Anime / Revolutionary Girl Utena

You'll never see roses the same way again.

"Grant me the power to bring the world revolution!"

On the day of her parents' funeral, a seven-year-old girl named Utena Tenjou is overwhelmed by despair until she has a miraculous encounter with a travelling prince on a white horse. The prince encourages her not to lose her strength and nobility as she grows up, and gives her a rose signet ring that he claims will lead her back to him someday.

However, Utena is so enthralled by the encounter that she decides to become a prince herself, instead of becoming a princess in waiting.

Seven years later, Utena (who now presents with a mixture of male and female gender cues) has followed the trail of her prince to the prestigious Ohtori Academy boarding school. One day, Utena attempts to defend her best friend from the abusive vice-president of the student council, and is unwittingly drawn into a secret sword-fighting competition held between its members, who all bear signet rings identical to her own. The champion of the Rose Crest Duels is awarded access to the mysterious inverted castle hanging above Ohtori Academy, "the power to revolutionize the world", and the hand in marriage of the demure and obedient "Rose Bride" (Bara no Hanayome): a student named Anthy Himemiya.

The relationship between Utena and Anthy slowly blossoms as a number of challengers emerge to fight Utena for their own personal reasons and self-actualisation. Utena grows closer to Anthy and her older brother (the charming and mature Akio Ohtori), is forced to confront the incongruities between her childhood ideals and developing sexuality, and discovers the secrets of her own half-remembered past and those surrounding the hidden benefactor of the Rose Crest Duels: a mysterious figure known as "End of the World" (Sekai no Hate).

Revolutionary Girl Utena (少女革命ウテナ, Shōjo Kakumei Utena) is a surreal Shoujo work that describes, averts, inverts, and subverts a wide variety of anime tropes, most notably Stock Footage (Utena's Once an Episode Transformation Sequence) and Clip Show episodes (two of the three such episodes contain major essential plot twists). The series has a striking visual design crafted by the circle Be-Papas (and headed by director Kunihiko Ikuhara) and influenced by the Takarazuka Revue, Noh theater plays, fairy tale imagery, and classic shoujo manga. It also features a lush soundtrack that mixes classical orchestral themes composed by Shinkichi Mitsumune with outré choral harmonies and surrealist rock music composed by J.A. Seazer. The show draws on a number of symbolic, philosophical and literary allusions while beautifully and aesthetically portraying its Dysfunction Junction of attractive and troubled characters. This approach helped the series win the "Best TV Animation" award at Kobe Animation '97.

Underneath all the visual flair and cultural references, however, Utena tells a coming-of-age story that explores many curious notions: Can a pink-haired girl surrounded by frills and flowers break free of the expectation of becoming a princess to instead take on the role of a prince? Can someone hold onto childish ideals to defeat an opponent who embodies adulthood? What does it even mean to become an adult, or love another as an adult, and what is lost by those who desperately chase an illusion of maturity?

In contrast to the show's subtle approach, the 1999 film Adolescence of Utena makes explicit the romantic nature of Utena and Anthy's relationship. The film also changes most of the show's characters in drastic ways, both in terms of appearance and characterization. The storyline receives just as many drastic alterations; fans consider it more of a recreation of the series than an adaptation. Utena: The Movie became infamous for a Gainax Ending — which comes after a Gainax Beginning and a Gainax Middle. One could see the film as an allegory on Mahayana Buddhism, a musing on Jungian philosophy, or even a look at gnostic belief. (Or it could just be about bisexuals.)

Central Park Media originally released both the series and The Movie in North America. When CPM snagged the show's license, it dubbed the show's first thirteen episodes, but failed to secure a license for the remaining episodes until years later. This mistake created a huge gap between the release of episodes. They did eventually dub the rest of the show and later released the series and The Movie on DVD. In 2011, Nozomi Entertainment rescued the license and re-released the series across three DVD sets, using the show's remastered Region 2 DVD as the video base and retaining the CPM dub. (It included The Movie in the third set.) The series also aired on Viz Media's Neon Alley streaming service. Manga Entertainment, who shares a distribution deal with Nozomi, made the whole series available in its entirety on both Hulu and YouTube; it also placed The Movie on YouTube. Nozomi re-released the series and movie, this time on Blu-ray, in 2018.

Viz Media published the entire manga series and the manga based on The Movie. While those releases have fallen out of print, Viz re-released the manga in a hardcover collection format in 2017.

Flowers magazine published an epilogue by the name of After The Revolution by Chiho Saitou from July 28, 2017, to March 28, 2018. Viz Media started publishing the epilogue in 2020.

The franchise consists of:

Anime and Manga

• A five-volume manga. Though chronologically the first version (serialization began in mid-to-late 1996), the manga and the anime were simultaneous projects, and the manga was based on the anime's plans rather than the other way around.
• A 39-episode anime series, which was produced by J.C. Staff, and aired on TV Tokyo from April 2, 1997 to December 24, 1997. This is considered the "core" canon.
• A single-volume manga based on the below-mentioned film. Although it follows The Movie relatively closely, it diverges with its own ending.
• After the Revolution, a 20th-anniversary 2017-18 one-volume epilogue-sequel manga that uses imagery from the anime and no clear-cut continuity.

Films — Animated

• Adolescence of Utena, an original animated feature film, released in 1999. The movie is considered an alternate continuity to the original series, though it is in many ways seen as a spiritual continuation/alternate ending due to its heavy use of symbolism that requires knowledge of the original show to parse.

Literature

• A pair of light novels published in 1998; one focuses on Miki, the other on Saionji. These are one of the most obscure parts of the Utena canon and are yet another alternate continuity (though they bear the closest resemblance to the original manga, and are mostly Lighter and Softer).

Visual Novels

• Four Days in Ohtori: Itsuka Kakumei Sareru Monogatari, a Sega Saturn visual novel. This game features two new characters—the New Transfer Student player character, and a villain named Chigusa Sanjouin—and is set during the anime's first arc. It was never released outside of Japan. Almost twenty years later, a fan translation was released.

Theatre

• Comedie Musicale Utena la fillette révolutionnaire (December 17 - 29, 1997) at Hakuhinkan Theatre.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena Hell Rebirth Apocalypse: Advent of the Nirvanic Beauty (May 26 – June 1, 1999) at Zamza Asagaya Theater. Produced by Gesshoku Kagekidan, a small angura theatre troupe with strong ties and history to Terayama Shuji, a favorite playwright of Ikuhara Kunihiko. Apparently featured Anthy with a machine gun, zombie mummies and the Egyptian God Osiris.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Choros Imaginary Living Body (September 30 – October 1, 2000) at Amasaki Piccolo Theater Center Hall. An even more obscure musical whose very plot remains a mystery.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Bud of the White Rose (March 8 – 18, 2018) at CBGK Shibugeki!!. This musical covers the Student Council arc.
• Revolutionary Girl Utena: Blooming Rose of Deepest Black (June 29 – July 7, 2019) at Theatre G-Rosso. Covering the Black Rose arc.

Oh, and one last thing you will want to remember: Word of God says all interpretations of Utena's symbolism are true.

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Grant me the power to trope the world!

Tropes A to E

• Absent Animal Companion: Apart from Chu-Chu, none of Anthy's numerous pets appear or even get mentioned past their introductory episode.
• Absurdly Powerful Student Council: Almost every episode, the Council members ride in a fancy elevator to meet in a rose-decorated tower to discuss the upcoming worldwide revolution. Then they swordfight for a chance to control said revolution. That's about as absurdly powerful as you can get. Beautifully subverted when it turns out that Akio and Anthy created the Duels for the sole purpose of benefiting Akio, and not even Utena really had a fighting chance to become the final Champion as long as Anthy remained the Rose Bride.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Anthy can power up the Sword of Dios/Utena's soul sword; included in said power-up is this property, although it's only demonstrated during Utena's duels with Touga. To put it into perspective, Utena's powered-up soul sword can easily split approaching cars without them losing velocity.
• Accidental Marriage: Utena and Anthy, though it's technically just an "engagement".
• Action Girl: Utena, Juri, and the other female duelists.
• Adaptation Dye-Job:
  • Utena started in the manga as a blonde, but was given pink hair in the anime and later manga volume covers and illustrations. Her eyes also varied between being brown or blue in the early colored artwork, but stuck as blue after her hair changed to pink.
  • Anthy also originally had dark brown/black hair in the manga, but it was changed to violet in the anime and later colored illustrations, while her eye color changes from brown to green. Other hair color changes included Juri going from being blonde to having orange hair (while her eyes changed from brown to blue), and Touga's hair changing from black with red bangs to red with one paler forelock. Miki's hair also was originally brown in the first color illustration of him, but quickly changed to blue to fit with the anime (as did his eyes).
  • Utena's uniform was also originally pink in the manga (though she receives a black uniform as a plot point in the third volume), but Ikuhara vetoed the idea of it carrying over to the anime. Chiho Saito explained in an omake that he gave her the choice of having Utena wear black or red in the anime; while she picked red, he settled on giving her black.
  • Anthy's Rose Bride dress was originally white with blue trim, but changed to red in later manga illustrations to match with Ikuhara's color choice.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Deconstructed with Mitsuru Tsuwabuki. His confused relationship with the concept of adulthood leads him to become a Black Rose duelist.
• Advertising by Association: The newest release announces on the box that it's from one of the creators of Sailor Moon: Kunihiko Ikuhara.
• Against the Grain: Utena has a very tomboyish attitude and refuses to wear Ohtori Academy's girls' uniform. In the manga, she explains she prefers a boys' uniform because she loves jumping fences and running, and she hates that the boys are always trying to see the girls' panties. The teachers, of course, don't buy any of this. They sigh in relief when Utena suddenly starts wearing a girl's uniform and starts behaving as a Proper Lady after she loses Anthy to Touga. And the boys... they practically throw themselves over the new, "feminine" Utena (in the manga)! Most people don't notice that she's suffering a Heroic BSoD; fortunately, Wakaba snaps Utena out of this.
• Age-Appropriate Angst: Played with. Though most of the cast are teenagers, reasons for angsting and levels of angst will vary depending on the personality and maturity levels of different characters. Then it's played straight with Akio and Anthy, who've lived for what's implied to be centuries and have universal problems proportional to their humongous ages.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: Deconstructed; any girl who goes after a 'bad boy' in this series finds themselves hurt by them in the end. This is most apparent with Wakaba's attraction to blatant Jerkass Saionji.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Sadly lampshaded by Juri, who remarks that the cast would be much happier if they could simply change the objects of their affections.
• All of the Other Reindeer: It seems this way from the students to Anthy at first, but as the story goes on it becomes clear that her real issues are much bigger than their petty bullying.
• All Take and No Give: Akio and Anthy's relationship offers an interesting twist on this trope. Akio has the obvious position of power, not just in the relationship but throughout Ohtori Academy, while Anthy is at the bottom of the social pyramid, and often plays into her brother's schemes. However, Akio is powerless without Anthy, and she knows it. However much he may try to abuse and dominate Anthy in order to take and maintain control, it does not change the fact that all of Akio's power is derived from Anthy.
• Almost Holding Hands: In the opening, Anthy and Utena's hands reach to grab each other but slip away, a few seconds after an Almost Kiss. This symbolizes the unresolved romantic tension that lingers between the two for most of the series, and also foreshadows a future point where Utena holds Anthy's hand to keep from falling from the planetarium.
• Alpha Bitch: Deconstructed; Nanami positioning her social life on being the leader of a Girl Posse means that she doesn't actually trust any of her friends on an emotional level. She also is unable to affect anything she actually cares about because her older brother has even more social power than her.
• Alternate Continuity: Played with; although the manga, series, and movie do tell their own stories in literal separate continuities, they also work in a kind of symbolic sequence that seems to indicate a connection of some kind, like how Utena gets her series' outfit partway through the manga, or how the characters in The Movie have kept some character development from the series. The movie-manga plays this straighter, being a more normal and rearranged version of The Movie's scenes.
• Anachronism Stew: It's a fairytale story using roles like princes and witches, while taking place in a setting practically made of symbolism that roughly corresponds with a modern one, that has characters who are implied to be aliens and there's even a hint of the undead. One particular example stands out in a certain flashback to the legend of the rose prince; it's played up as medieval, with swords, monsters and pitchforks, but at the same time, there's an inexplicable fax machine prominently placed in the scene.
• And the Adventure Continues: The anime ends with Anthy departing on a quest to find the missing Utena.
• Animals Hate Her: Nanami.
• Animation Bump:
  • The Stock Footage is stock footage, yes, but it's all very well-animated.
  • Utena and Akio's sex scene in episode 33. It is speculated that this is because Utena's movements in this scene were very carefully designed to convey her emotions on the matter.
• Anti-Villain: Nearly every character that can be considered a villain at any point in the story is this except for Akio.
• Anything That Moves: Touga (although he's mainly into girls) and especially Akio.

