References to beliefs and mythical events of two religions. Ancient Greek gods are under myths instead, for no strong reason; I arbitrarily separated out some religious myths from others. I live in a Christian society, so I have absorbed a lot more about Christianity than any other religion. I expect that references to other religions have flown over my head. But I will write what I discover.
Buddhism, Christianity, and Manichaeism are the main religious references (that I know of). Gnosticism is a set of ideas that some religions draw on, especially Manichaeism.
Buddhism
Christianity
Gnosticism
Judaism
Manichaeism
other religions
Utena sees religion as contributing to the oppression of women, sometimes literally and always figuratively. The Christian church is directly shown to be patriarchal, and Buddhism is subtly implied to be an illusion that itself misleads people.
I love the opposed parallels of the Buddha dying without rebirth and Jesus being resurrected (that is, reborn). In Utena they mean the same thing. As Anthy and Utena are opposed aspects of the same thing, Utena treats the opposed examples of religious transcendence as aspects of the same thing. In fact, they are aspects of Manichaeism, where the cosmos is made of opposed dark and light like Anthy and Utena. When Utena vanishes from the Academy, it is transcendence in (at least) three religions, Buddhism, Christianity, and Manichaeism. They are some of the victory symbols at the end of the series.
A duel song gave me the clue to look into Buddhism. At first I had to research it from scratch. Since then, semi-anonymous Nick has given me a bunch of pointers to help get me up to speed on the basics. Thanks!
In Buddhism, for most people, everyday experience is an illusion. What you see and feel and believe is false, and amounts to suffering. Suffering is an illusion and illusions are suffering; the self is an illusion; permanence is an illusion; the cycle of life and reincarnation is an illusion. The idea permeates Utena: Everything on the screen is an illusion; we see what the current point-of-view character falsely sees rather than any kind of truth; locations and characters are unstable; the story repeatedly insists that it itself is a stage play, or a fairy tale, or a myth, or another kind of illusion. Shadows, including the shadow plays but also other shadows, symbolize illusions even as they point toward the truth; we see only the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave.
A small number of people may be awakened, which in English we call enlightened. The Buddha is awakened: He suffers no illusions but sees the complete truth. To not be awakened is to be as if you were dreaming, seeing only illusions. Utena of course pulls in the metaphor of dreaming.
This aspect of the Buddhist worldview is the polar opposite of essentialism (Wikipedia).
In Buddhism, life is bad because it means suffering, but it is difficult to get out of because those who die are normally reincarnated. Samsara (Wikipedia) is the cycle of life and rebirth. Only those who awaken and reach nirvana are not reincarnated. They step out of the samsara cycle and cease to exist, and that’s good.
Samsara is perpetuated by ignorance and desire. To be awakened is to have complete insight and to lose false earthly desires. It includes the realization that you have no self; the self is an illusion. Utena works out its parallel in detail.
Anthy as samsara. Anthy stands for destruction and renewal with continuity, in other words, for the eternity of samsara (though it is an illusion like everything else). She is ignorant that the patriarchy is false, and she desires Dios and Akio. She is immortal, and until Utena opens her coffin, all we see of her is her image—the illusion of Anthy. She brings up reincarnation in episode 27 when talking with Utena in bed. She connects it with parents passing on their thoughts and feelings to their children through generations: Though the person dies, their thoughts live on eternally. The person is mortal but the system of control is reincarnated in every generation, establishing the parallel. Like life, the system of control is painful and bad. It works by providing people illusions (causing ignorance) and desires.
Episode 27, where Anthy establishes the parallel, is Nanami’s Egg. Nanami spectacularly shows her ignorance and her misguided desires. It’s not in the least obvious that Nanami’s Egg is a religious reference, and yet it is!
Anthy’s usual job is to cultivate the students, that is, to ensure continuity of the system of control. See Anthy watering her roses. The Academy’s symbols of regeneration participate in the parallel, for example the Student Council entrance.
Utena as Buddha. Utena stands for destruction and renewal with change, that is, for revolution. After failing to rescue Anthy at the end of the series, she admits to herself that she was only playing prince, and is awakened. Being severely injured, she then literally or metaphorically dies and disappears from the Academy. She steps out of the ever-looping system of control. She has lost her ignorant illusions and become detached from her false earthly desires. In the allegory, it means that she sees the true nature of the patriarchy, and loses the patriarchal desires to be a prince and to marry the prince. She has lost her “self”, the illusionary belief system she sought to re-attain in episode 12. Having stepped out of the cycle, she ceases to exist when she dies, disappearing, and that’s good.
