Am I Really That Bed💔😢

Some new closeup pics of the Petit Chara Sailor Moon Festival Edition figures + Preorder link: http://www.sailormooncollectibles.com/2016/01/13/petit-chara-sailor-moon-festival-edition-figures/

news reporter anthy himemiya: […]as they say their final goodbyes to this fallen chairman, aggie ompoopoo- i’m sorry- onbooboo-

my mother watches Utena (part one)

“the roses are… roses?” Don’t worry mom we’ll English teacher you eventually.

She really doesn’t like Saionji.

We’re only two episodes in and she already knows there’s something lesbian going on.

top places to publicly overshare online:

tumblr blog

youtube comment section of a song

So, lets now come to the next topic. This moves us away from Hinduism and into Buddhist territory. This sentence is one of the 3 Main charscteristics of the World according to Buddhism.

In Buddhism, the world has 3 Main Features, anata, anicca and dukkha. Meaning that there is nothing Staying constant, nothing which lasts eternal and the World will always have suffering.

(Ironically, in Utena, this sentence of nothing lasts eternal later ends with "but there is always suffering")

In Buddhism, these Main Features of the world are responsible for time becoming a cycles, or to say it otherwise, a Revolution.

But why does this lead to suffering: via the 3 poisons: hatred, delusion and greed

Delusion here is also meant as a desire of self deception and clinging to illusions and delusions despite the knowledge of them being false. In Buddhism, people are trapped in a world of illusions because they do not want to leave that world. Due to that, in the end, Utenas decision to leave the world of illusions and the cycle was the only right thing because there, she won against the poison.

Interestingly, in Buddhism, the path to free yourself from the 3 poisons is called a "vehicle". Like for example "diamond vehicle". Maybe this is meant by Utena turning into a car.

The whole Buddhist theory of suffering is also connected to the term of Sunyata which is important in the Kyoto School and post ww2 japanese philosophy. The kyoto school was a group of philosophers studying in germany under Martin Heidegger.

They combined Buddhism and heideggerian philosophy. Heidegger thought the main emotion of all humans is fear/anxiety and everything humans do is a rejection towards fear. Fear is connected to our mortality and to the fact that humans must choose actions but every action can have devastating consequences which are not always plannable but humans are always responsible for everything they do.

The kyoto school used heideggers theories and added the Buddhist idea of Sunyata. Sunyata means absolute nothingness. Absolute nothingness is in contrast to relative nothingness. Relative nothingness is basically lack and a nothingness where it's clear what is missing. Sunyata is a nothingness where it's unclear what is missing or if something is missing. And this causes fear. (Like the saying goes "you are not afraid that you are alone in a dark forest. You are afraid that you might not alone in the dark forest and that something is lurking there.

And sunyata also means everything in the world will be destroyed someday and is running towards its own destruction. (Absolute destiny apocalypse, like the name of this song.)

But everything humans achieve and do and accomplish is a reaction to the thought of sunyata. Absolute nothingness creates everything.

The sunyata theory and its influence is one reason why anime loves the apocalypse as a topic.

This Buddhist cosmology is related to the idea of entropy and self escalating chaos. Basically every possible way to fight against entropy causes more entropy and more chaos.

This is where the idea of Taoism, that the wise man does everything needed to be done by doing nothing and the idea of the immovable mover come into play. This all basically refers to the wise man as someone who avoids unnecessary entropy and who does not need to do more because of this.

As Kyubei points out, Homura is trapped in an eternal cycle of suffering due to her unwillingness to give up her desire to somehow save Madoka.

Interestingly, the Ending theme of madoka magica contains "its because you yearn with greed, even through your heart may bleed" a fitting line.

FOUR FOR FOUR!

about me

minor || downton enthusiast (very evidently so)

things i will probably talk about / reblog:

SPOILERS!!!

pairings

thomas barrow support

branson support

bates support

i also might post art who knows!!!!

“sotr is mid because you already know how it ends” shut the fuck up, the point of the book is that despite knowing how it ends you would have never known what actually went down because that’s the point of propaganda, the whole book is about the power of propaganda

My next analysis of Utena is the famous cow Transformation of Nanami. I know the theories behind "Nanami Was always an animal", "the egg Episode is about pregnancy", the egg Episode as a partly retelling of the OVA Angels Egg, and other theories. I would like to put forward another theory.

In Buddhism and Hinduism, roughly speaking, your biggest character flaw decides your next rebirth. If its fear, you Stay a human. If its Ambition, you become an asura god. Asuras are basically norse gods (its proven that the term aesir is derived from asura) or saiyans. If your biggest character Flaw is Anger and hatred, you get into Naraka/hell.

And if its delusion (or moha in sanskrit) , you become an animal next time. Delusion here is not about having untrue and outlandish beliefs but more a refusal to think and question your own beliefs. (Interestingly, in catholicism, the famous irish saint Patrick also told stories about people becoming animals via this character flaw and the bible helping them to overcome that.)

In that infamous cow Bell episode, other characters point out that this is a cow bell and not a fashion item from a Designer. But Nanami refuses to Listen and doubles down. This doubling down leads to her becoming more and more cow like.

The Nanamis Egg also shows Nanami not asking very obvious questions like how a mammal like her would be able to Lay an egg and instead going to extreme lengths for her belief.

Nanamis egg shares some Thematic similarities with Oshiis Angels egg, a Surrealist OVA, where a girl Transports an egg. Many people see the egg as an Allegory for hope and religion in the wake of the Nietzschean "death of god" (see my previous analyses for that topic.)

In that movie, in the end, the male protector of the girl destroys her egg and many people interpret this act as a result of him seeing the egg as dangerous (in the sense of a flight from reality.) This fits here very well.

