All in Good Storytime 📚 Episode 42

All in Good Storytime is an interactive, bookish, book club podcast hosted by Alanna, Katya, and Tia. To join the club, make sure you're following us on Twitter to get updates on what book we're reading and to what chapter we are reading through (or what anime we're watching and what episode we are watching through), and listen to the podcast here or on iTunes (see link below) to join in on the discussion. And don't forget to read along!

In the 42nd episode of All in Good Storytime, we watch the first 5 episodes and episode 8 of Revolutionary Girl Utena (the order in which the episodes were intended). In these episodes, we meet Utena, the beautiful tomboy who really wants to be a prince, Anthy, the innocent and abused rose bride, and the secretive student council. Utena is drawn into their orbit when she challenges one of the student council members to a duel for disrespecting her friend and inadvertently becomes the reigning champion.

We discuss how gender is addressed in this series, primarily through Utena's character. She wants to be a prince and often acts "masculine", but she is steadfast that she is a girl, making obvious the distinction between masculinity and actually identifying as male. We continue analyzing the characters by examining Anthy, the so-called rose bride. While she is given some interesting character quirks, like her collection of animals, she is a mystery and rarely shares her thoughts. We discuss Miki, his quest for perfection, and his odd relationship with his sister. We compile a list of our most hated characters, with Touga and Kyouichi topping it off. Finally, we share our theory that Anthy may actually be the very prince that visited Utena when she was a child and our belief that Anthy may not even be a human but is actually a magical being.

In two weeks, we will be watching episodes 7, 6, and 9-13 (the order in which the episodes were intended) of Revolutionary Girl Utena.


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