• Arc Words: All over the place, to the point where the show occasionally throws in parodies of its own arc words for humorous effect.
  • "Revolutionize the world!" and numerous variations. ("[Grant me] the power to bring the world revolution!", etc.)
  • And also appearing in the sword-pulling sequence, "Rose of the noble castle, by the power of Dios that sleeps within me, heed your master and come forth...!"
  • End of the World, used to refer both to the mysterious individual and the actual event.
  • The Absolute Destiny Apocalypse, both the name of the transformation sequence's song and what Anthy repeats in every "next time" preview.
  • The Shadow Play Girls have "I wonder, I wonder! Do you know what I wonder?" and "Extra! Extra!", which open their segments in the first and second arcs, respectively.
  • Various mentions of "endless motion" and other forms of repetition.^note Or, in other words, revolution. (Which is a motif that the overuse of arc words ties into.)
  • From the Student Council arc (and also somewhat the whole series): "If it cannot break out of its shell, the chick will die without ever being hatched. We are the chick, the world is our egg. If we don't crack the world's shell, we will die without ever truly being born. Smash the world's shell!^note For the revolution of the world!"
  • Most of the Student Council has their own special words: Saionji's "something eternal"/"that which is eternal", Miki's "shining thing"/"that which shines", and Juri's "the power of miracles".
  • From the Black Rose arc: "Deeper... go deeper..." and "The path before you has been prepared.^note Your only choice is to revolutionize the world."
  • From the Akio arc: "There, can’t you hear it? If your soul has not truly abandoned all chance for hope, then you can hear the sound that races through the End of the World. Follow us to the world you seek!" and "I now reveal the End of the World... to you."
• Artistic Age: Type 1. It's easy to forget that Utena and Wakaba are 14 years old, and Nanami is only 13 years old, looking about the same age as their 16-18 year old upperclassmen. Makes for added Squick during Akio's seduction of Utena
• Artistic License – Engineering: That long, slanted support pillar really shouldn't be capable of holding the dueling arena up. It only works because the dueling arena, the slanted support pillar, and the long, spiraling staircase are all illusions generated by the hologram projector in Akio's planetarium, where the duels are actually fought.
• Ascended Extra: Nanami, a major secondary character in the anime, only appears in a photo in the manga, where Juri more or less takes her place.
• Ascended Fridge Horror: A good rule of thumb with this series is that if something, especially a relationship, seems a little fucked up at first glance odds are it's not only exactly as bad as you think it is, but worse.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Possibly Utena, in the end of the series and manga.
• Author Avatar: Chu-Chu. This is Ikuni.
• Autobots, Rock Out!: With Ominous Latin Chanting to boot. Try not to enjoy the Black Rose Arc songs.
• Back for the Dead: Enforced by Ruka.
• Backstory: Everyone has one.
• Badass Boast: The songs during the duels sometimes contain these, like "My children, astronomical planets - five solid bodies are my descendants". Sometimes they're the namesake of the song, like "I Am All the Mysteries in Creation" or "I Am An Imaginary Living Body".
• The Beautiful Elite: Almost every major character (except, notably, Anthy) has a scene where they are being admired by a crowd of lovestruck onlookers (of both genders). This usually happens when they're first introduced.
• Bifauxnen: Utena.
• Big Bad: End of the World/Akio.
• Big Brother Attraction: Deconstructed, most thoroughly with Nanami, who seems like a textbook case of this trope, obsessing over her brother and hating people who get his attention... until she actually confronts her feelings and it becomes clear that she doesn't actually know in what way she likes him, if at all.
• Big Brother Instinct: Averted. Dios ignored Anthy when he was too busy saving the rest of the world. Then he became Akio and decided that he wouldn't mind having his sister stabbed by swords for all eternity.
  • Subverted with Touga, who outwardly indulges Nanami but ultimately sees her as a toy like he does with most girls.
  • Played with with Miki, who wants to have a relationship with Kozue, but no longer knows how he can do that.
• Big "NO!": Kanae at the moment of her defeat .
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: Chu-chu has them. And he's supposed to be cute.
• Bisexual Love Triangle: Utena is torn between first Touga and then Akio (Touga's mentor and role model), both princely Manipulative Bastard types, and the demure and feminine Anthy. Touga/Akio both remind her of the prince she met a a child, but her relationship with them represents becoming a princess instead of the prince she aspires to be. In episodes where she submits to Touga/Akio, she undergoes temporary Chickification, going from a brash and confident tomboy to a demure and submissive girl. Whereas Utena's interest in Anthy is closely connected to her desire to become a prince and emulate the Knight in Shining Armor ideal.
• Bishounen: Roughly the entire male cast.
• Bitch Slap: Anthy is on the receiving end of this multiple times during the story, typically courtesy of Nanami and her posse. Her close relationship to the student council (particularly Nanami's brother, Touga) and Extreme Doormat tendencies made her an easy target.
• Bittersweet Ending: Utena has disappeared from Ohtori Academy, the entire campus will eventually forget about her, and on the surface everything returns to a typical school life instead of the world-shattering "revolution" imagined by Akio. But the revolution did occur: Utena's presence has changed everyone she met for the better, in small but significant ways, helping to free them from their trauma and toxic relationships. Most significantly, Anthy is inspired to finally break free of her eons-long abusive relationship with Akio, and leave Ohtori Academy to search the world for Utena.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The official English translation by Neil Nadelman is rather infamously bad. There's countless translation errors, ranging from minor and relatively inconsequential mistakes to butchering character beats and plot developments. It's been noted that the official translation makes the plot much more difficult to follow than it actually is, because it creates plot holes that fans had to come up with interpretations to explain away (given the abstract nature of the show) and generally overcomplicates exposition. The songs in particular are subject to awful translations. The duel songs for episodes 14 and 20 directly reference Hamlet's Japanese translation, but you wouldn't know that from the official translation (though admittedly most fan translations also miss this). Listing every problem in the official subtitles (and the dub, which uses the same bad translation) would fill an obnoxiously long stretch of this page, so have some highlights instead:
  • In the iconic Absolute Destiny Apocalypse song, "sanba uba" in "yami no sabaku ni sanba uba" is rendered as "shining place" rather than the intended "midwife, wet nurse".
  • As seen in the link above, Wakaba saying she doesn't see a need to know more than the multiplication tables is mangled into her saying that she'd be happy getting only 99s in Math tests. Uh, entitled much?
  • Kanae's monologue in episode 14 counts for a butchered character beat. In the actual script, she says she despises Anthy no matter how hard she tries. The official translation misparsed this to her saying she can't get Anthy to like her no matter how hard she tries.
  • Earlier that same episode, Utena remarks that she and her classmates went out to have fun on Saturday, which is mangled in the translation into her saying that she turned their Saturday class into a party.
  • Episode 18, which centers on Tsuwabuki wanting to be a grown-up, has a large amount of innuendos and double entendres, including the final line of the episode, which has Nanami saying something that could be translated as "Is it hot in here or is it just me?". Some of the more obvious ones are translated in the subs, but there's still many unaccounted for, including the aforementioned final line.
  • For a more traditional blind idiot translation, a line in episode 7 where Utena says that she doesn't know if the things she's heard about Juri are true or not is erroneously rendered as "I don't know if it's real or true." This is one of the many errors the re-issued subs on the recent Blu-ray release did not fix.
  • One error they did fix in the updated subtitles is the final line of episode 1. They corrected an incorrect translation that went something like "From this day forward, I am your bride" to the accurate translation of "From this day forward, I am your flower".
  • In episode 23, Utena's younger self in her memory says she will be patient, while the official translation changes that to her saying she will be strong. It's a relatively minor error compared to the rest, but it still damages the scene because the point of the scene is that in her memory, Utena was dependent and vulnerable, not strong.
  • All references to the Namahage are scrubbed out of episode 21's Shadow Girl play in the official translation, which means the Namahage isn't mentioned and the mantis Shadow Girl's speech quirks are not adapted.
  • In episode 8, a thinly veiled threat of rape towards Anthy from one of Nanami's cronies is left out.
• Bloodier and Gorier: The manga, surprisingly enough, is much more violent than the show in a couple scenes, despite the manga usually being Lighter and Softer. Utena brutally cuts a large gash in Akio. Even The Movie-manga's painting scene has the paintings melting in a bloody-looking way.
• Bloodless Carnage: There aren't any injuries that would be accompanied by noticeable blood until the final episodes, but none of them feature the puddles of blood that they should.
• Blood Sisters: Utena vows to protect and support Anthy no matter what the cost. However, much of the dramatic tension throughout the show comes from Utena's vows being self-serving: she vows to "support" Anthy while making broad and sweeping assumptions of what "supporting" actually means, because she knows nothing about Anthy's history and circumstances, and makes little meaningful effort to bond with her and find out.
• Book Ends: The very last episode features a montage of "everyday" scenes paralleling events that happened to Utena and the other characters throughout the last year. As Anthy points out, the ending is not as bittersweet as it initially appears — the character dynamics that Utena changed are things that can't be undone.
• Boxing Kangaroo: One breaks out of containment, attacks Nanami, and ends up getting KO'd by Touga. No explanation was ever given for why there was a kangaroo on campus in the first place.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: More or less literally — the asparagus sandwich may never be the same.
• Break the Cutie: Weaklings in Utena either stay weak and get into severe trouble, or they try to seize power in incredibly unscrupulous ways.
• Break the Haughty: Everyone's haughty to some degree, but no matter how it seems from the outside, Akio does not live a happy life.
• Brick Joke:
  • One of the shadow plays features a scientist and her robot, which every now and then mutters some nonsense about catching monkeys. A few episodes later, there's an entirely unrelated skit with talking animals, and it ends when a robot appears out of nowhere and kidnaps the monkey.
  • In the first episode, Utena asks Saionji why there's an upside-down floating castle in the middle of the forest. He says, "It's a kind of mirage. Think of it as a trick of the light." Thirty-seven episodes later, Akio turns off the planetarium projector.
• Bright Castle: The castle in the forest above the dueling arena is the classic fairy tale castle, with lots of spires and pointy turrets, all in red and white. Termed "the castle where eternity lies", it is the home of Dios, a spirit embodying the Knight in Shining Armor ideal. Like most fairy tale tropes at the end, the castle has a much darker secret behind it: much of it is an illusion cast by Akio, and the castle is associated with the imprisonment and perpetual torture of the Rose Bride.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Played with in Miki and Mikage. Neither are completely lazy, but they do not reach their full potential in the series.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Wakaba and Saionji take on this role in her Black Rose episode. It goes horribly wrong, of course.
