Kashira wrote:

Lady Chani wrote:

I think I'd flip and fall out a window too.

And bury yourself in a garden too?

Well, I have this theory, quite insane, you see. He did indeed bury himself, because he fell from such a great height. You know, how in cartoons, they always make this shaped-hole when they fall to the ground from a great height? There was an Akio-shaped hole in that garden, and the janitors covered it up. *nods sagely*

Seriously though, I've never stopped to ask if it was truly Anthy who buried Akio in the garden. It makes sense that it was, as a sort of regretful act. Or perhaps, if you include a bit of manga-canon, perhaps my insane Saturday-morning-cartoon-based theory is partially correct. When everything changed to accomodate the loss of the Prince, twisted though he may have been, perhaps the Academy itself buried him in the Garden.

That was pretty obscure, I guess. (I should apply for a job with Be-Papas).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

Kashira wrote:

So there's a ...movie manga nad a series manga?

Yep. It's very pretty and lovely and has no people turning into cars. It's also got sex.

I found an interesting quote that I had recorded today from Myths to Live by by Joseph Campbell.

I thought I'd post it in this thread about Movie Akio, along with a few quotes from the older thread about Movie Akio, because I think there's some relevance between the "growing up" themes we were discussing and this passage about coming of age rituals.

Myths to Live By, pg. 46
"Accordingly, one of the first functions of the puberty rites of primitive societies, and indeed of education everywhere, has been always that of switching the response systems of adolescents from dependency to responsibility--which is no easy transformation to achieve.  And with the extension of the period of dependency in our own civilization into the middle or even late twenties, the challenge is today more threatening than ever, and our failures are increasingly apparent.  A neurotic might be defined, in this light, as one who as failed to come altogether across the critical threshold of his adult "second birth." ... In the modern Western world, moreover, there is an additional complication; for we ask of the adult something still more than that he should accept without personal criticism and judgment the habits and inherited customs of his local social group.  We ask and are expecting, rather, that he should develop what Sigmund Freud has called his "reality function": that faculty of the independently observant, freely thinking individual who can evaluate without preconceptions the possibilities of his environment and of himself within it, criticizing and creating, not simply reproducing inherited patterns of thought and action, but becoming himself an innovating center, an active, creative center of the life process."

rhyaniwyn wrote:

Movie Akio v. Anime Akio Post
In the series, Akio is an adult.  But he's one who is very emotionally immature, when you get right down to it.  In the movie, Akio doesn't appear to be an adult.  But he's still the school's chairman and he's still engaged. Those are roles an adult would fill.  He's shown as being very unsuitable for those positions.  A person with authority over an entire school of young people who drugs and molests his own sister.  An engaged man who is sexually involved with another girl.  When he realizes that someone else has seen it, he has a fit of hysteria, like a teenager.

In a way, he could be a representation of the inner Akio.  An emotionally stunted, essentially immature man trying to fill the shoes of an adult.  That still discards a host of Akio's most important characteristics, though.

In the context of the movie, perhaps he is young and ineffectual on purpose.  He's young, trying to act like an adult without having the resources of character and maturity required--which makes him completely ineffectual.  Effectively it emasculates him.  Because he's not able to meet any of the expectations placed on him, he's not able to truly do anything a grown man is expected to do, and so he is unable to be a man in any sense.

Which explains the tower and key...

brian wrote:

Movie Akio v. Anime Akio Post
I remember waiting on a corner and nearby were three kids: a little brother and two older sisters. The plump little boy was spouting vapid obscenities and his older sisters were just doting on him like he was the coolest, manliest thing in the world. He was obviously the prince of his family just because he was the only boy. He was obviously tremendously spoiled and probably corrupted by his adoring sisters and probably was going to grow up to be a monster, and a weak and inept one at that.

Perhaps both versions are valid in different ways. Movie Akio is a type of moderately realistic person who can do a lot of harm as an individual to another individual. He seems to have feelings and vulnerabilities and real qualities that a person could reasonably love. He comes across as being slightly capable of real ideals and real love for his sister. The voracious series Akio is not believable as a real person, but he makes a better archetype and he better sums up the crushing, beguiling totality of "The World" or "The System" or perhaps Mara.

