Murphy 1 Abby Murphy ACLA Seminar: Genre Trouble 8 March 2019 Shades of Shoujo: Differing Subversions of Gender in Revolutionary Girl Utena on the Page and Screen In the realm of comparative literature, Japanese anime and manga are often overlooked, but within this broad range of media, anime and manga tropes allow for a unique engagement with genre. In particular, shoujo manga (girls’ comics) as a genre contains many conventions that give audiences concrete expectations, often harkening to fairytales, with stories about a female protagonist falling in love with the “prince,” literal or figurative, of her school. Revolutionary Girl Utena (Shoujo Kakumei Utena) (1997) is one such story, but one that adds more than a few twists to this classic formula. Utena embraces the fairytale conventions of the shoujo manga genre to such a degree that it can begin to subvert them. In the manga, anime TV series, and movie, protagonist Utena Tenjou embodies both male and female characteristics: inspired by her childhood fairytale prince, she endeavors to become a prince herself while always asserting that she is still a girl. Moreover, in all three versions, Utena’s relationships with men are problematized, and instead of the genre’s typical heterosexual romance, she has her closest relationship with her female classmate, Anthy Himemiya, the “Rose Bride.” Thus, in regard to both its portrayal of gender and queer relationships, Utena allows for an intriguing case study and insights into how shoujo manga generic conventions can be used to create a critique of the genre’s norms. 1 1 These conventions will be continually referred to as shoujo manga ones (and not shoujo anime), as this is how the conventions are referred to even by series creator Kunihiko Ikuhara himself, who talks about how, “A shoujo manga is a story where a girl is the main character,” even when talking about the anime (“Episode 38 Commentary”). This phrasing reflects the usual trend of manga being adapted into anime, thus the conventions would originate in comic form, but can be found in both media.