• Brother–Sister Incest: No! Don't be repulsed! Or, well, do be repulsed, because it's deliberately not played for fetish appeal. Pairings include Miki and Kozue, Nanami and Touga, Anthy and Akio. The first is implied and the second never gets explicit. Akio and Anthy, on the other hand... And all three pairings are creepy and full of insidious manipulation from one or both sides.
• Broken Ace: While not immediately obvious, Utena, the Student Council, Mikage, and even Akio(!) all have amazing skills, legions of admirers, and a dumpster fire's worth of psychological hangups apiece. Though certainly buttressed by magic and privilege, each duelist has reached acclaim through a massively unhealthy obsession with something from their past that (they think) will fix everything; actual fame and and social prestige are tertiary. The unasked question: is "specialness" worth that level of emotional turmoil, especially if you didn't care anyway?
• Broken Bird: An overt example is Juri. She's the reason Ruka comes back for the dead. A more unconventional example is Anthy. Also, Kozue and Shiori.
• Bull Seeing Red: Anthy presented Utena with a freshly knitted red sweater shortly after Nanami turns into a cow, resulting in a bullfighting scene.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: They're all over the place, especially in The Movie.
• Butt-Monkey: Nanami and Saionji, especially in the light-hearted Nanami episodes.
• Caged Bird Metaphor: Anthy's rose garden is inside a birdcage-shaped greenhouse, emblemizing her mysterious imprisonment as the "Rose Bride". The fact that she can technically leave this "cage"—but chooses to stay—also hints that she's imprisoned by more than physical or magical means.
• The Casanova: Touga, Akio.
• Cassandra Truth: No matter how many times Utena is told not to trust Akio and Anthy, she doesn't listen.
• Cast Full of Rich People: Implied. The Student Council Duelists are implied to be made up of rich kids. Touga and Nanami are explicitly wealthy and live on an off campus estate, Miki and his twin sister live in an apartment by themselves and are shown to have a large house as well, Juri is a model, and Anthy and Akio have a Sleek High Rise Apartment and are close with the namesakes of the school, with Akio also owning a sports car with a car phone (which was very fancy for the time the anime was made). The only exceptions are Utena, an orphan, and Saionji, who seems to have a bad relationship with his family and has to ask Wakaba, a fellow student, to let him stay with her while he is expelled. The trope is downplayed in that the wealth of the characters rarely comes into play.
• Catchphrase: Goes with the stock footage.
• The Chain of Harm: A recurring theme is how abuse victims often turn around and abuse others.
  • Akio abuses Anthy who passively aggressively attacks Nanami, Utena and others.
  • Touga is (according to Word of God) abused by his parents (this is made explicitly canon in the movie). He manipulates Nanami and Saijoni who take their anger and jealousy out on Anthy.
• Chained to a Bed: Kozue's husband does this to her every night in After the Revolution because he thinks she's in love with someone else. She is.
• Chalk Outline: The arena during the Black Rose arc becomes filled with red silhouettes of dead bodies. Rather creepily, whenever a Black Rose duelist is defeated, they collapse perfectly into one of the silhouettes.
  • Remember where Mikage gets his Black Rose Seals...?
• Character Development: Everyone gets some over the course of the series.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: You don't want to know what it did to Dios and Anthy...
• Cinderella: Subverted, of course. At first, Keiko seems to follow this tale straight to the point of parody, Nanami being a sorta "evil stepmother". But then her attitude to her "prince" appears to be much more "rose-bridish" than "cinderella-esque". And as she gets close to Touga at last, she switches roles with Nanami, starting to humiliate her. To crown the subversion, she ends up beaten and "princeless".
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Nanami, Kozue, Shiori, and tragically Anthy.
• Clip Show: Episodes 13 and 33 summarize the first and third arcs, respectively, while surrounding the clips with intrigue, surrealism, and plot twists. Episode 24 is a humorous version, and compiles all of Nanami's Butt-Monkey moments as diary entries written by Tsuwabuki.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Anthy sometimes appears to be one, mostly near the beginning of the series.
  • Nanami as well.
• Clothing Damage:
  • During Utena's second duel with Touga, her uniform gets torn from the strikes. An analysis of the scene reveals that Utena is getting rid of the sense of false normalcy and clear discomfort the female uniform she was wearing gave her, in an attempt to get back her princely self.
  • During the ball in episode 3, Nanami arranges for Anthy to wear a dress made from a fabric that disintegrates when wet, and then arranges for her to get splashed. Utena ends up making a new dress for her out of a tablecloth, which looks surprisingly good for an outfit made from found materials in under a minute.
• Colour-Coded Characters: Each major character has a color associated with them. Each color, in turn, represents the biggest emotional problems they face. Similarly, Utena's white rose when she faces Black Rose Duelists is a classic case of White Hat Black Hat.
• Comically Missing the Point: Throughout the Black Rose arc, the shadow play girls start doing their performance in front of other people (usually Utena), at the end of which the witness makes some innocent comment or question about their performance. Said comment is invariably about the literal events portrayed without grasping any of the allegorical similarities to the events of the episode.
• Conspicuously Light Patch: Utena's locker in the Black Rose arc.
• Coming of Age Story: At it's heart, Utena is about the pains and missteps of growing up.
• Compete for the Maiden's Hand: The duels for the Rose Bride. The way that Anthy drops all association with her betrothed if he/she loses a match the moment she knows that the loss occurred can be rather disturbing.
• Continuity Nod: The shadow play girls talk about a monkey-catching robot in episode 22. It makes later appearances in episodes 24 and 31.
• Cool Car: Akio's car, which appears several times starting in the third act and becomes a major motif.
• Could Have Been Messy: Since the objective of the duels is to cut a rose off the opponent's jacket rather than to draw blood, most duels end with minor injuries at worst. Akio even points out in the final duel that Utena has no experience in real fighting because she's only fenced under a gentlemanly victory condition, which leaves her totally unprepared for getting run through by Anthy.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The series really toys with this trope. There's the deity Dios, a literal prince on a white horse, who occasionally comes down from the heavens to give Utena his strength. The antagonist is Akio ("Morning Star", as in, Satan), who clearly defines himself as Dios' evil counterpart. It turns out they were once the same person, who was worshiped as a god in a medieval society, but unable to listen to everyone's prayers and fulfill his duties as a deity. His sister Anthy took the blame and was symbolically crucified as a Jesus-figure, still to this day feeling the pain of her punishment, but absolving the people of their sins.
• Custom Uniform: The duelists' uniforms are in non-standard colors, with custom tailoring and military decoration like braid and epaulets. Utena's Non-Uniform Uniform gets pimped out to the point of Custom Uniform when dueling. The transformation is part of the standard duel intro sequence.
• Damsel in Distress: Deconstructed. Many stories feature damsels in distress who go through Hell and back, but remain sweet and nice and without many psychological marks because many writers won't know how to portray them otherwise. Utena points out that in real life, people of both genders stuck in these roles will stop being "pure" and "sweet" and start acting more passive-aggressive and manipulative if they're forced into situations where they can't seize direct power. This is very obvious in the cases of Shiori Takatsuki (looks sweet, gentle and demure, but is very malicious and has horrible self-esteem since her "best friend" Juri is a beautiful and strong Lady of War), Kozue Kaoru (repeatedly gets herself in trouble and flirts/sleeps with other guys to catch the attention of her twin older brother and "prince", Miki), and especially Anthy Himemiya (once performed a huge sacrifice, paid the price by both suffering immense physical pain and becoming a passive figure as the Rose Bride, ultimately became a mix of Broken Bird and puppet to her manipulative brother Akio a.k.a. Dios aka End of the World) and Utena Tenjou (she's not one since the beginning, but her insecurities and naiveté more than once play quite part into shoving her close to the "role"). This is not to say that Being Tortured Makes You Evil, or that it's stupid to remain nice after a tragedy. It's just pointing out a general trend: if weakness is imposed on people, it will bring consequences.
• Dances and Balls: Fancy parties, akin to royal balls, are made during the show; and in those parties some relevant moments take course.
  • The ball in episode 3 has Utena saving Anthy from a really cruel prank and Touga expresses his interest in Utena in Nanami's ear range.
  • The party where Nanami receives the cowbell.
  • The party Nanami organize in hopes of cheering up Touga, during the Black Rose saga. Keiko is unable to attend because of Nanami, which makes her go to Mikage's seminar.
• Dark Mistress: Kanae. Poor, poor Kanae.
• Dead All Along: The boundary between life and death is flexible in Ohtori, it seems:
  • Mamiya and Mikage in the series,
  • Touga and Akio in The Movie and movie-manga.
  • Chigusa in the game.
  • Ruka in After the Revolution.
• Dead Man Walking Ruka. When he shows up during the 3rd arc he only has days left to live.
• Deconstructor Fleet: The point of the series, much like Neon Genesis Evangelion, is to tear apart character tropes that are usually portrayed as either adventurous and romantic, as endearing quirks, or just Played for Laughs (or Fanservice) in most anime, but are actually really, really messed up by the standards of any ordinary human being. See Genre-Busting below.
• Depraved Bisexual: Akio is the manipulative kind who will seduce Anything That Moves as long as it will help his cause.
• Discretion Shot: We are mercifully spared seeing Nanami wearing a nose ring.
• Disposable Fiancée: Kanae is either a hilarious invocation or an inhumanly cruel straight example of the trope, depending on how you watch the show.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Keiko offers her umbrella to Touga. Nanami's response? Remove her from all her clubs, positions of power at the school, and every other group she is involved with and basically ruin her life. Nanami loves her big brother...
• Distaff Counterpart: With its surreal and deconstructive nature, Dysfunction Junction cast, and being highly open to interpretation; the series is often considered one to Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is fitting considering that creator Kunihiko Ikuhara is friends with Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno.
• Distant Sequel: After the Revolution takes place two decades after the original series, revisiting the characters as adults in their thirties.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • In "Nanami's Egg", Nanami woke up to find that she had laid an egg and spent the following day wondering whether this was something that happened to many girls or not. It is generally assumed that this is a metaphor for menstruation, although it gets a bit confusing when another character almost cooks and eats the egg.
  • Anthy kisses Touga's sword to give it superpowers, turning it red and giving him the power to deal massive Clothing Damage to Utena.
  • In some scenes, we see Touga, Akio, and Saionji rolling around in bed shirtless with unzipped pants.
  • The duelists wear roses on their chests that need to be knocked off with a sword in order to win, hence "deflowering".
  • The sensual yet vicious manner with which Akio devours a flower in one of the later episodes tells you pretty much everything you need to know about his relationship to women and sex.
• Downer Ending:
  • Most of the Black Rose episodes end with the Black Rose duelist happier off and with some Character Development for their trouble; Wakaba's, on the other hand, ends with her coming to see Saionji has left as she mutters an "I'm home" to herself. In short, it's implied that not only is she still discontent with her status as an ordinary person, she also missed her Aesop - which is that being attracted to a person of Saionji's character is really not a good thing.
  • ''The Tale of the Rose'' ends with the Witch trapping her brother, the Rose Prince, and sealing his light away from the world.

