Adolescence Mokushiroku as Burlesque
             
                         by Alan Harnum

All of this is but my opinion.  Responses and feedback are
welcomed and appreciated.

Needless to say, this contains spoilers for the entirety of both
the TV series and the movie.  You've been warned.

Ciao,
-Alan Harnum

* * *

This brief essay is based upon my personal response to an
aspect of the Utena movie that I found particularly interesting,
one which influenced my response to the entire film: as should be
obvious from the title, the use of _burlesque_, in the poetical 
sense.

     Quickly defined (by the ever-handy glossary of "Poetic Forms
and Literary Terminology" in my Sixth Edition of the Norton
Anthology of English literature), burlesque "makes its subject 
mean and absurd by directly cutting it down".  One of the classic
examples of burlesque in the Western canon is Cervantes' "Don
Quixote", which mocked medieval romances and concepts of chivalry
by making their exponent a delusional madman; in the twentieth
century, Monty Python's "Life of Brian" and "Quest for the Holy
Grail" films reduced, respectively, the life of Christ and the
deeds of King Arthur's court to burlesque.

     My thesis is that many aspects of Adolescence Mokushiroku
can be explained by interpreting them as burlesques upon the
television series--particularly the characterizations, which will
be the focus of my argument.

     Given the highly personal nature of the response to art, it
is best to say some things about my take on the original 
television series before attempting to explain why I take the
stance that I do on Adolescence Mokushiroku as burlesque.  

     For me, the great draw of the Utena television series was
the marvellous subtlety of its characters and the relationships
between them, where the use (or lack of use) of an honorific,
the narrowing or widening of eyes, the brief touch of hands,
could hint, like a pool's clouded surface, at immense depths of
emotion beneath.

     The characters of the Utena TV series all seem like 
fragments of a whole to me, wounded people whose actions and
situations are mirrors of light and darkness to each other--most
strikingly, for me, in the characters of Tenjou Utena and Kiryuu
Nanami, who at first seem such utterly different people, but by
the end of the series are revealed to be perhaps more alike than
any two others.

     I would say, then, that the primary word by which I would
define the Utena television series is _subtle_.  It unfolds
slowly, like a rose gradually revealing its inner depths.  
Secrecy is paramount; the secret (and often taboo) loves that so
many of the characters carry in their hearts, the duels fought in
secret while the regular life of the school goes on around them,
the forces in the shadows pulling the strings like dark 
puppeteers.

     By contrast, then, I would say that the word by which I
would define the Utena movie is the antonym: _blatant_.  To an
extent, this is perhaps dictated by the constraints of a movie
lasting less than two hours as opposed to the freedom of a 39-
episode television series, but I do not think "there wasn't time
for subtlety" is an entirely adequate explanation.  If the
television series is the opening of a rose (for Wakaba fans, the
peeling of the layers of an onion is an equally apt metaphor), 
the movie is being engulfed within a storm of rose petals; it
threatens to overwhelm the senses.
     
     The movie, then, can be seen as a negative version of the
series, in the sense that it is almost a direct reversal of much
of the television series: rather than being fought in secrecy,
for example, the duel between Utena and Juri is fought before an
audience of Ohtori students.  This reversal is most obvious in
some of the film's characterizations: Arisugawa Juri, whose
tightly-curled hair in the television series was a symbol (like
that of Himemiya Anthy) of her repressed character, now sports a
wild mane of hair well past her waist and flirts openly with
Kaoru Miki.  Miki himself is drastically changed: an 
inexperienced and innocent boy easily manipulated by his 
predatory sister in the television series, he shares an apparent
sexual relationship with her in the film, and it is implied later
that he may have been her murderer.

     It is not enough to prove my burlesque thesis for the
movie characterizations to be reversals of those of the series,
however; the intent of these reversals must be to mock their
subject by making them "mean and absurd".  Neither of these terms
are easily defined; for my purposes, I shall hold that my 
burlesque thesis is adequately proved if these reversals render
the characters ridiculous, inferior, silly and/or ignoble as
compared to their incarnations in the television series.

     I have already mentioned Juri and Miki as examples of the 
movie's reversal of character; before dealing with them in more
detail, let us examine Saionji Kyouichi, their fellow Student 
Council member.

     In the series, Saionji was an angry, bitter, wounded young
man, caught in the manipulative shadow of the stronger male
figures of Kiryuu Touga and Ohtori Akio.  His first appearance,
as he callously slaps Anthy, seems to establish him as a brute
and bully.  Later, however, he reveals unexpected depths of
tenderness and vulnerability in his relationship with Shinohara
Wakaba during the Black Rose arc of the series--only to again be
cast as the arrogant bully when he treats her as callously as he
ever did the Rose Bride.  Of all the Student Council members, he
displays the most signs of being mentally unstable.

