Exegesis of and Musings on Revolutionary Girl Utena
ciaan
Rough Draft - scattered fragments
Revolutionary Girl Utena is a deep story. Like all deep stories, it is full of meaning(s). It can be enjoyed without analysis, or it can be probed and prodded for a very long time, giving ever more and more to be analyzed in turn. For meanings breed more meaning, and the deeper you look the more you find. For meaning is a tricky thing. It is hard to say how much of it is put there by the creator and how much by the audience. I have been able to find a great deal of meaning in this story, and I know that everyone thinks I am obsessed with it. The symbols it uses, the people and places in it, constantly jump up to be compared to everything else I encounter. In warning, I must mention that this numinousity, this religious fervor of mine, only applies to the anime, the series. I haven’t read the manga, only seen little bits of it, so I don’t know what I think of it. The movie I have seen, and it has two good points. One is that the art looks good, the other is that Utena and Anthy kiss. They make out naked, in fact. Other than that, the movie has none of the meanings that I am drawn to in the anime. It totally messes up the characters, the world, the metaphysics, the philosophy, the emotions, everything. I’m sure it has its own set of meanings, but they are not important to me. I will hereby disregard it in this discussion from now on.
Being a deep story, SKU has a great many interpretations. What you make of it is shaped by who you are, and everything else you believe and have experienced. I do not claim to have any definitive understanding, and a lot of what I think has been affected by what I have discussed with my friends who have also watched it and what I have read from other websites. However, I have spent a long time looking within the depths of this story, searching to make the meanings more clear, to give an explication of the many subtleties so that it might all make sense in my mind. Some of these have been practical questions about chronology or the details of events, such as “How’d Dios turn into Akio? What really happened back then?” or “What the fuck... Mamiya, Mikage, what the fuck?” Others have been more overtly philosophical, such as “What is the difference between the heart and the soul? Which is the sword connected to?”
This series is great because while everything in it is indeed a symbol, of some emotional, or philosophical, or religious something, they are not symbols in the allegorical fashion of one thing being one other thing. Instead, the people are real people, as complex and three-dimensional as anyone you could ever hope to meet. And in their complexity lies all the symbolism, all the entanglements of meaning. It can all be looked at from so many angles. Everything is mentioned. This is what I mean by deep. Deep like the waters of the ocean, the dreams of the heart. Each person is a universe, and all together they tangle to make the larger universe, the universe that made them. So what is meaning? Meaning is the dance of our minds and souls meeting, meaning is the spaces between the words, meaning is the structure that is formed from everything. What have I found here? Or what have I created based on this story? What story lays now in my mind? What does my mind lay in the story?
Just a bunch of thoughts I have, trying to make sense of a lot of the things that aren't as obvious. This all assumes you have seen the whole thing.
Starting with what seems to be, in many people's minds, the most confusing thing- the Black Rose arc. Why did all that happen, especially when everyone forgot about it afterward? What was up with it? And who is Mikage, after all? Well, to start off, I love Mikage. When the arc first started, I was upset that he seemed to be usurping Touga's place as the bad guy. But then I began to like him- he seemed all sleek and evil. Then I fell in love with him. I can tell you exactly when that happened- it was when I saw his heart break. Nemuro was a computer-like man, he didn't really have emotions, but Mikage is all emotions. Mikage is the ultimate tragic figure- everything he did was to save the life of a boy who was already dead, and even forgotten about. All his goals, hopes, and aspirations were doomed from the start, from before he even began. And he didn't realize that. He fought so hard to save his precious memory, and that memory was false. Now, there are a lot of arguments that can be made about whether he wanted to save Mamiya for Mamiya's sake or mainly for Tokiko's sake, but regardless, everything he did was to save Mamiya.