• Dub Pronunciation Change: Early episodes had Anthy's surname pronounced "him-eh-ME-ya", but later episodes corrected to "him-EH-me-ya," which was how it was pronounced in Japanese.

• Earn Your Happy Ending: The ultimate goal of all the Duelists is to literally gain the power to "bring the world revolution". How and why is an entirely different matter, but the Student Council model sums it well enough.
  Touga: If it cannot crack its eggshell, a chick will die without being born. We are the chick. This world is our egg. If we cannot crack the world's shell, we will die without being born. Smash the world's shell!
  All: FOR THE SAKE OF REVOLUTIONIZING THE WORLD!
• Elaborate University High: It is sometimes difficult to tell where Ohtori Academy ends and the town it inhabits begins.
• Elevator School: Ohtori covers elementary through high school.
• Elite Four: The first arc has four Duelists: Saionji, Juri, Miki, and Touga. These student council members seem to control the school and have access to the special power of the rose seal, and are the primary antagonists. After Saionji leaves, Nanami replaces him as part of the group. Later on in the series this relationship falls apart as characters turn against each other and become less antagonistic.
• Emotionless Girl: Anthy, although the trope is twisted and subverted in every possible way the way. After all, this is Revolutionary Girl Utena.
• Epic Fail: Nanami's attempts to frame Anthy as a weirdo during a study session fail miserably because Anthy's natural state is far stranger than what Nanami was planning to make her look like, and everyone else present already knew that.
• Epiphanic Prison: Ohtori Academy serves this for most of the characters, especially Anthy in one popular interpretation.
• Even the Girls Want Her:
  • Utena's got a legion of fangirls at Ohtori, and Wakaba goes so far as to call Utena her "boyfriend".
  • Juri seems to have this effect on female fans.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Akio's Super Seduction Skills lets him seduce most of the major cast... unless it really is just a ride in his car.
  • Just a ride in his car? Oh, come on. It's Akio.
• Everyone Is Bi: Most everyone is canonically or hinted at being bisexual, although lip service is paid to heterosexuality as being the norm ("I'm a totally normal girl who wants a totally normal guy!"). Hilariously lampshaded when Touga, who is sleeping with Akio, tells Nanami, his sister, that only boy/girl romance is normal. And proceeds to make out with her episodes later.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Nanami's various plots to humiliate Anthy in "The Sunlit Garden - Prelude" all have completely literal names, such as "Operation: Oh! Anthy Himemiya is a weirdo who keeps a snail in her pencil box!"
• Extreme Doormat: Anthy. Subverted when we find out that her emotionless personality is just a cover for her collusion with her brother, double subverted when she actually is an Extreme Doormat to him, though she passive-aggressively rebels every step of the way. In any case, she's far from emotionless to the point where some fans consider her worse than Akio. She theoretically can rebel against her destiny as a fallen princess / Wicked Witch, but has to choose between eternal torture and returning to the outside world which brought about her torture into the first place.
• Evil Laugh: Saionji does this a few times. His English voice actor makes it rather crazy.

Tropes F to K

• Face–Heel Turn: The Black Rose arc is all about these, and a fair few major characters end up switching from being friendly/neutral towards Utena to opposing her for their own ends.
• The Faceless: The shadow-play girls, and the few parents shown; also affects some "faced" characters when they appear in flashbacks.
• Fairytale Motifs: First appears to be played straight, and then subverted down to its core.
• Fallen Angel: Akio, depending on how literally you chose to interpret his backstory. Metaphorically speaking, he's definitely one. His name even roughly translates as "Lucifer".
• Fallen Hero: Series Metatropes - What makes a prince? And what causes said princes to fall? Just ask Dios...turned Akio!
• Fanservice: Played straight with all female characters due to uniforms and attractive body structure. Played straight with all the guys due to many bishonen performing dramatic and meaningful shirtless poses. Then there's the Akio Car.
• Fan Disservice: Has its own page.
• Feminist Fantasy: Right up there with Miyazaki movies in terms of female-centered stories with themes around personal growth and liberation.
• Filler: Mostly averted, as much as you'll see the term "filler" tossed around in the fanbase and on this page. A lot of Nanami-related episodes may not seem that important to the plot, but they actually help with establishing characters like Nanami and Tsuwabuki that otherwise wouldn't receive very much characterization due to their passive roles in most of the main plot, and this characterization is necessary for their episodes that are more plot-related. The clip show episodes avert this even harder, usually having a Framing Device that contains very important plot details.
  • The Black Rose Arc also plays with and subverts filler. A description of it seems like filler. The arc introduces a Filler Villain who corrupts minor side characters to fight Utena. The entire arc end with a All Just a Dream Ret-Gone ending and is never mentioned again. However, the arc also introduces a lot of character development, ramps up the surrealism, brings in the important Akio and develops Anthy via multiple Wham Shot.
• Flower Motifs: Roses, everywhere! Of every color! In your architecture! In your teacups! In your jam!
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the first episode when Utena looks at the floating castle in shock asking what it is. Saionji sardonically tells her that it is "a trick of the light". Turns out Saionji was a lot closer then he thought in his description as it turns out in the final two episodes of the series that the castle is actually an illusion that Akio creates with the Planetarium.
  • From the final episode of the anime: Juri Arisugawa tells the other duelist a story about how a boy tried to save her sister from drowning in a river. The boy didn't succeed and drowned himself, while someone else saved her sister. The tragedy was that the sister soon forgot the boy. Juri was upset by this, until she admitted to the duelist that she also forgot about the boy and his name. Not long afterwards, Utena fails to save Anthy, and all the students and her friends forget she ever existed. Akio and Anthy remember her however, and Anthy uses her memory of Utena to finally free herself from Akio's control.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Utena met Anthy for the first time right after her parents died.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Don't eat Anthy's curry.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Of course the show is practically built out of them. But one hides in plain sight: as the climax of the opening theme begins, we glimpse Extreme Doormat Anthy in a knight's armor riding to battle beside Utena. Out of Character Is Serious Business, because at the show's end, Utena disappears and Anthy is left to break free and search for her on her own. The theme song even closes with "If ever we two should be torn apart, I swear that I will change the world."
• Friendly Enemies: Miki to Utena. As the series moves towards its close, eventually most of the other Student Councilors follow suit.
• Funny Background Event:
  • There is often some strange event going on during the student council scenes, like Touga using Miki as a knife throwing target for no reason except for Rule of Symbolism.
  • During the Black Rose duels, there are a hundred desks arranged in the dueling grounds, each of which has some item symbolic to the Black Rose duelist. In Kozue's episode, that's milkshakes. While she's fighting with Utena, Anthy is drinking all the milkshakes.
• Gambit Pileup: Played with. Though all of the characters have their own agendas and minibosses Touga and Mikage would like to imagine themselves as Manipulative Bastards, only Akio's machinations truly drive the force of the whole story.
• Gambit Roulette: Avoided. The Myth of the Prince and Rose Bride is shown to have existed in a time where swords were the main weapons, implying that Akio has been trying for centuries to achieve his goals and is not just relying on some one-shot, throwaway gamble.
• Geodesic Cast: Each Duelist has their own Black Duelist counterpart. Even Akio, though Kanae isn't shown drawing his soul sword. Hmmm....
• George Lucas Altered Version: There are changes to the animation and sound editing for the remastered editions. The most noticeable are the addition of bodies resembling the Black Rose duelists to the coffins in the Nemuro Memorial crematorium, which were originally empty in the older versions, and the removal of the decaying rose in the background of the flashback when a younger Utena follows Dios and is shown Anthy's fate as the Rose Bride.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Of the eight main characters, four are female (Utena, Anthy, Juri, and Nanami) and four are male (Akio, Touga, Saionji, and Miki).
• Genki Girl: Wakaba.
• Genre-Busting: It's a complex, metaphorical coming of age story seen through the lens of Buddhism, Gnosticism, and Jungian philosophy. It also tackles issues such as gender roles, the incest taboo, and binary principle. It's a complex look at the dark side of tropes and imagery associated with European fairy tales, such as the prince, the princess, and the wicked witch. It's also a surrealist dramedy observing the complicated interpersonal relationships between the students. It's also about lesbians.
  • As mentioned above, director (Kunihiko Ikuhara) is buddies with the director of Neon Genesis Evangelion and shares a lot of his interests. If you know that, it's no surprise that the show turned out the way it did.

