A few members touched on the similarities between SKU and Othello the play, but since Othello is my favorite play and I'm a Shakespeare freak, I thought I'd do a little analysis of Episode 33.

The Rambling

To start off with, it's probably been mentioned before, but Utena's rambling seems to be a "Shadow Play Girls" style explanation of the previous clipshow.

Such as, right after episode 25, the Saionji Akio car episode:

Shadow Girl:  That challenger just barely lost.
Shadow Girl:  Well, the champion's fighting style was truly magnificent.
Shadow Girl:  Now the King of Impersonation has been on top for the last eight weeks!
Shadow Girl:  Just four more matches and it'll be time to fight the glorious Grand Champion of the Kings of Impersonation!
Utena:  That champion is so amazing.
Utena:  I wonder if he'll be able to challenge the Grand Champion of the Kings of Impersonation?
Utena:  I hope he makes it.

This is, pretty obviously it seems, Saionji and Touga.  The King of Impersonation is Touga, and the title fits him all too well.  And the challenger who keeps trying to best the King but always is just barely behind is Saionji.

Then, for Miki's first episode:

Utena:  I swear, she just won't quit!
Utena:  She's got the nickname "alum". Why it's "alum" I don't know,
Utena:  but before that was "teacup". And before that was...what was it?
Utena:  What was it?

In the other subs they make it clear she's talking about a teacher.  Utena is Miki, Alum is Kozue.  Kozue torments Miki, just like Alum torments Utena.  But the important part comes with the nickname.  It symbolizes Miki's memory, and how Miki clings to an ideal time that's distorted by his memory.  Also, in the episode, Miki analyzes why he wants to duel and just how he wants to possess Anthy.  He forgets that he is not the pure ideal he holds himself to.

Utena:  Oh, damn it! I left the rolls sitting out from this morning.
Utena:  I wonder if Himemiya'll put them in the fridge okay.
Utena:  If they don't get put into a plastic bag, they'll start smelling like the stuff around them.

This is explained in the next clipshow, for Miki's Akio car ride.  Miki wants to be pure in an impure world, and Kozue says that this is impossible and he's going to have to sink to the standards of those around him to get what he wants.

The Murder of Desdemona

The "recipe" conversation has already been analyzed and linked to Juri, Shiori, and Ruka, but now we come to the Othello game:

Utena:  Huh? The tables got turned.

This establishes Akio as Othello, black, and Utena as Desdemona, white.  Good and evil work as well, and again, the mechanics of the game have been analyzed, so I'll focus on the play.

So, we get the beautiful Duel Area Rains scene ("It'll be all right, Juri," and all that), then...



Utena turns out the lamp.



And turns to look at Akio.

Okay, that's turning out the light much like the lowering of the blinds in Akio's observatory, right?  It symbolizes sex.  Her hand is limp.  Straightforward.

Well:

Yet she must die, else she'll betray more men.
Put out the light, and then put out the light:
If I quench thee, thou flaming minister,
I can again thy former light restore,
Should I repent me:--but once put out thy light,
Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,
I know not where is that Promethean heat
That can thy light relume. When I have pluck'd thy rose,
I cannot give it vital growth again,
It must needs wither:--I'll smell it on the tree.--

That's from Othello, More of Venice (Act V, Scene II, to be exact).  He's holding a lamp, looking on the sleeping Desdemona, and wondering whether he'll kill her.  In plain English, he's saying, "I'll put out the light, then put out her light.  If I put out my lamp, I can light it again, but I can't give her life again."  He compares her to a rose, and killing her to plucking the rose.

Anthy:  Have you received tonight's roses?

Obviously, the roses stand for her virginity.  But in using Othello, light, and plucked roses, there's a little bit more going on.  It stands for her death, the death of her princely character.  Akio murders her in the bed.



She is Desdemona, an innocent, faithful girl underneath a strong black man far older than her.  Akio is Othello in this situation.  But it isn't Akio that turns out the light, and it isn't Akio who delivers the roses.  Other than her body language in the asparagus sandwich scene, it's ridiculous to assume rape; Utena puts out the light and lets a part of herself die.



The next scene reinforces this, where her eyes are glazed over, and she is still, uncannily still.  A part of her has died.

Villainy, Villainy, Villainy!