Personal_IceQueen wrote:

Movie Akio v. Anime Akio Post
but if you look at it, Ohtori is much like the island, this isolated place from the rest of the world and the "adults" who come into power-really have no clue as to what being an adult means, other than instantaneous power.

Giovanna wrote:

Movie Akio v. Anime Akio Post
Anyway I think I'm just rewording what's been said, but I agree that movie Akio is not the representative 'adult' in the movie, and that there isn't one. I think the movie decided to be more about the prince symbolism, and skipped the 'be wary of adults' message that the series pounds in repeatedly. Akio, and for that matter, all the adults in the series, are drawn as adversarial to the goal of growing up on your own terms. The adult world in the series wants you to be like it, and it's the enemy. That antagonistic adult element isn't present in the movie. It looks like the adversarial force isn't the adult world that wants to mold you to fit it, but the childhood world that wants to keep you there.

...

The series leaves you with a pretty bad impression of the adult world, the movie leaves it more ambiguous what the adult world is like, it suggests it's for you to shape, not have to avoid conforming to.

The part that reads, "A neurotic might be defined, in this light, as one who as failed to come altogether across the critical threshold of his adult 'second birth'" is particularly interesting to me given the end of the movie.  I have always sort of mentally amused myself with the obvious visual symbols: car = penis, underneath the castle = womb, metal-grinder-of-death = vaginal passage, breaking-through-akio = rebirth...

Akio in the movie is the neurotic who failed to cross the threshold of his adult 'second birth.'  In point of fact, all the people who choose to stay in Ohtori are.  Utena, Anthy, the duellists, Wakaba, and all others who do/will undertake the challenge leaving when their time comes (posts in the Cars thread, 1, 2, 3**, 4*) are striving to come through the trauma of their coming-of-age ritual to become healthy adults.

Last edited by rhyaniwyn (03-06-2008 09:54:41 PM)

Umm, don't know if this has been mentioned yet since I don't feel like reading though this monster, but one thing that was obvious to hell to me while watching the film was the status of his tower's phallus symbol looking like it had been castrated at some point.  Similarly "Makio" was acting pretty much like a whimp through most of the film as opposed to when the phallus symbol was still intact during the tv series.  Since Ikuraha does a lot of his story telling through symbolism, I would say your answer lies in there.

Last edited by J-Syxx (12-01-2008 12:55:42 AM)

Just chiming in, but I thought the origin story of the Prince was a fascinating key into why Makio is so markedly different from Akio.

As the narration describes, the Prince was never really a Prince in this iteration of the tale - he was always King of Flies, and was simply given a noble shape by Anthy's magic. And that's where this all starts - Makio doesn't have the illusion of his own power to cling to and use like Akio does.
If the Prince never existed in the first place, then Makio can't really have a conception of regaining the power of the Prince. Even assuming that the Power of Dios that Akio tried to get was at the end pure illusion, at least the illusion was there for Akio to focus on. Makio has nothing to latch on to other than the world, which is echoed in the fluidity and motion of the architecture.
Next, he has no leverage over Anthy - Anthy never sacrificed herself for the Prince in this tale, so Makio doesn't have the memory of her devotion to work with. Without the Witch, he cannot be certain that the world he is in will remain safe, and so he becomes desperate. Enter the Rohypnol Daiquiri. And when that fails? He casts himself right into the roses.
The breaking of the phallic tower is not so much the symbol of an emasculated Makio, but rather both the tower and his own decreased sexual appeal are symbols of his failure to establish any sort of authority in Ohtori. Certainly, at the end he has enough strength to be the final obstacle to Anthy and Utena's escape into the 'adult world', but on the inside he is little but the roses he was buried under. No flesh under there, just roses scattered to the wind.

He's emasculated because it's a way to show just how little power he has, and also how little he perceives himself as having. Or something like that.

Almaser wrote: Just chiming in, but I thought the origin story of the Prince was a fascinating key into why Makio is so markedly different from Akio.