• Giant Poofy Sleeves: The female student uniforms of Ohtori Academy are Sailor Fuku with noticeably large, puffy sleeves. The girls' gym uniforms also have similarly huge sleeves.
• Girl Posse: Nanami's three-girl clique.

• G-Rated Sex: A number of different forms of it in the series, but the Akio Car sequence seems to be pretty much universally understood as a sexual metaphor—the fact that it ends with him stripping is kind of a tell.
• Gratuitous English: From time to time. The first ending theme as well:
  Missing truth and forever
  Kissing love and true your heart
  • And the opening theme:
  Take my revolution
• Gratuitous French:
  • The eyecatches and soundtrack CDs translate the title as Utena: La Fillette Révolutionnaire.
  • The first clipshow episode gives Utena's seven duels up to that point French names: amitié, choix, raison, amour, adoration, conviction, and soi.
• Grey-and-Grey Morality: Even the bad guys have their reasons, vague as they may seem. The fact that everybody lives for the most part also tends to dull the seemingly malevolent natures of Touga, Nanami and Saionji later on in the show. The only actual villains are Mikage and Akio, and even then they're just a darker shade of grey (albeit a very dark shade in the latter case). However, no character in the series truly is entirely pure, despite how they may seem.
• Greek Chorus: The shadow-play girls, with an assist from Utena during the second arc.
• Growing Up Sucks: At the heart of all the symbolism is the notion that growing up is inevitable and trying to avoid it has negative consequences. It takes a big effort for the student council to move beyond their problems/complexes, but by the end, it's clear that they either did move on or cope with their problems in some effective way. One could make the argument that Utena refusing her romantic feelings for Akio and the final duel, and fading away is a metaphor of the previously equally immature Utena finally realizing she could not be a prince but still fighting to save Anthy anyway, allowing her to grow up, and therefore transcending the childishness of Ohtori Academy.
• Half-Identical Twins: Miki and Kozue.
• Hannibal Lecture: Utena herself gets this from way too many people. Her usual response: Shut Up, Hannibal!.
• Hard Light: Akio's planetarium projector can project it, if episode 38's duel is anything to go by.
• Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Utena states in the second episode that she is still a normal girl and only wants a normal boy, despite the ambiguous relationship she shares with Anthy. Again, in the last arc, Utena lamely denies that her feelings for Anthy are similar to Juri's feelings for Shiori.
  • In the second episode, the only person Utena has eyes for is the dream-like prince who saved her from her Despair Event Horizon. Everyone else, female or male, is only peripheral to her. By the last arc, Utena loves Anthy, but isn't sure if she wants to continue fighting for a girl who is less than what she imagined her to be. Juri throughout most of the series loved and defended Shiori no matter how badly Shiori treated her, and the above quote refers to when Utena tells Juri that she doesn't want to become a Love Martyr like Juri once was.
  • However, Utena and Anthy's relationship in the anime can be interpreted in different ways.
• Heel–Face Turn:
  • Touga in the manga.
  • It's implied that neither Miki nor Juri have much interest in the End of the World since, after their personal problems are resolved, they stop being antagonistic to Utena (and in Miki's case, they're overtly friendly). Even Saionji is not really evil, just an easily manipulable jerk. Only Akio and Touga in the anime remain villainous until the end, though Touga has his reasons...
• Here We Go Again!. Subverted Trope. After Utena's disappearance after taking the Million Swords for Anthy turns out to be a nine days wonder that quickly fades from the school's memory, the End of the World announces that he's planning to revise the Code of the Rose Bride to account for lessons learned, cultivate a new Prince, and start again. Then Anthy shatters his plans by resigning as Rose Bride and leaving Ohtori to look for Utena.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Akio was terrified of the idea of having to pay a high personal cost to regain his power (e.g. being impaled by the Swords of Hatred); hence why his plans and actions all revolve around forcing others to bear the cost in his place. In contrast, Utena's genuine desire to free Anthy above all other considerations - and treating the price as a worthwhile cost to pay - is ultimately the key to helping the latter break free of her abusive relationship with Akio, and leave Ohtori.
• Hot for Student: Do you really wanna know how many students Akio sleeps with? Does anybody really know?
• Human Resources: The Black Rose Circle's plot is apparently powered by the corpses of the 100 boys who died in a fire at Nemuro Memorial Hall.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: They're called Duels (even the ones without an actual duel in them).
• I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: A twisted example of this trope is discussed when Nanami and Touga are in Akio's car. Akio implies that Nanami finds incestuous relationships disgusting because she has never tried that herself^note At this point, Nanami is already aware of the nature of Akio and Anthy's relationship.. Then, Touga makes sexual advances on Nanami, and her refusal and disgust at the idea avert this trope entirely.
• I Just Want to Be Special: Deconstructed. Aside from a small handful of exceptions ^note Anthy, Akio, Dios, Chu Chu and the Shadow Girls, everyone from the students to the Student Council is dealing with some sort of inferiority complex and wishes that they were more "special", which inevitably means tying their self-worth to a goal or another person rather than valuing themselves as they are. This includes people who are "special" already. Wakaba's envy and Saionji's bitter (and one-sided) rivalry with Touga are just the most visible examples.
• I Kiss Your Foot ... So I Can Sinisterly Manipulate You Into Submitting To My Every Whim!
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: What the medieval townspeople do to Anthy in flashback.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Everybody, but especially the Rose Bride outfit. Utena's is famous for its visuals. Averted somewhat with Utena herself, as she has a perfectly reasonable outfit underneath the jacket — a tank top and bicycle shorts. It's just the jacket that makes cosplay very hard.
• Improbable Age: Utena's supposed to be 14?
• Implausible Fencing Powers: Utena tends to do this during the duels, particularly with the Soul of Dios powering her up. Her biggest accomplishment is probably managing to slice multiple incoming cars in half.
• In the Back
• In the Name of the Moon: Played straight several times with Utena as part of her Knight in Shining Armor persona.
• Intertwined Fingers: Utena and Anthy do this quite a bit. Used at the end of the series for dramatic effect. It's the final frame of the anime.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Touga is implied to be a variation on this trope: it seems he likes girls for meaningless sex, and guys for emotional affairs — Utena and Nanami being an exception to that rule — although Akio is the only guy he's really implied to sleep with. One could also make a case that this trope summarizes Saijonji's feelings for Touga, but just the same, it's possible to argue that it's purely platonic.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: This is Akio we're talking about!
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Akio has many of those moments.
  • The moment where he's first implied to be sleeping with Anthy is a defining one. As is the part where Anthy is revealed to be a witch, with Akio as her 'jailor'.
  • In his debut episode, if you really pay attention to The Stinger, the fact that he set his incredibly self-conscious girlfriend up to be Mind Raped for the purpose of testing Utena.
• Kick the Dog: Nanami's Moral Event Horizon is revealed in a flashback, when she murders her brother's pet kitten.
• Knife Outline: Touga on Miki. During a student council meeting.
• Knife-Throwing Act: One of the Student Council meetings had Touga and Miki doing this with Touga as the knife-thrower.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Played with in our leading lady knight.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Utena. By the last arc, Utena loses faith in her own goodness because she realizes that she only became a prince in order to find something to live for after her parents died. She loves Anthy, but is not sure whether she wants to continue fighting for a less than pure girl who sleeps with her brother. In the end, though, Utena realizes that no matter what Anthy does, she'll always get the short end of the stick as long as she stays in Ohtori. She can manipulate as many students as she wants, but at the end of the day, she'll still be the Rose Bride openly stepped on by every Duelist she comes across, and the only one in the world who is perpetually impaled by a swarm of animated swords.

