You can, on occasion, grab the whole set off ebay or something for like 60bux or so--you tend to do better waiting for the set. As for scans, you won't find it on a lot of manga sites because it was technically licensed and released in English.

That said, it's no longer in print, Viz has been long dead, and as far as I can tell no one currently has the English license for the content. Which means a new translation effort posted on such scan sites would not be any more legally dubious than any other translation posting. It's a little hairy to post scans of Viz's work of course, but there's also no entity around to get mad about it, so I have at times considered scanning the manga to have it available for people given its comparative rarity. (Something that will just get worse as time goes on.) No one's specifically called for it, though, so I've not been in a huge rush. If there's demand for that kind of thing I may try harder.

I remember those days.

Some things are so different now, but other things have remained the same. We still argue over whether Utena and Anthy are a romance or not, we still argue over whether Ruka is a human piece of shit or a saint, and I still run the only Akio shrine on the internet.

It's all much more concentrated now, though. Anyone who is still interested in or is now discovering SKU isn't likely to do so because they're maniacally absorbing every shoujo anime they can find. There were a lot of fans back then that just enjoyed the show at face value as a great shoujo series. I suppose you could call them 'casual' fans? We're all more invested now, some of us have literally led different lives because of the show, or have it burned on our skin, our wedding pictures, or found it indirectly leading to the most drunken state they've ever been in ever.

If the fandom aside from just being smaller has any fatal flaw now, it's that some of us have been here so long we're very set in our ways, and it makes people sometimes stubborn in the face of new conversations or arguments. I say this now because I'm working on the analysis section, which to me has always been about variety, but includes essays that have offended many. Hell, that stupid one I wrote about Anthy ended up a flippant Tumblr meme.

For a series as old as this, though, there are so many total non-answers. Even after years of interviews and opportunities to clarify, Ikuhara and the rest still refuse to give straight answers, and interpretations vary as widely as the people offering them up. I think that's why despite its age, there's still a fandom at all. It used to be like any other fandom, of course. We all gobbled up the two second trailers for the movie, excited at every low quality image that surfaced...when there were more translators around people used to bicker and debate translations of obscure cultural references from the Shadow Play Girls...we were all a lively crowd. It's much more sedate of course now, and that this forum still exists at all is something of a miracle. It's a relic from a time before the dominance of social media sites, and it's just not the primary means of communication it used to be a decade ago! It's always humbling to remember that.

While late to the party, you're still in before last call, I think! We're all here, and Tumblr's made for a revamp of its own, though I am personally forbidden from visiting it by Yasha. She says I lack diplomacy and self-moderation. And apparently wanting to jump on Akio's cartoon joystick is not a popular pastime over there?

Ahem. As for the manga, there's been far less demand for it, to be honest. The rerelease of the series probably didn't make Right Stuf's year in sales, but was a reliable offering and definitely added value to their library. There was a definite demand for it. Manga I think is less vibrant a sales category, and the manga was never really as clung to as the series by English-speaking fans. You could blame this on availability and you wouldn't be wrong, but I think also a lot of what many of us love in the series honestly is less present in the manga, which follows a much more classic shoujo structure and tone. And Saito's disapproval of the homosexual connotations in the series and movie were also not popularity making.

Rocko52 wrote:

Are there any veteran fans here who remember the earliest days of the Utena fandom, when it was maybe a bigger name in the small US industry, as it was new back then? I mean, I know that the site this is connected to, ohtori.nu , is quite old (and remarkably still running! I've loved the theories/galleries/interviews/other stuff on there lol!) and I know the founders/active contributors have been Utena fans for quite some time too.

I've often wondered this myself. Were people passing around fansubbed episodes on VHS as it was airing like what happened with Evangelion in the 90s? How did the TV series first get popular in the west (before the movie was a thing)?

BunB wrote:

Rocko52 wrote:

Are there any veteran fans here who remember the earliest days of the Utena fandom, when it was maybe a bigger name in the small US industry, as it was new back then? I mean, I know that the site this is connected to, ohtori.nu , is quite old (and remarkably still running! I've loved the theories/galleries/interviews/other stuff on there lol!) and I know the founders/active contributors have been Utena fans for quite some time too.

I've often wondered this myself. Were people passing around fansubbed episodes on VHS as it was airing like what happened with Evangelion in the 90s? How did the TV series first get popular in the west (before the movie was a thing)?

I first watched the show in college, back in the late 90s, myself.

