When I was first watching Utena in early 2000s showings by the Cornell Japanese Animation Society, who had been the ones to first fansub it years earlier, when that required a genlock, I would not have imagined it would be even subculturally relevant or so much as remembered by now, that’s kind of a nice surprise. If the two ‘90s anime series we decided to canonize are Eva and Utena, well, sorry Cowboy Bebop, but fair.
Trying to recall how we were differently receiving it then, but that’s tough to pin down in retrospect. I know we did keep a running count of the times Anthy got slapped and treated it as a laugh cue, but appreciating the formalistic recurring elements is sort of a big part of Utena
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