Okay, but ultimately, I think that Mikage is the symbol of humanity. He is us. He is the perfect reflection of us, of the good and evil twined together in our hearts, the light and the darkness that form us in a yin-yang pattern. How so? He is the perfect balance between Akio and Utena. Akio is, as everyone knows, the Devil. And Utena can easily be looked at as a Christ-figure, the one who brings Redemption (Revolution) to the world (we'll argue about the end of the show later). Mikage is, in Wendy Doniger's terms, a double, or a shadow (kage), of both Akio and Utena. We can see this made clear in two easy symbols. Dios died, and Akio appeared. Nemuro died, and Mikage appeared. Thus, we are warned that he is like unto Akio. Utena has pink hair. Mikage has pink hair. Thus, we are warned that he is like unto Utena. You think this is a trivial and shallow thing, huh? Well, take a look at the pictures called forever and pink&purple in my Utena pictures folder. It is just a surface marker asking us to look deeper, after all. It doesn't have to be that amazing. Mikage, of course, doesn't realize that Utena is like him, he thinks she is like Tokiko. The main way that we know Mikage is like Akio is that they act similar. They both use other people as means to an end. They twist, lie, abuse, cause pain, even kill. And both like to say that their manipulations are not really manipulations, that the others gave in through their own free will. Both build their paths across the pain and suffering of many others, not caring what damage they cause. Both, in other words, commit evil. And yet.... Akio commits evil out of selfish ends, to gain power for himself. Mikage does not. Just as Utena fights the duels for the selfless goal of helping Anthy (although exactly what she's helping her to changes over time), Mikage does everything for the goal of helping Mamiya. He does it out of love. He does it for Mamiya, for Tokiko. He hasn't really got a selfish bone in his body. And he too is the victim of Akio's manipulations. So everything he does is for a good cause, for the cause of love. He is a noble and caring figure. He is, indeed, the exact and perfect balance of light and dark, good and evil. He is the honorable shadow.
So then the question remains, why did Akio create him? What did he hope to get from using him? This is really two questions, for there are two episodes here. The first question is, why did Akio use Professor Nemuro, Tokiko, Mamiya, and the 100 Dead Boys in the first place, so many years ago? (How many years ago?) The second is, why did he keep Mikage around, fueling his delusions, leaving him young, and what did he hope to get by turning him and the Black Roses against the victor of the duel? I think that a lot of people, when attempting to understand the series, and especially the end, lose a lot by just leaving out the Black Rose as unimportant, tangential, confusing. I think that the Black Rose has a lot to teach us about the point of the show, and about the Power of Dios. I think that the show can only be understood as a whole, by looking at all parts.
First, let's look at what was going on in the beginning (we think it was the beginning...) of Akio's tenure at Ohtori Academy. There was a grand research project on “revolutionizing the world” and “grasping eternity.” As part of this project, Nemuro caused the path to the dueling arena to open and the castle to appear in the sky above it. At a celebration of this event, the building burned down, leaving 100 researchers dead. Or were they dead already, buried below the building? Either way, doesn't matter. They were dead. Their bodies were placed in coffins.... their burned bodies? How could that be? Maybe they were buried alive.... And their rings turned black. All well and good. Some sacrifices are always required, of course, and they had signed a contract. Now they had died, like the dinosaurs, and the black rings were made, like fossil fuels. A limited supply, of course... only 100. Ah, but now we're getting into the later part of the story.
Let's return to an earlier statement for a while. Nemuro had caused the dueling arena to appear? That seemed to make sense when it was first said, but by the end of the show we know it must be false. The dueling arena was a projection of Akio's orrery. Akio created it; he controlled its appearance. How could Nemuro have caused it? Well, maybe Akio just made it appear at that point so everyone would think Nemuro did it... Akio is tricky, after all. Or maybe there's more to it than that. After all, what is Akio? Who is he? What is his ultimate goal? How great are his powers? We know that Dios was good and powerful. We know that when he “died” most of his power was lost, locked away somewhere, hidden, inaccessible to the new being who arose, to Akio. So Akio, we can imagine, was actually fairly powerless when he first appeared. Ever since then he has been trying to regain that power. That's why he goes to all these lengths of trying to create a noble heart that he thinks can free the power and give it back to him. (So what is this power? Where is it? And what is finally found in the place where Akio thought the power was? We'll get to that later.)
Now, if Akio had no power, and he wanted power, what would he do? He would conceive and execute a plan. But a plan needs tools. There must be steps. First you get something, which is strong enough to get you something else, which is strong enough to get you some more stuff, which allows you to gain.... and so on. So.... to open the Rose Gate (assuming that's not just an illusion) he needs a noble heart. To get the noble heart, he needs a noble heart factory, as it were. And maybe he needs to localize the Power of Dios anyway, build a gate to it. So he needs some form of power. The power that he ends up having, the power that guides and creates Ohtori Academy, where noble hearts are formed and sharpened, is the orrery. So..... Nemuro was a genius. I think the most likely answer is that he built the orrery for Akio. Or maybe Akio had it already, and Nemuro just helped with the programming, fixed it up, improved it.... Either way, he had something to do with the creation of the orrery, and thus allowed Akio to have that power of illusion over the Academy that he has. The more I think about it, the more I think that Akio really wasn't as powerful as everyone in the show believes. I really do think that, for instance, all the things Touga hoped to gain from him, he really couldn't offer. I believe Akio was stuck in Time just like everyone else, and not really present in Eternity.
