Utena and Penguindrum characters belong to their various owners.
WARNING: Parts of this work contain depictions of transphobia, controversial shoujo fantasy trans situation that in no way reflects real life trans people, and misogynistic magic attack leading to forced masculinization
Note: Because … you know, it's fun to channel Ikuhara ;-)
1: " Flowers Adrift "
(much of the following text is modified from Ikuhara's English Commentary for Episode 1)
A word before we start: Seinen — a gender neutral term for "young adult" — was originally intended to be a fanfic about Utena and Co all getting mundane jobs ten years after the revolution, with their revolution being a revolt against the tyrannical CEO-figure Akio becomes.
During the process of getting from the story idea to the actual writing itself, I felt the need to test the water with the existing Shoujo Kakumei Utena Fandom. And so, I opened this "fic idea" thread. There, I proceeded to convey the idea of the fic to fans, in a way that I had hoped would generate interest.
It was mostly an "it's something like this" type of thing. And in fact, it got the gist across, and the mild interest shown by a few people gave me the mental green light to start on writing.
However, when I finally started on the first part/chapter/episode, I was plagued with worry. Suddenly I was brooding over what the story's originality really was. Originality is key in creating an interesting fanfic in an aging fandom. A unique individuality. A story no one has ever thought to write before. There was this pressure of "I have to make this a fanfic with a story unlike any before it. That's the only way fans will want it."
I decided to focus more on the misogynic nature of the "Duel called Revolution". And that prompted a switch to flip in my mind. Within myself, I could sense that this would be a special story, if only I change it to be one where Utena got forced-masculinized by the Swords of Hate. But, it was hard to explain this new direction's "specialness" to the fandom before it gets published.
And so, I kept my plans to change the story completely to myself, did the new story outline, and wrote out the modified Part I: "Flowers Adrift ".
The feedback was surprisingly good. People were all like "I love how Juri and Shiori gets shipped! Powerful!Anthy FTW!" They had, of course, no idea about how Utena will be showing up as a "man" down the road. So … all the while I had these pangs of guilt, like I was deceiving someone.
And then.
I came up with this idea to make Seinen a crossover with Penguindrum, a (then) new Ikuhara show that had incited mixed reactions from Utena fans.
Even as I yet again modify the story outline, I could already envision that only possible reaction the coming parts will incite from readers:
"Huh? What the f_k?"
