Wow.. for some reason, I've just now noticed they were staying at a hotel. I thought it was Utena's and Anthy's room.. but now I can't see how I thought that. Anthy was in the planetarium room.

But, I always thought Utena's behavior was extremely.. nervous and babbly, just like when she was rambling about sandwiches while being laid. It seems full of jittery nervousness and hyperactivity. Perhaps she was expecting it, but just acting oblivious. Or maybe she sub-consciously expected it.

But, damn, Utena.. That stretching IS very suggestive.

It does make sense. That's actually the view I take of it-- she knew, but wanted to pretend that she didn't. Anyone who gets a hotel room with a guy they are attracted to, have flirted with, have kissed, and have romantic feelings for has to be open to the possibility that something like that will happen. No matter how naive you are, if you have any idea of sex at all, you do have to realize at some point that things are leading up to it.

Some there are times I think that Utena only figured out that she was gonna get laid about half way through the actual sexual act, she just gives off that impressions sometimes.

I still think that those scenes happened afterwards, at first she was trying to distract herself from thinking about it, then she had to lay back and think about it.

One could argue that she never truly realized even after it was all over, that is to say never truly faced up to it.

What kind of person goes on and on and ON, talking about food, while someone is ... ah-hem ... working on them?  She's babbling, and it has to be either post-coitally or pre-coitally.  When she starts shutting up, that's when the real action is starting (or starting again). 

When they leave, it's still night, and the same night (I think, given dialouge), but there's no telling how long they were there.

All that talking just flies in the face of normal behavior during sex, though not in bed in general.  Maybe it's more like some major sexual act just took place, and they're doing pillow talk before the start of another sexual act.

I must be dense too, because, all through the season I just assumed she was a fitness nut!!
"Let's get physical" starts up

UK girls like coffee
Boys like daddy
You can shasei *
Do your real slow
Make me happy
Make me feel good
You could love me

Let's get physical
Physical
I wanna get physical
Lets get into physical
Let me hear your body talk
Your body talk
Let me hear your body talk
I wanna get physical
Physical
I wanna get physical
Let's get into physical
Let me hear your body talk
Your body talk
Let me hear your body talk

Make me happy
Make me feel good
You could
Watch me watching
Watch you
Make me feel good
Make me feel good

Let's get physical
Physical
I wanna get physical
Let's get into physical
Let me hear your body talk
Your body talk
Let me hear your body talk
I wanna get physical
Physical
I wanna get physical
Lets get into physical
Let me hear your body talk

Let's get physical
Physical
I wanna get physical
Let's get into physical
Let me hear your body talk
Your body talk
Let me hear your body talk
I wanna get physical


so aha!

Nervous habit or Fitness nut??
Where is Clarice when you need her?

:searches for Clarice and excellent analysis:

I always thought of Utena's babbling speech to be after the sex, not during. Its seems a bit silly to think Akio is so lousy he can't even occupy his partner's mind entirely. Its after all the passion and hot meaningless sex that you calm down and it begins to sink in.


In any case, I'm not entirely sure I have the events in place. Utena gives Akio the roses, he asks her out, they go to the carnival, stop off at the hotel and then go for a drive?

Ok, if so, it does make a certain amount of sense. They go the carnival and have their fun, then they're both going to be tired. Its late out. So Akio comes up with the _great idea_ to stop off a hotel for dinner and a shower. Maybe even spend the night in a _completely innocent and platonic manner_ or something. At least, that's the way Utena would see it. Utena's innocence isn't as exaggerated as you think; how many girls have gone to the apartment of the internet friend they really really trust or done other equally stupidly naive things? On the other hand, he has kissed her before so she knows he isn't completely devoted to his fiance.So there's definitely that element of convincing herself there's nothing going on when she knows there is. Hence her being nervous.

Utena's affair with Akio did strike me as loss of innocence and purity, not the sexual kind, but in a moral sense. He's engaged, she knows it, but because she's attracted to him she ignores the fact.



But did anyone consider that maybe Utena made the first move? Akio's being verry patient, seated most of the evening some distance from Utena, watching her talk herself into a fit. Until Utena can't take it anymore and jumps into his arms. Would make for extra guilt. Just a thought. She never blames Akio for what happened, doesn't go 'nooesss, you seduced meee!!'

Last edited by YamPuff (03-29-2007 06:57:12 AM)

I'm squarely in the camp that thinks the lunch speech is pre-coital. For one, there's that jerk and twitching near the end, which is really hard to explain without involving penetration/hymen tearing. Second, sex would be the most obvious point at which her change in mood occurs. She shuts up after the sex. If she were still blabbering afterward, it would be odd she'd suddenly fall quiet in the car.

Maarika wrote:

Anyway, I agree that Utena was very naive but I also think that she might have been subconciously aware of what was going to happen but it never really reached her till it actually did happen. :/

I agree with this, too. Even I can't think so little of her as to honestly believe nothing registered as odd about being in a hotel room alone with a man. Especially since we've seen her tipped off to unusually intimate situations before; she blushes when he pulls her close during the Lucifer speech. It's a different circumstance because it involves contact on top of the unusual situation, but in that scene she does seem to be aware there's something not quite happyhappy friends there. Actually she spends the whole series prior to this event acting this way; she tends to yap and yap and yap whenever she's alone with Akio. He lets her and plays the counselor role, but it's a convenient way to dodge the strangeness of the situation. By constantly lording over the conversation, she 'successfully' avoids having to account for what's going on.