Okay, so Nemuro built, or helped to build or perfect, the orrery. If you look at his blackboard, you see mathematical equations along with the hexagrams of the I-Ching, and it all looks very weird and just like what could lead to some semi-scientific, semi-magical orrery. So, that's why Akio had Nemuro in the first place. Now, why did he have Mikage? Well, I don't know exactly why he went to all the trouble of creating Mikage. I think he felt he needed to get rid of Nemuro somehow- he couldn't let him stick around. He had helped make the orrery, and that made him powerful and dangerous. And he did make Mikage- he ordered him to burn down the building. He was the cause of all the events that turned Nemuro into Mikage. But I don't have a perfect window into Akio's thoughts (and I don't really want to, either). So I don't know exactly why he created Mikage. But I have an idea.
As I said, Ohtori Academy is a noble heart factory. And what better crucible to put the heart through than the black rose? What better whetstone to sharpen the sword against than the honorable shadow? What shall she do when presented with the darkness? Will she take up a sword against her best friend? Will she throw her opponent to the floor and punch him while he's pinned down? Will it cause her to go dark herself or will she shine even brighter against it?
In all the time, Utena never knew Mikage, never knew what or who he was. She didn't know what it was that had happened when he stopped, all confused, and she managed to cut his rose off. She didn't realize exactly what it was Akio had put her against. But it still did the job. The light cannot be measured unless held up to the darkness. The strength is no strength unless it has withstood temptation. Before meeting the devil, first she has to meet the balance, the mirror. Besides, the Black Rose arc prepares everyone, both the characters and the audience, for the end of the story.
For the most important thing we find in the Black Rose is this- The lessons of the heart are not erased when the memories are forgotten. Yes, they all forget it afterward. But the things they learned, the changes to their emotions, are still there, still written deep inside them. This isn't necessarily good in this case, because these are mainly lessons of pain- roses stabbed in, swords forced out. But it gives more hope to the ending. More hope that the clarity and freedom they have all gained by then remains, and is not lost, as some people think it is. In lots of the “seven or ten years later” fanfic Juri is still in love with Shiori because she has forgotten about Ruka and Utena and all that happened. But I really hope that's not so, and I think it isn't so. Because, if the effects on the heart were undone when the memories went away, then there would have been no point for Akio to put them (her) through all the events of the Black Rose.
Clearly he kept Mikage around for a reason and had him go up against the duelists for a reason. Now, we don't know how long Akio and Mikage have been there, or how many people Akio had used the same way he used Utena, how many people got up to the very end and couldn't quite do it. The implication is that he had done the same thing to others before then. And he had probably turned Mikage against some of them before, and of course Mikage doesn't remember it, since he doesn't remember any time passing. So Mikage was useful to Akio. Then, why did he let him go? Why did Mikage graduate at that time? Is this a sign that Akio was so very certain Utena would succeed that he let one of his valuable tools slip away? Or was Mikage somehow “worn out” and no longer useful?
Well, let's see. What did Mikage have? He had those black roses Mamiya made and those 100 black rose signet rings. Now, the roses themselves were made keyed to a person. They seem to be created by what is happening to their intended wearer. They have a connection to the person, and as many of them as necessary can be made, depending on how many people there are (I presume). But the rings are limited. You may say that since it's all illusion anyway, the rings may well be illusion, and thus not be limited. But not everything is or can be illusion, or else it wouldn't work. The swords aren't illusion- they are a true representation of a person's “heart” (what that is, I'll discuss later). If they were illusion, Akio wouldn't need to go through such an elaborate process to get them. So, I think that also the black rings can't be illusion- they are true rings that were on their wearers when the wearers died, and have been changed by that fact. Now, I don't know exactly how they were changed, or even what the normal signet rings are and what they're for in the first place..... But the fact is, these 100 rings are a limited supply.
Now, there's some point where Mamiya mentions something about the last rose, which seems weirdly self evident in a way- of course, it's the last, they've run out of duelists, and weird in another way... can't they just keep making more? And when I first heard that I thought- but it can't be the last, it's only the seventh, and there are 100 of these coffins..... It is possible that they had used up the last of the rings, and that was why Akio let Mikage realize what had been done to him and had him graduate. It would have been very complicated to make new black rings, at that point.