The first 13 episodes were picked up and localized and released on VHS (and boy oh boy did the packaging LOVE to use bright pink and sky blue!), but it would be several years before the remaining 26 episodes got localized officially, and so fourth-generation fansubbed bootlegs were the only way to go at the time.

Honestly, fansubbed VHS tapes were hardly unique to Utena, either. At the time, anime was very, VERY niche (stores often referred to it as 'Japanimation' back in the day, and then later as 'animé' with the stress accent so people would know how to pronounce it), so fansubs were the only way to get anything that wasn't super high-profile, like Evangelion, Record of Lodoss War, Slayers, or Tenchi Muyo.

Last edited by Rikoshi (01-07-2016 05:21:06 PM)

Rocko52 wrote:

I've also heard about Saito being possibly homophobic (I hear that manga Juri is straight, or maybe bi? And that Utena x Touga is way emphasized over Utena x Anthy maybe?) but it seems weird to think that an integral part of Be-Papas could be homophobic when sexual identity/non-conformity is such a huge part of the entire point. Aaand I have seen pictures from the manga that have some Utena and Anthy kisses soooo, I dunno seems odd lol.

Art was drawn for the series by Saito that tends to have a more sexy flavor to it--you might notice in her artwork that their outfits shift from an original setup gradually closer to the series designs, and the sexiness increases alongside it. That said, I fall into the very unpopular camp that never took the series to be able a lesbian relationship between the two characters, so there's no more cognitive dissonance in her art than the series art to me.

She does write Juri as straight (bi maybe?) though, and other implicitly homosexual relationships don't happen in the manga either. It's more her tone in interviews, most of them taking place around the movie, though--which is undeniably a lesbian romance.

Rocko52 wrote:

you're a probably the biggest Akio fangirl on the site

Only probably?

Rocko52 wrote:

if you've seen Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

I..I have, yes. But actually Akio's voice actor seems pretty versatile, I rarely recognize him right away and he doesn't often pull me out of immersion by reminding me too much of another character he played. Mikage's voice actor, popular though he is, has this problem for me. Took a long time for Mikage to stop being Zelgadis from Slayers. That said, I haven't watched anime regularly in a horrifyingly long time.

DD: Huh, I have the first and didn't even know they got finished. So much for the person that ran the initial attempt at translating it. Alas it was a little later in the fandom by then and I didn't have enough translators interested in it.

Hey good idea! I just checked my old stomping grounds, and the Miami-Dade system does indeed have them! So that might be an option depending on where you live.

Many databases can be searched online, actually. And both Miami-Dade and my public library system up here in Edmonton will send a book to your local branch for you. Libraries are amazing things.

I think I have a spare Saito book, I can't recall what it is, but I'm not personally super attached to it, if you're interested.

When it comes to merch, especially books, I've had to mentally detach from my possessiveness of them. I've willfully slaughtered probably thousands of dollars worth of artbooks and doujin for the site--it's worth it to have these things high quality and available for everyone, but it makes me sad to see what would be a crazy impressive Utena collection is basically scrap paper. Ah well.

Thanks to duplicates, I do have a few untouched books. Namely that amazing Akio tentacle porn doujin and I think an extra copy of Art of Utena or something. And I eventually probably will butcher the manga, as it gets harder and harder to find. I'd rather the resource be available for fans to enjoy than have the actual content of Utena disappear in any reasonable capacity, and over time that will probably happen with the manga if it's not reprinted.

Oh man. Be careful of the douijin, okay? If it's not dickgirls, it's WEIRDLY MUSCULAR ANTHY or Saionji in a diaper.

Just warning you.

Hence why eventually I might just make it available for people.

But yes, the doujinshi is a dark, dark place. I probably shouldn't be hosting so much questionable porn but I feel like it's something about the fandom that needs sharing. It's amazing that I see a developing female character with identity issues and someone else sees a dickgirl.

Well the doujinshi is very...interesting, ey? Aheh... 

So I think I'll eventually shell out to read the manga, but probably not for a while. For now I'm content with what I have. But if you do ever scan the manga onto this site, that'd be really great! Of course, it's a shame that you have to destroy the books in the process...if I was in your position I dunno if I'd be able to do it lol. Especially those Utena Artbooks. But I guess you have a stronger will and sense for contributing to the greater good and preservation of Utena.

Seriously though, I hope someone licsenses the series again, but that'll probably never happen. And it'd be amazing if Nozimi could get their hands on the Utena Blu Rays, but that's probably a pipe dream too. Ah well.

I would probably buy an omnibus edition, even though I already own Viz's releases and the first volume in the original Japanese