First off, if I were explaining the show to a guy, it'd be much different than explaining it to a girl. It has been harder in my case to get guys to become interested in this anime. For girls, it's been MUCH easier. No duh, huh?

Explaining to a guy: "The anime is extremely complex with lots of twists and turns that will keep you guessing. Everyone in the show is bisexual and most of characters tend to have extremely loose sexual morals. Incest is impled and expressed also, so you may wanna watch for that. It's not all serious, of course. It has a good amount of funny and very very random moments that will make you laugh your ass off your back. So, it's up to you, but it's an anime worth experiencing."

Ragnarok wrote:

USED TVTROPES TO DISCRIBE SKU

Thats pretty cool but you cannot completely explain SKU without mentioning Nanami who is afterall The Libby who is a bit of a Princess who becomes a Clingy Jealous Girl when it comes to her Big Brother.

(I wish I had the time to find more links that discribe all the Namami episodes including the Cowbell of happiness and Nanami's Egg as well as the Surfing Elephants, but I have to get to work soon.)

In traditional faerie tales, girls are princesses, wooed and rescued by princes. Girls in faerie tales that cannot be princes, however, are witches. They have no choice but to be witches. Utena is the story of a girl who threw this dynamic out the window and decided instead to be a prince. This story is told amongst a series of duels at an exclusive private academy. By winning a duel, the victorious swordsman or swordswoman becomes the One Engaged to a girl known as The Bride of the Rose. When all the duels are fought and over, the one who is One Engaged will gain the Power to Revolutionize the world.


As bad and convoluted as this sounds, I've gotten more people to watch the series based off that description than any other I've come up with.

All the wierdness in the show is one of it's neatest parts (imo, at least). Trying to explain how that works is exceedingly difficult though, because it's all so completely subjective to the viewer. I'd probably not go into it /too/ much when trying to give a broad description to get someone interested. I'd just go on the basic plot/ideas behind the show, and mention that it uses some of those strangeness techniques as well.

Seeing all those scenes for the first time was a real treat anyways, I wouldn't want someone to have spoiled them for me beforehand.

Imagine quickly summarizing as your poor Advanced Writing course teacher is about to delve into 20 pages of character analysis.  I think I just used "...is a symbol for..." way too much to prove this was an intellectual masterpiece and not just a cartoon.

Someone actually asked me that, and I said: "It's a story about illusions and trust; and the strings one will pull to get what they want."

for girl: It's a psychological story about maturity. It beginns as a fairytale, but don't judge this show too fast.

for boy: Lesbians and incest.

I'm terrible at describing Utena. I just can't do it.

Every once in a while I practice it in my mind, but I keep adding things to it, and before long I've been thinking to myself for at least fifteen minutes. But I usually keep the phrase "Postmodern fairy tale" ready, and then slap my hands over my mouth before I get too mired in details.

I've spent a lot of time trying to summarize Utena the past couple of months. Last October I decided that Utena was going to be one of the shows I was looking for for a final paper, then I would up writing the entire paper about SKU. At some point I had to pitch it to my professor and then in my paper I had to give an overview before I started talking about gender roles and trio dynamics and god knows what else (I wrote 15 pages about sex, gender, and Utena in about 10 hours after a full day of classes and random last minute research, I've been afraid to read it again).

SKU has been described as an allegorical post modern fairy tale full of symbolism and metaphor. The basic plotline is Tenjō Utena comes to Ohtori Academy and seemingly though happenstance becomes involved in the school’s elite secret society who duel to posses the Rose Bride and through the Power of Dios, revolutionize the world. Things are much more complicated than that, many things are illusions, and the ending is ambiguous at best. SKU is, to use the TV Tropes Wiki terminology, a serious mindscrew. It is also very pretty and full of references, allegories, and symbolism. A quick glance at one of the more active message boards reveals fans analyzing the Jungian and Freudian symbols, bringing up Joseph Campbell’s myth theories, Buddhist and Hindu concepts, Biblical allusions, and at least one mention of Nietzsche.  Shoujo Kakumei Utena is not for the faint of heart, or at least it is not for the people who do not like thinking deeply about things and coming to their own conclusions

That's from my paper. Obviously not a good summary of the series. And yeah, I was talking about IRG there, I believe I have a footnote about the forums and a link. That came 6 pages in, after an overview of anime/mange history and a bunch of stuff about shoujo anime and how Utena fit into that. While I was researching for this paper and watching the series for the first time, I knew I had to convince my friends to watch it. I've gotten three of them to watch it, so I'm making progress. I have the (dis)advantage of being at one of those small alternative liberal arts colleges. From about day one, we're talking about postmodernism and hegemony, all the -isms and a lot of us are at least passingly familiar with major works by Freud, Jung, myth theory, cultural studies, and media studies theory. So I can talk about how it's a postmodern fairy tale that subverts everything ever and how it's an incredibly queer text that really messes with the binary and everyone knows what I'm talking about. I can talk about symbolism and I can talk about some of the history of anime/manga and how it's a parody of magical girl anime and connections with American culture, and everyone's on the same page. Most of my friends think that's pretty awesome, so it's largely been a matter of sitting them down and watching Utena.

I'm trying to figure out how I'd summarize the show to someone who isn't so firmly grounded in academia/geekery. It's really hard. In general I guess I'd say that SKU is a very surreal series about a girl who wants to be a prince and the strange things that happen on her quest and nothing can ever really be taken quite at face value. I'd want to tailor that to specific individuals, though. I know some people who would be all about the lesbians, some who would see it because of how well the duels are done (or not) and the music, and so on.

Last edited by VerboseWordsmith (02-10-2008 10:52:33 PM)

... I'm really, really awful at summarizing things, and I've never once explained Utena coherently(I usually give up trying to and just show people AMVs). Last week I tried to describe it to my prof as preparation for my class project, and I ended up telling her it was about a fallen angel figure who tries to corrupt the innocent while accompanied by a 'succubus' character with a twist. It was pretty awful.

But the summaries in this thread are really great, and concise - would it be ok if I took some phrases from her for my SKU school project I'm working on? I want to be able to point out most of the important symbolism and themes while making sure people understand the basic story.

I've been thinking how to summarize Utena to get more people into it. And it's so hard because there are so many things in it!

And then I realised the Utena game OP makes a perfect trailer. Seriously. It has everything from Miki's piano to Touga/Saionji/Akio and curry explosions.

How I'd summarize it to get someone watching:

Hot people with brightly colored hair have sex, and talk shit at each other.
Their world is shown to be a tragically f'ed up place, where everyone is empty inside. Remind you of ours?
The hero is an idiot and the villains are love-interests, and if you watch for long enough it will 'F' up your world.
You won't expect what it can do to your head.
Watch it only if you have the guts.