Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

Utena Tenjou arrives as a new student at the surreal Ohtori Academy, where she witnesses a fencing match and unexpectedly reunites with Touga Kiryuu, a boy she knew in childhood and considers her ex-boyfriend. Inside a white rose she discovers a signet ring engraved with a rose crest identical to Touga's. This leads her to Anthy Himemiya, a quiet, passive girl known as the 'Rose Bride.' Fellow ring-bearer Kyouichi Saionji immediately challenges Utena to a formal sword duel; she wins by drawing a glowing sword directly from Anthy's chest. As victor, Utena becomes Anthy's new 'master' — the Rose Bride is betrothed to whoever holds the dueling championship, because possessing her supposedly grants 'the power to revolutionize the world.' That night Anthy visits Utena's dormitory room and attempts to seduce her, though Utena refuses. Anthy then explains the rules: the engraved rings mark duelists, and the duels exist to reactivate her dormant witch powers. Akio Ohtori, the school's unseen chairman who communicates only by phone, provides a mythological framing: Anthy is a witch who once transformed the lord of flies into a prince, but when her magic faded the prince reverted to a monster, so the duels are held to restore her. A second duel occurs when Juri challenges Utena; Juri loses after she witnesses Utena apparently embody the image of Anthy's legendary prince. Meanwhile, the school's broadcasting club has been investigating and discovers a set of disturbing surveillance videos showing that Akio had drugged and raped Anthy. More shockingly, Akio's corpse is subsequently found buried in Anthy's rose garden — he has been dead for years. A second video reveals that Anthy was fully conscious during the assault; when a panicked Akio realized this, he stabbed her, then accidentally fell to his death. The dueling structure and the mythology of Ohtori are thus exposed as a fiction sustained by a dead man's cruelty. Utena simultaneously unravels the mystery of Touga: she comes to understand he was the 'prince' from her childhood memory, a boy who died saving Juri from drowning. After she thanks him for that sacrifice, Touga quietly vanishes. Utena seeks out Anthy and proposes that they simply leave — escape to 'the outside world' together. The film then shifts into surrealist abstraction: Utena passes through a car-wash and is 'swallowed,' metamorphosing into a pink sports car. Anthy takes the wheel and drives. Other students at Ohtori, inspired by the pair's act of revolution, begin moving toward the outside world as well. A ghostly apparition of Akio appears to block their path but fails to stop Anthy. The film ends with Utena and Anthy riding the skeletal remnants of the car out of the academy and into a grey, open wasteland beneath a blue sky, kissing as they drive into the unknown. The film is a loose, heavily stylized reimagining of the TV series, compressing and restructuring its characters and themes rather than adapting its specific narrative.

Sources: Wikipedia