The series has been described as a deconstruction and subversion of fairy tales and the magical girl genre of shōjo manga, making heavy use of allegory and symbolism to comment on themes of gender, sexuality, and coming-of-age.

After dueling and achieving victory over the council, Utena is confronted by Souji Mikage, a student prodigy who uses his powers of persuasion and knowledge of psychology to manipulate others into becoming duelists.

[12] He commented that Saito's style deviated from the "anime-like" art that was popular in manga of the era, and thus presented a compelling challenge to adapt into anime.

[10] The title character of the series is Utena Tenjou, a middle school-aged girl who seeks to emulate the noble disposition of the prince she encountered in her youth.

As the Rose Bride, Anthy is submissive to the personality and disposition of whomever is the current champion of the tournament, and possesses seemingly no free will or independent identity of her own.

[16] Though at first glance Anthy resembles a stereotypical damsel in distress defined by her passivity and demureness, as the series progresses, she is revealed to occupy a central role in controlling the duels and the school itself with her brother Akio Ohtori.

Its membership consisted of Ikuhara, manga artist Chiho Saito, animator and character designer Shinya Hasegawa, scriptwriter Yōji Enokido, and planner Yūichirō Oguro.

[23][e] Per Oguro, a basic series concept of "a romantic action show starring a pretty girl who wears boys' clothes" that had a "Takarazuka style" was eventually settled on.

[21] Utena draws inspiration from several sources – Animage described the series as "influenced by [Ikuhara's] idiosyncrasies"[21] – including the Takarazuka Revue,[9] the artwork of Jun'ichi Nakahara,[25] Hermann Hesse's novel Demian,[8] and the experimental theater of Shūji Terayama.

[25] Saito cited the manga series Kaze to Ki no Uta[26] and the 1973 film adaptation of The Three Musketeers[4] as among the influences that informed her contributions to Utena.

[9] Saito stated that she was hired to join the otherwise all-male Be-Papas in part because they were concerned that without a female perspective they would create a parody of shōjo manga, which was not their intention.

Believing that the series required "a unique individuality"[3] if it was to find an audience, he abandoned his previous goal of a mass-market hit in favor of more non-commercial aspirations.

[8][27] To this end, he began to incorporate a variety of avant-garde elements into the series, such as theatrical-inspired layouts, a recurring shadow play segment that allegorically comments on the events of each episode, and the experimental choral music of composer J.

[3] Ikuhara and Saito particularly quarreled over whether the series should depict the relationship between Utena and Anthy as a romance, and at one point during production did not speak to each other for a period of three months.

[28] Key individuals involved in the production of Utena beyond the membership of Be-Papas included Shingo Kaneko and Tōru Takahashi, who served under Ikuhara as assistant directors.

[32] Background art was created by Shichirō Kobayashi [ja], based on initial designs by Nagahama,[33] and Mamoru Hosoda and Takuya Igarashi were among the storyboard artists for the series.

[37] The duels are themselves heavily stylized, in a manner that scholar and critic Susan J. Napier notes is reminiscent of the ritualized performance style of Noh theater.

[71] She attempted to incorporate as much material as possible from the scripts Enokido had completed,[72] but was frequently required to use her own judgement in rendering aspects of the story that the anime would ultimately depict in an entirely different manner.

[71] Animerica described the production of the manga adaptation as "one that got its inspiration largely through [Saito's] own confusion about what exactly she was supposed to show, and Ikuhara's own vague answers to her questions.

[73] Written and illustrated by Saito, the three-chapter series depicts the lives of the primary cast following their departure from Ohtori Academy, and was serialized in the manga magazine Flowers from July 2017 to March 2018.

The duel songs function similarly to a Greek chorus, commenting on the motivations of the duelists through allegorical lyrics that feature references to religious, scientific, and arcane subjects.

[36] Seazer originally produced the songs featured in the series as part of his experimental theater company Engeki Jikken-Shitsu: Banyu Inryoku [ja] (lit.

[68] The film occupies an ambiguous place in the broader Utena canon, and has been alternately interpreted as a stand-alone adaptation that exists in its own continuity, and as a sequel that is contiguous with the events of the anime series.

[87] Two light novels written by Ichirō Ōkouchi with illustrations by Chiho Saito, titled Shōjo Kakumei Utena: Aoi no Futaki (少女革命ウテナ – 蒼の双樹, lit.

[90] A visual novel with dating sim elements, the game tells an original story about the player character (voiced by Kaoru Fujino), a transfer student at Ohtori Academy.

[92] Although the simple juxtaposition of prince and princess archetypes could suggest that Utena is a straightforward "feminist fairy tale",[95] Napier argues that the series "is not simply a work of female empowerment".

[8][102] Typically, characters in Ikuhara's works seek a MacGuffin-like device that purports to solve their struggles by accelerating the process of change; in Utena, this is represented as the "end of the world".

[8] Enokido has noted how each of the characters in Utena seek their own version of "eternity", which he describes as representing the "desire to vicariously re-experience times past", but which ultimately symbolizes the danger of humans being "ruled by sentimentality".

[105] The series' depiction of sexuality has been considered in relation to its subversion of fairy tale and magical girl tropes, as the trials Utena faces often occur in the context of efforts to pressure her into the "heroic heterosexuality and monogamy"[106] typical of those genres.

[110] In 2017, Japanese broadcaster NHK conducted a national poll to determine the one hundred greatest anime in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the medium, in which Utena placed 30th.