Once upon a time, there was a boy grieving over the death of his father, lost protecting his crew. Before this boy appeared the captain of a starship. His golden uniform gleaming, and his smile gentle, he held the boy and dried his tears. "Little one, bearing up alone in such sorrow, do not lose your strength and nobility when you grow up. These were your father's command braids, please keep them always. We will meet again." So struck was the boy by this captain's concern and his own father's bravery that he vowed to one day become a captain himself. But was that really such a good idea?
Author's Note: Revolutionary Girl Utena is a 39-episode Japanese anime directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara, based on a five-book manga by Chiho Saito. It is the story of Utena, the girl who wants to be a prince, and Anthy, the best friend she is trying to save from a secret dueling society. Insistantly allegorical, relentlessly mystical, the series opens up questions of gender, sexuality, identity, and the transition to adulthood.
The Star Trek 'verse provides us with James T. Kirk, a smooth talking and fast acting captain, his highly logical best friend and first officer (and perhaps lover) Spock, and crew. Together, they are the hope of humanity, and a beautifully idealistic picture of both the future and the present. The series is known for its morals and its vision, along with its tangled messages about love as Kirk has dalliances across the galaxy and gives Spock his bedroom eyes almost every episode.
On the surface, the two stories are rather different-- too different, at least in my mind, for a crossover piece to be plausible. How could a bunch of high schoolers caught up in a ritualized series of duels and a military shipful of idealistic adventurers ever come together in a cohesive story? The short answer, for me at least, is that they cannot meet directly. What they do have in common, however, is an emphasis on the bigger picture, and characters who are far larger than life. These similarities open them up for other forms of cross-pollination. I see a lot of Utena in Kirk, for example, which I find at once perverse and delightful.
What I am attempting is something like a massive organ transplant. I have taken every character out of Utena and replaced each one with a character from the body of work that is Star Trek, while leaving Utena's story largely unchanged. Of course, this means some alterations on both sides: neither of the canon explanations for how the Enterprise crew met are being preserved, and an upside-down castle in the sky is a hardly a goal Kirk would aspire to reaching. For all the little changes, I seek to leave the 'soul' of both stories intact, and to see what we can discover of each by placing it in contrast with the other. Wish me luck!