Poor Mikage. I don't know what happened to him after that. Did he turn back into Nemuro? Akio does call him Nemuro. Did he stay like Mikage? Was he a new personality that was a combination of the two? How much did he remember of all the intervening time? And even more..... I remember seeing a movie called Lost Horizons, about Shangri-La, when I was a kid, and a woman from there left with some visitors. Since no one there aged, she was about 200 years old. And when she left, she immediately aged to 200 years and died. Would something similar happen to Mikage/Nemuro when he left Ohtori? Would he age to how he should be? It's not that old, since Tokiko is still alive and pretty looking. Does no one in Ohtori age? Akio says to Tokiko that they never grow up. But they must at some point advance from grade to grade.... we don't really know how long they've been there. We see flashbacks of the characters as children, but we don't know if, say, Touga and Nanami went to elementary school there or not. Akio and Anthy clearly don't age, but I don't know how similar or different that is to other people, like Mikage, not aging. Anyhow, using up the rings is about the only reason I can see for Akio letting Mikage go, as he doesn't seem the type to let his tools be lost easily.
So now I think I've discussed what Mikage is, what the black rose is all about, and so on. Oh yes, one last piece about that, and the lessons of the heart, and swords. When Nanami first duels Utena, she has a sword and a dagger. Then when Tsuwabuki takes her sword out, there is a sword and a dagger. But then later, when she lets Touga take her sword out, there is only a sword, no dagger. Now, while watching the black rose arc, it was always very sinister when the duel would be lost, the sword would disappear, and the coffin would fall into the fire. Clearly the body, now no longer necessary once its ring had crumbled, is being discarded. But it always seemed as if some part of the duelist whose sword was used or the black rose duelist might be falling into the fire as well. So I don't know why Nanami's dagger is missing in the third arc. Did the scriptwriters forget about it? Did the animators decide that it was too hard to draw? Or is it a sign that her heart has changed? Maybe she just grew up... I mean, when she first had the dagger, it was a sign of some sort of two-facedness and treachery. Her sword was knocked away, and she came after Utena with the dagger in an unexpected move. Actually, it was even after her rose was cut off, right? Anyhow, so to have it missing may just be saying “Look, she's more honest now, she doesn't need the second, back-stabbing weapon.” Or it may be saying “Yes, some part of her heart was lost then, ripped out and never returned, consumed in the fires, and she doesn't even know about it.” I don't know what that bit's about.
Where is the power of Dios- sword of Dios from Anthy's chest. Where is her heart? Where is her will? Locked in a coffin, where Akio thinks the power of Dios is. There are at least three Anthys- the one in the coffin, the one suspended from the swords, and the one walking around.
Body, mind, heart, and soul. Maybe souls are only in two states, good and evil. Is the sword of the heart or the soul? What is the heart exactly? It is the emotions. It is also the self.
Very different when swords are ripped out than when they are opened and freely given.
If Akio is the devil, Utena can be seen as Christ. If Akio is Maya, Utena is the Buddha. She vanquishes illusion.
Dios died, Akio appeared. But is Dios really dead? Is he really gone? We’ve seen him- he came to Utena, he spoke to her. Akio may even have been speaking to him at the end of the show, in the last episode.
Anyhow, the power of Dios is gone and hidden. Akio wants it back. But what do we find in the place where he thinks the power is? We find Anthy. So where is that power really? Well, the Sword of Dios arises from the chest of the Rose Bride, who has no will, no heart of her own. And what seems to be her will, her heart, her earlier child-self, is locked away. The Rose Bride is older than the child Anthy who was there with Dios. Akio looks older than Dios. If the shining power is love and friendship, when his love died he lost his power. And his sister lost her love. She was trapped away because of the swords of hate. But as Jung (that’s Carl Gustav Jung, the guy who’s a famous psychologist, and all into archetypes and the shared unconscious) says, the shadow is the guide to self-realization, adulthood, and the light. And so the shadows, Akio and Mikage, guided Utena to the light and adulthood, where she saved Anthy. Dios and Anthy both fell, he to become Akio and she to become the Bride. She gave up her will, she sacrificed herself to save her prince. To save him she immersed her will in his, lost her heart in him and it was gone when he lost it again. It took one who could love, who could be selfless, without giving up self, to free her. It took the tears of friendship and love, which Akio could no longer shed, which he could no longer even see. The prince sacrifices herself to save the bride who sacrificed herself to save the prince, and so on round and round. Nobility, honesty, earnesty (they mean earnestness).
