Some of you might remember that I vowed to revive this series by myself no matter what the cost So anyway, I ended up making an hour video essay talking about Utenas characters, themes, and world so, that’ll be up on my youtube channel this tuesday at 3 noralities
I finally completed this Anthy/Utena/Touga interpretation of the brilliant and beautiful photo shoot of Anne Hathaway, Audra McDonald, and Raúl Esparza in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” I recently have been binging a bunch of Utena analysis on YouTube and damn now I need to rewatch the show!! These in depth explanations of the story make me appreciate Anthy Himemiya’s character SO MUCH MORE. The show literally revolves around her and she is absolutely more than she seems. Anthy has the most complicated personality out of the whole cast and I love that. Utena was a big part of my life in high school! I watched it constantly, tried to cut my hair like Utena, started wearing b&w two toned shoes, and ordered a rose signet ring online lol! It feels pretty great to come around full circle to draw more Utena again. I hope you like this piece! Pre-orders are up for prints!! Take my revolution
I’ve never done much with tarot before, but when Utena won my monthly fanart poll on Patreon, I immediately wanted to play with the swords suite.
The ten of swords is a card that, to my meager understanding, represents pain, endings, betrayal, heartbreak, and so forth. However, reversed, it represents learning from your mistakes, choosing to break painful cycles, confronting and processing old pain so that you can move on. Something like that, anyway. Which seems very appropriate for Anthy and Utena (not to mention, the fact that the card traditionally depicts someone pierced with many swords, in the back).
I approached it as though Anthy were on the traditional card, but then scooted the image down (or up, as this is the card reversed) to get Utena in there at the top, about to pull the Sword of Dios (which is the tenth sword on the card) and begin the work of unraveling a cycle of pain, bitterness and betrayal. It’s meant to be both grim and hopeful.
