CD #1: Shoujo Kakumei Utena: Zettai Shinka Kakumei Zenya (The Eve of the Absolute Evolution Revolution)

To listen to some tracks from this CD, visit "Themes of the Revolution"'s [OST 1] page.

Close your eyes. Turn off the lights. Pop CD #1 in. The fragile first few notes of the first track can instantly, almost effortlessly carry you away into the Utena world... Especially now as Utena is becoming an adult conceptually, when I listen to this CD, I feel it to be a 'spring' CD, redolent of innocence, childhood... when things were simple. Musical arrangements here are graceful, restrained, subtle and delicate, dominated by piano and voice arrangements. Bass and percussion is smoothed out, 'classical' instruments predominate. Correlated, this CD accompanies the first arc of the story, the Seitokai Hen, where, truly, things ARE simple. Basic conflicts on a basic level. Yet, this is the very core of Utena itself, the root of the rose, where everything else springs from....and already here there is a great divide marked by the original "Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku" and "Kami no Namae wa Abraxas", when the gentility is stripped away to make room for the beginnings of Revolution in the duel themes...

EOI's favorite tracks of CD #1 (and why):

Track 1: "Overture"- Come in, enter the myth through the rose gates...

Track 2: "The Round Dance-Revolution"- Well, geez. It's only the opening theme...:) The whole aim or goal of the original Utena storyline is in this song... to cast away illusions and restraints and live wild as the naked roses...

Track 4: "The Sunny Garden"- Enough said...

Track 5: "Campus' Scarlet (Utena's Theme)- Compare this romantic, almost national-anthem musical theme for Ootori Gakuen and Utena's first appearance to the chilling track 4 of CD 7, which I read to be the Adolescence Mokushiroku analog of this track...

Track 11: "Eros of the Ball"- Remember when Utena ripped the tablecloth off the table and made a dress for Anshi? THAT'S what I call Miracle Power! This is the sweet ballroom music used from the dance in episode 3.

Track 12: "Dice of the Heart"- Mixing the spanish guitar, the water effect and the wind chimes makes this an evocative track of sunny Sundays and quiet time in the world... yet, this song accompanied some sad, as well as thoughtful moments in the series...

Track 13: "Invisible Roses"- A hint of things to come. Darker than the previous tracks, a cloud on the horizon with an unresolved ending...

Track 19: "Idea of the Memory"- A prelude to the division between grace and conflict, between the refinement of lazy summer days and the intensity of the Duel...

Track 20: "The Legend of the God Named Abraxas"- The Student Council's theme- the ritual invocation of the bird and its shell completed only by the title of this track, referencing Hermann Hesse's immortal lines from "Damien". The world is the shell, and we are the egg...this track is the mourning of all those whose hearts are buried and yet till live...

Track 23: "Absolute Destiny Apocalypse" (original mix)- Cast away everything you thought you knew, and ascend to fight for what you believe in... Not the best mix (I favor the counterharmony of the musical version from CD 5, personally) but still up there.

Track 28: "Spira Mirabilis Theater" - Miki's first duel theme and somehow one of the ones that, of all the duel themes in Utena, really LINGERS. This has that indefinable something that makes it shine just a little brighter than many of its peers. Maybe it's the fact it was used in several commercials for promoting the early videos from the series..hmmm. Does hearing something in a commercial strengthen or weaken a piece? But the very lyrics of the duel songs contain the keys to the truth of the story: 'the theatre, gifted characters, phantasmic reality'- for that is, at the core of "Utena", all that there is...a complicated illusion with great actors who 'only for the moment of the drama are present- then when the moment is over they are someone else'... Just as Utena is possessed by Dios, we are possessed by her presence, but what becomes of the actors when the show folds?

EOI's least favorite tracks of CD #1 (and why):

Track 6: "The School's Lyric" - I've never been a big fan of the 'goofy' music of ANY series, although I will admit Utena's is executed with competence- andhearing it does bring back pleasant memories... Still, this is too much reminiscent of "Sailor Moon"...and the point of Utena was to grow up past Sailor Moon, wasn't it?