Manga Review: 'Revolutionary Girl Utena'

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As the current coronavirus plague rages on, keeping most of us cooped up at home, I thought it a good idea to snuggle up with a good book.

Today's subject will be the manga of Revolutionary Girl Utena. You're probably more familiar with the anime series. This is a classic shoujo (Japanese: "girl") story that, in lieu of its name, revolutionized the genre, similar to how Sailor Moon and Neon Genesis Evangelion changed the magical girl and mecha genres respectively. In fact, Utena is basically the love child of both those shows since the director is a Sailor Moon alumnus and a good portion of the staff worked on Eva. Utena went on to influence other media for years to come, some prominent ones including Scott Pilgrim and Steven Universe, the latter having recently finished.

The manga was written and illustrated by Chiho Saito, character designer on the series. Both the manga and anime were made at the same time, but the manga was released first in 1996, a year before the series. It served as promotion for the show, not unlike the manga version of Evangelion. While both versions started at relatively the same place, they each went in different directions in terms of story and characters, as I will discuss later.

Interesting Finds at the Library

Today, my family and I went to a local outdoor festival. As it is the beginning of May and I live in the eastern United States, it was fairly warm outside, and my younger sister and I wanted to go into the library next door to cool off. My sister, being an avid fan of classical composers due to the recent anime series ClassicaLoid (a series which I may or may not review in the future), wanted to borrow a book on the subject. She eventually found one, a biography about Mozart. As for me, I went to the science fiction section wanting to find 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. I indeed found it, as well as another book that piqued my interest: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, which oddly enough was in the same section as 2001. Thankfully, I had my library card with me, and I managed to check out all three books.

Though 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Last Unicorn seem very different on the surface, both books share at least two things in common: they were made into feature films, which are more well-known, and each author wrote the screenplay for the film based on his story. 

I am like most people in that I am more familiar with the films than the books that inspired them. So, I thought to myself today, why not read the books that inspired the movies? Both are not that long, so I should be able to finish them within the month, if time permits. Expect more blog posts on the way, as I have decided to review each chapter of each book. Stay tuned.