Revolutionary Girl Utena #2 CPM 144 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 03/21/2000

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I realize now, with recent prices, that six episodes for $39.99 MSRP doesn't seem like a good deal, but some time ago it was an -excellent- deal. Nowadays with careful buying you can get six or seven episode DVDs for $19.99 with online discount, and Rightstuf seems to be in the business of selling WHOLE SERIES for slightly more than $10 a DVD, I like to call those deals the "Rightstuf's weekly rape my wallet" program, where I buy $70-100 work of stuff at a time and then leave it on my shelf...still in the celophane no less! But yeah, back in the day $23.52 at Bestprices was one hell of a deal for six episodes of Utena, if you're judging it purely by the technicaly aspects like episode count. Three years ago everyone was picking up 3 episode DVDs like they were manna from heaven and nobody thought any worse of the companies putting them out. CPM's release of Utena was like a refreshing little oasis of cost efficiency. Frankly though, while I can admire a show like Utena, I really just can't bring myself to like it.

I'll just assume your next question was going to be 'But, why Dave?' and because I'm running this show there's really nothing you can do about it. Don't worry about it, I'll do my best to make it worth your while. I don't know, to me, Utena seems just so...vapid. If there's something going on with this show then I sure as hell don't see it and while I'm sure it's moving to build up to some impressive climax the show is really taking its time with it. In thirteen episodes basically nothing's happened except Utena won a duel, won Anthy, a whole bunch of people tried to duel her and lost...then Utena lost a duel, lost Anthy (this might've happened twice, hell if I know) and the next episode she wins her right back! So who cares? It's like they knew that I was going to pick this apart, because at the end of the episode Anthy's waiting for Utena just like she was on the FIRST disc. Jesus! That just makes me mad. This show is probably one of the prettiest I've ever seen (baring some disgusting CG castles). The art is good, really really good. I enjoy many of the character designs (except for Juri, who looks stupid, and most of the secondary cast) and the architecture is out of sight...but where's the content? Why is this show so obssesed with acting like the fate of the word rests on its shoulders one moment, and then going complete off the wall the next?

I don't like slapstick and probably never will, and when it's introduced into a show like this it's just plain weird. Hey! Last episode we were being all crazy with betrayed lesbian love and gross incestous little girls, but NOW we're going to make an episode like Freaky Friday only it's going to involve some seriously explosive curry! And then the crazy obsessive guy is gonna have his personality switched with the MONKEY RAT and it'll be HILARIOUS. Except it isn't, and no amount of elephants falling on crazy incestous younger sisters (She might duel with the hardcore Espada y Dagger, but she's still weird) is going to make me feel better. I won't say this show had potential to me, because I don't know what I'd use to back that claim up with but...damn! The art's awesome, the dub's pretty good (Listen, you all know that Crispen Freeman is my main man. But the way Tomoko Kawakami screams "Himemiya!" in the Japanese track. Jesus...I think I had an orgasm), the theme song (Rinbu Revolution) is probably one of the best I've ever heard in my short time on this planet!

But it never really coheses for me and I'm left here sitting with a six episode disc that I'm pretty much bored with the whole way through (except for Japanese girls screaming people's names) and I find myself glad that the last episode is a clip show so I can watch it on 8x and get everything done with even faster. That's kind of pitiful, normally I wouldn't do stuff like that but I already didn't want to watch Utena again. That's not entirely true. Part of me wants to sit there and kind of muscle my way through it, because there's so many parts of it that are good in so many ways. I just can't believe someone would expect me to sit there for two hours and twenty minutes because the main character's costumes is one of the coolest things ever designed, or the dueling themes are some of the coolest songs ever made. Screw you Japan, now you're just playing dirty pool. My issue with this is that I think a lot of people are going to watch Utena thinking that it's got some incredibly awesome deep metaphor behind it, which of course it doesn't...but it looks so pretty and weird that it HAS to... ...right?