With a Mystical Sword, Utena duels her classmates to protect her strange friend Anthy, who is the key to a magical power that everyone wants and could make Utena's dream - to become a prince - come true. But their deepening friendship hides a terrible secret, and Utena must face the truth about herself and those she loves... and learn what it truly means to be a hero.
-Taken directly from the back the DVD
Utena is the anime motion picture of the manga by the same name with mostly the same theme. A girl who wants to be a prince.
Why it sucks: This longing for gender bending crap is some of the stupidest drivel I've wasted my eyes on. It screams of a sterotypical bad french movie. Not being one who's read the Manga, I can't say whether or not its accurate, but it feels like one damn thing after another. I heard good things about Utena... the Manga and Anime series anyway... but this movie is garbage! What a let down!!!! To try and impress you they note that Hasegawa-san from Evangelion was the key animation supervisor and Ikuhara-san from Sailor Moon was director. While it indeed packs the visual punch of Evangelion and at times shares the same tender and romantic feel of Sailor Moon, this thing butchers itself in practically no time at all! In a surreal fantasy world whose origin itself holds a terrible secret... if in fact it... you know... has an origin. A school where the "duelists" who fight over the one tanned girl around known as the "Rose Bride" and uh... that's about it.
Multiple chalkboards move move on rails, teachers are non-existent and these annoying shadow radio people are EVERYWHERE!!!!!! They babble on about scandels and the most irritating crap you can imagine, and once they show the scandelacious (that's the word they use to describe it) tape they simply WON'T stop talking!!!! ARRRGHHH!!!!!!!! Speaking of irritating, catch the point at which Utena becomes a car???? What genius wrote this crap!?!? A living corpse? A dead who's there, but NOT there? A dead headmaster buried in under the school courtyard?? AND WHAT'S WITH THE CARS???????????? Screw your symbolism and tell the story right, damn it!!! This piece of crap isn't the least bit romantic, at best it's a failed hentai. They keep pointing toward sex, but never quite make it there. And then there's all those characters who have little or nothing to do with most of the movie who make lil' cameos because I suppose they were in the Manga or Series... What about those who MISSED all that? If you go through all the trouble to take a story that's already been told and RE-TELL it from the beginning... but different, why not do ao good job??? If the story wasn't good the first time write about something else!!! Tenchi Muyo, Lodoss War, El-Hazard, Escaflowne and several other Anime series have gone down this road and it always leads to the feces fair. Re-telling a story is bad business, period. Clamp seemed able to handle the X1999 Movie, it was yet another re-telling, but unlike Utena and some other anime movies, it was done RIGHT!!! It was beautiful, it tugged on heart strings, IT MADE SENSE and it was a wonderful, if saddeningly sobering, experience. Utena would be better done like Woody Allen's What's up Tiger Lily with completely different dialogue done in place of the real dialogue. At least it would be funny as opposed to a waste of time. Oh and on a final note, the bulk of the music hurt far more than helped. If you watch it with the music subtitles on you'll be begging them to stop because not only do most of the songs hurt, they're just plain stupid to boot.
Why it rules: It's worth watching at least once for the incredible visuals alone! Albeit it would be better watched while muted, it sports some seriously engrossing visual scenes and tricks. Like Toga telling his story through the pictures frames in the room and the dance scene with Anthy & Utena, this movie has some simply magical moments. For fans of the Manga it looks like EVERYONE from the series & manga stops by to at least make a cameo appearance, I hope you know who half of those people were and their relevence to the story... because I sure don't. Then there's the Scandel tapes... It's almost worth owning for those alone!!!!!! The "wrong tape" scene is a laugh riot, the Scandel tape starts out great itself with Akio leaping over the hoods of cars going "Ciao!" and the indifferent way he saunters into the taxi, man that was amusing.
Can you say DVD?: This thing isn't quite DROWNING in special features, but it has far more than your typical anime affair. Trailers, COmmentary, A look at the ENglish dub crew at work, sketches, notes, a tribute the fans (something more anime should have, it means a lot to the fans), a hilarious trivia game, script, art gallery and more DVD-ROM features. Not to mention the fact that the movie comes with a disc spilling over with previews for anime carried by Software Sculptors, Central Park Media and US Manga Corps and includes some cool special features of it's own! Practically worth it's weight in pink transluscent plastic with DVD fun alone!
Overall: I tried so hard to enjoy watching this... SO HARD!!!! I'd heard such good things... Not very specific things, but good things about the Utena series that I thought th movie couldn't be ANY worse. Instead we've got something that feels like Sailor Moon crossed with final episodes of Evangelion, in esscence a very pretty movie that is hampered by the fact that the story and sybolism (what little makes sense) is trite crap and the fact that it doesn't seem to jar any emotion from me... Ask me sister about what a weeping lil' baby I am. I actually cry everytime I watch Sailor Moon R, S and even though I hate the movie I can't stop the waterworks at the point that Usagi is screaming as Chibi-usa is kidnapped in Super S. I've even been known to get a lil' emotional watching Digimon ^_^;;;; Hell half my anime collection gets me all choked up, I don't even want to tell you how bad I am after I beat Final Fantasy games... Or Transformers the movie for that matter. ^_^;;;;;;
My girly sobbing aside, this movie did NOTHING for me. It bored me to the point that I actually started cleaning my room while I screened it the first time. It's just one unexplained thing after another followed by bad music and annoying dialogue and in the end people become cars. That's right, CARS! As in VROOOMM!!! And then Utena and her living corpse bust through to the real world! Lame yet? 87 minutes of french-like hell. The psuedo noble clothes that the bad guys wore in Gundam Wing was bad enough, but in Utena it's everywhere! It's not where to start when pointing out the cons in Utena the movie, it's finding a place to stop. And I think that if you really want to part with the money, I won't stop you... But I warn you not to be tempted by the pink plastic box no matter how tempting the extras or even the fun trivia game sound, it's not worth the anguish I suffer. In short, it's revolutionary like a hole in the head. Ugh.