Empty Movement

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
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GOGAI, GOGAI!! Have YOU ever wanted to pay WAY too much for a t-shirt!?!? Well this week only: HERE'S YOUR CHANCE!!

This shirt is, let's say, inspired by a design sold at the 2013 Utena exhibition in Japan, and has been the stuff of fandom legend ever since....that is, until I grabbed one and made this design, from the original! Yes, that includes manually editing each letter because no fonts were a perfect match.

My intent was to launch it on Nanami's birthday on the 8th, however one of our two workhorse computers just fried (RIP Anthy's mobo, processor, and RAM, 2012-2026 honestly a great run tbqh) and welp OBVIOUSLY we now need about six trillion dollars to get enough RAM to run Firefox and Hades II and Photoshop.

So here's the deal! For the next week, until her birthday, the shirt is marked up by a significant amount, about $35 each. If you wanna help us out a little, that's an easy way to do it! If you want the shirt but not the extra out your wallet...just give it a week! After that point I'll drop the margin for us back down to the $5-10 we usually use.

That's all! Thank you, drive thorough! :)

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Hello there! Only two more days to pay too much for this t-shirt. :) Thank you so so much to those of you that have already chipped in! <3

revolutionary girl utena rgu utena empty movement utena merch nanami kiryuu nanami MOOOO nanami cow shoujo kakumei utena i have no idea what the numbers mean lmao given the Skate Rat Chu shirt is a parody of Santa Cruz this might be a similar situation and I don't know the inspiration lol help anthy the pc by buying nanami the shirt obvs there's still the patreon but this seemed like a neat approach to take
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GOGAI, GOGAI!! Have YOU ever wanted to pay WAY too much for a t-shirt!?!? Well this week only: HERE’S YOUR CHANCE!!

This shirt is, let’s say, inspired by a design sold at the 2013 Utena exhibition in Japan, and has been the stuff of fandom legend ever since….that is, until I grabbed one and made this design, from the original! Yes, that includes manually editing each letter because no fonts were a perfect match.

My intent was to launch it on Nanami’s birthday on the 8th, however one of our two workhorse computers just fried (RIP Anthy’s mobo, processor, and RAM, 2012-2026 honestly a great run tbqh) and welp OBVIOUSLY we now need about six trillion dollars to get enough RAM to run Firefox and Hades II and Photoshop.

So here’s the deal! For the next week, until her birthday, the shirt is marked up by a significant amount, about $35 each. If you wanna help us out a little, that’s an easy way to do it! If you want the shirt but not the extra out your wallet...just give it a week! After that point I’ll drop the margin for us back down to the $5-10 we usually use.

That’s all! Thank you, drive thorough! :)

revolutionary girl utena rgu sku utena shoujo kakumei utena empty movement utena merch nanami nanami kiryuu nanami cow MOOOO i have no idea what the numbers mean lmao given the Skate Rat Chu shirt is a parody of Santa Cruz this might be a similar situation and I don't know the inspiration lol help anthy the pc by buying nanami the shirt obvs there's still the patreon but this seemed like a neat approach to take
empty-movement
empty-movement

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GOGAI, GOGAI!!!! Freshly cleaned cover to cover kibbles just in time for Adolescence of UTENA, playing in the North American theaters this weekend!!!!

Art of UTENA - 'Revolutionary Girl Utena' Making of Visuals Book

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This 112 page color and black and white combined artbook from 1999 celebrates both the series and movie artwork and production process!! You can now peruse the totally reasonable copy above on the Empty Movement forums, or you can go hit the Internet Archive for the bonkers 8k pixels across per page version!!

One of the interviews featured in this book has already been translated, should you want to read more from Juugo Kazayama about script and storyboarding the series!

This artbook was an early source of some of the rarer pieces of Utena art, and has been part of the Empty Movement gallery for over 20 years! I'm hyped to finally share a copy of it that I think gets across the 'experience' of the book in person as best I could manage! The images have been descreened and selectively cleaned for legibility..a miserable process given the annoying repeating background that the scanner choked on. But my work is your win! Check it out, download it, share it, and enjoy it!!!! :D

So, a thing that people who haven’t been in the Utena fandom spaces forever might not know– we owe a lot to Evanescence. They were, not even joking, the unofficial OSTs. I genuinely wish I could take y'all back to that time to see how pervasive Fallen and The Open Door were in the fandom back then. So, so many AMVs, so, so many songfics. It was like a common language in the fandom.


