Anime tie-in video games are almost always bad. There are good ones, of course, but like, they’re a cash grab, right? They’re there to cater to otaku who really love the anime and would buy any merch, and thus like anything, they’re not there to like, make a statement, or even sometimes be ACCURATE to the source material. They’re there to make a quick buck.

Just like in everything else, Utena saw that trend and was like “fuck that shit”, completely breaking the mold. And so we got an Utena game on the Saturn, the only game the franchise ever saw. And it’s stunningly good. Way, WAY better than it should be.

Warning: I WILL talk about some Utena spoilers in this. It’s just how it is. Also, there’s a bath scene I’ll be showing a picture of, so be careful looking at this at work. It’s not like, smut, but it’s tasteful Anime nudity.

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I’m just calling this game Utena because that name is a mouthful. It translates to “Revolutionary Girl Utena: Story of the Someday Revolution”, for the record. Utena on the Saturn is a first party Sega game, which is kind of wild, but beyond that, it has a lot of backing behind it. The entire voice cast makes a return, their lines fully voiced. It’s directed by some heavy hitters in Sega at the time. It has the backing of an actual animation studio behind it, Zexcs. I THOUGHT they had the original animators and artists working on this game, but I tried to research that and couldn’t find anything so I guess I misremembered something I heard. But either way, the animation and art is extremely faithful.

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In fact, the entire presentation is faithful. EVERYTHING is faithful. This feels like it was made by someone who really, really gets it. And maybe it was, because it was written by Ichiro Okouchi, the dude who wrote Gundam Witch. A guy who likes his yuri, clearly. But yeah, the entire game is on point in presentation. It fits in very snuggly in continuity, basically taking place concurrently with the first arc of the series and neatly moving into the second arc in the epilogue (this game is set up as a trial run for what would be the Black Rose Arc). When characters appear for the first time, they get the little roses moving around them! It’s all on point!

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Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about Utena’s themes and whatnot, at least a LITTLE bit. Look, I am a simple woman. I am not intelligent. I am the epitome of that one meme where Utena’s themes are flying over my head and I go “wow, funny cars. Ha ha, Nanami turns into a cow. Lesbiabs!” I know that this franchise is filled to the brim with extremely loaded concepts and themes. I’m just not smart enough to fully get it. Like, some things are obvious, like duh, the car is sex. That’s clear. But all that other stuff, I dunno. I just digress to others who can tell you that the egg and cow episodes are, in fact, very deep and not weird shitposts. And that’s how it is with this too, you can read a lot into it. I read an article about this game that was like “it follows the series being a deconstruction of its genre by being a deconstruction of the dating sim genre in this way and this way-“ and I was like “uh huh :)”. I dunno, read that article I’d say if you wanna get into that. I’m frankly not smart enough. I’ll just tell you that those themes are PROLLY there if you wanna go looking for em. If not, it’s still a fun time.

So, what is this game anyway? It’s a dating sim! Well, kind of. Again, it’s a deconstruction. It’s more fitting to call it a visual novel, though you can, in fact, do dating sim type things in this game. In the game you play as a character made specifically for the game that you name. It’s your self insert! Yes, YOU are sent to Ohtori, and are quickly swept up in the pace of the main characters of the show. This is kinda deconstructed because like, your character kinda seems like a faceless entity with your parents being LITERAL faceless entities to send you off to school, but as the story progresses we find out a lot more about this girl and her parents’ history, which ties directly into the story, and she becomes less your extension and more her own person, which is cool.

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The “gameplay” of Utena for Saturn is very simple. It’s a visual novel. Read a bunch of text, then choose an option for your character to do. Do you try and stop Seongi from slapping Anthy again, or do you stand back and watch like a fucking asshole? Stuff like that. Each character in the game has Nobility Points, and your actions can increase those points. They naturally go down due to the influences of the villain, who I’ll get into soon, I promise. So, yeah, go through the story, interract with characters, try to get the ones you want to like you, simple stuff.

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The plot of the game is that you’re a new exchange student, and another exchange student also joins in. This character is another one made for the game, Chigusa Sanjouin, who is a super sexy villain, and I love her. She’s a ghost who’s been dead for years, but is brought back, very much like the antagonist of Act 2, and her past intertwines with your’s! She’s here to make your life a living hell, and her corrupting influence lowers character’s Nobility Points. If they drop to zero, that character is lost to you, their heart closed, and they are under Chigusa’s influence. So you’re trying to balance characters to keep them from falling to darkness, basically. When I first played, Saionji IMMEDIATELY fell, because I didn’t wanna touch that dude with a ten foot pole.

The game isn’t very long, and has ten endings, some of which are very in depth and varied. You have character endings, sure, where your characters kiss and whatnot. Spoilers I guess, but I fucking LOVE Juri’s ending, where she gives you a locket with her face in it, and asks you to remember her, which is so fucking funny, because I’ve seen the show, so I know how fucking mean that is to do that to another closeted lesbian. And yes, characters do kiss. It’s chaste kisses on the eyes for women, and on the lips for men, but this game is, in fact, gay. On a Sega console. In 1998. That’s fucking stunning. And beyond that, the Akio and Touga sex scene is ALSO in the game. This game re-uses a lot of stills from the show to fill in art, and that’s one of em. Christ almighty. Gay sex in a Sega game. I love it. (it’s not ACTUAL sex on screen but like, dude, it’s a metaphor. They fuckin.) You can also extremely explicitly have sex with some characters, too. It, like the show, is very adult and mature despite appearances.

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Seriously, there’s no heterosexual explanation for this.

But yes, the endings go beyond just character endings for each of the characters. There’s that, a perfect ending, a neutral ending, and super interesting ones where YOU end up becoming a duelist. You can fall yourself, and become a black rose duelist, which is SICK, with the elevator scene and everything, and there’s one where Akio shows you the End of the World and you fight Utena. You lose both of these duels, obviously, because this game is easily slotted into canon, but it’s cool it’s there!

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The game is two CDs, though honestly it basically doesn’t need to be. The reason it’s on two CDs seems to be that the entire last 10th of the game, the final day, contains a SHIT ton of anime FMV for dueling fight scenes with Utena (very impressive), and the ENTIRETY of the Duelist Intro. Y’know, the one with Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku. That fuckin’ banger. The rest of the game feels pretty static.

Over all, this is a game that really feels like it’s MADE for Utena people, because every subset of Utena fans will love this. They’ll love it because it gets the show, because there’s stuff to it deep down, and cause there’s lesbians. Really, it IS just a pretty good visual novel on a console, but for what it COULD have been, a shitty anime cash grab like all the other god damn anime cash grabs that have been shat out throughout history, like, holy moly. It’s REALLY good.

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Also, I own a physical copy of this game. It comes with an art book that has all the game-unique stills in it as sketches, and it is EXTREMELY cool. It’s also a FLIP BOOK, with the game’s fight scenes as little animations in the corners!! I’m so glad I own this. It’s a good one.