Cheap Revolutionary Girl Utena - The Movie (DVD) (Kunihiko Ikuhara) Price

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Customer Reviews of Revolutionary Girl Utena - The Movie

If you like straightforward plot, this is NOT for you.
Utena the movie... well. First of all, the series and the movie have little to do with each other, excepting the characters, so seeing the series is not a prerequisite to watching the movie. Now that we've gotten that out of the way, to the actual review: The movie is largely incomprehensable (the car scene is especially...odd...) but that really doesn't detract from it that much- Utena is expected to be slightly surreal. The animation is beautiful, and if you get REALLY lost, you can always just look at the pictures. :) There ARE some dark elements in Utena, but they are mainly implied, and anybody that doesn't already have an idea of what is going on in those scenes isn't going to find out from watching this- it isn't going to corrupt anybody. All in all, this is the kind of movie you watch late at night with a bowl of popcorn and your friends beside you- a lovely mind-trip sort of anime that you don't have to worry about understanding- it's nigh near impossible anyway, so just sit back and enjoy the show! The beauty of the dance scene is reason enough to buy this title all by itself, and the rest of the movie is just as enjoyable. Even if it is difficult to understand.

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One of the Best Anime Movies!
I watched the Utena movie before I watched the tv series and I have to admit I do like the movie better (but then again I loved the series too). Also I am not much of a shoujo fan so I was really surprised when I watched the movie and loved it!
It's extremely symbolic and almost dream like,it's like all the characters are stuck in a dream world that they can't get out of.
The only one who holds the key to the outside world is Anthy the Rose Bride. That's all I'm going to say about it, I don't want to give everything away.
It's not a children's movie though. It does contain mostly adult themes of sexuality, abuse, death, etc. You get the picture. It's also a movie that you have to think about after watching it. The movie does make sense once you thnk about it.
Buy it!!!

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A Mysterious and Gorgeous Masterpiece
"Utena - the Movie" is a masterpiece, brilliant in color and concept, and fascinating in its plot and meanings. Of course, if you want connect-the-dots animation and plotting, or if you think that Utena and Anthy are sweet little teenagers, then you'll hate it, but this film was made for viewers who will want to see it again and again to puzzle out its secrets and mysteries. And "Utena" has secrets as well as some of the most gorgeous animation ever done, like the dance sequence and the final car chase. --- The film operates on two distinct, but interpenetrating registers. One is symbolic, and the other surrealist. Utena and Anthy, now older than they were in the television show, have once again met at Ohtori Academy, once again to find each other in a kind of karmic repetition of their past lives. Symbols of the past echo throughout the film as dying monuments. Utena's no-longer-really alive, once-boyfriend/lover Touga emerges from white shrouds to talk on the phone to Anthy's equally dead brother Akio, the unprincipled headmaster of a previous Ohtori Academy that nonetheless still enslaves Anthy. Crimson roses grow on a platform cantilevered high above Ohtori, tended by Anthy, still the Rose Bride to be won by duel. And splashes of blood red crimson stain not only the roses but the walls and walkways of the surreal world of Ohtori. The crimson of the roses is also the crimson of Anthy's blood, but the rose that Utena finds and that Anthy gives to her is white: unstained. It is a symbol of their undying love, loyalty, and interwoven fates. --- The film lacks the virtually Wagnerian high drama of the television show. Instead, it is more modern (as befits the reprise of Utena and Anthy's love story) and sharper edged, not absurdist, but surreal. The architecture of Ohtori Academy looks like a cross between de Chirico and a mecha designer gone mad, but that's Ohtori for you, the world from which Utena and Anthy escape. --- At one level, the film is simply the story of two young women who escape the repressions of adolescence to find themselves and each other. At another, it is an allegory of love, this between two women who will build their own roads together. At yet another, it is a portrayal of sexuality, warped and truly corrupt within Ohtori Academy, and centered and intimate between Utena and Anthy outside Ohtori. Ohtori is the world of consensus reality, and of acceptance of what is given and commanded, in brief, all the things that Utena and Anthy must escape. The Castle of Eternity, previously a hoped-for panacea for instant happiness, is now a polluting illusion, corrupt and lethal. It represents all that Utena and Anthy must destroy if they are to become real people, genuine and authentic. --- That the film succeeds in all this, and much more (the music is marvelous), is a tribute to the skills of director Kunihiko Ikuhara and artist Chiho Saito, the woman who drew the original manga. It is not necessary to know the previous versions, although that adds depth to the film, because ultimately the film stands alone: the story of two young women in love who find their way to freedom.