Where does one start with the amount of Les Yay and Ho Yay in Revolutionary Girl Utena? The whole premise of the plot is Utena's desire to be a "Prince" to Anthy's "Rose Bride", and Akio's manipulations to make sure that he milks Utena's dreams for his own benefit. Then couple all of that with the fact that just about Everyone Is Bi.
For more explicit/heavily-implied Queer Romance-oriented relationships, including Utena/Anthy, there's now this page.
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Female
- Chiho Saito (the mangaka and one of the writers) has said that people should consider Utena and Anthy to be like a married couple. This becomes especially noteworthy when you consider that Saito had originally been against the idea of Anthy/Utena being a romantic couple.
- While Saito is heavily maligned by the Utena fandom for her initial stance on Anthy/Utena, her manga still has its share of Les Yay at times. In the third volume, Wakaba starts to become jealous of Utena's closeness to Anthy, so Utena has to reassure her that she still considers her to be a dear friend. Wakaba then asks, "Then what about Anthy Himemiya?!", to which Utena says that she's kind of like family... which doesn't please Wakaba at all, because she thinks that's something married people would say!
Wakaba: If that's how you want it, fine! I'll be the mistress. And I'll just fight the legal wife over you!- Wakaba also has a loud and public crush on Utena, which she mainly expresses by glomping Utena and going for rides on her back later on.
- The titular Utena has an obvious Even the Girls Want Her status, give that she's swooned over by several members of both sexes from the very first episode — including hordes of fangirls. She elicits these reactions whether dressed as a boy or wearing Ohtori's female uniform, as proved by the episode coming after her loss at the hands of Touga, which she tried to cope with by acting like a princess instead of a prince. Yes, the other girls were still seriously wet for her.
- Chigusa Sanjouin from the Utena Sega Saturn game gets her share of fangirls squeeing over her when she appears in class, and Kozue is even seen dating her at one point.
- The Sega Saturn game is similar to a dating sim game. The player character is female, so depending on how you play it, she can get Les Yay with Juri and/or Utena. And then there's the secret Anthy scenario where the player character challenges Utena to a duel for Anthy and wins. Afterwards, the player character and Anthy end up taking a bath together and it's heavily implied that they had sex.
- The female player character and Chigusa Sanjouin have some Foe Yay/Les Yay and there's even art in the game of the two of them naked together.
- Aside from Utena and Anthy, who toe the line between subtext and actual text, there's Utena and Wakaba, Utena and Juri (like in episode 7), Juri and Shiori, and Anthy and Kozue (episode 26). Oh, and the Shadow Girls, every so often.
- Nanami's Girl Posse gets some with each other, once sharing Intertwined Fingers in an episode.
- Nanami and Utena actually seem to have some in episode 32 and beyond. After Nanami finally gets over her feelings for Touga it's Utena that she's the most civil towards, bordering on Tsundere. Specifically, after Nanami tries to distance herself from Touga the person she ends up living with is Utena, even sleeping in Anthy's Utena-facing bed. She even hangs around after Utena in Akio's home after walking in on Akio and Anthy having sex, which horrifies her.
- There's also the time when Utena feels Nanmi's forehead to check if she's feverish and that makes Nanami's temperature go up.
Male
- This series has plenty of yaoi too, especially between Mamiya and Mikage, who are sort of like the opposite-sex versions of Anthy and Utena respectively. Their relationship even gets lampshaded by Mikage's secretary in episode 23, where, as part of a long monologue she delivers to him, she comments that the person she fell in love with "wasn't a boy younger than me". However, in the anime the relationship turns out to be a bait-and-switch, as Mamiya was actually the little brother of the woman Mikage loved as Professor Nemuro and the current "Mamiya" is actually Anthy in disguise.
- The manga makes the relationship even more blatant, as Tokiko does not exist and Mamiya is implied to have been a student of Mikage/ Professor Nemuro. Mikage even refers to him as his "beloved" and the two are seen tenderly embracing. In the end, Utena breaks Mikage's hourglass, which has kept him alive for years, and Mikage/Nemuro is able to "rest" with Mamiya in the afterlife.
- Episode 5 had some Ho Yay between Touga and Miki. Touga essentially seduces Miki into dueling Utena. Touga sleeps with Miki's twin sister Kozue and then tells Miki that his sister is just as cute as him. Then Touga makes a speech about how if Miki doesn’t protect the things that are important to him, then other people will take them away. Miki’s later Imagine Spot about Touga’s “advice” involves Touga rolling around with his shirt open on a bed, which did not actually happen when Touga made his speech; a few fans have actually taken that to be implying that Miki had some sort of previous sexual encounter with the guy.
- The light novels take the Touga/Miki Ho Yay and send it right through the ceiling, in that they're shown to be sexually involved.
- The episodes in the third arc of the series take the yaoi up to eleven, when Alpha Casanova Akio becomes the focus of the duels. This arc is positively rife with subtext, all of it being very clear and blatant. Symbolism be damned; when boys roll around in bed together shirtless, it only means one thing.
- Akio has subtext with everyone and that especially includes Touga.
- If even rolling around in bed with open shirts and unzipped pants is too subtle for you, there's a certain silhouetted shot of Akio and Touga on the bed together. The audible sigh in Touga's voice during this scene just seals it all the more.
- It's interesting to note that Touga, a character who spends so much of his time going through women like tissue paper, is involved in the bulk of the show's male/male Ho Yay; to put it into perspective, he's only seen interacting with three other males in the entire series, and he has substantial Ho Yay with all of them. Bisexual, much?
- Oh and there was that one time when it was implied that Saionji, Akio, and Touga had a three-way.