Akio never forces her to drop that distraction. They're alone in a hotel room getting god damn room service, but he doesn't say or do anything that stops her yapping. You would think, in most natural situations, that such an event would be preceded by some accounting for that it will happen. Some confession of desire, expression of intent, suggestion...something. But no, Akio lets her maintain her weak shield of denial right to the bitter end.

Because he's a total dick.

Seriously, at that point, he could have played these events out a dozen different ways and still had sex with her. I don't think it's a stretch to assume he'd be perfectly capable of arousing her past her blabbering. He could have had her writhing and ready and too swimming in want to be as nervous as she was before they got in bed. But...why would he do that? Ease her discomfort? Help her? What would he gain from doing so?

morosemocha wrote:

I've always thought that if he'd been kinder to her, played the mushy, romantic card a little bit more, she'd have been sold enough for him to get the goods -I.E., Utena as his soon to be neglected Princess, the sword, and Anthy kinda dead. Or at least swimming in pointy stick obscurity for a while.

Hmm...I'd agree it was a fuckup, except I don't think that was his intent at all. This is where he could have made that mistake, but given how intently he backs up that coldness in episode 38, I don't think he wanted a Princess. That whole sequence 'You're my princess' blah blah just reeks of...that subliminal message character from SNL. On the surface he's being all sweetness and LOL I'LL PROTECT YOU NOW , but he carefully neglected to do any number of things that would actually have subdued her.

Then again, I think the way Akio reasons things, no possible outcome to those events could have worked against him, given his desire to sustain the state he's in and keep Anthy being his little bitch. Utena goes with him? Talk about kicking Anthy in the teeth. Also he gets her sword, which, because she's now 'fallen' to his level, will be useless. YAY! Utena fights? Talk about reminding Anthy of her place. Also he gets her sword, which, because she's still a noble heart, will...be useless in his hands anyway. YAY!

In that regard, I think he did make a 'sacrifice' of sorts for his own pleasure. He could have done more to make Utena fold from the very beginning, but the way he figured it, he'd win either way, and this way was more fun. I do wonder though, whether that outcome would have satisfied the obligatory 'Of course I'm trying to save you, Anthy. ' Even if it didn't, it would have been a safer bet for him right then...but he didn't think there was a reason to play it safe. His overconfidence is his weakness, and in that regard, I'd agree he made a mistake there. He should have been aborting the whole thing when Anthy got too bitchy, but he wanted to be a prick about it. In the end, though, it wasn't Utena he made the mistake of being too cruel to.

Utena does give that very suggestive spasm when she says, "What is Eternity?"

Alternatively it could be the first big spasm of guilt finally hitting her after trying to fend it off with her babbling and stretching.

I doubt that things are happening in chronological order in that episode.

Personal_IceQueen wrote:

Nervous habit or Fitness nut??
Where is Clarice when you need her?

[snickers] Wearing a stupid hat, sitting in a hotel room in Paris. No, seriously. It's this crazy top-hat with Uncle Scrooge sticking out of the top of it with a fistful of Euros. Blithely walking through one of the major financial districts of the city while wearing this is probably symbolic of something in and of itself, but I think most of the French I walked past just thought I needed committing.

Undead Princess wrote:

I imagine Utena realized she was going to have sex with Akio at the last minute, kind of like when she was kissed by him. He probably rolled himself over to her futon and she started babbling.

Actually, it's probably a fair assumption, that. My personal opinion was that she was babbling away while he was...well, working her, so to speak, and that the way she cut off at the end implied either penetration or something similar to orgasm (I don't want to go too deeply into IFD territory here, but a) I doubt she had an orgasm first pop, so to speak, no matter that Akio is DA MAN and b) realising that pleasure can be derived from that area can be unexpected for girls, if they haven't done any exploring themselves beforehand). In the end, it's probably that when the lights went out she started talking to Akio the way she talked to Anthy in their shared bed -- as they probably had futons next to one another -- and when he didn't respond (or just watched her with a kind of inevitability that we'd expect from all that has gone before) she got worked up and started babbling. I don't know if it could work this way, as we always see Utena from the same perspective (and I tend to assume it was Akio's, although seeing Utena from above in that scene could be symbolic of her bending to the will of another, or as being "fallen"), and if Akio moved I'd expect our perspective to move with him, but...this scene has always confused the beegeezus out of me, I have to admit.

Personal_IceQueen wrote:

(And there's nothing symbolic about a Westernized chair being in a Japanese style hotel room... I've seen Japanese hotel rooms, and a lot of them are just layed out that way)

Actually, I think you can see the chairs in the background of the first shot anyway -- and they look lower to the ground than a standard Western-style chair. Could just be the perspective/shoddy animation budget, mind you...