Now- about heart and soul and will and mind and body. Does Anthy have a heart? A will? Does Akio have a heart? Does he have a soul? A body? Did we really see him turn into a bunch of stars and light? Was that an illusion or was it real? Is the sword the soul or the heart? Anthy locked Dios away inside herself to save him- he’s mine now, all mine. But they stabbed her with hate, and out sprung Akio. And he wanted his power back. But it was hidden, and he knew not where. He knew someone’s essence had fled to this place, and he thought it was his, but it was really his sister’s, and why didn’t he know that he was inside her? I mean, let’s not be crude here about the other way he was inside her.... And so he needed a noble heart to open it up (having lost his, of course). It’s funny, in a way- instead of trying to turn people evil, like one would expect the devil to do, he’s trying to turn them good. But not being good himself, he’s a wee bit bad at it- he can corrupt with his touch, or he can be the shadow that leads to the light. But he had never succeeded yet, so seems he was corrupting- like with Touga. Poor Touga. All he wants is to be perfect, and to have everything, and to be eternal- in a world he views as very fallen, where love is a weakness and true friendship is impossible, is that so much to ask?
The message is to love, to be yourself, to have friendship and hope, and to do what you want and what is best for you. Love and freedom. Don’t be stuck in the roles of princess or bride or victim, be open and free. Be a prince if that’s who you are, don’t let them say you can’t do it because you’re a girl, that doesn’t really matter. Be true to yourself.
It does stand up for women’s rights, and being a princess with Akio is no happiness AT ALL.
And then explain why Ruka is so good and would never have had sex with Juri.
Touga is the mind (is the mind the will?). He is cold, rational, logical. He plans and schemes and calculates. He needs to control, to be on time, to know it all. He buries his emotions, either denies them or uses them as servants of his will. He is disembodied, despite all the sexuality. (And yet he seeks eternal life of the body. This is part of his tragedy, this hatred and rejection of the material, and yet it has so much control over him... Go read my fanfics.)
Saionji is the heart, or maybe the body. It gets a little messy. He is more straightforward. He does what he feels and he feels what he does. If he thinks it, he says it. If he wants to, he does it. He is all wild mood swings, flashes of temper and violence, ups and downs of sorrow or happiness. All emotions.
They are a perfect contrast. They hate each other because they are opposites. But they are both extremes, and the extremes of left and right have more in common with each other than either does with the center. And opposites attract. They need each other to be whole. And both are very proud, and both want to be whole, and both hate to need anyone or anything. So they don’t admit the fact that they mutually know that they must be together. Who else can live up to them? Who else can measure them? Saionji also wants eternity, wants to be perfect and have it all. They are the same. But maybe their idea of perfect is different.
Okay, T and S having sex. For some reason, in all the slash I’ve read, about 95% of the time, or more, they engage in anal sex. Okay, why folks, why? I mean, where’s the oral pleasuring? Don’t you know that blowjobs are good? And here’s another problem- people always and I do mean always always always have Touga being the top and Saionji as the bottom. I mean, I have read NOT ONE story where Touga is the bottom to Saionji. Sometimes to Akio, yes, in fact all the time to Akio (Akio is never the bottom. And this may well be true.). Now, I think this stems from a few assumptions, mostly incorrect ones. One, people seem to write lots of fanfic where S is a wimp. Where he’s desperately in love with T and wants T to say “I love you” and T won’t and so S is unhappy. Where they fight and then S submits to T, just wimps out and rolls over, because he is so desperate. But Saionji is NOT a wimp. He is not weak. He is stubborn and proud and a thick-headed (although often perceptive) idiot. He would never submit to T. And I swear that T will say I love you before S ever does. So don’t think Saionji is a desperate wimp, because he ain’t.
Now, about people’s assumptions surrounding sex, not the characters. People seem to be assuming that being the bottom means being passive and especially submissive. And since T and S are all about Dom/sub dynamics, they always play that aspect up, and always specifically equate being bottom with being sub. Now, this is where language is tricky, because bottom does mean sub in D/s terms, but it also just means the receptive partner in anal sex (the one being penetrated, being fucked), and that’s how I’m using it. I’ll use sub to mean sub. (Sub is short for submissive, Dom for dominant, for those who don’t know.) Okay. Being the bottom doesn’t mean you are submissive. It doesn’t mean you are passive. And it doesn’t even mean that you’re on the bottom. Bottoms can be on top, just as the woman can be on top in vaginal intercourse. There can be Doms who order their subs to fuck them. So. Now, a great many people do equate being the bottom with being submissive. Some of these people want to bottom for this reason, others say they would never do it for this reason.