One way to take Utena’s disappearance is that Utena no longer sees the illusory Academy, but the truth. If the camera takes her point of view, then it can no longer show her in the Academy and she disappears from it. In Utena the camera shows nothing but illusion (that’s what animation is); once Utena is awakened, she can no longer be the viewpoint character.
And yet Utena who escapes samsara still stands for samsara in a larger sense. Society as a whole remains trapped in the illusions of the patriarchy. It is hinted that a future sequence of heroes will unravel the patriarchy strand by strand. But that is reincarnation again: Each hero is born of the previous one, and as the first hero Dios was an illusion, so are all of them. The heroes bring progress to the world, but we always need another hero for the next step. We can read it as Utena undercutting its own Buddhist metaphor, saying that the full truth can never be reached. There is no Buddha who is free of illusions.
As I read it, Akio considers that his world is the entire world. The real world, where you become an adult, lose your belief in fairy tales, see through the illusions, leave your coffin, hatch from the egg, become self-actualized, and escape samsara, is not the world of Buddhist mythology’s cycles. We the audience don’t have to accept that Utena literally dies and disappears, either because we take the parallel as figurative or because it is deliberately ambiguous whether she dies. We can if we like, though.
Utena is Jesus. In her role as victim and princess, Utena corresponds to Eve (see below). In her role as prince, Utena corresponds to Jesus: She is a savior, she performs miracles, she forgives others their sins (she even forgives Anthy’s backstab), and she follows a strict moral code—in the prince role, she is without sin, like Jesus. When she becomes a prince in episode 2, a Moravian star in the empty dorm is the Star of Bethlehem. In the final showdown, Akio turning Utena into a princess corresponds to the crucifixion of Jesus. Utena vanishing from the Academy corresponds to Jesus vanishing from his tomb (that’s what the Academy is—see coffins and kofuns) and ascending to heaven.
The Bible calls Jesus the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6). The word translated as “peace” is Hebrew shalom, which means more than English “peace”.
Utena depicts Utena as Jesus as morally good and not sexist (she doesn’t notice that sex roles exist), and the church as an institution as corrupted by Akio, patriarchal and morally bad. Swords are cross-shaped. Above all, the sword-shaped church tower is a cross. It ties the patriarchal church with other symbols of male sex and power.
Dios is Jesus as well. Dios is “the light of the world” in The Tale of the Rose, while Jesus calls himself “the light of the world” in John 8:12 (and the same metaphor comes up elsewhere in the Bible). The halo around the last burning candle in episode 30, and the halo around the sun in the Second Seduction, are Christian haloes. One interpretation of the haloes is that the light remains until you choose darkness; Utena can choose to save herself (and does not). But I like this interpretation: Utena blows out the last candle in episode 30 and is corrupted—and Dios approves Utena’s turn toward Akio. Utena chooses to stay with Akio in the forest until sunset, again violating the ideals she gained from Dios and becoming more deeply corrupted—and Dios approves. It is part of God’s plan that Jesus is to die on the cross and be resurrected. The power of miracles is far-sighted, and prepares Akio’s downfall as early as episode 30 (maybe earlier, though I haven’t traced it).
Threes are significant in Utena, but my attempts to find the holy trinity in the show don’t convince me.
I think Utena has more of the qualities of Jesus than Dios does.
Akio is the Devil. In episode 25, he equates himself with Lucifer, that is, with Satan. When corrupting Utena, he plays the role of the serpent in Eden. Akio cannot corrupt Utena as prince (the Devil tried to tempt Jesus and failed), but he does corrupt Utena as ordinary girl and turn her into a princess.
Isaiah 14 makes the equation: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” The bit translated as “Lucifer” supposedly means the morning star. The following text makes it clear that Lucifer means Satan.
The Bible calls Satan “the prince of this world” in John. And it says that he is the “father of lies.” See Akio as father.
At the beginning of the story, little Utena hides in a coffin in a church in the prince story. Akio started his plot to control Utena in a place where his power is great.
Anthy and Utena are each equated with Eve, in different ways. Anthy and Utena are aspects of the same thing: Together they stand for all women, and for a Christian, Eve is the original and prototypical woman. Though note: The myth of Eve is older than Christianity and appears in other Abrahamic religions.
