena TV series, is still present, but practically reduced to a bit part. Overall, however, it's an effective and compelling condensation and reinterpretation of the TV series.

But the story details have never really been the best or most important part of Utena. The emphasis has always been on the music and visuals, from Shinya Hasegawa's slender, aqualine character designs to Hichiro Kobayashi's oversaturated, rose-colored art direction, to J.A. Seazar's surging, almost nonsensical duel theme songs. All of these elements are present in the Utena movie, only turned up several notches-- this time, Ohtori Academy is awash in rose petals, and the mysterious Shadow Girls oversee the events of the film from a goofy, hi-tech control room. The castle motif, introduced immediately in the TV series, is only brought in at the end of the film, which is slightly disappointing.

Along with the character and color design, one of Utena's most entertaining visual aspects are the duels, and they're present here in spades-- the film plunges right into an exhibition match between Jury and Miki, and there are several opponents for Utena to face before she gets to the bottom of Anthy's mysterious power. As if that weren't enough, there's even a short vignette with Chu-chu (the monkey) and Nanami (Touga's crazy little sister), which is completely extraneous, but still very funny.

I was generally floored by the dub, which is quite a pronouncement, given that I thought that the initial dub of the TV series' first 13-episode arc was shaky. Here, the actors' performances are much more careful and nuanced, due both to ADR director Tony Salerno's steady hand and film director Kunihiko Ikuhara's supervision. Rachael Lillis and Sharon Becker turn in fine performances as Utena and Anthy, but it's Crispin Freeman who really steals the show as Touga-- the scenes with Touga and Utena are particularly absorbing. Also of note is Lisa Ortiz as Shiori, who gives the conniving secondary villainess an entertainingly subdued take. The dub isn't 100% perfect-- annoyingly, Akio's name is mispronounced-- but it's a truly excellent effort. The Japanese version, which I actually saw in 2000 and only spot-checked on the DVD, seems fine enough-- I never really got into Tomoko Kawakami's performance as Utena, but I like Takehito Koyasu's Touga and especially Kotono Mitsuishi's Jury. Overall, each language version is terrific, which is itself pretty rare.

Central Park Media went all-out for the DVD version, and it shows. I'm still not a huge fan of their packaging (I just don't like their choice for the Utena logo), but the contents of the DVD are fantastic. Not only is the movie presented in anamorphic widescreen, but there's a wealth of extras, including a behind-the-scenes featurette, Japanese trailers and commercials, art and character sketches, a trivia game, and that rarest and most entertaining of extras, a director's commentary. I didn't have a chance to listen to the entire commentary, but in the portions I heard, director Kunihiko Ikuhara eagerly outlined everything he could remember about the film-- surprising, considering his coyness about the story's plot points when asked about it at cons. There's even more stuff on the DVD-ROM portion, like a script and another art gallery. Unless you simply don't have a player, there's no excuse to avoid getting the DVD version of this film.

There is one glaring problem about the Utena movie, however, and that's context. See, unless you're interested in the story enough to have seen the first 13 episodes (or at the very least, read up on the characters), the story of the film is going to be very hard to follow. Some characters' motivations aren't clearly explained, Akio's role in things doesn't make a lot of sense... it's a very good movie, but it does suffer because it relies so much on the viewer having prior knowledge. In the end, I'll forgive that shortcoming, simply because Utena: the Movie is 90 minutes of the sweetest eye candy you're bound to see in the world of animation. It's bursting with visual delights; it plays less like a standard, linear movie and more like a frenetic, flashy love letter to the fans of the TV series and manga. With the Utena movie, director Ikuhara abandoned all pretense and created something barely coherent, but so strikingly beautiful that it hardly matters.

Added:  Saturday, October 18, 2003

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