Now, I suspect that Saionji is indeed one of those people who, if he were the bottom, would feel that he was being submissive and would not enjoy it, and for that reason he will never ever do it. He is not a wimp, and he will not submit to anyone. He has said so. And, as I said, if he does something he feels it. He is direct. Simple, and that doesn’t mean stupid. If he performed a submissive act he would feel submissive, and hate it. Touga, however, is different. He has many layers, and is very complex. He fakes things all the time, and can do something without feeling it and feel something without doing it. He can just lean back and enjoy physical pleasures. If someone else thinks he’s submitting to them, so what? All the better, in fact, for he knows he’s not really and thus has the upper hand over them all the more, tricking them. They think he’s given in, and really he’s got them wrapped around his finger. He’s in control, of himself, them, the situation.... It’s a classic way to manipulate, make them think they give the orders, and really they just tell you to do what you already want. (Now, some would say this is what all subs do anyway.....) So Touga would be able to enjoy being the bottom while knowing in his heart that he wasn’t submitting. Saionji wouldn’t, since he would feel like he was submitting.
Thus, when the two of them are together, I’m sure Touga is the bottom. And while I admit a great many things in SKU are open to multiple interpretations, in this one thing I am right. And the others are wrong. Anyone who says S is the bottom for T is just plain wrong and knows not whereof they speak. Meaning, they probably know very little about D/s and queer male/male anal sex, and have also misunderstood the characters at least partially. Now, I myself am female and have never engaged in anal sex, and am not into D/s, but I do happen to have heard and read quite a lot about both by people who do engage in them. And little vanilla straight chicks can write slash, but may get some things wrong. Also, I know that yaoi has its own conventions of seme/uke, and that people are just trying to play into that, but folks, sometimes things other than height are more important. You can’t decide who’s the bottom in a slash story based only on how tall the boys are. When it’s a show such as SKU that is so complex, and where the characters are so clear in the D/s standings, don’t fuck them up! Don’t make them do the wrong things!
A song by the Magnetic Fields (Stephin Merritt). Not of course totally correct, but remember the episode “The Love that Blossomed in Wintertime.” Remember the cacti. Remember what Touga’s name means.
The Cactus Where Your Heart Should Be
The Magnetic Fields- written by Stephin Merritt
The cactus where your heart should be
has lovely little flowers
so though it’s always pricking me
my ardor never sours
The cactus where your heart once was
has power to rend and flay
I stick because I’m stuck, because
I just can’t tear myself away
Mind opposed to heart. Body opposed to soul. Body opposed to mind. Body like heart. Heart like soul. Soul like mind? Or opposed?
So at the end of the show Utena has disappeared to somewhere. Anthy says she is not dead, and is determined to find her. Anthy is free and whole now, all grown up and truly herself, not bound, not tormented, no longer pierced by the swords and stuck as the bride and stuck with her brother. And Utena has become a real prince, whatever that means. Just hopefully it won’t wear her out the same way it wore out Dios. Everyone else seems a little more whole, healthy, and happy. We hope. But I do feel a little sorry for Akio- he is still trapped, he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t know what happened, who or what he is, where his power is (is it still inside Anthy?). He is still a dead man walking in the grip of an illusion, and how will he ever get out now that his sister is gone? Inside the game, that makes it impossible. But maybe now he will realize the easy way out, just to say “I am what I am, and what I was, and I love.” To say “I am free” and to walk away. That’s how simple it is, just open the door and leave. But he will “continue playing prince in this coffin” and toying with his orrery, and thinking he is at once prince and devil. And Dios is still out there, just hanging around, watching him and trying also to grow noble hearts. Factory versus garden- produce or grow.
