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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.