     In the movie, he's simply psychotic.  His eyes are manic; he
gnaws on Anthy's hair like it's a chew-toy before duelling Utena.
After losing to her, he disappears until shortly before the 
climax of the film.  The duality of his character disappears 
completely; he is the ignoble, brutal bully seen slapping Anthy 
in the first episode of television series, only worse.  Movie
Saionji is clearly a burlesque of TV Saionji, lacking any of the
depth he had in the series.

     Miki and Juri come off slightly better.  Of all the Council
in the movie, Juri is probably the closest to her television
characterization: obviously strong and capable, she is 
nevertheless unable to control her own heart, and retains her
half-unwilling (and, in the movie, somewhat inexplicable) love
for Takatsuki Shiori.  Her flirtatious advances towards Miki in
the parking garage are not even that distant from her later
characterization in the television series--the point in episode
37, for example, where she engages in similar playful advances
towards Utena.

     What movie Juri lacked, to my perspective, were the more
vulnerable aspects of her character that made her sympathetic and
appealing (this is something common to a lot of the movie
characterizations); instead of being a well-rounded character in
her own right, she is simply a brief adversary figure for Utena.
There is also a confusing conversation between Juri and Miki
(again, taking place in the parking garage) wherein Miki alludes
to how much Juri hates the Rose Bride--something she was quite
lacking in the television series.

     Whereas Juri and Saionji essentially undergo simplifications
of their character, Miki is entirely changed; his new, sinister
character (hungrily desiring "more power" rather than the 
idealistic "shining thing" of the television series) is an
understated and underused part of the movie.  At first, he seems
entirely normal; he is even introduced by Wakaba using almost the
exact same phrases used in the television series.

     However, as the scene in the bathtub between him and Kozue
shows, he's almost an entirely different person in the movie.  A
defining characteristic of the television Miki was his resistance
despite temptation (or, alternately, his outright revulsion) at
the sexual advances of his sister.  Though the sexual dynamic of
their movie relationship is implied rather than explicit, it's
difficult to see how the sight of the siblings naked in the
bathtub together is otherwise supposed to be interpreted--they
certainly don't need to go that far in order to let Kozue trim
Miki's eyebrows.

     Miki's movie characterization is, in fact, a study in
implicities; it's never outright shown that he's so very
different a person.  The viewer must infer these changes from
such small things as his statement about desiring power, the
brief glimpse of a bloodstained rubber ducky (last glimpsed in
the bathtub scene, sans bloodstains), the sight of a car with a
KOZUE license plate.  From these, I inferred that the intent is
that Miki murdered his sister (an act utterly alien to his
television personality, which was both protective and disdainful
of his sister), perhaps in an attempt to finally break free of
her clutches.  How exactly he is supposed to have accomplished 
this when our last sight of Kozue is of her holding a straight 
razor to his throat is one of those mysteries.  

     Miki's transformation is probably the most alien of the
movie cast, perhaps meant to mirror the fact that he's one of 
the more innocent and well-intentioned of the characters in the 
television series--from musical genius to murderer of his
sibling, I find him almost totally unrecognizable.

     Kiryuu Nanami, the "fifth wheel" of the Student Council in
the television series, gets what can best be described as a 
cameo.  Like Saionji, she is merely a simplification of herself.
The original intent of Nanami's character when first introduced
into the television series was apparently one of comic relief;
however, she revealed unexpected dramatic depths in Episode 10,
which only grew as the series progressed.

     In the movie, she appears only as the cow she transformed
into in Episode 16.  Her death by animal inhalation is apparently
supposed to be a comic episode in the film.  Lacking all deeper
aspects of character, she exists only to provide a brief (and
debatable) moment of levity before being killed off in a 
ridiculous manner.

     Given the nature of Kiryuu Touga's role in the film (he is
perhaps the only character to actually come off far better in the
movie than he does in the television series), the inclusion of
Nanami as a human character would have undoubtedly been 
difficult.  This, then, may help to explain why her role in the
movie is so debased from that of the television series.  However
(it is good to state one's biases up front), I'm an enormous fan
of Nanami in the television series, and so her "role" in the 
movie was a particular disappointment for me.

     If we accept the thesis that the purposes of these altered
characterizations was to render the Student Council members in 
the movie (aside from the aforementioned Touga) mean and absurd 
compared to their characterizations in the series, we may then
ask what the purpose was.

     I would speculate that the intent of the altered 
characterizations was specifically to tighten the focus upon the
characters who actually do receive three-dimensional 
characterization in the film--characterization that builds upon
their personalities in the series, not characterization that
merely alters it upon an apparent whim.  I would say that these
characters were Utena (whose heartbroken statement in the film
that "there was never any such thing as a prince" clearly echoes
her despair in her final moments in episode 39), Anthy (whose
disobedient, sensual persona proceeds naturally from the ending
of her repression and servitude to Akio in episode 39) and Touga
(whose self-sacrificing princely incarnation echoes the person he
wished to but failed to be in the series).  Having the other
characters be rounded and developed in the same way simply lay
beyond the bounds of a movie.  