Tropes L to P

• Lady and Knight: One of the series' most fundamental subversions of gender roles is the fact that both lady and knight are women. Utena is an outspoken Action Girl who wants to emulate a Knight in Shining Armor she met as a child. Anthy is an Extreme Doormat Damsel in Distress who stays this way for most of the series. Exploited by Akio, who counted on Utena and her chivalrous spirit, showing her Anthy's Fate Worse than Death so Utena would be dragged into the dueling game. Utena is understandably devastated when she finds out, and also realizes that she had played the prince role wrong, protecting Anthy to bolster her own ego without having any real consideration for her lady's feelings. It's only then that Utena starts to genuinely play the role of knight toward Anthy—by vowing to help save her "lady" from her curse, which ends with Utena vanishing from the world, but giving Anthy the courage to call Akio out, walk away from him and Ohtori, take control of her own life, and go search for Utena herself.
• Ladykiller in Love: Touga, but it depends on whether you think he's really in love with Utena or not.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Wakaba's speech during her duel about how Utena, Anthy and the student council are all so important actually seems to be her jabbing not at them being important to Utena, but rather that they are the main characters.
• Lethal Chef: Anthy, who cooks up not poison but explosives with magical side effects. Unless she's making shaved ice, which is safe. Subverted with Akio, whose magnificent cooking skills only belie his Big Bad status. In the comic, it's Chu-Chu's fault.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: The Black Rose arc is pretty much comprised of the supporting cast bucking up and trying to kill the Rose Bride. Many a jaw dropped when this included Tsuwabuki and even Wakaba.
• Light Is Good: Prince Dios is a sparkly, beautiful prince often portrayed with Holy Backlight, dresses in immaculate white regalia and lives in a shining palace. His Cool Sword is likewise shiny and brightly colored, and he has a glistening rose Flower Motif. To a lesser extent, Ohtori Academy is itself is a massive, brightly-lit landscape where marble columns and European architecture feature heavily. NOT. All the above is a thin veneer covering a very ugly, sordid reality. And most of the "light" elements are just illusions anyway.
• Like Brother and Sister: Miki and Juri's friendship has some hints of this; Fanon and fanfiction have been known to take this in non-platonic directions.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Akio, Touga, and Saionji.
• Loophole Abuse: Ain't no rule a girl can't wear a boy's uniform! Of course, Utena's uniform is still noticeably very different from the boys'. This is given more detail in the manga, where the exact rule Utena is bending states that a student must wear a uniform from the school's designer. It may not match the normal girl's or boy's uniform, but it's by the same designer, all right.
• Love Dodecahedron: *Deep breath*:
  • Utena idolizes Dios and loves Anthy but gets tempted by Touga and sleeps with Akio, who is engaged to Kanae and sleeping with Kanae's mother.
  • Anthy mourns Dios, has love/hate feelings towards Utena, sleeps with Akio, and is pursued by Saionji and Miki.
  • Saionji, who may-or-may-not return Wakaba's feelings, also may-or-may-not love Touga.
  • Touga may-or-may-not love Saionji back, but seduces hordes of schoolgirls anyways, attracts both Keiko and Nanami and appears to fall in love with Utena. Also, Touga sleeps with Akio.
  • Wakaba loves Saionji and maybe Tatsuya, who definitely loves her. She also develops a schoolgirl crush on Akio later, and she may-or-may-not love Utena in more than a platonic way.
  • Tsuwabuki loves Nanami, but Nanami has feelings for Touga, who has no problem with kissing her.
  • Mari is jealous of the attention that Tsuwabuki pays to Nanami and Tsuwabuki may-or-may-not like Mari back. Interestingly, Nanami seems to be jealous of Tsuwabuki's friendship with Mari, in spite of being in love with Touga.
  • Kozue fools around with lots of boys, sleeps with Touga (and quite likely Akio as well - at the very least, she goes on a date with him and rides in his car) and kisses Anthy at one point, but actually loves Miki; meanwhile, Miki may-or-may not also be attracted to Kozue, and loves Anthy at least in part because he thinks of her as an idealized version of the person Kozue once was. Miki is also implied to be molested by his piano teacher, at least until Kozue pushes him down a flight of stairs.
  • Mikage once loved Tokiko, who was seduced by Akio, and now loves Mamiya, who is Anthy in disguise (kind of).
  • Meanwhile, Juri, Shiori, and Ruka have their own love triangle all to themselves, but Juri also has lots of subtext with Utena, and Akio manipulates the emotions of all of the above to keep them in the Duels.
    • In summary: Akio sleeps with half the cast.
• Love Redeems: Anthy to a huge extent, and Touga to a lesser extent, though whether or not the latter makes a full Heel–Face Turn is up for debate.
• Love Triangle: Juri-Shiori-Ruka and Utena-Anthy-Akio are the main ones. Then they're the smaller canon ones, and the smaller non-canon ones, etc... The Juri-Shiori-Ruka one is a particularly messy one for being about a non-titular character. None end well, though that observation is extremely debatable.
• Loving a Shadow: Everyone but Akio. Let's see..there's Miki-to-Kozue, Juri-to-Shiori, Shiori-to-Ruka, Saionji-to-Touga, Nanami-to-Touga, Touga-to-Utena, Utena-to-Dios, Utena-to-Anthy, Saionji-to-Anthy, Miki-to-Anthy, Mikage-to-Anthy, Mikage-to-Utena, and finally Utena-to-Akio and Anthy-to-Akio for a time. Had fun reading that? Fortunately, all of the relationships are examined and have well-developed backstories to keep them from being repetitive. Not to mention that no two of them evolve the same way. Utena/Anthy is especially unique.
• Madonna-Whore Complex:
  • Gender Inverted with the male cast, as an analysis essay called "Akio and the Fangirls that Hate Him" shows. The young Miki and Tsuwabuki are virginal, naive, and sweet. Meanwhile, the older Akio, Touga, and Ruka provide Fanservice during their Shirtless Scenes, and they happen to be Domestic Abusers who use their sex appeal to manipulate women.
  • Miki loves Anthy, whom he sees as entirely virginal and passive, because he sees her as basically the foil of his promiscuous sister, Kozue, whom he is sexually attracted to. The theme appears to be that Miki sees Anthy and Kozue as two sides of one woman, and by extension seeing neither as a full person in her own right.
• Magic Realism: Part of the genre, a lot of probably magical stuff happens which no clearly defined border as to where the realism stops and the fantasy begins, even some things that are clearly magical at first are latter explained to be quite mundane but others aren't.
• Magical Girl: Played for drama. The defining trait of all Sentai Magical Girl series is that altruism and unconditional love will always save the world. However, the biggest prince in the story became the Big Bad in part because he was incredibly altruistic, and all of Utena's strength and purity can't save one Damsel in Distress if said Damsel won't break away from centuries of abusive habits to save herself. Also, Utena is more of a Magical Warrior than a conventional Magical Girl.

• Manipulative Bastard: Akio. Touga aspires to be like him, Ruka tries to be like him for moral reasons, and Mikage believes himself to be one and succeeds for the entire second arc.

• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Aside from the setting's Magic Realism, there is likely at least something magical or supernatural going on at Ohtori Academy, fitting as it is also an Academy of Adventure. However, it's never entirely clear whether something is actually magical or just some kind of bizarre symbolism.
• Mental World: The arena takes on aspects of this during the Black Rose arc; it becomes filled with school desks and atop each one are identical copies of some item important to Utena's opponent.

• Mind Screw: The series uses such surreal and over-the-top imagery that it's sometimes hard to tell what's really going on. While it's generally agreed that it takes place in a World of Symbolism and that not everything happening on-screen should be taken at face value, the symbolism itself can be rather bizarre at times. The first arc starts pretty normal, starts losing it in the Black Rose arc, and becomes a metaphor/symbolism storm in the final arc.
• Modesty Towel: When Touga sees Dios's power for the first time and decides to get close to Utena to find out more about it, he joins Utena's household as a "shimobe" (personal servant). The first time Utena hears of this is the next day, when he waltzes out of her shower, clad only in a towel.

• Mood Whiplash: The episode with the boxing kangaroo is followed by an episode where Juri agonizes over her sexuality. This is followed by a Freaky Friday episode, which is followed by a flashback where eight-year-old Utena hides in a coffin and begs to die.
• More than Mind Control: The Black Rose Saga, and Akio does everything in his power to keep doing this to Anthy.
• Mrs. Robinson: This is just Akio's Anything That Moves at work, but he and his mother-in-law-to-be definitely get it on. Poor Kanae.
• Mundane Made Awesome
  • Surreal shows are full of dramatic flourishes and objects suddenly appearing in thin air. Touga, Saionji, and Akio are particularly found of this kind of Fanservice, and Utena loves dramatic poses to show her powerful, princely nature.
  • In episode 21, Keiko hands out party invitations by whipping them like throwing stars.
  • Virtually every Nanami episode will have this to some extent.
• The Musical: A one-off musical was made, the soundtrack has a recording of the cast singing Absolute Destiny Apocalypse in an awesome multi-part harmony.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Nanami gets one when she dropped the box with the kitten she gave to Touga in the river. She tries to justify it to herself by claiming that it was stealing her brother's affections from her, but she does not seem to be able to convince herself at all.
• My Kung-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours: Played with. Fighting ability varies depending on the user's motivation, but having superior sword skills definitely still helps.
• Mysterious Waif: Definitely Anthy, nobody else will ever be as complex.
• Never Grew Up: Ohtori Academy is apparently a twisted version of Neverland. Akio, Mikage, and (possibly) Anthy chose to stay, and the metaphor for "growing up" is "graduating".
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Nanami.
• The Nondescript: Played for drama with Wakaba, who is notable because she's pretty much the only "normal" person in the main cast. Over time, this causes her to feel very unhappy with herself, and she becomes desperate to break out of that role and become someone "special".
• Non-Human Sidekick: Chu-Chu.
• Nonuniform Uniform: Utena wears a version of the boys', not the girls' uniform. She justifies this with a loophole in the student handbook: technically, the only dress code requirement is that students buy items from school-approved lists. There is no written requirement that all the pieces come from the same uniform set, nor is there any rule against custom dyeing or tailoring. The standard boys uniform is a light-green jacket and pants; Utena's jacket (with darts and nipped waist) is dark blue, and she wears it with tight red shorts from the gym uniform. In the manga her uniform was originally bright pink top and bottom.
• Noodle Incident: What, indeed, were Tsuwabuki's strategies for winning Nanami's heart? Especially Plan 24...
• Noodle People: Every single character has ridiculously long legs.
• Not Blood Siblings: Nanami is crushed after finding out she and her brother Touga are both adopted and not blood related after all. This is then subverted when it turns out that Touga was just playing with her head — while they are adopted, they were adopted from the same family and thus actually are blood siblings. For the record: This is the Double Subversion of the inversion of a trope — a prime example of how Mind Screwy this show is.) Even further subverted in that Nanami never finds out the truth (or if she does, it's never shown onscreen).
• Not Just a Tournament: The winner of the Rose Duelists' tournaments will hand over the godlike power of Dios to Akio, then be promptly disposed of.
• Oddly Visible Eyebrows