Anthy is Eve because she corrupted Dios and caused him to become Akio, as Eve corrupted Adam by offering him the apple. Dios is Adam. Anthy is associated with apples by animating one in her notebook in episode 4, by the apple that is cut into six pieces in episode 5 (which corresponds to her rabbit dance in episode 7), and by the poisoned apple in episode 32. In the final version of the prince story in episode 34 she replays part of the myth of Eden, corrupting Dios and “lying with” him.
Utena is Eve in the Apocalypse Saga corruption storyline, while Akio is the serpent and corrupts her. Akio relies on lies and temptation, the same methods as the serpent. Utena is associated with apples through the shadow play of episode 11 and the color red, which represents her virginity in the First Seduction. Eating the apple corresponds to Utena losing her virginity in the First Seduction. The apple is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil: It puts Utena on the road to learning the truth and leaving the Academy, which is marked by her increasing thoughtfulness after each step of deeper corruption.
In Utena, Christianity is part of Akio’s propaganda—it is an ancient patriarchal tradition. The Bible’s patriarchal attitudes are in plain sight. Eve the prototypical woman was corrupted, therefore women are corrupt. Part of the punishment for eating the apple is that women are subordinated to men. In propaganda, it’s not the serpent’s fault, it’s weak Eve’s fault, and strong Adam gets a pass. Men must control and protect women for the sake of both men and women. That’s how I read it. The attitude shows in part through Anthy’s femme fatale character archetype, which accepts Eve as a corruptor.
The end of Utena’s story comes with beautiful opposed Buddhist and Christian parallels. Utena shares the Christian parallel with The Little Prince and Sailor Moon. The Sailor Moon article includes a picture of Anthy half-crucified: She is half of of the whole of Anthy and Utena.
In the final showdown, Akio turns Utena into a princess. In the fairy tale plot, it is the prince being murdered—defeated by the heroic Akio with “his” sword (that is, by taking Utena’s sword and making it his). In the Christian parallel, it is the crucifixion of Jesus. Akio takes Utena’s sword on a cross of shadows. The parallel is reinforced by a comparison of four-pointed shadows between the church in episode 9 and the princessification in episode 38.
After Jesus died on the cross, a Roman soldier stabbed him with a spear (Wikipedia) to ensure that he was dead. It corresponds to Anthy’s backstab in the final showdown. In depictions, Jesus is shown as pierced on the right side of his body, the side where Anthy stabbed Utena. Both stabs were intended to inflict mortal wounds.
In Utena’s symbolism, the right side is the side of truth. Part of the meaning of piercing Utena on the right side is that Anthy truly desires vengeance against her. The Christian symbolism also holds: Those at the right hand of Jesus are saved, and piercing Jesus on the right side stands for that. Even the soldier who made sure Jesus was dead is saved. Even Anthy who sinfully seeks vengeance is saved. The backstab is necessary for Utena and Anthy to win, and that ties in.
Utena disappears as the Swords of Hatred converge on her. It corresponds to Jesus being resurrected.
I thought Anthy might correspond to Mary Magdalene, but no, it doesn’t seem to work.
Utena characters do a lot of sinning. I don’t see how this fits into the structure of the show, if it does at all, but it seems to me that there is one best example character for each of the seven deadly sins.
| sin | who | clear example |
|---|---|---|
| Lust | Touga | always surrounded, yet in episode 12 leaves Anthy alone to go trysting |
| Gluttony | Chu-Chu | emptying the lunchbox in episode 11 |
| Greed | Akio | seeks world domination |
| Sloth | Mikage | episode 22, he admits he doesn’t care about details |
| Wrath | Anthy | the backstab |
| Envy | Nanami | drowning the kitten because it was close to Touga |
| Pride | Juri | episode 16 entry to Nanami’s party |
These characters commit other sins, and others commit the sins I’ve assigned to them, but I think these are the unique best matches. For example, Touga is a better match for Lust than Akio because Akio has wider interests. Sloth is the most questionable. No one is very slothful.
Gnosticism (Wikipedia) is not a religion as such. It’s more a collection of religious beliefs that some early Christian or Christian-adjacent sects adhered to with their own variations.
Basic Gnostic beliefs align well with Utena. Manichaeism below includes Gnostic beliefs in its mix, so maybe that’s the intended connection and there is no other tie to Gnosticism. That’s how I came across Gnosticism.
