she's morphine, queen of my vaccine

Utena is cyclical in structure, acting as a series of expositions of its characters that increase in depth and penetration of the patriarchal narrative. all of its characters are strongly allegorical reflections of a set of relations (either three-part, patriarchy-oppressed-liberator, or two-part, patriarchy-oppressed). They have traits, that's what's great about them, but those traits never prevent them from being read very immediately as narrative functions (this also parallels how fairy tales work in a fun way).

These cycles of exposition are generated through the establishment, alteration, and expansion of motifs--burning coffins, sports cars, roses, shadows, you know the drill. All of these motifs, again, have a lot of clear symbolic resonance. They *look* like symbols. In this way Utena primes readers to read itself, making its entire structure orbit around ideas that are defined and placed within systems of other ideas until it reaches a climax of understanding, which the reader experiences *through Utena* as she processes the symbols of her own narrative at the same time we process the actual story of Utena.

But given all this, the end product is something that is structured like a sort of veiled compromise between shoujo anime and feminist philosophy. The archetypal responses to male domination are explored in their detail, their internal contradictions and complicities with patriarchal logics are explored, Utena recognizes through conflict with them the problematics inherent in her own uncritical assumption of the mantle of "prince", etc. It's kind of dialectical, actually.