• Ominous Latin Chanting: Voices chanting "aaah-aaah-aaah-aaah" in the "Nectar Knife" song is beyond creepy.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: "Idea of Memory" and "Legend: The God's Name Is Abraxas".
• Only Six Faces: The characters tend to have the same facial structure with different hairstyles or eye colors.
• On The Next Episode Of Catchphrase: "The absolute destiny, apocalypse."
• Ontological Mystery: In a loose sense.
• Orphan's Plot Trinket: When she lost her parents, Utena received a rose-crested ring from the prince and decided to become a Prince Charming herself.
• Our Ghosts Are Different:
  • Mikage in the series.
  • Though she isn't dead, Anthy herself may possibly be some form of projected phantom. Her sudden disappearances and reappearances in the final episode, along with the reveal of her actual body being sealed behind the Rose Gate would seem to make this almost explicit.
  • Chigusa in the game.
• Out-of-Clothes Experience: Anthy is in the nude as she takes the swords of hatred.
• Palette Swap:
  • The first ending credits sequence gives Utena a pink version of Anthy's dress, which she actually wears in episode 38. The third arc gives a blue dress to Kozue and a purple dress to Shiori.
  • Akio and Anthy wield a black version of the Sword of Dios/Utena's soul sword during the endgame.
• Parental Abandonment: Utena herself, the Kiryuu siblings and the Kaoru siblings. The parents that are not dead or absent are simply not mentioned.
  • And then there's Kanae's mother, who, even though she's one of the only parents to appear, manages to show in one short scene that she's abandoned her daughter in a way more heartbreaking than the rest of the casts' families put together.
• Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Deconstructed, like many other tropes in this series. Utena ends up in an Accidental Marriage (or rather, engagement) with Anthy after unintentionally winning the duel, and is quite surprised by the sudden revelation, as is Anthy when she realizes her "groom" is actually a woman. Still, they quickly bond and become friends, and slowly start to fall in love making it appear the trope will be played straight after all. Than the second arc happens and it all goes to hell.
• Personality Blood Types: Discussed by Nanami and her Girl Posse, and later by Nanami and Utena. This becomes a plot point because this discussion is what leads to The Reveal that Touga is not related to the rest of the family, because Touga and Nanami's parents blood type is B, and Touga's blood type is A, which would be impossible if he was their biological son. The fact that Nanami's blood type is also B allows Touga to mess with Nanami's head by making her believe that the two of them aren't related by blood when they are in fact, biological siblings.
• Person of Holding: Anthy initially, but Utena and the other duelists also become this.
• Pimped-Out Dress: A few, like Anthy's dress for the duels, and the dress Utena wears in the introduction.
• Pink Means Feminine:
  • Utena is heavily associated with pink, having pink hair, occasionally wearing pink dresses and associated with pink roses. It's one of the very few concessions to femininity in an otherwise tomboyish character, thus seemingly subverting the stereotype. However, it's played straight and deconstructed as Utena wears pink dresses when she acts/becomes more feminine. The deconstruction comes in that she's wearing pink and acting feminine because people like Touga and Akio manipulated her into doing so, taking advantage of her naive and trusting nature to subtly force her into a "princess" role.
  • Played straight in the Grand Finale when Anthy trades her red dress and school uniform for a pink travel suit. It's a triumphant moment as she rejects the uniform and role that others have forced on her for her own outfit.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The student council spends far more time talking about the Rose Bride, the duels and any messages they may have received from The End Of The World than they do handling things that would normally be the responsibility of a student council, like organizing student events or allocating school funds to various clubs.
• The Plan: End of the World's plan is actually not that complex: make duelists fight each other because the swords they form from their hearts might be the weapon strong enough to cut open the Rose Gate and release Dios's power. (Even the Black Rose arc is part of it: the brainwashed duelists demonstrate that using Anthy's sword was So Last Season compared to the power of drawing a sword from your own heart.) Meanwhile as Akio he seduces Utena so he can take her sword when it's ready. If only his plan hadn't meant abandoning Anthy to her torment...
• Poor Communication Kills: Most of everyone's problems could be solved if they would just sit down and talk. Shiori and Juri get this the most but it applies to everyone.
• The Pornomancer: Akio, and to a lesser extent Touga.
• Postmodernism: You think a story like Utena could have been written any earlier? On the other hand, its visual flair also lends it just enough earnest romanticism to challenge its own post-modern bent.
• Princess Classic: Anthy as the Rose Bride is a tragic look at this trope. She has no control over her future and it's passed to the current winner of the duels. Not to mention, when she confesses a desire of learn to cook like Wakaba, Touga laughs at the idea of the Rose Bride cooking and that her only priority is taking care of the roses. Like a princess who is just there to be pretty.
• Princess Protagonist: Played with extensively, fitting the Fairy Tale Motifs. There's a fairy tale repeated throughout the story, which allegorically tells the life story of Utena, about an orphaned princess who meets a handsome prince and decides to become a prince instead. A major plotline is Utena, the pink-themed protagonist living in a world of castles and seeming Princes Charming, trying to decide whether to become a princess or a prince. The series is also famous for postulating that all girls are princesses but there aren't enough princes for everyone. Alternatively, interpretation is that both princes and princesses are childish and false ideals, and that the way to grow up is to move past them.
• Prince Charming:
  • The Prince is the term given to the Utena Knight in Shining Armor equivalent. He always has to save the day; he has to be perfect. Utena specifically becomes one (and yes, she's a prince, NOT a princess) as the show progresses, though this trope gets heavily deconstructed, both through her and...
  • Akio (yes, Akio)'s viewpoint, who used to be this through and through, as Prince Dios, but when he couldn't hack it anymore, he became the Big Bad, who still used the image of a Prince Charming to manipulate those around him. (i.e, seducing women and men for his own purposes, posing as Dios to comfort little!Utena when at her lowest point). Utena tried to invoke the trope and protect Anthy, and it turned out she wasn't doing it for Anthy's sake, but more to feel good about herself, and she REALLY regrets having done such a thing in the end.

Tropes Q to S

• Queer Flowers: Roses are used to depict the love and relationships between the largely LGBT cast. Anthy is a sapphic woman who is called the Rose Bride and is betrothed to Utena, another girl, and their relationship is described as "looking like a lily."
• Questionable Consent: This is played deliberately several times, mostly for the purpose of Fan Disservice.
  • The paramount example is the relationship between Akio and Anthy, since the audience is initially led to believe at first that it's consensual and both parties seem happy with the relationship; it's only after one scene, in particular, where Akio rapes Anthy when she hesitates to come to him that it becomes clear that it's really not, and in fact is almost literally ^note to the point that people have actually run it through a checklist used by professionals and hit pretty much every point a case study for Domestic Abuse.
  • Due to the vast age differences between the parties, most of Akio's relationships would be considered statutory rape in real life even with consent. There are some scenes where Akio has sex with Touga (18). Later, in the infamous episode 33, where Akio has sex with Utena (14), leading to an extremely uncomfortable and awkward scene where they're never fully shown having sex (we only see Utena from the shoulders up, babbling and later moaning), but the results are rather obvious by the time it's all done. The fact that there is also a massive authority gap, namely that Akio is senior faculty at Ohtori Academy while virtually everyone else in the cast is a student, would also make consent highly dubious even if everyone was the same age.
  • The light novel also has Touga having sex with Miki, with extremely dubious consent present throughout the entire scene.
• Rape as Drama: The true nature of Anthy and Akio's relationship goes from squicky Fan Disservice to flat-out heinous when, at the end of episode 25, Akio rapes Anthy when she hesitates to "come to him" as she usually does. It is later heavily implied that he has used force on her during their nighttime meetings more than once.

• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Utena is an assertive Action Girl in a modified boy's uniform. In contrast, Anthy spends most of the series being a demure Damsel in Distress in a dress whose lack of Silk Hiding Steel prevents her from being a Yamato Nadeshiko. Later in the series, when the former asks the latter about what femininity is, the latter replies, "In the end, all girls are like the Rose Bride" — an Extreme Doormat Stepford Smiler Damsel in Distress who stands around looking pretty and obeying her master.

• Red Oni, Blue Oni: There are multiple contrasting pairs
  • Utena and Anthy. Utena's a Hot-Blooded Action Girl who wants to be a prince while Anthy is an Extreme Doormat Damsel in Distress. It's reflected in their hair colors - Utena has pink hair while Anthy has blue hair.
  • Touga and Saionji. Touga is a cool Manipulative Bastard while Saionji is Hot-Blooded with a Hair-Trigger Temper
  • Miki and Kozue. Miki's reserved and introverted while Kozue's much more outgoing and expressive.
  • All of this is examined and played for drama. A lot of tension is because the Red and Blue Onis have different communication styles and end up talking past each other. It contributes to a lot of unnecessarily destructive and self-defeating behaviors.
• Red String of Fate: Shiori steals the boy she thinks Juri likes. The actual string appears in flashbacks to these events.

• Ret-Gone: Sort of. When Utena defeats Nemuro, it appears that Nemuro wasn't erased from history, but all signs of the plot he carried on after his death were.
• Rewatch Bonus: Watching the series a second time is a different experience with the knowledge that Touga, Anthy, and Akio are manipulating everyone including Utena, and Anthy is a witch with vaguely defined powers, turning gags and minor acts into expert string pulling. For example, in episode 5 the first time you see Anthy cheer Utena on during the duel with Miki it looks normal, the second time it's clearly Anthy deliberately tripping Miki up so he'll lose the duel. And the act that inspired Miki to issue the challenge in the first place, namely Anthy playing the song Miki used to play with his sister on the piano, goes from coincidence to a calculated act.
• Rule of Symbolism: Omnipresent in the show (a passing gag about a multi-layered bento box even symbolizes the series' deeper themes!), but especially in the flashbacks and the Tale of the Rose.

• Sailor Fuku: The standard girls' uniform at Ohtori Academy is a sailor fuku, though theirs is notable for also having Giant Poofy Sleeves.

• Satellite Character: Season 2 deconstructs this archetype. Every Black Rose Duelist's "trigger" reflects their resentment over how their lives are merely in service to a more "special" person.

• School Play: The Shadow Girls' rendition of the Tale of the Rose.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: At the end of the final episode, Anthy decides that the whole "Rose Bride" thing is meaningless, and leaves the school to search for Utena.

• Sharp-Dressed Man: The student council wears pristine military-style uniforms, all decorated with their trademark colors. Utena's regular outfit also gives off this feel.
• Ship Tease: Has its own page.

• Shout-Out:
  • Utena features commentary on and references to existing works, including (but not limited to) The Rose of Versailles, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, the House of Borgia, Paradise Lost, William Shakespeare, Cicero, and Ovid's Metamorphoses. It even has multi-episode obscure visual references to Manet and numerous nods to the existentialist German war novel Demian.
  • Wakaba is seen reading and talking about Magnolia Waltz, an earlier manga by Chiho Saito, in the second episode.
  • A previous work by Chiho Saito, Kanon, may have served as the inspiration for several of the themes and tropes in this story.
  • The series as a whole takes many thematic and aesthetic influences from the Takarazuka Revue, from the military-esque outfits the Duelists wear to nearly every duel being accompanied by a musical number.
• Shower of Angst: Juri indulges in this.

• Significant Name Shift: When Utena wins her first duel with Saionji, Anthy stops referring to Saionji as -sama and starts using -senpai to indicate she no longer has any obligation to be subservient to him.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: No character is innocent. Even Utena herself is far from ideal. And yet...do they have to be?

• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: The series plants itself in the middle of the spectrum, refuses to budge, and lets the characters and plot (and audience) fight over it to whatever extremes they please.
• The Smurfette Principle: Inverted with the Black Rose duelists, discounting Mikage himself; all but one are female, with the Elementary school boy Mitsuru being the only male to be lured into the duels (Tatsuya, another boy, was lured in, but rejected).
• Something about a Rose: Roses are the main flower motif in the series, and they pop up absolutely everywhere, from Anthy's title as the Rose Bride and her frequently tending to the roses in the school's greenhouse, to the stylized spinning rose that pops up during key scenes, to the duels involving opponents having to knock roses off each other's clothing.
• Spoiler Opening: The first ending shows Utena with the Prince, in a pink version of Anthy's Rose Bride dress. Utena wears the dress when Akio draws a sword from her in episode 38.

• Stargazing Scene:
  • Akio has a planetarium and telescope in his house. Akio likes to look up at the stars on his ceiling and make philosophical observations, and he often dispenses advice to Utena during solemn sessions of stargazing. These scenes develop the Akio-Utena romance, as Utena grows to trust Akio during these sessions. The fact that the stars are a planetarium show and not real is symbolic, representing the fact that almost everything in the world of Ohtori Academy is an illusion created and manipulated by Akio.
  • Anthy gets her own solo scene where she poignantly closes the roof of the planetarium on the night sky and insists to Akio she prefers the fake stars. It perfectly encapsulates Anthy's dilemma and complicated feelings.
• Stealth Pun: The names of the girls in Nanami's entourage are Aiko, Keiko, and Yuko. Written just a little differently, their names are I-ko, K-ko, and U-ko, as in the beginning of director Kunihiko Ikuhara's surname.