• There is a flawed material world and a pure spiritual realm. The material world is ruled by a “malevolent lesser deity” (Akio), and the spiritual realm is of God.
• Every person has a “divine spark” from God that gives them a potential of salvation. Many Utena characters show signs that they may escape the Academy someday. See epilog - good characters have made progress. We can read the divine sparks as stars: That is why people are represented as stars.
• Salvation is achieved by enlightenment, knowledge which can free the divine spark from the material world. It means seeing through the illusions of the material world (similarly to Buddhism above). In the end, Utena gains knowledge of the patriarchy and disappears from Akio’s world. See final showdown - Utena disappears and afterstories - literal versus metaphorical afterstories.
• Jesus was sent to guide humanity toward enlightenment. See above, Utena as prince is Jesus.
A black rose is a close match for a dybbuk from Jewish mythology.
The Dona Dona song from episode 16 is of Jewish origin.
Manichaeism (Wikipedia) is a dead religion, but it is every bit as central to Utena as Buddhism and Christianity. I ran across it as I cast around. I saw connections, but only slowly realized how important it is.
Manichaeism draws from Buddhism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and I expect others. It is a Gnostic religion, or at least draws on Gnostic ideas. The cosmos consists of a light spiritual world and a dark material world, which got mixed together as good and evil when darkness invaded the light. Light is knowledge and moral purity; darkness is ignorance and evil (including materialism and sexual desires). In a historical process, light fights back, gaining knowledge and slowly freeing itself from the evil and ignorance of the material world, and returns to the world of light. In the final state, light and dark will be fully separated. Demian’s light and dark worlds are similar and may be borrowed (or may be from Zoroastrianism, which has a related idea). But in any case, Utena’s light and dark have direct ties.
I read as widely as I could. But most of what I say can be traced to these two larger sources, plus Wikipedia:
• Manichaeism - episode 84 of Literature and History.
• Manichaeism - from Jason Colavito library.
Luring. Most Manichaean writings have been lost due to persecution. Saint Augustine (Wikipedia) was a Manichaean before he converted to Christianity. He argued fiercely (while claiming to be gentle) against what he saw as Manichaean errors. One passage in particular refers to a lost text that more or less describes Utena’s plot. It is from On the Nature of Good, chapter 44. The whole passage is over-long and hard to follow, but it has beings of light taking on the form of beautiful girls or boys to lure in lusty souls, after which the souls were (or could be) cleansed.
To Augustine it was absurd. In Utena it’s the story—except that dark Akio does the luring.
Twin. The religion’s founder and prophet Mani said he received revelations from his “divine twin”. One reading is that his twin was the “divine spark” within him, the light that was mixed into his dark material body. I find it natural to see Utena as Anthy’s divine twin who brings revelations. The light and dark are even reflected in their skin tones. If you want to stretch it further, many comparisons can be taken as cases of twinning. See especially paired character comparisons.
Knowledge. The religion puts great weight on knowledge. That’s what “gnostic” means; it is derived from Greek gnosis meaning knowledge. Manichaeism calls for confirming truths for yourself by experience and reasoning. It calls for seeking spiritual knowledge and knowledge of oneself. Utena is slow to catch on, but increasingly finds truths as the series nears its end.
Reincarnation. There’s a conception of reincarnation that is similar to Buddhism’s (it’s likely a borrowing). See samsara above. The dark world is full of ignorance and suffering. Those who die in the dark world are usually reincarnated there, their souls remaining trapped. Those who achieve knowledge (I think full knowledge of humanity’s spiritual nature) escape to the world of light and are not reincarnated. It’s a kind of heaven, if you like.
Akio rules the dark world of the Academy, a material world with people and objects. His greed for material possessions (like his car, and stealing the Ohtori family’s property like his tower) and for sex are Manichaean dark traits. Utena’s victory is a victory of Dios’s light over Akio’s darkness and is represented as Buddhist transcendence, Christian transcendence, and for all I know other religions that I have not recognized. It is hinted that Utena, having left the Academy, is no longer a person but has become an idea: She has left the material world and become a spiritual entity in the world of light. See afterstories - Manichaeism. It is Manichaean transcendence. When Anthy leaves in the final episode, she tells Akio that Utena has not disappeared, but has only left his world—that’s what she means.
Akio as the ruler of the dark world is parallel to the Christian metaphor of Akio as the devil.
There’s a large and elaborate mythology about the formation of the mixed dark-and-light world that we live in, where dark is ascendant and light is trying to free itself. The dark invaded the light and created humanity in the ensuing struggle.
