Film

Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

Name: Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie
Genre: Animation, Drama, Fantasy, Romance
Released: 1999
Cast: Tomoko Kawakami, Yuriko Fuchizaki, Mitsuhiro Oikawa, Kotono Mitsuishi, Aya Hisakawa

Coming-of-age

A wildly inventive 1999 anime film that remixes its TV source material into something stranger and more urgent. Surreal, emotionally raw, and visually baroque—full of symbolic duels, impossible architecture, and characters cracking under the weight of expectation. For anyone who loves art that refuses to sit still.

TMDb rating

3.7

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you love stylised, symbol-heavy animation that trusts you to puzzle out its meaning, and you don't mind a story that answers its questions sideways.

Skip it if you want a tidy, self-contained plot, because this runs on ritual, theatrical staging and abrupt shifts of mood that rarely explain themselves.

What it asks of you: Under ninety minutes, but dense and deliberately stylised, with long held frames and dialogue delivered in riddles; you have to lean in rather than let it wash over you.

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Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

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