     Whether it was necessary to debase them to the extent the 
movie did is questionable, and I think the creators might have
realized this; this, then, would explain the sight during the 
movie's climax of Juri, Miki and Saionji (and, in a way, Wakaba)
in much more sympathetic guise than they have had before, 
rescuing Anthy and Utena from peril during the race sequence.  
This scene, however, lacked impact for me; it felt tacked-on and
artificial, a nod in the direction of the interesting and 
likeable supporting cast of the television series after a solid 
hour or so of debasing them.  The Shadow Play Girl commentators
proclaim that Anthy and Utena were saved by their friendship, but
it's hard to see where this friendship existed within the context
of the movie.

     Two other characters beyond the Student Council also serve
to support this burlesque thesis: the adversary figures of the 
film, Ohtori Akio and Takatsuki Shiori.  

     Akio himself, a frightening and shadowy manipulator in the
television series, appears only on videotape, as a corpse, or, in
a guise made ineffective by his earlier characterization, the
gigantic final obstacle to Anthy and Utena's freedom.  He has 
lost his car keys, an especially obvious castration symbol given
how much of his sensual power was invested in his car in the
television series.  He is silly, something the television Akio
never was.  He is quite open to Touga on the phone about the
tragical history of the Rose Prince and the Rose Bride, whereas
this formed the central underlying secret of the television
series.

     Movie Akio is in many ways a supplementary figure, 
unimportant in the scheme of things; it would be quite easy to
imagine the movie without him.  This is quite opposite his 
central role in the television series, where all that went on at
Ohtori went on because he willed it so.  Despite his appearance 
at the end, Akio is simply not the frightening figure he was in
the television series.  The fallen prince has become the school
clown.

     Takatsuki Shiori, ridiculous and vicious at the same time,
is, as an adversary figure, slightly more effective dramatically.
If anything, the sheer malignity of her character combined with
her frilly outfit and overblown proclamations are what creates 
her ridiculousness.  She is such an utterly negative figure that
she simply becomes comical; at the end, when her car incarnation
is destroyed after repeatedly colliding with orange traffic 
cones, it seems a completely fitting fate.

     In the television series, Shiori was an ambiguous figure:
weak, given to self-pity and hysteria, easily manipulated to 
serve the ends of Mikage, Ruka and Akio.  I am uncertain if there
is quite the same vocal anti-Shiori faction among Japanese Utena
fandom as there is among English-speaking fans, but, if such a
faction exists, Shiori's movie characterization could be seen as
something of a poke at it.  Her comic-book supervillainy in the
movie would seem a dream come true to those who so vigorously 
launch polemics against her character in the television series--
after all, she's even worse in the movie!
     
     That both the adversaries in the film are comical narrows 
the focus to the internal conflicts of the characters; I never
felt that Shiori or Akio was much of an obstacle to Utena and
Anthy's escape.  Utena's real obstacle was coming to terms with
the tragedy of her past, admitting (like Mikage does in the
series--it is unsurprising that the revelation of Touga's fate
comes in the elevator of Nemuro Hall) that the one she loved has
been dead for years.  The final scenes between Touga and Utena
were, for me, the dramatic and emotional peak of the film; the
race to the outside world, while excitingly choreographed and
beautifully scored, simply failed to raise the same depths of
feelings in me.

     Thus, I conclude that the burlesque debasing of so many
characters in the film was done with the intent of tightening
the narrative focus; from the expansive cast of the television
series to the trio of Utena, Anthy and Touga, and from the dual
threat of powerful external forces and internal conflict to mere
internal conflict.  

     This approach may not, however, have been the best one to
take.  More than anything else, it was the treatment of the
supporting cast that left a bad taste in my mouth upon watching
Adolescence Mokushiroku.  Rather then present them in the debased
form it did, they might have been better left out altogether, or
reduced to background roles that would have allowed them to
appear in the film without changing their personalities so
substantially.  Standing by itself, Adolescence Mokushiroku is an
impressive film, but I found it to be a disappointing follow-up
to the brilliance of the television series, as it lost a number
of the things I loved in the transition from small to big screen.

* * *

Thanks to:

Maachaq (simpso57@pilot.msu.edu) and everyone else who worked on
the fansub of the movie; a great job, which allowed me to 
actually understand the film (as much as it's possible to 
understand Adolescence Mokushiroku).

Mercutio, who gave me a copy of his copy, allowing me to review
the movie at my leisure while writing this.

Ten'jou Utena (utena@duellists.tj), for the wonderful resources 
on the movie available at End of Innocence, and for her own 
review/essay on the film.  While (as the preceding has probably
made clear) I disagree on some points about the film, it was 
nevertheless a stimulating and thought-provoking piece, and 
served in part as the catalyst for this attempt to record my own
thoughts about the movie in a semi-formal way.