Even beyond that, like… it feels a little weird to admit this, but Evanescence was absolutely the dominating soundtrack to all the coding and image cleaning that Vanna (and to a lesser degree, I) did to continue to make Empty Movement into the horrible behemoth it is today. It’s so massive that even we forget what’s in it and where it is and all that… and let’s be real, Vanna and I are still here near thirty years on, so it’s not likely a change of music would have stopped us.


But Evanescence was the soundtrack to a huge, huge part of building that behemoth. Picture us in our headphones, shooting messages back and forth over whatever IM program, me stubbing a cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray (I vape now, don’t come at me, I’m trying) and Vanna swigging out of a bottle of wine, and the two of us knowing we had to be up in the morning but loving the music and the time with each other and the knowledge that what we did would give others the chance to make even more cool shit.


Evanescence was a huge part of that, and they’ve got a new album out that has got some goddamn bangers. If you want overemotional lyrics, beautiful vocals, and metal af instrumentation, check it out here.


And as a memento of that time when it was a common fandom language, here’s one of the AMVs I loved most, Roseate Nocturne.


WARNING– SPOILERS!!

revolutionary girl utena rgu sku shoujo kakumei utena utena anthy empty movement rgu spoilers spoilers
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GOGAI, GOGAI!!!! Freshly cleaned cover to cover kibbles just in time for Adolescence of UTENA, playing in the North American theaters this weekend!!!!

Art of UTENA - 'Revolutionary Girl Utena' Making of Visuals Book

image

This 112 page color and black and white combined artbook from 1999 celebrates both the series and movie artwork and production process!! You can now peruse the totally reasonable copy above on the Empty Movement forums, or you can go hit the Internet Archive for the bonkers 8k pixels across per page version!!

One of the interviews featured in this book has already been translated, should you want to read more from Juugo Kazayama about script and storyboarding the series!

This artbook was an early source of some of the rarer pieces of Utena art, and has been part of the Empty Movement gallery for over 20 years! I'm hyped to finally share a copy of it that I think gets across the 'experience' of the book in person as best I could manage! The images have been descreened and selectively cleaned for legibility..a miserable process given the annoying repeating background that the scanner choked on. But my work is your win! Check it out, download it, share it, and enjoy it!!!! :D

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Empty Movement's Discord mod teasot recently acquired a stack of copies of production materials from the Utena movie. Out of 90 odd images, 37 were specifically of this kiss. I can't really sum up the vibe better than that!! Uploads coming soon. Amazing preview above!

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Production Materials: The Kiss (Teasot)
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NOW GO SEE THE MOVIE IN THEATERS THIS WEEKEND

revolutionary girl utena rgu sku shoujo kakumei utena anthy empty movement utena utena meta utena movie adolescence apocalypse utena kiss baiser
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"...how boring reality would be if we lacked the sensitivity to recognize beauty in beautiful things."

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Mitsuhiro Oikawa & Chiho Saito for H! Rockin' On Japan Magazine, July 1999

That's right! Did you know this movie manga artwork, that graced many a wall in the early 00s, is based on a real photo of movie Akio's voice actor and mangaka Chiho Saito, taken at the iconic Meguro Club Sekitei love hotel? Well, it is!

And you know what else? We translated the interview it came with! H! Rockin' On Japan is a music-oriented magazine, covering the Utena movie more from Oikawa's perspective. The queer vibes in the interview are off the charts, and it's clear as day that the shift in Akio's visual style from the series to the film is in no small part in response to Oikawa's involvement. This interview is a really neat look into the context around that change, and it's all thanks to translation by Nagumo and editing by Ayu Ohseki! I did not work this interview into the magazine pages, since they are text-dense anyway, so you can read the interview here at In the Mouths of Babes, or you can look at the high resolution magazine scans, complete with magazine cover and table of contents, here at the Bibliothèque! And as always, there's a ton more new Utena stuff to check out at Empty Movement proper!

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GO SEE THE UTENA MOVIE IN THEATERS THIS WEEKEND

revolutionary girl utena rgu shoujo kakumei utena sku utena adolescence apocalypse utena movie utena meta oikawa anime music utena analysis adolescence of utena chiho saito utena translation
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DID YOU KNOW???

The character design sheets for Adolescence Apocalypse include instructions for how it is Utena’s massive amount of hair fits so cleanly into the short look she takes around school! Neat huh??

NOW GO SEE IT IN THEATERS THIS WEEKEND!!!!

And if you want more movie content, I just dropped the entire cover to cover scan of The Art of UTENA! If you want even more movie art, I have also finished the back end of the Hardcore of UTENA ~ Illustration Side, which covers the movie’s promotional artwork and in higher resolution than you’ve ever seen it before!

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