But we know that Akio isn't much like Othello.  Othello was passionate, jealous, and straightforward.  Akio is much better suited to the "motiveless malignity", Iago.

Iago manipulates everyone behind the scenes.  He's crudely sexual and gets pleasure out of putting people against each other to wreck their lives, but puts on a mask of being the kind, mature, wise, trusted adviser.  In the end, he accomplishes a great part of his goals, but he's done in when the woman he lives with and abuses betrays him.  Sound like anyone?

That makes Anthy, in this scene, Emilia, Iago's wife.  Emilia and Iago have a loveless marriage, based on sex more than anything else, and she knows him better than anyone, how he can be manipulative and how little of the personality he shows is real.  She doesn't realize exactly how messed up he is until the very end, though, and by that time her mistress Desdemona is dead.

Anthy:  Have you received today's roses?
Akio:  Yeah, I received them.
Akio:  Thanks for your help.

Emilia's importance in the play is that she brings Desdemona's handkerchief to Iago when Desdemona drops it, because Iago's been pestering her about it.  Iago plants the handkerchief, which is Othello's prized family heirloom, in Cassio's room, and has Othello spy on Cassio when he gives the handkerchief to his lady of ill repute, Bianca.

In this, Emilia is a large cause of the death of Desdemona, by going along with her husband.  She finally betrays him and explains the truth, so he kills her.



Here, it establishes Anthy as a conspirator in the murder of Utena, even though she has personal feelings for her Desdemona (Emilia is Desdemona's handmaiden, and is most loyal to her).  She lets herself be used by Akio, but it also foreshadows that, in the end, she may not be as loyal as he thought.

poetoffire wrote:

Epic analysis that combined SKU with my favorite Shakespearean play

O poet of fire, can I have you? Because that was amazing. Though if I could add a little bit...if Akio's Iago, then Dios is Othello. They both were portrayed as great, noble people who "loved not wisely, but too well" (Act 5, scene 2, line 340). Your earlier analysis still upholds, of course because Akio is a corrupted version of Dios.

But that leaves me wondering, does that make Touga Cassio

Last edited by Malacoda (06-05-2010 03:33:23 PM)

poetoffire, that should be an essay in the analysis section. Wonderful work.

I don't have any symbolism, but comparing Utena and Othello characters are interesting mainly because I got the play

I was re-watching the series the other day and I realized a couple of things about Akio and Utena; I hope this isn’t repetitive or that there isn’t a huge discussion about it. >.> I also apologize forehanded if there are any grammatical errors, I suck at writing but I really wanted to write about this and read what you guys think about the subject.
On previous post people have stated that Akio and Anthy represent the archetypical man and woman. While Utena and Anthy are the ying-yang, different but they complete each other. In my opinion Akio and Utena are also a type of ying-yang. The colors of their clothing are what inspired me to investigate a little about colors and their symbolism. I think the colors Akio and Utena wear represent bits and pieces of their personality.
 
First of all their shoes; so much alike and yet with one little detail that difference them. Both of them want to be a prince. Utena doesn’t even remember why she wants to be one or what being a prince really means. Akio only wants the power of the prince while trying to skip the responsibilities and deny the qualities needed to become a prince. However, Utena’s willingness to try to overcome obstacles is represented in her red shoelaces. The only reference I could find about shoes is the magician in the tarot deck. The black in the magician’s shoes represent the initiation in occultism and a protection against precipitated knowledge.

Now, the colors they wear are basically the same, as seen in the pic above. Their colors (starting from the neck) are white, green, yellow, red and black. Both Akio and Utena embody the colors and their symbolism in good and bad ways.
In dreams the color red represents blood, fire, passion, war, strong feelings and sexuality. When the red dominates the soul is ready to take action. This can manifest itself as love or hate, surrender or conquest. In general the color red represents a sentimental relationship either good or bad, and often with sexual undertones. Legs support the body and are necessary to move forward. If we combine the symbolism of both legs and the color red, we get Utena’s feelings for her prince and Anthy which are what support her and help her move forward. But the passion or feelings Akio wakes up in Utena (represented by the color red) threat to steal her support (legs) later in the series.
Both Utena and Akio are passionate and ready to take action to get what they want. The difference is that Akio is willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his goal. This is passion (red) shown in a negative way.
Like any color black can have negative and positive meanings. When we are talking about the color black not as a color but as absence of colors it takes a negative meaning. Black represents emptiness, dead, mourning. But if we are talking about the color black that is formed from the union of all the colors its symbolism changes. Now the color black signifies virginity, original chaos and indifference. In Akio I believe the color black represents: Mourning the dead of Dios, the darkness of the human psyche, mystery, dignity, strength and hidden knowledge. In Utena black represents submission to a cause. Priests wear black to indicate submission to God. For our heroine black also represents birth, the original chaos and indifference. In the tarot deck the empress is pictured with a red shield that has a black eagle on it; these two colors here signify activity and purity, pure wishes free from selfishness.

