take my revolution!
Revolutionary Girl Utena is genuinely one of the deepest and most complex explorations of gender as a social system in modern entertainment. 9 months after after watching the show I was still wrestling with it. I think the Palace Perspective essay takes a good stab at nailing down the central theme: that romance is a structure to reproduce gender patriarchy; in the end all girls become the Rose Bride.
If you haven't seen Utena, watch Utena. It's a long ride but the way it builds so slowly is masterful. It gets heavier than you think it will, but that's why people have been writing essays on it for almost 30 years.
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