Utena is the best case of a shÅjo anime. The film is full with a naïve dream of princes and princesses and teenage women with characteristically big eyes, flowing hair, and magical abilities. ShÅjo topics remain clearly present during the movie. It features intensely emotional scenes filled with roses and relationship conflicts. However, this story isn't a conventional shÅjo narrative. Utena is exceptional since the narrative overtly shows the shÅjo with her female individuality to conquer patriarchal societies' fantasies of the perfect female.
Utena looks somewhat like a normal fairy tale on the outside but is obviously different under. The fairy tale-like narrative is used to review the illusions seen in fairy tales (Napier 176). Just like a timeless fairy tale, Utena arrives in a castle-like academy dressed like a priest and have to combat other duelists to be able to conserve the Rose Bride, Anthy. However, Utena diverges in the normal fairy tale as Utena is feminine and the castle-like academy and princes are just illusions. Utena and Anthy made the illusion if they refused and rationalized the unwanted facets of their princes' identities. Following their idealized dream is ruined, Utena creates the radical decision to leave their present fairy-tale planet with Anthy. Upon departing, the fairy tale academy is revealed to be quite a dark and empty place stuffed just with straw dolls. The planet is ruined after Utena and Anthy opt to leave it since it was a dream maintained only with their envisioned ideals of a patriarchal fairy tale property.
Utena brings home the notion of all shÅjo and possibilities open to this abject female individuality because Utena utilizes her individuality to perform an apocalypse of this fairy tale universe. Based on Frenchy Lunning, the shÅjo is the best vehicle for possibly creating new female societal identities since she's in a position to escape patriarchal societies' expectations of a lady by shifting between the picture of an innocent woman and a mature girl (Lunning). Utena is a exceptional shÅjo since she knowingly recognizes her possibility to alter the world. Utena carries out from the narrative what Lunning says the shÅjo does through repeated indications within our society. Shes takes it one step farther by grabbing the opportunity created by her identity to make a new identity. She does so through conscious rejection of patriarchal ideals. Utena and Anthy reject the occurrence of princes and the idealized lady by determining to depart the function of the oppressed Rose Bride and false memories of the princes. Utena used the possibility inside her teenager, not-quite-set shÅjo individuality to pursue new identities and a connection with Anthy. Utena chooses the shÅjo narrative one step farther because she's a shÅjo personality herself but knowingly utilizes her individuality to create new chances for himself.
Works Cited
Lunning, Frenchy.
"Beneath the Ruffles: ShÅjo and the Morphology of Electricity." {Mechademia,
2011: 3-19.
Web. {DOI: 10.1353/mec.2011.0021
Napier, Susan.
Anime from Akira to Howl's Moving Castle. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005.
Print.