Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (naoko Takeuchi, 1991)

“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.

Mandela effect

YOU STOP SCROLLING RIGHT NOW

I KNOW IF YOU SCROLL OR NOT SO JUST PAUSE YOUR DOOMSCROLLING FOR ONE SECOND ily thank you for being here!! you give the world some very-needed flavor ☺️ even if you aren't perfect nobody is i mean one time i broke a drawer because someone asked me to pull out the said drawer for them we all have had our moments anyway while you're here if you aren't right now go drink some water (no soda, coffee, etc. doesn't count hydrate yourself) anyway yes that is all ily!!!! enjoy your scrolling

These are hard to make without transparent images available huh

Her Prince🥀🥀

18 x 20, collage

Details 🥀🥀

you held me the whole way through

when i couldn’t say the words like you

i was scared, indigo, but i wanted to

i was scared, indigo, but i wanted to

I think Nanami Kiryuu would feel 20x better if she took a nap and went to Claire’s to get her ears pierced.

That girl does not need knives, she needs a mall trip and a new Bath and Body Works hand sanitizer

top places to publicly overshare online:

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youtube comment section of a song

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. :)