Revolutionary Girl Utena will be available to stream on Crunchyroll on Nov. 3 at 2:00 P.M. PST.
The streaming company announced the addition of the classic shojo anime to its library on its website. Revolutionary Girl Utena was originally released in 1997 and continues to be celebrated for its avant-garde presentation and for being one of the first televised anime series to feature openly gay and bisexual protagonists. The series has maintained a dedicated cult-following and has been re-released multiple times on VHS, DVD and Blu-ray in the last 23 years. Crunchyroll will stream all 39 episodes of the series.
Revolutionary Girl Utena was the work of the artist collective known as Be-Papas, which was headed up by Sailor Moon anime director Kunihiko Ikuhara. The project's staff also included Kanon manga artist Chiho Saito, Neon Genesis Evangelion animator Shinya Hasegawa and Yoji Enokido, a veteran screenwriter who worked on both Sailor Moon and Evangelion, and who would later be involved with the production of other hit anime such as Ouran High School Host Club, Nodame Cantabile and Gainax's FLCL. The series was created after Ikuhara left Toei Animation in 1996 due to the director becoming displeased with the lack of creative freedom he was granted. The series was a critical hit upon its release, and is still frequently cited as one of the best anime series of the 1990s, often named alongside classics such as Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion, which was created by Hideaki Anno, a personal friend of Ikuhara.
The anime series was followed up with the 1999 release of The Adolescence of Utena, a very loose movie retelling of the story from the original TV series. The movie features a more mature and serious tone than the frequently comedic TV series, and further delves into topics of sexuality and gender identity. While the movie isn't streaming on Crunchyroll, it is available on the free retro-anime focused streaming service, RetroCrush.
The series focuses on the titular Utena Tenjou, an athletic young tomboy who was rescued by a fairy tale-like prince as a child and now aspires to become a heroic prince herself. Utena transfers into the prestigious Ohtori Academy, an elite school with connections to an enigmatic organization known as "End of the World." After protecting a kind but submissive girl named Anthy from an abusive man who claims to be her fiancé, Utena agrees to take part in a series of increasingly dangerous and bizarre sword duels to protect Anthy and unravel the mystery surrounding the school and the members of its student council.
Source: Crunchyroll