Great point, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this. Yes, the origin story does change everything.

The series was a seductive genius:cool:, who knew how to fight:dance:. The other had to have the pink mach 6 run over his ass

When I first saw the movie, my first thought was exactly that: "interesting, they made a non-cool Akio".

Which I think is part of the point. I don't buy the idea that you are meant to view the movie as a completely separate thing from the series (as someone else pointed out, if you do that, then it's very hard to even make sense of what is happening, not to mention making sense of the Nanami-cameo. ) My feeling is rather that if they make a re-interpretation of the series where much is the same but some characters are radically altered, then surely you are intended to compare and contrast and draw conclusions?

In the case of M/akio, I don't think the comparison is so far-fetched. When Anthy leaves Ohtori in the series, one of her last lines is "Please go on playing make-believe "Prince" in this comfortable little coffin forever. But I must go". Here it seems to me that she has decided that he is pretty unimpressive and pathetic.

We as viewers don't necessarily see him that way, because we have seen him in the context of Ohtori, where he is quite literally the center (and end) of the world. But in a bigger perspective, he should not be as impressive at all that. What if we could see him the way Anthy finally saw him? Well, this is where the movie comes in. I see this as Ikuhara basically saying: dudes! You were totally duped by all the glitz!

Someone up the thread complained(?) that Makio is giving Akio a bad name by being such a creep who rapes his sister. I think this is very much to the point. After all, Anthy and Akio's relationship in the series also seems pretty abusive (at least to me). It just _looks_ much nicer, since it is all expressed in terms of cool cars, sumptuous planetarium-equipped rooms, and stylized visual transitions, while the movie is more realistic and sordid. Which all goes to show: all those pretty, art-deco rose leaves can obscure your vision sometimes.

/me ducks and hides before the Akio-fans kill me...

I really don't understand why everybody hates Makio. In my opinion he was a more sympathetic character because he knew what he did to Anthy was wrong. Sure we all love to hate series Akio, but Movie Akio was pretty interesring in his own right.

Miss Bluesky wrote:

Seconded. Then again, maybe being such a magnificently manipulative bastard is what draws a lot of people to Akio in the first place, which is a quality Makio seems to lack quite conspiciously.

That, and a horrible voice actor who sounds like he's reading his lines straight from a paper...

Lightice wrote:

Miss Bluesky wrote:

Seconded. Then again, maybe being such a magnificently manipulative bastard is what draws a lot of people to Akio in the first place, which is a quality Makio seems to lack quite conspiciously.

That, and a horrible voice actor who sounds like he's reading his lines straight from a paper...

Wasn't he some random Japanese celeb guy? Think it said summat like that in the commentary.
I'm practically tone deaf anyway mind, so I never even noticed XD

Hiraku wrote:

Makio in Japanese can't be as bad as Makio in dub... omg... that "Ciao" sends shiver down my spine everytime I hear it! >_<

When I heard he said "Ciao", I didn't even attempt to listen to the dubbed version.

I am tired, I am tired, but I will defend my opinions to the last:

A lot of parallels can be drawn between Makio and Satan ala Dante's Inferno. Both are the terrifying, powerless figures at the center of world, worlds that they have no control over, Both must be overcome to move past their world's. Makio is better representation of Akio because he strips away all the shitty, self-glorify feats Akio pulls off in the series - all of which wow the fans to such an extent that they lose sight of Akio's true nature. Sakio and Makio are one in the same; Sakio just gets to cover up his creepy, obsessive nature with a thick vaneer of smexy badassery.

As for the whole Makio-Manthy relation (hey, she herself has shown herself not adverse to gender bending), it seems a lot healthier than it was in the series. Makio was not comfortable with doing what he saw a something horribly wrong. Anthy was cool with it ,and tried to reassure him that it was all ok. Akio's stodgy, Dios styled morality dictated that incest was bad, even though in this situation both were into it and it was really just harmless fun (I'm going to go ahead and ignore Kanae..). The whole sequence shows how Akio/Dios' lack of adaptability to reality caused their downfall.