The Black Rose arc was neither filler nor gibberish, though. It was all about character development, and the symbolism is so obvious that there are, in at least two moments I recall, LITERALLY flashing arrows pointing at it. Mikage is manipulating people into trying to defeat Anthy so he can make his dying friend Mamiya the new Rose Bride-- and he does a lot of this manipulation by drawing out the worst in people-- their weaknesses, their insecurities, their flaws-- and they basically face their weakness to either overcome it or be defeated. There are lots of references to metamorphosis in the arc as well, as seen by the larva/cocoon/butterfly pictures-- and the progress is generally seen going forward or backward based on whether or not a character is growing or regressing. One of the climaxes of the arc is through Utena's own growth, in which her strength as a person comes from herself rather than relying solely on Anthy, and this is shown by having the sword that Utena usually draws from Anthy knocked away, leaving her defenseless. Just as she's about to be defeated, the roles are reversed and Anthy draws the sword from Utena, and achieves victory through power in which she herself is the source.
Also, the coffins represent stasis or empty motion in context of character growth. It's a dark, secure place, but you'll never grow as a person if you remain trapped within your own hesitance or refusal to step forward.
I may be off on a few things there, it's been a few years since I've watched Utena, but my point is that a lot of things in Utena actually does make sense if you watch it all and piece it all together. A habit Ikuhara seems to have is allowing viewers to make their own interpretations or analyses without giving context right away-- but gives pieces of the context in small doses the farther you get into the series. The same goes for Penguindrum. The first half of Penguindrum is nonsensical and absurd, but then episode 12 happens and then the floodgates of context begin to open.
In other words, while the show is airing, enjoy the ride for what it is and have fun making sense of it as you please. Things will make more sense as context is given.
Maybe I was unclear, I don't think anything in particular in Utena literally doesn't make sense. Enough of the symbolism is blunt enough that it's clear what everything is supposed to be, not to mention that the plot literally is explained and does make sense without any of the supernatural elements. I meant "gibberish", probably inaccurately, in the sense that as soon as that arc ends it retcons itself out of the show, meaning that everything that happens during it retroactively doesn't matter and was a waste of time.
I quit watching for like six months because I was not too happy to see that the substantial chunk of time I invested in watching, and enjoying, that arc was actually dismissed as basically meaningless by the show itself, which already has a lot of arguably meaningless content by virtue of the fact that much of it is just the same episode on a loop with no new developments. That in itself has some meaning of course, but the number of times it's necessary to do that is up for debate, and I would argue it's far less than the show decided to go for.
Of course I haven't finished watching yet, so maybe I'm wrong about all of this and the Black Rose arc does actually matter and I just haven't seen the impact yet, but for all intents up to what I've seen it could be cut entirely without losing a single thing. The character development it invests in either refers to characters that no longer exist or has yet to be called back to as of four or five episodes from the end, but I recognize that that could change at some point. And of course all of the character development matters internally, which is why I said that I almost wish that arc had been its own, entirely separate show so that it wouldn't have to reconcile itself with fitting into something larger.
By the way, there's only one Utena movie, and it won't make a single ounce of sense to you if you haven't seen the ending to the anime. (Think of it as a New Game+ for a certain character in the series.)
Oh, okay, I thought there were like three for some reason. But yeah, I understand it has to be watching in order, which is why I haven't just skipped ahead to that.
As for Yuri Kuma Arashi, I successfully watched the first five minutes before my internet broke and I gave up and went to bed. The aesthetic is definitely there, which is cool. And it seems to be a fairly broad comedy at least on some level (as was Utena nearly all of the time, which people forget sometimes) which makes dismissing it as pretentious hard for me. It seems to understand what it is, and I respect that. But of course that was a first impression from five minutes. Maybe that's not actually the tone of the show, I don't know. I liked the first segment, it was fun.
