Revolutionary Girl Utena Meta
Dec. 15th, 2018 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wolffyluna(crossposted from tumblr)
I think one of the reasons Revolutionary Girl Utena is such effective psychological horror is that the writers, storyboarders and animators knew that showing less is sometimes more.
Or in other words: letting the audience draw their own conclusions is the scariest thing of all.
Some of it is in the ambiguity, the tension between the fact that what’s going on could be innocent and the fact that’s it’s heavily implied to be not. Take for example the shots of Anthy putting her glasses down in the Black Rose Arc. In and of itself, taking off glasses is not unsettling. And that creates tension in the viewer. Because in those scenes, a lot of other things are at work to creep the audience out. The darkness, the isolation, the dialogue, the fact that the camera has something to hide*. Even the subconscious knowledge as viewers that every shot means something, that the glasses coming off is significant, build the tension. The scene is shouting ‘something is very wrong here!’ while very little unambiguously wrong is happening. Everything is set up so our instincts are screaming that something is wrong, but we have very little to hang that instinct on, and that is unsettling.I think in a lot of the scenes, especially the earlier ones, use this tension to make the horror happen.
But some of the later scenes use something else: A slow realisation is more disturbing than a quick answer. An example would be the asparagus scene from episode 33. If the shot was more zoomed out, if we saw what Akio was doing, it would be far less horrifying. Some of that is from the ambiguity: we don’t know what Akio is doing, we don’t even know for certain it is Akio doing it, and that combination of creepy implications and lack of certainty is offputting. But a big part of it is that the scene leads you down the garden path, and forces you to draw your on conclusions. “Wow, that’s a claustrophobic shot. And a weirdly still one. Like the camera is hiding something*. Is Utena on a bed? I’m not sure. …She’s really uncomfortable. Why? She seems to be rambling about something irrelevant to avoid acknowledging something. That’s not like Utena. Is she naked? Why is she naked?…oh no. OH NO.” And that slow realisation is ten times creepier than being shown it outright.
*The storyboarders seem to love ‘the camera is hiding something’ as a method for creeping people out.
I think one of the reasons Revolutionary Girl Utena is such effective psychological horror is that the writers, storyboarders and animators knew that showing less is sometimes more.
Or in other words: letting the audience draw their own conclusions is the scariest thing of all.
Some of it is in the ambiguity, the tension between the fact that what’s going on could be innocent and the fact that’s it’s heavily implied to be not. Take for example the shots of Anthy putting her glasses down in the Black Rose Arc. In and of itself, taking off glasses is not unsettling. And that creates tension in the viewer. Because in those scenes, a lot of other things are at work to creep the audience out. The darkness, the isolation, the dialogue, the fact that the camera has something to hide*. Even the subconscious knowledge as viewers that every shot means something, that the glasses coming off is significant, build the tension. The scene is shouting ‘something is very wrong here!’ while very little unambiguously wrong is happening. Everything is set up so our instincts are screaming that something is wrong, but we have very little to hang that instinct on, and that is unsettling.I think in a lot of the scenes, especially the earlier ones, use this tension to make the horror happen.
But some of the later scenes use something else: A slow realisation is more disturbing than a quick answer. An example would be the asparagus scene from episode 33. If the shot was more zoomed out, if we saw what Akio was doing, it would be far less horrifying. Some of that is from the ambiguity: we don’t know what Akio is doing, we don’t even know for certain it is Akio doing it, and that combination of creepy implications and lack of certainty is offputting. But a big part of it is that the scene leads you down the garden path, and forces you to draw your on conclusions. “Wow, that’s a claustrophobic shot. And a weirdly still one. Like the camera is hiding something*. Is Utena on a bed? I’m not sure. …She’s really uncomfortable. Why? She seems to be rambling about something irrelevant to avoid acknowledging something. That’s not like Utena. Is she naked? Why is she naked?…oh no. OH NO.” And that slow realisation is ten times creepier than being shown it outright.
*The storyboarders seem to love ‘the camera is hiding something’ as a method for creeping people out.
