Production
The Utena franchise was conceived by BePapas, a production group composed of talents from various corners of the manga and anime universe. Most notably, the 39-episode Revolutionary Girl Utena TV series was created by some of the same production staff responsible for Sailor Moon, including writer and director Kunihiko Ikuhara. Ikuhara was already well known for his role in the production of Sailor Moon, including his contributions to the highly acclaimed third season, Sailor Moon S. When working on Utena Ikuhara was unsure if he would be fit for the role as producer and worried about the financial risk involved. Believing it may be the last show he ever worked on, Ikuhara set out to make Utena the pinnacle of his work. The member of BePapas responsible for the manga version of Utena was Chiho Saito, a well-established shōjo manga author. Though she and the other members of BePapas discussed concepts together, Saito had little influence on the direction of the anime.
Ikuhara did not conceive of the idea for the movie, Adolescence of Utena, until watching the final episodes of the television series on broadcast TV. Once again, BePapas convened to discuss concepts, and Saito would go on to create a manga adaptation of the film. The film can be interpreted either as the end of the story initiated by the TV series, or as a condensed retelling with the same themes and characters, although it goes in a very different direction. Its structure is in many ways parallel to that of the series, but the roles of the leads are subtly switched. If the television series riffs on themes from theater and mythology, it could be said that the movie riffs on themes from the series. Familiarity with the television series is assumed, and the movie version is even more visually bizarre than the original Utena, enough so that it earned the good-natured nickname "The End Of Utena", after the similarly abstract but much less cheerful The End of Evangelion.
Another incarnation of Utena came in the form of a number of one-shot theatrical productions. The Takarazuka-style "Musical Shōjo Kakumei Utena", also known as "Comedie Musicale Utena la fillette révolutionnaire", played in 1997, and the second disc of Shōjo Kakumei Utena OST 5, Engage Toi a Mes Contes, contains many of the songs from this musical. At Animazement '00, Ikuhara was said to be working on a later musical, "Shōjo Kakumei Utena, Makai Tensei Mokushiroku hen, Reijin Nirvana Raiga", with the theatrical group Gesshoku Kageki Dan.
Read more about this topic: Revolutionary Girl Utena
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“Perestroika basically is creating material incentives for the individual. Some of the comrades deny that, but I can’t see it any other way. In that sense human nature kinda goes backwards. It’s a step backwards. You have to realize the people weren’t quite ready for a socialist production system.”
—Gus Hall (b. 1910)
“By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.”
—Friedrich Engels (1820–1895)