In fact, I think part of the genius of the show is that by the end, I feel sorry for, or like in some way, every single character, even those I dislike. Okay, except for the music teacher who is molesting Miki. We are never given a reason to feel bad for him, we don’t understand why he does it, we don’t see his tragedy. Everyone else we kinda come to see from the inside, and so don’t hate, even when we dislike and condemn. Most people I either liked from the beginning, or disliked and came to like. There’s one exception to that, however, and that’s Anthy. I liked her at the beginning, the way I was supposed to. And I still like her, still feel bad for her, still want to her to be free and be with Utena. However, as I watched, she creeped me out more and more. The girl is freaky. She’s inhuman. Really. I mean, when Kozue is dueling Utena, and all the milkshakes are on the desks in the arena with the dead bodies painted on the floor and the desks move and it’s all really scary, Anthy drinks a milkshake! She drinks it! A symbol of pain and why the duel is being fought, a symbol of a lost heart, and she just drinks it like any old milkshake!!!!!! She’s scary.
Discuss the surrealist episodes. The egg, the body-switching (how did he let that happen? How could anyone else be inside the body of the Bride?), the cowbell. I think the cowbell was just Anthy or Akio fucking with Nanami’s head. She’s paranoid and has an overactive imagination, a very funny person to play tricks on. And Chu-Chu was inside the egg.
Anthy and Akio/Dios are Indian because that’s where Hinduism and Buddhism are from.
I must explain how it all fits in with Buddhism and realizing the illusion and thus being free.
So how much did Anthy choose to be the Bride and did Akio-Dios (Akidios) choose to be Akio?
Utena is a show about Love. So let’s examine the meaning of Love.
First, there’s the view upheld by Touga, that love is a weakness. This view, as other people have said on their websites, probably comes from his childhood and his parents: being abandoned by his parents; and then being raised by foster parents who probably didn’t actually care about him and Nanami very much, were often absent, and probably moved in political and social circles where people used each other for power and gain. So Touga came to believe that love and friendship and caring were weakness, and that they only served to give someone else power over you. If you care for someone, they can use and manipulate you easier. And then, he discovered that he was living in Hell. This is why we should give Touga’s view credence- he, alone of the characters (except Akio and Anthy), knew all along that they lived in a world designed and controlled by the Devil. In Hell, love truly is a liability. All it does is make you suffer. Just look at the characters. Juri’s main problem? The fact that she is in love with Shiori, who doesn’t love her back. Shiori’s main problem? The fact that no one loves her except Juri, whose love she can’t accept and who she is desperately jealous of. Miki’s main problem? The fact that he loves Kozue, wants to regain what he lost with her, and then thinks Anthy is the way to get that back. Kozue’s main problem? Her obsession with her brother. Nanami’s main problem? Her obsession with her brother. The thing that got Anthy turned into the Bride? Her love for her brother. Akio’s problem? The fact that he doesn’t love anyone anymore. Touga’s main problem? The fact that no matter how much he doesn’t want to, he still cares for people. Saionji’s main problem? The twisted relationships he has with Touga and Anthy. And the list goes on.
All these loves are selfish and obsessive. The person’s main goal is to be happy, and they want to be happy by having the object of their affection be theirs. But there is another form of love, one that is very rare in the series. That is the unselfish type, the type where the goal is to have the object of your affection be happy, even if that means you can never be with them. Only a few people feel this way: Dios, Utena, Ruka, Mikage, and that boy who liked Wakaba that Mikage turned down in the elevator (Tatsuya). And even then, in many of these people, love leads them to make one person happy at the expense of others. Mikage killed those 100 boys so that he might gain immortality for Mamiya. Ruka acted like a jerk to both Shiori and Juri so that he could free Juri and make her happy. Even Utena slips up once or twice, like when she pounds Mikage into the ground and threatens to kill him. Loving one person unselfishly doesn’t make you fully noble.
“Love is for fools and all fools are lovers
It's raining on my house and none of the others
Love is for fools and God knows I'm still one
The sidewalks are full of love’s lonely children”
-The Birthday Party, “Deep In The Woods”
There is, however, a way to allow love to lead you out of Hell. When Akio and Touga say, “Love is for fools,” Utena and Dios would reply, “And thank God I am one.” True friendship, true love, unselfishness, nobility, are the opposite of Hell. Utena finds the real Anthy, loves her, and shows her how to love herself again, so that she can be free. She even teaches the others how to love, and brings about the revolution. She shows love to the whole world.
Utena, in the end, gains the power of Dios, the power that anyone can gain. The power of Dios is Love. Akio wants Power, as in the ability to manipulate and control, and that is something you don’t do when you are Dios. You can’t have the power of love without loving. It is not Power. Akio is trying for an impossible goal, questing after something that can’t exist. This is why I even feel sorry for him. He is still trapped, still blind. Being the Devil, he is caught in an illusion that is even stronger than those he catches others in. But Utena breaks out of it, Anthy breaks out of it, they gain the Power of Love.
