So there's this awesome shoujo/yuri anime called Revolutionary Girl Utena, and I'm basically insane about it. It's deeply surreal and makes use of symbolism to produce a sense of intense metaphysical meaning, even though it's just a cartoon for teenagers. I love sets of symbols that produce meaning in people, let's mash some together and see what happens!

There are 39 episodes of Utena, and they center on the "rules of the rose seal," the 21 duels that will grant the champion the power to revolutionize the world. Interestingly, there are 22 cards in the major arcana of the Tarot. There are also 16 "court cards," four for each of the four suits. 22+16 = 38... I got to thinking about how to merge these two hyperfixations of mine and I realized that if I included the movie as the last major arcana card, then one could map the sequence and "story" of the tarot onto Utena. It ended up corresponding much better than I thought.

I originally wanted to make this a series of posts, detailing the exact specific meanings for each of the cards, but I just kept having pesky new ideas about them! So instead, I'll just leave you with the correspondence table.

There's lots of interesting quirks, like how all the fire court cards are on episodes about the Prince / Akio, the sword court cards all falling on Nanami episodes, and how all 3 recap episodes are water cards. The synchronicities between the major arcana and the duels are where things really shine, though.

FURTHER READING