Revolutionary Girl Utena (Japanese: 少女革命ウテナ, Hepburn: Shōjo Kakumei Utena)[a] is a Japanese anime television series created by Be-Papas, a production group formed by director Kunihiko Ikuharacomposed of himself, Chiho Saito, Shinya Hasegawa, Yōji Enokido, and Yūichirō Oguro. The series was produced by J.C.Staff, and originally aired on TV Tokyo from April to December 1997. Revolutionary Girl Utena follows Utena Tenjou, a teenaged girl drawn into sword dueling tournament to win the hand of Anthy Himemiya, a mysterious girl known as the "Rose Bride" who possesses the "power to revolutionize the world".

Ikuhara was a director at Toei Animation on the television anime series Sailor Moon in the 1990s; after growing frustrated by the lack of creative control in directing an adapted work, he departed the company in 1995 to create an original series. While he initially conceived of Utena as a mainstream shōjo (girls' anime and manga) series aimed at capitalizing on the commercial success of Sailor Moon, the direction of the series shifted dramatically during production towards an avant-garde and surrealist tone. The series has been described as a deconstruction and subversion of fairy tales and the magical girl genre of shōjo manga, making heavy use of allegory and symbolism to comment on themes of gender, sexuality, and coming-of-age. Its visual and narrative style is characterized by a sense of theatrical presentation and staging, drawing inspiration from the all-female Japanese theater troupe the Takarazuka Revue, as well as the experimental theater of Shūji Terayama, whose frequent collaborator J. A. Seazer created the songs featured in the series.

Revolutionary Girl Utena has been the subject of both domestic and international critical acclaim, and has received numerous accolades. The series has received particular praise for its treatment of LGBT themes and subject material, and its influence has been noted on numerous subsequent animated works. A mangaadaptation of Utena written and illustrated Saito was developed contemporaneously with the anime series, which was originally serialized in the manga magazine Ciao beginning in 1996. In 1999, Be-Papas produced the film Adolescence of Utena as a follow-up to the television anime series. The series has had various iterations of physical releases, including a remaster overseen by Ikuhara in 2008; in North America, the series is distributed by Right Stuf under its Nozomi Entertainment label.

Pilot Watch: Revolutionary Girl Utena