While both episodes are rather humorous and absurdist, Nanamis relationship with her brother is also a sign of delusion. She makes personal illusions, refuses to accept that her brother cares far less for her than she hopes, and she is even willing to commit acts of cruelty for the sake of maintaining her fantasy.

Best example is what she did to the cat.

Thus the connection between delusion and Nanami are pretty obvious.

But I need to mention that in Buddhism, delusion, among with greed and hatred are the 3 poisons which keep the circle of suffering from continuing. Which maintain the "revolution". Thus, everyone has delusions. In Utena, this is the case as well. Every character klings to personal illusions in the Story and these delusions are one of the Main reasons why they are at ohtori.

Another interesting aspect here is that the student council mantra tells you to "smash the egg shell" to destroy the illusion and to finally grow up and be free. In the egg Episode, Nanami does the opposite and tries to prevent the egg from cracking at all costs. She wants ro prevent her illusions from being smashed.

Chiho Saito’s 1999 Revolutionary Girl Utena Original Illustration Collection

IT’S HERE. IT’S DONE. IT’S FINISHED. NOW…IT’S YOURS. Happy Holidays, my friends.

Vanna here! I have posted some already about this project, and the responses I got, public and otherwise, have been absolutely incredible. Y’all have been reblogging and hyping this before it even finished…I haven’t felt so encouraged about an Utena project since the musicals! (Yes, streams soon, I promise.) You can read the other post to get more details, and catch my post here with more details about the process if you’re interested. The long and short of it?

This is the first artbook I ever scanned. I did it in 2001. In Photoshop, using multiple scans per page that took hours to process. But it was 2001. A half megabyte file that was 1250px wide was considered extremely hardcore and impressive. That’s just always been the business I’m in when it comes to Utena art, you know? 

It’s now the latest artbook I’ve scanned, and so much of the process, and effort involved, is unchanged. What has changed, is the result. Welcome to your new desktop background. Your new phone background. Your new poster print. 

What I’ve done here is attempt to create definitive digitized images of Chiho Saito’s work as offered by this book--I have removed the print moiré of the original scans, and used my literal decades of experience to try and tease out as much information from them as possible. Without being physically in front of the original artwork (which is a thing I’ve had the great fortune to get to do) this is The Most Chiho Saito you are ever going to get. I’ve tried my best to make sure there is a way to get it that works for everyone:

Do you just wanna scope 'em out? Look at some disaster gays? Grab your favorite one or two? This is the path for you! Check out the ‘compressed’ (not very) 10k ‘web friendly’ (not really) copy at the Bibliothèque, the media archiving wing of the Something Eternal forums at Empty Movement*. All the following links are also available from here. Do you want these copies? All of them? Don't just grab them individually, friend. This batch is 375MB and can be downloaded as a zip of the individual files here on our Google Drive.

Do you like digital archiving? Are you looking for a copy that preserves the archival quality of the effort but sits nice and comfy in a single file? This is for you. A minimally compressed 10k, 513MB version worked into a PDF is now up, shiny and chrome, on the Internet Archive. Do you like the idea of the minimal compression, but want the individual files in a zip? Yep I did that too, here's the drive link.

Are you looking to print these in a larger size? This is probably the only reason on Earth you’d ever want them, and yet a bunch of you are going to go straight for these. Here are the zero-compression JPG full size copies, most of them are 15k across, like simply a ridiculous size. Pick your fave and download it from our Google Drive! 

I am genuinely really proud of this work.** I was able to tease out so much new detail from these…her incredible layering techniques, the faintest brush of her highlights, and the full range of her delicate hand at whites and blacks… details commonly lost in digitization. I sincerely hope you find something here that you’re looking for, as an artist looking for inspiration, as a weeb looking for a desktop, as an archiver excited to see incredible 90s manga artwork saved forever in the digital realm. I feel like I have already said so much about them, and could keep going, but you know what? This work speaks for itself. Enjoy, use, explore, and definitely tell us what you think!

We love y’all. ~ Vanna & Yasha

* AHEM ASTERISK AHEM

You might be wondering what any of that is. Something Eternal? Biblewhatawhat??? EmptyMovement.com? You might even have done a double take at the word ‘forum.’ And you should!!!

I have a confession. This artbook was my ‘side project’ as I worked on this, *the main project.* For a couple years I’ve been banging around with a new domain, and originally I had other plans for it, but Elon Musk ruined my Twitter and Discord is well along on its way to enshittification, and well….we joke on the Discord a lot about ‘reject modernity, embrace forums’ and you know what? We’re right. So Yasha and I are putting our money where our mouths are once again, and doing something insane. We are launching, in 2023, a website forum. Obviously, this is not the official ‘launch’ per se, but I cannot announce the artbook without directing you to the forum, since it sits on the attached very cool gallery system. Oops! Told on myself. Another post more focused on the forum will be forthcoming, but if you are just that motivated to get in right away, you absolutely can! (This will help stagger new arrivals anyway, which is good for us!) If you would rather wait for the ‘official’ launch, by all means that’s coming, including a lengthy screed about how and why we’re doing this. In either case, remember: this is a couple weebs trying to make internet magic happen, we are not website developers by trade. Give us grace as we iron things out and grow into this cool new website thingie…hopefully along with some of you! :D

If you do join up, naturally, there is a thread about this project!

** If you like this kind of content, consider helping us pay for it! We do have a Patreon! If you’re wanting to use these in some public-facing distributive way, all we ask is for credit back to Empty Movement (ohtori.nu or emptymovement.com, either will work.) 

I would like to say ‘don’t just slap these files on RedBubble to get easy money’ but I know that saying this won’t effectively prevent it. Y’all that do that suck, but you’re not worth letting it rain on the rest of this parade. :)