The Story

Once upon a time...
A little princess was very sad because her parents had just died. In the depth of her depression, a prince on a white horse came to her and wiped away her tears. He told her never to lose her strength and nobility, and he gave her a rose ring to remember their encounter. "This ring will lead you to me, one day," he told her. The little girl was so impressed by the prince that she decided to become a prince herself one day.
But was that really such a good idea?

This story is told at the beginning of the first few episodes and in other ones along the series. This isn't the exact words, because I can't remember them precisely, but this is the main idea. Anyway, this young princess grew up to be Utena Tenjou, a fourteen-year-old eighth grader who goes to school at Ohtori Academy. The teachers at her school constantly berate her for wearing a "boy's uniform," which is actually nothing like the boys' uniforms at the school, but much like a military uniform with shorts, tailored to Utena's figure. The teachers don't like it, in any event, but Utena always gets around them somehow. She challenges the kendo team captain to a duel after she finds out about the unfeeling way he treated one of her friends, and so it begins...
The student council completely runs Ohtori Academy. They duel each other for the possession of the Rose Bride, a strangely passive girl who seems to hold within her some great power. With the Rose Bride comes the "power to revolutionize the world", a power that is not really explained in the first 13 episodes. Utena gets unwillingly swept up in this after she defeats the kendo team captain (who mistakes her for a duelist who actually knows what she's doing) and becomes "engaged" to the Rose Bride. The series follows her life as she duels one council member after another, each time the reasons they are fighting becoming more and more unclear. Yet, somehow, things start to make a strange sort of sense, after a while... especially if you're so high on the sheer oddity of it all that you come to expect being confused.

There are four "sagas" in the series. The first is The Student Council Saga, the second is The Black Rose Saga, the third, the Akio Ohtori Saga, and the last, The Apocalypse Saga. I, personally, like the last two the best :) I couldn't find much of a meaning to the Black Rose Saga, but it was interesting...