• Stock Footage: The series has many famously overlong sequences used over and over— Utena climbing to the arena (and several of her signature moves), Akio's highway scenes, etc. The shows plays around with this, using them both to save money but also emphasize how one's lives and stories can repeat themselves. The story about the little girl who lost her parents and met a prince that opens several episodes is repeated enough that most viewers will have memorized it... except it is eventually revealed to be only partially truthful.
• Stock Shoujo Bullying Tactics: Anthy is frequently cornered by Nanami's Girl Posse after school and slapped for things that aren't her fault, usually over her association with popular male students like Saionji. Nanami herself takes part in this during her introductory episode, where she persuades Anthy to wear a special dress to a ball, which dissolves when she engineers someone to "accidentally" spray champagne over it. Good thing Utena saves Anthy's dignity with a dress made from a tablecloth.
• Stock Sound Effects: The "creaky metal door" effect is used in the sequence of Utena climbing to the duel arena (and even opening her locker!)
• Surprisingly Creepy Moments: To the point that the first company to license the show marketed the first batch of episodes as a bog-standard Magical Girl series... they wisely changed their approach from the second arc on.

Tropes T to Z

• Take Our Word for It: Steadily less of the action of the fights are actually shown during the third arc.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Between Akio and just about everyone else, though there arguably isn't any actual romance in the relationship, just meaningless sex.
• Tech Marches On: Akio's omnipresent car includes a car phone. Back in 1996, this luxury helped emphasize how rich and important he is. Now... not so much.
• Tender Tomboyishness, Foul Femininity:
  • Downplayed for Juri and Shiori. While tomboyish fencing captain Juri has an ugly side to her that appears at least once around Anthy, compared to Shiori -and as seen in their relationship- she's much more passive and emotionally vulnerable, and among the entire cast, she's one of the few with more redeeming qualities. Shiori on the other hand is very delicate and feminine, emotionally vicious against apparent friends and foes alike, and never holds back in a fight.
  • Played with and deconstructed for Utena and Anthy. Taken at face value, Utena and Anthy are stereotypes of "tomboy and girly girl" - rather tomboyish Utena fights in a knight-like way wanting to become a "prince," and the "princess-like" Anthy supports her with her Rose Bride magic. Utena, however, is always affable and overall sweet around the emotionally isolated Anthy, which over the course of the series is what helps develop their friendship into something more genuine. As the series goes on, it becomes very apparent that there's more going on with Anthy Beneath the Mask, and at the same time, that Utena has a lot of hypocrisy she's not confronting. By the time they do confront those sides of each other, Utena's shown herself, and the witch, Anthy, has stabbed her in the back. But Utena doesn't give up hope, regardless.

• Temporarily a Villain: Pretty much all the Black Rose Duelists are normal (or at least morally grey) people around the school who have a really, really bad day, and decide the best way to fix things is to kill the Rose Bride.
• Theme Naming:
  • In French, but the themes overall are more complex than usual.
  • Lots of references to flowers and botany are made. "Utena" (萼) means "calyx", which is the part of the flower that protects the petals. "Ánthos" (Anthy) is Greek for "flower".

• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Utena, a brash, sporty girl who wears the boy's school uniform, is "engaged to" and develops a deep friendship with Anthy, a demure and shy girl who wears a Pimped-Out Dress as the Rose Bride.
• Toplessness from the Back: In Stock Footage of ascending to the dueling arena, Anthy loses her normal school uniform at the beginning and is implied to be totally naked until the end of the Transformation Sequence, though only her bare shoulders from behind are shown.

• The Tragic Rose: Utena received her Rose Seal after her parents' funeral when she was a young girl. Anthy, whose unhappiness and trauma is revealed to be deeper and deeper throughout the show, is the Rose Bride, along with the gradual revelation that she has thorns herself. Duelists also wear Rose Seals and wear roses during the duel; all the Student Council members deal with their suffering in ways that hurt themselves and / or others, while the Black Rose duelists are recruited explicitly for their pain.
• Transformation Sequence: Changes slightly between the first and second arcs; the third arc has a completely new one.

• Troubled, but Cute: Saionji. Kozue is a rare female example.
• Triumphant Reprise: The very end of the show, when Baiser slams into "Rose & Release", which is Okui Masami scatting to the tune of the opening theme. After everything that has happened, it is incredibly joyous.
• Two-Teacher School: Akio's the only authority figure who really matters.
• Uncovering Relationship Status: In "The Rose Bride", Utena asks Wakaba if Saionji is going out with Anthy.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Played with. While most of the student body has a touch of this, it's most obvious in Utena herself, who spends almost zero time investigating the supernatural events that are happening to her regularly. She appears to believe that the best way to handle her classmates trying to kill her and Anthy, in the midst of physics-defying weirdness, is to simply go about her regular routine, she was told that all that weird stuff was an optical illusion and she just believes it at the end is revealed that it was in fact an optical illusion, yet a normal person would be interrogating the Council, talking to the principal, or calling the cops. She never even seems to ask Anthy for a full explanation of what being the Rose Bride means or what the rules are for the duelists.
• Valley Girl: In the English dub, an unnamed Ohtori student never really seen onscreen speaks with an exaggerated valley girl dialect. Most of the time she's relating gossip about Shiori and Ruka. Apparently, "the whole school's talkin' about it."
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: An in-universe example. The play put on by the Shadow Girls gives a very inaccurate explanation of what happened to Dios (that for some reason flies right over Utena's head anyway) and seems to come from the lie that Anthy made up to keep Dios safe. Utena later has a dream about her childhood that gives a lot more details, but she can't remember most of it when she wakes up.
• Villain-Possessed Bystander: The Black Rose Arc features minor, often comic relief characters such as Kanae and Tsuwabuki temporarily becoming duelists and attempting to kill the Rose Bride after having a "counseling session" with the Arc Villain Mikage, who gives them a seal that allows temporary access to the dueling arena. The characters generally dramatically change personality and become somewhat Brainwashed and Crazy after talking with Mikage about their problems.
• Villainous Breakdown: Averted somewhat in that instead of going Ax-Crazy upon losing his second duel against Utena, Touga simply sits down in a chair. And stays there. For thirteen episodes. Real Life Writes the Plot. His voice actor temporarily left to work on other series. Plus, it made his re-entry into the third arc all the more dramatic.

• Villains Out Shopping: Happens with the student council members at several points, and to the point of eeriness with Akio near the end of the series.
• Visual Innuendo: The architecture of Ohtori Academy, and particularly the dueling arena, is chock-full of psychosexual imagery:
  • To enter the dueling arena, Utena travels through a narrow, slit-like door flanked by two gates and topped with a large rose design. The whole effect looks very much like a vulva. A similarly yonic door exists near the base of Akio's tower, where the student council meets.
  • The duels take place at the top of a very tall, phallic platform. Anthy is naked for much of the Transformation Sequence to get there.
  • Akio's tower is even more phallic in shape, fitting as Akio is a seducer who embodies a certain kind of masculinity and sleeps with Anything That Moves.
• Wham Episode:
  • For the first part of the series, you can almost convince yourself that the whole show is going to be interesting, but mostly fun and lighthearted. Then during Episode 9, we have a flashback to Utena more or less trying to kill herself when she was eight, the Upside-Down Castle nearly coming down and taking Anthy with it, and Saionji attempting to kill Utena and Anthy both. And then you can't.
  • Episode 33, a Clip Show episode, which by its nature lulls the viewer into a false sense of boredom. And then Akio has sex with Utena, and you've missed it if you blinked.
  • Episode 34, in which the Shadow Girls interact with the main cast for the first time and casually reveal the entire real plot thus far. And it's horrifying.
• Wife-Basher Basher: This is the bait that Akio Ohtori uses to rope Utena Tenjou into the dueling game: make sure Utena sees Saionji slapping around his "girlfriend", Anthy.
• Wicked Witch: Series Metatrope - Anthy is implied to be either a Wicked Witch or a Damsel in Distress.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Utena. And Dios before he became Akio.
• Wooden Katanas Are Even Better: The bamboo training sword Utena uses to win her first rose duel.
• Word Salad Lyrics: The soundtrack has a bit of a problem with this.
  Astrologic eras, primeval oceans, erosion, deposits
  Three billion years, birth of life, geologic eras
  Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian
  Stromatolite, bacteria, collenia
  Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous
  • The duel songs for the first two story arcs (except for Mikage's duel) weren't written specifically for the show, and most of the ones that were manage to be even more obtuse than the ones that weren't.
  • They do, however, sometimes offer commentary on the plot and its themes. One such song comments on the binary principle and the gender binary.
• World of Jerkass: Akio is a Depraved Bisexual, a sexist, and a rapist, Touga is a Depraved Bisexual who goes after Anything That Moves, Saionji is a Domestic Abuser to Anthy, Nanami is the Alpha Bitch, Keiko is the Beta Bitch, Shiori is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who does anything to spite Juri, Mrs. Ohtori is an Evil Matriarch who sleeps with her daughter's fiancé, and Ruka is willing to abandon Shiori and later assault Juri.
• World of Symbolism: Rule of Symbolism is really the only unbreakable rule in this story. The series relies on Jungian archetypes to explain immortal power struggles, with surreal landscapes and a bewildering sword fighting tournament set in an ostensibly modern, ordinary world. It also uses fairy tale archetypes and motifs to examine and deconstruct gender roles, especially ones that are prevalent in shoujo series.
• World of Technicolor Hair: All of the characters that are majorly involved at some point have outrageously colorful hair, highlighting their specialness and importance to the plot. In contrast, most of the background characters, and named characters who are supposed to be more "normal" (like Wakaba, Keiko, Tokiko, and Tatsuya) have brown-black hair. Hair colors include:
  • Utena, Souji: Pink
  • Anthy: Purple
  • Akio, Mamiya, Dios: Lavender
  • Touga: Red
  • Saionji: Green
  • Juri: Orange
  • Nanami: Canary yellow
  • Miki: Light blue
  • Ruka: Dark blue
  • Kozue: Indigo
  • Shiori: Raspberry
  • Kanae: Pale green
  • Mitsuru: Dark yellow
  • Chigusa (from the Sega Saturn game): Teal
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Ruka sees himself as Prince Charming in a series that has an ambiguous relationship with the concept.
• Yandere: Kozue for Miki, though like everything else in the show its not as simple as it seems. Nanami for Touga too, or at least when she was this more when she was younger since she killed his cat out of jealousy.

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The absolute destiny apocalypse.