CBR18 Bingo – Justice: it’s about a girl who fights for what she believes is just, instead of just being a normal girl who doesn’t need to duel. Because it’s not normal (or just) for middle school girls to duel for their life all the goddamn time.
Revolutionary Girl Utena is one of my favorite animes and I had no interest in ever reading the manga because I was not interested in the story without all the things that the manga cut.
That all changed when I heard someone yelling “new never opened Utena manga – 80% off!”
A handsome prince comforted Utena when she was young and grieving her parents. He gave her a ring with a rose seal and promised they would meet again. She traced the seal to a boarding school and enrolled.
The school’s tyrannical student council also wears the rose ring. They have duels and whoever wins the duel gets the rose bride. There’s a lot of roses in the story.
That bride is just Anthy, one of the students. She seems shy and mousey, but she’s also the slave/wife of whoever wins the duel. She seems fine with it.
Utena didn’t know about this setup when she got in a fight with the student council VP. She just knew that he was an asshole who humiliated her friend and hit his girlfriend. Utena is a good person and won’t tolerate either of those things, but she doesn’t really want to get involved. She just wants to meet her prince and be a normal girl who wears a dolman hussar jacket with hotpants.
Instead she has to find her prince, be a prince to her new bride (she won the duel), and figure out who is causing so much injustice in the school and her life.
I liked the manga more than I thought, but I’m not sure I would have without already knowing the story and characters. It felt like a summary more than a revisit, without the bizarre humor and extreme darkness that I associate with the story. But it was a fast and pleasant enough read.
