pikestaff

Over the Moebius Skies

Fond of yuri and giant robots. Char Aznable's Pet Eevee, for better or for worse. Probably for worse.

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(Image: Gundam fanart by Chiho Saito, author of Revolutionary Girl Utena)

[DISCLAIMER: this post was originally written for my tumblr audience which is much more familiar with Utena than with Gundam. My apologies if you happen to be the other way around.]

I never seem to see people talk about this much, if at all, and since I like both yuri and robots I'm going to volunteer to be the one to talk about it.

Yes, I said what I said, you cannot fully understand Revolutionary Girl Utena without understanding Mobile Suit Gundam (1979).

First, I'm going to give a brief synopsis of Mobile Suit Gundam. For those of you unfamiliar with this franchise, I'm going to be talking about the original show, the first in the series, which came out in 1979.

It focuses on a teenage boy named Amuro Ray who climbs into the cockpit of a giant experimental mech called a Gundam in order to survive an attack on his space colony. He gets recruited into this ongoing conflict primarily because he has no choice, and is the main pilot of the Gundam. Amuro is a smart but introverted kid who is terrified about being thrust into this war, but eventually begrudgingly accepts it because he knows there's not much else he can do about it.

Towards the end of the show (or the middle, if you're watching the compilation movies), he develops into a "newtype", a sort of quasi-mystical new human evolution that gives him preternatural abilities and allows him to predict the movements of enemies in battle. This concept is important for the rest of this post.

He has a rival named Char Aznable, a delightful bitch of a man who decides to kill his boyfriend in order to get back at his boyfriend's dad and is all around a magnificent bastard. Char, too, becomes a newtype, though he's not a particularly good one. Most of his battle prowess as a mech pilot comes from experience. He makes up for this by recruiting a young woman named Lalah Sune, who is an extremely powerful newtype, to fight for him.

Amuro meets Lalah and is smitten by her and they develop a sort of psychic newtype connection (the newtype stuff is really hard to explain - just bear with me). Unfortunately, she is his enemy, and ultimately she dies by throwing herself in front of Char to protect him from Amuro, and Amuro kills her.

Amuro and Lalah having a newtype connection

Lalah Sune is dead, so shortly after we are first introduced to her.

Char and Amuro, meanwhile, go on to have an extremely homoerotically charged rivalry for the rest of the show and this relationship continues in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (1985) and the movie Char's Counterattack (1988). Lalah occasionally shows up as a Force Ghost newtype spirit, mostly to try to get Char and Amuro to stop fighting and kiss and make up, like she's some sort of cosmic fujoshi. But she has served her part in the story. She died to advance the narrative of two very sad boys. That was her purpose. (And I say this with all the love in my heart, by the way, because Mobile Suit Gundam is one of my favorite anime shows of all time and Char and Amuro are two of my favorite characters of all time.)

Now let's move on to Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Chiho Saito drew a lot of Gundam fanart. Like, a lot of it. Here's her delightfully shoujo take on Char Aznable.

Char Aznable as drawn by Chiho Saito

She seems to have been particularly enamored by Char and Lalah and their toxic relationship. She liked this so much that she straight up took Lalah as inspiration for Anthy. This isn't just me speculating, she has admitted this.

Sketches of Anthy, including the phrase "I made Anthy "Indian-like" like my favorite Mobile Suit Gundam Lalah, even on put a bindi on her forehead."

And what about Char? Well, Chiho Saito spun him into a character called Silver Mask, who would eventually morph into Akio. Note the mask and cape. Here he is next to Char Aznable and his mask and cape.

Sketch of a man named Silver Mask next to an image of Char Aznable. They both have a similar style of mask and cape.

Anthy and Akio are, of course, their own very well developed characters. They are not carbon copies of Lalah and Char by any means. But the connection is there, and this is especially interesting when you compare Lalah's role in her story to Anthy's in hers. Lalah's purpose is to be killed to advance the narrative of two men. And Anthy tells us that in the end, all girls are the Rose Bride, forever in pain for the benefit of the men around them. Revolutionary Girl Utena is a very good story on its own but it's also a meta story about the role of women in anime and storytelling in general.

There is probably a lot more to say about this, including the Mobile Suit Gundam -> Revolutionary Girl Utena -> Witch From Mercury full circle pipeline, and also I'm sure there is a LOT to say about the fact that Lalah and Anthy are both Desi, but although I am a person of color myself I am not Desi so I don't feel particularly informed enough to speak on that (but I would love if other people did). Mostly I just wanted to get this out there. You would not have Revolutionary Girl Utena, at least not the way it is, without Mobile Suit Gundam, and you would not have a lot of yuri without Revolutionary Girl Utena, so everyone please say thank you, robots, for the yuri.

In closing, here's a direct shoutout to Gundam in Utena.

Bright smacking Amuro, who then says "Not even my father ever hit me!" and Anthy smacking Keiko, who then says "Even my own mother ever slapped me!"


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in reply to @pikestaff's post:

Oh this is a good write-up, thanks for putting it together

There's a magical girl gag comic, Magical Ensign Blaster Mari where Char shows up on a white horse and gives the protagonist the ability to transform, including wearing his outfit. So that's another potential point for a Char-Akio connection

I always felt like Akio and Anthy were meant to be a critique of Char and Lalah's relationship, so this was a good read!

And damn, I did not know about Silver Mask until now, so this just cements Akio = Char in my mind.

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