Dios. The first man Adam was created by darkness out of mixed dark and light. That seems to correspond to Akio inventing Dios, a being created by darkness but sold to the ignorant as a hero of light. It seems likely to me that Dios corresponds to Manichaean Adam, especially since there’s a Christian version of the correspondence. Elsewhere I say that Dios is a fiction (which is fitting for a being created by ignorance), but in this correspondence he can be real.
I found one source that says women have only a tiny bit of light and men have more. Akio was already in control by the time Manichaeism was invented (in the 200s AZ [after zero])—just as the Manichaean mythology says.
Creation. The details of this aren’t quite clear to me. But it seems that souls are light, or require light. The light can create immaterial beings and give them souls. The dark cannot, but must rely on material objects and create beings by sex. Akio’s sex is an attempt to trap more light in his darkness. His pursuit of Dios can be read as pursuit of the power of creation.
Someday, we will shine together. Anthy will transcend in the future. The two will “shine together” in the world of light, but not yet. That someday will be when Anthy is fully enlightened, as Utena was when she left. Until then, Anthy is mired in the material world and mixed up with evil. For example, when she leaves, Anthy believes that Utena is a prince, which is a patriarchal illusion. The “shine together” words are Utena’s: In Utena’s transcended state, she knows that Anthy will join her eventually. And Anthy agrees, saying she will search as long as it takes. She is searching for the way to join Utena in the world of light.
The historical process will continue with the sequence of heroes. Utena is the women who seek to leave the patriarchy, and Anthy is those who seek to support it. Utena’s departure is the start of a feminist revolution. The sequence of heroes is its continuation, and corresponds to Anthy disentangling herself from Akio’s evil. Eventually Akio will be defeated entirely, and Anthy will join Utena—literally. Anthy and Utena are one person split into two. When both have left the partiarchy, they will regain their wholeness.
Utena shows others freeing themselves from evil too. See epilog - other characters. And it shows Akio carrying on as though nothing important had changed, at least until Anthy leaves.
Manichaean priests wore “white robes with red piping” (from Manichaean diagram of the universe, Wikipedia). Akio and the four regular members of the Student Council dress as Manichaean priests. Priests are called the Elect, and the Student Council members are “chosen”. On the other hand, the Elect are supposed to live ascetic and celibate lives (that is, without seeking material possessions or sex). Surely the reference is intended, and it implies some kind of corruption or reversal. They are all in the dark material world, after all. It is the same idea as the corruption of the Christian church.
All these corrupt priests contributed to Utena’s enlightenment. That’s how Manichaeism says it is supposed to work.
As I read it, Akio is surely no priest—but that doesn’t mean he’s faking it. In Manichaean terms, he stands for ignorance. He thinks he is on the side of good.
I haven’t found strong connections with other religions, but then, religions are so big and hard to grasp that I wouldn’t be surprised. Here are a few semi-random examples where I see weak connections. I have suspicions about others.
Druze. They believe in honest speaking, like Utena, and in a cycle of reincarnation that ends with the soul rejoining the Cosmic Mind. It’s a bit like Utena’s story.
Islam. Muhammed became an orphan at age 6, rather like Utena. I haven’t found any other connection with his life.
Mandaeism. A Gnostic religion. Like Manichaeism, light and dark worlds are big. Points that lead me to suspect a tie to Utena: North is symbolically the direction to the world of light. Mandaeans need to live near a river for baptism; the Academy is near a river. Baptism is mentioned in the Absolute Destiny Apocalypse song. Spiritual counterparts or “dmuta” exist in a world of ideas, an idea similar to Mani’s twin. “Savior spirits” to assist the soul toward the world of light. Dios can be Utena’s savior spirit, and Utena can be Anthy’s. I have found no firm evidence, though.
Sikhism. According to Wikipedia, “God has no gender in Sikhism, but metaphorically, God is presented as masculine and God’s power as feminine.” The gender-mixing seems Utena-like. Sikhism includes ideas about karma and reincarnation that are similar to what Utena takes from Buddhism.
Zoroastrianism. Manichaeism draws from it, or draws from the same sources. The dualism and some other points are similar. But in this religion, fire is associated with the ultimate good and water is associated with wisdom. It seems like too much tension with Utena’s symbols.
Jay Scott <jay@satirist.org>
first posted 8 January 2023
updated 8 October 2025