revolutionary girl utena often shortened to rgu or just utena (i use them pretty interchangeably) was created by the group be-papas and first aired in 1997. the series consists of a few things but the ones i really love are the show revolutionary girl utena and the movie adolesence of utena. to poorly sumarise the two utena a girl who wishes to become a prince discovers that there is a dueling tournement going on at her school for a girl named anthy/the rose bride who grants the power to revolutionize the world. both are very engaging (most of the time :P) with very pretty animation and a lowkey fire soundtrack.
what is revolutionary girl utena?
why I like rgu
essentally for all its flaws (and it certainly has them) rgu is the combination of everything i gravitate towards in media. i love how it explores its themes and how weird and sureal it is while still having a distict idea of what it wants to comunicate. my favorite character is juri shes just a wet dog pathetic lesbian, my little meow meow as it were. i love that by the end of the series shes shown to have grown past shiori the girl she was in love with and is trying to move forward. i also love saionji and nanami both for being wacky and fun and giving the some of the funniest momments of the series, plus nanamis egg is genuinely one of my fav episodes.
rgu references in other media
utena has been revolutionary (get it) in a lot of ways and that means its been referenced in a lot of other media. here are some of the ones ive found if you know any send them to me id love to add them in.
(gotta make proper explanations for these)
the pokemon sun and moon anime
this one is pretty straight forward lilly and mallow are dressed like utena and anthy. its super cute though :).
she-ra and the princesses of power
in the final episode of she-ra catra pulls adora out of her dream refrencing the last episode of utena where utena atempts to pull anthy out of her coffin (though catra is actually successful lol) the shots are almost identical and its a neat refrence. (image credit to r/shojokakumeiutena).
there are a few other utena refrences in she-ra notably in save the cat where the roles are reversed and adora is holding catra in the same pose utena holds anthy after she pulls the sword out of her chests (its the most popular utena pose so it makes sense that it was included)
gundam the witch from mercury
witch from mercury has so so many utena parallels woven within its story. this is probably because Ichirou Ookouchi is writing the show and he wrote the rgu light novels but anyway its super fun to try and spot them and draw parallels. i mean the whole enitial setup of dueling for a bride was very utena. i also really like the seconding ending having gundam aerial (or maybe calibarn?) doing the classic utena sword in chest.