Morinaga Milk – L’oiseau Blew – a Revolutionary Girl Utena Doujinshi (8/28)

[leahandillyana]

Morinaga Milk is a pseudonym (after an actual milk company) of a popular yuri (F/F manga) creator. Her most known professional work is “Gakuen Police”, but before publishing it she’s been involved in doujinshi (fancomic) publication for nearly twenty years. Below are some pages from a doujinshi based on cult classic “Revolutionary Girl Utena”, a franchise made of an anime series, an AU anime movie and three different manga series. It’s an introspective piece from the point of view of Anthy, co-lead of the franchise. Contains heavy spoilers for the series as well as some nudity. The work was translated and scanlated by Lililicious, a group dedicated to translating all things yuri into English. Eight pages out of 28. Happy Pride Month, everyone!

Comments

[alicemacher]

I tried watching the original anime, at the urging of a friend and fellow s_d member, but lost interest after around 15 episodes, thus less than halfway through. Know that I really wanted to like it, given its unique design aesthetic and exploration of gender motifs. (I particularly loved the shadow-puppet alien girls acting as a Greek chorus.) But a couple or so episodes into the "Black Rose" arc, I finally tired of the repetitious duelling elements, especially the long, formulaic "entrance to the arena" sequences.

Even more did I tire of brother-sister incest featuring, either through subtext or full-on abusive text, in three different character arcs, one of which was central to the overarching plot. While I'm more than fine with dark anime (I'm forever grateful to the above-mentioned friend for recommending Evangelion as it went up on Netflix), I expect at least a little variety and imagination in the kinds of darkness explored.

[krait]

I have watched the entire thing, and love it very much, but the Black Rose arc is definitely too long. :/

(And with full knowledge of the plot, I find the multiple sibling incest replays significant of something specific, so I don't really have a quibble with that now. On first watch, though, my reaction was pretty much like yours!)

[ozaline]

I think I got burned out the first time through Black Rose too, but I've warmed up to it on recent viewings. I think it's very much part of Ikuhara's "thing," to make deliberately repetitive plots, and use as much stock footage as possible and use them to examine different variations on a theme, and emotional chords.

It's something he's done from Sailor Moon all the way to his most recent series, Sarazanmai, which is arguably even more repetitive than Sailor Moon as all the fight scenes are pretty much one hundred percent identical.

I think it takes a special kind of creativity to weave that all together, but it for sure isn't going to work for everyone.

[krait]

That's interesting, that the repetition and reused footage appears in other works; I haven't seen many of them, but now you mention it was definitely there in the season of Sailor Moon I watched.

It works for me really well in Utena, because the entire thing has this implied timelessness and the mythological nature of the driving characters. Akio and Anthy have been repeating this same cycle of conflict, destruction, and sacrifice down through the ages, because they're the embodied archetypes of stories continually being reused and reworked.

The repeated incest issues work for me in this context, too, because I see it as a side effect of Akio and Anthy's relationship: as the centre of Ohtori and the power behind its isolated otherworldliness, their strange codependency and harmful love are woven into it. The Duelists caught in its spell all reflect and echo the conflict at the centre.