Utena and Akio both are pictured with a little green gem and some trace of yellow or gold. Green represents reason and thought. Yellow represents materialism, power and determination.
Finally Akio and Utena’s clothes have a small amount of white on them. White as a lack of colors represents purity and thrust, but in a way that will take you to your grave. White as a color takes the same meaning as before but in a positive way.

I like the observation that Akio's top is the same color as Utena's bottom and vice versa!  It really does look strikingly like someone just flipped the colors, doesn't it?

I don't know how much symbolism to read into the particular colors.  Yeah, red is a dynamic color for Utena and a sexual color for Akio, but I wouldn't go any farther than that.  If we reversed who's wearing what where -- if we gave Utena a red shirt and black pants -- we could just as easily say "well, she's a passionate character in her heart, and she's striding into the mysteries of the abyss with her legs."  So we're only seeing what we expected to see, and the colors don't really tell us anything we didn't already know.  At least, that's my feeling.  It's possible that Saito and Ikuhara did say "I'm going to put just as much specific symbolic significance into every pixel of this uniform as Tarot artists put into the smallest detail of their decks," but I think it's more likely they thought about what colors and wardrobe features naturally resonate with each character (and look cool, and make them stand out) and used those.

Your first picture made me think of the still shot in Juri's Unfulfillment, so I MS-Painted her in there:



...And noticed that if you include the shoes, the run-of-the-mill girls' uniform has all the same colors you noted in Utena's and Akio's.  Take that for what you will

Last edited by satyreyes (07-15-2010 11:41:03 PM)

satyreyes wrote: but I think it's more likely they thought about what colors and wardrobe features naturally resonate with each character (and look cool, and make them stand out) and used those.

I agree with this but it is nice to over-analyzed every once in a while.
Actually, this reminds me of the manga; there is a page in which an assistant accidentally spills ink, it falls on Utena's jacket. They later explain that Utena's jacked is black because of that.

b]satyreyes wrote:[/b]...And noticed that if you include the shoes, the run-of-the-mill girls' uniform has all the same colors you noted in Utena's and Akio's.

Yes, but the fact that the colors Akio and Utena wear are inverted and that they have so little green in their outfit is what really called my attention.

winksniper wrote:

Ikuhara:  Which do you like better, pink or black?
Saito:  Mm... Pink.
Ikuhara:  It'll be black, then.

This sounds like a classic example of those two writing their own characters.    There's a similar joke in one of the commentaries about Ikuni's careful attention to lasciviousness in wardrobe design, over Saito's intentions.  As with everything else Ikuni ever says, I usually assume he's making it up because it's entertaining!

Gio wrote:

I would offer that Anthy's Rose Bride dress is really what seems to complement and reflect Akio's outfit as far as color scheme--Utena's dueling uniform I want to say is meant more to speak to Anthy's dress than Akio's clothes . . .

Yeah, I can buy that -- Akio and Utena both reflect Anthy, and as a result you can draw a pair relationship between any two of them.  Anthy's dress, presumably, is red because she's a bride, and bridal gowns are traditionally red in East Asia.  In that sense, the use of the color in a series full of bad faith, bad judgment and recklessness actually subverts the usual, propitious meaning of red clothes in that part of the world!

Winksniper, I remember reading that in the manga too. Except Saito's options were RED and black because all that pink would be hard to animate (and for the record, Saito wanted red. The symbolism of this alternate scenario never ceases to amuse me).

Though for me personally, I've always associated Utena with the color black. She wears it all the time and the few times she isn't wearing her black uniform, she's either in her pajamas or acting against her own ideals. It's as if she's mourning something but doesn't quite know what it is (maybe Anthy?)

But I'll leave the symbolism for the well articulated experts.