Love is what leads people to want revolution and eternity, in many cases. In other cases, it is power that leads them to want these things. As Marion Zimmer Bradley said in one of the Darkover books “the love of power or the power of love” those are the two things that drive people on, and it is clear which one succeeds.
Utena brings the revolution, brings love- like Christ. But the hell of Ohtori is much more the world of illusion and suffering in Buddhism. They are trapping themselves in their coffins, and if they just realized that they were actually free, they would be free. Akio is the villain because he brings hell to others, trapping them in a web of kama and maya. But they could all leave if they wanted to. He is trapped himself “playing at being a prince” and he could leave hell if he would just quit. But he thinks he cannot. He is foolish, trying to gain the Power of Love without loving, trying to have the Power of Dios without being the noble Dios. This path is doomed to fail- this is the path of illusion, and will bring no results to anyone. That’s why I feel sorry for him. It’s not so much that he’s Evil, but that the path he walks is the wrong path- it is the Path that is the true villain, not him. It is the goals, and the methods, and the thought patterns, these are what we really fight, not any individual.
But Akio, you know, he sucks at making noble hearts. Which makes perfect sense. He’s forgotten what nobility and love are, so how is he supposed to create them in others? That’s why he’s been there for so long, and it hasn’t worked yet. That’s why his duellists, instead of making them noble, he corrupts them with his touch and fucks them up more and more. Utena only barely escapes unscathed- he comes so close to breaking her. She mostly succeeds because Dios is creating her, fighting against Akio. And she helps undo some of the damage he has caused to the others before the end, and then more at the end when she brings revolution. I mean really, Akio trying to make someone noble is like someone covered in gasoline attempting to wash clothes by hand- you just make them dirtier. Evil has a hard time creating good.
And yes, I’m fascinated by Touga. Poor Touga. Read my fics.
Touga seems to feel-
any deviation from perfection might as well be a total deviation;
anything that isn't heaven is hell.
unless you're perfect, you're all bad.
unless you have everything, you have nothing.
so for all his pride, there is self-loathing.
and for all his love of physical pleasure,
there is a hatred of the material world,
which is by definition imperfect.
he does want to be a being of pure energy, I think.
“He gave me hope. In this world of sin, this world of dirt, this world of loss, this world of death, hope is a weakness. I want to be free of it all.” -The end of my Super Explicit Touga Thinks About What He Thinks About Stuff unwritten fic.
Smashing against reality, hoping it will break...
Smashing against illusion, hoping it will break....
Illusion, reality, childhood, adulthood, coffins, life, death....
Can belief change the world? Desire, want... yes, yes...
Eternity is lack of change...
yet revolution is change.
how can they be the same thing?
Mikage is psychotic, yes. Delusional, yes. He’s a figment of his own imagination, and the rest of his world is an illusion created by Akio to keep him from realizing that he’s a figment of his own imagination. And then one day he learns, he knows, he becomes aware- he wakes up. How Buddhist.
Character descriptions for people who have just met them.
Kiryuu Touga- Student Council President, accomplished swordsman, and popular playboy. His outermost persona is charming, suave, chivalrous, and friendly. Underneath, he has a cold, calculating, manipulative, selfish layer, believes love is a weakness, and uses everyone else as pawns. And below that..... does there lie a heart of gold? To put it simply, all he wants to be is perfect and all he wants to have is everything. Is that really too much to ask?
Mikage Souji- The charismatic, genius high school senior who leads the Mikage Seminar, otherwise known as the Black Rose Society. His office is located in Nemuro Memorial Hall, where he also has an elaborate basement that houses Mamiya, the black roses, and 100 dead boys. In this world there are two forces- good and evil, love and hate, nobility and selfishness. In some people, one force is dominant. In others, both are present, in the balance of yin and yang. Welcome the honorable shadow.
Kiryuu Nanami- Popular, beautiful, intelligent, talented. What else could she be, being a Kiryuu? She has three girls who follow all her orders, and maybe they actually like her. She has a big brother, who is oh-so-wonderful, and he adores her, of course. Except he’s not very demonstrative, lately. Cold in fact, some might think. And then there are the animals.... Nanami has a hyperactive imagination, and often will get caught up in paranoid fantasies. Oh, and she’s a type B who can’t let go of things.