I want to be special too, or why I love Wakaba from Revolutionary Girl Utena
everyone has "their" Utena character, here's mine
This is going to be a bit different from what I usually do, a bit more personal, but before we get to that, I need to provide some background. For the unfamiliar, Revolutionary Girl Utena is a surrealist magical girl anime from 1997 that tells the story of Utena Tenjou, a young girl with the goal of becoming a “prince,” regardless of her gender. At Ohtori Academy, Utena gets involved in a competition where selected students duel each other for possession of the Rose Bride, also known as Himemiya Anthy, and whoever wins at the end will obtain the power to revolutionize the world. This is a very complex series that handles delicate themes like abuse and queer identity and continues to resonate with people over two decades later. Everyone who watches Utena has something to say about it, but there’s one character in particular that I deeply resonated with and that I believe should be talked about more: Wakaba Shinohara, Utena’s “average” friend.
Wakaba occupies an interesting place within the narrative. She’s introduced to us as a one-dimensional, cheerful and naive young girl who is not very important to the story, she’s only there to be Utena’s friend and to provide some comic relief, and we shouldn’t think too hard about her. At the same time, Wakaba’s confession to Saionji is the event that kickstarts the plot, and she remains a regular character throughout the whole thing, often being present at key moments of Utena’s development, so attention is drawn to her multiple times. As the series progresses, we realize that Wakaba is painfully aware of her position as a secondary character, which I think is a very compelling conflict, and it speaks to my personal struggle with self-worth in a world where it sometimes seems that some people really are more “special” than others.
The Black Rose.
The second arc of Revolutionary Girl Utena, the Black Rose Saga, quite fittingly revolves around the secondary cast. Some of these characters are new, but most are people that we already knew superficially as satellites to the more interesting main characters. This includes Wakaba. Ever since Utena joined the duels, she has grown apart from the “normal” life of the Academy, and her friendship with Wakaba has been forgotten as Utena gets closer to Anthy and the Student Council. Wakaba went from being Utena’s closest friend and the catalyst for her hero journey to being only slightly better than the rest of Utena’s fans. She realizes that there’s a fundamental, inherent difference between herself and the main cast, even though she’s not aware of the duels or the Rose Bride, and so she takes this as a failure on her part. There’s something missing in her.
Wakaba is saying that no matter how hard you try, you will never have what it takes to be a “main character” in the game of life. Some people are simply born more beautiful, more intelligent, more talented and charming than the rest. As Utena gets farther from the ordinary world, Wakaba loses the only thing that makes her stand out from the faceless crowds of Ohtori Academy, her connection with Utena.
Episode 20, “Wakaba Flourishes,” is a great episode, perhaps one of the best in the show. The entire episode revolves around, obviously, Wakaba, and every little detail adds to the “ordinary vs. special” theme. We see Wakaba walk home from the Academy, showing us the distance between her and the magical, surreal world of Ohtori; Akio tells Utena that she was born to have a grand destiny, and she could never understand the struggle of “normal” people like Wakaba; the matching cups that Wakaba bought for herself and Saionji are shaped like sheep; Saionji’s gift to Wakaba is a plain, colorless leaf accessory, in constrast with the colorful roses that dominate the entire show, etc. “Wakaba Flourishes” also challenges the viewer on a deeper level than the other duels. It’s not just Utena, Anthy, Saionji and the system that have doomed Wakaba to be a background character: we, the viewers, are complicit in Wakaba’s suffering. Despite how important she has been to Utena’s journey throughout the entire show, we haven’t given Wakaba any significance until now, not even entertaining that she may have a rich inner world of her own.
Wakaba’s resentment is heartbreaking. It’s the simple, universal tragedy of seeing your friends outgrow you, seeing them become amazing people, and feeling like you will never be like them—that they will forget about you. It’s easy to see myself in Wakaba because her pain is one that most people will feel at some point. I fear that I will have an unremarkable life and that there’s nothing unique or interesting about me. Like Wakaba, I feel trapped in a secondary role.
A Theory.
Ohtori Academy is a cage (a coffin, an egg) that keeps the students trapped in stasis, forcing them to relive the same abuse over and over again and to stay in the roles Akio has assigned to them. At the end of the show, we see Anthy “graduate” from Ohtori. This is the revolution that the entire show has been building up to; she has finally decided to break free from her brother and to look for a better world outside his control. The final episode goes over every character, and we see how they have been changed (or not) by Utena’s “revolution”. Nanami is having a tea party, while Touga and Saionji continue dueling in the background; Kozue is playing the piano; Shiori joins Juri in the fencing team; even the nerdy boys have moved on from Nanami and are pursuing her lackeys. And then there’s Wakaba.
Right before Utena’s disappearance, we cut away to Wakaba wondering where Utena was. Then, the last time we see Wakaba, she’s replaying a scene from the first episode, where Utena leans on a windowsill and Wakaba jumps on her, but now Wakaba is the one on the window, while some other girl takes her old role. With Utena gone from Ohtori Academy, Wakaba is the one to literally take her place, which I see as a hint that Wakaba is the one that will leave Ohtori next.
Finally, Wakaba has become special…
But is that such a good thing? Utena’s journey starts with her trying to be a “prince”, but the show thoroughly breaks apart why becoming a prince is not going to change the system. Similarly, I believe Wakaba’s desire to be special is set up as something that she has to work through and get over in order to “graduate”.
We all have to unlearn the myth that only exceptional people can be happy. There are no secondary characters in life, and no protagonists.
Interesting Trivia:
In “Wakaba Flourishes”, we see that Wakaba has a kappa-shaped kettle. In the finale, Nanami uses the same kettle when playing. The kappa kettle ties into the whole “being ordinary” vs. “being special” theme and relates to both Wakaba’s and Nanami’s journey. I didn’t make this connection, I found out on this really cool website that is entirely dedicated to analysing Utena. I would love to delve into Nanami at some point, but for now I just wanted to point out this neat little detail.
Wakaba’s duel song, “Magic Lantern Butterfly Moth 16th Century”, talks about a somewhat pathetic character who doubts before dealing his foe the final blow. The character’s name is translated as Pyrrhus (of Epirus), Polonius (Hamlet) and Paris (the Illiad) in different versions. Considering the references to Troy in the song, it makes sense for it to be Paris, but I personally prefer Pyrrhus as it reflects how Utena winning the duel doesn’t change anything about Wakaba’s situation and is only a victory in a superficial sense.
Further Reading:
There’s a lot more to be said about Wakaba and her role in the story, so here are some other sources that I highly recommend checking out.
Wakaba and the Big Green Monster. Wakaba and jealousy.
Why “Wakaba Flourishing” is a Masterful Episode. In-depth analysis of episode 20.
What if Wakaba Won? A fun thought-experiment on what would happen if Wakaba won the duel and killed Anthy.
Thank you for reading! I’m trying out different types of posts, please let me know your thoughts by leaving a like or a comment.