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Description

I watched the Adolescence of Utena while developing this comic.

Utena deals with spaces comprised of Desire itself, hence its florid, Nouvelle aesthetic, focusing on every direction which that desire can go in, often in its worst manifestations. In portraying the show's adolescent environment, Utena collapses the difference between imagination and reality (or, more accurately, shows imagination *to* be Reality), specifically in not only the way in which the social environment within the school becomes a reflection of despotic modes of Patriarchy and its continual attempt at becoming every single institution, but also the anime's Egyptian Book of the Dead-like systems for, well, growing up; moving out of the hell that is adolescence for anyone who isn't an alpha archetype of masculinity or femininity, out of the satanic reflection of the Real World confined within grade school and out into that very Real World.

2-III-C-Delta-Gimmel might be thought of as what happens when someone's childhood *was* an Utena-like tumult, and how that bares on and defines their adulthood ever after. It's about a Nagisa Kaoru or Gilbert Cocteau-like Crimson Rose love interest growing up and becoming an underwhelming adult instead of dying tragically at 16 years old.

The deuteragonist for the Mainstream Success series, Zos, is someone whom I'm thinking had started out as a sheltered, Candy Boy archetype at Brutus Magnus's age, but who was able to retain that personality and affect well into middle-age, hence him still living in a Nouvelle space comprised of Desire itself, the deeper parts of the Elephant Palace being an endless walled garden underneath a full moon and a cold, but not frozen night. He's not nearly as erratic, unstable, or political as Brutus Laurentius Magnus, which I'm thinking is the primary point of tension between them.

The location is based off of a reflecting pool at Alhambra and the panel layout, including the plants, is a study from Kazeki. I wanted not to use something trite for Sci-Fi communication, such as holograms or a large computer terminal, so I settled on a reflecting pool which showed the reflections of whomever you were speaking to. A bit like the scenes in the aforementioned Adolescence of Utena where Utena and Anthy are standing above a similar reflecting pool in a field of roses (an important flower for Desire itself), with their archetypal self-imaginations being what is beneath them in the reflections.

Here's the weblink: sites.google.com/view/23cdelta…

Description

I watched the Adolescence of Utena while developing this comic.

Utena deals with spaces comprised of Desire itself, hence its florid, Nouvelle aesthetic, focusing on every direction which that desire can go in, often in its worst manifestations. In portraying the show's adolescent environment, Utena collapses the difference between imagination and reality (or, more accurately, shows imagination *to* be Reality), specifically in not only the way in which the social environment within the school becomes a reflection of despotic modes of Patriarchy and its continual attempt at becoming every single institution, but also the anime's Egyptian Book of the Dead-like systems for, well, growing up; moving out of the hell that is adolescence for anyone who isn't an alpha archetype of masculinity or femininity, out of the satanic reflection of the Real World confined within grade school and out into that very Real World.

2-III-C-Delta-Gimmel might be thought of as what happens when someone's childhood *was* an Utena-like tumult, and how that bares on and defines their adulthood ever after. It's about a Nagisa Kaoru or Gilbert Cocteau-like Crimson Rose love interest growing up and becoming an underwhelming adult instead of dying tragically at 16 years old.

The deuteragonist for the Mainstream Success series, Zos, is someone whom I'm thinking had started out as a sheltered, Candy Boy archetype at Brutus Magnus's age, but who was able to retain that personality and affect well into middle-age, hence him still living in a Nouvelle space comprised of Desire itself, the deeper parts of the Elephant Palace being an endless walled garden underneath a full moon and a cold, but not frozen night. He's not nearly as erratic, unstable, or political as Brutus Laurentius Magnus, which I'm thinking is the primary point of tension between them.

The location is based off of a reflecting pool at Alhambra and the panel layout, including the plants, is a study from Kazeki. I wanted not to use something trite for Sci-Fi communication, such as holograms or a large computer terminal, so I settled on a reflecting pool which showed the reflections of whomever you were speaking to. A bit like the scenes in the aforementioned Adolescence of Utena where Utena and Anthy are standing above a similar reflecting pool in a field of roses (an important flower for Desire itself), with their archetypal self-imaginations being what is beneath them in the reflections.

Here's the weblink: sites.google.com/view/23cdelta…