That's okay, you've been looking at Akio's ass. It's understandable.

Giovanna wrote:

By the way, I totally didn't forget about this thread. I've just been mulling over the right images to use for the whole Saionji and Wakaba thing.

Edit: Which I've started writing. I think I might give it its own thread, this is getting long and I've hardly brushed the surface.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

I adore Ruka, but I really think that of all the "tragic couples" Wakaba and Saionji are my favorite.

you. But you already know that, don't you?

Edit:...wow, my yay! just goes right off the edge of the screen. Freaky deak.

Last edited by morosemocha (02-08-2007 08:55:07 AM)

SleepDebtFairy wrote:

Can we post our own body-language interpretations?

Oh absolutely! I'd love to see others' thoughts. Body language is like any other kind of critical analysis, the more minds look at the same thing, the clearer the picture gets.

I'm having a bitch of a time with this Saionji and Wakaba one though. It keeps starting to veer off into an essay. I'm thinking I might do it differently, complete straightforward uninterpreted reads of a batch of shots and then start a thread where we can rip apart what the behaviors are there for. There's something really amazing here as far as analyzing who Saionji is. Which means I keep starting to ramble off, heh.

At the rate it's going it might certainly turn into that.

There's no need to shut up. Any idea when we'll be able to see this essay?

As I mention at least once a day on these here forums, one of my favorite episodes, probably my favorite, is 30, The Barefoot Girl. Why, you ask? What a silly question, the whole episode is about Akio being a manipulative godless bastard. Of course I like it. But give me a little credit! It's not just that it's a major episode for my favorite character. It's also, frankly, one of the biggest body language orgies in the series. Actually, it seems to trade this off with symbolism. While there's certainly plenty of symbolism, namely the three candles going out and clever use of shots of the cocktower, there's not nearly as much symbolism as, say, the Juri episodes that come right before. But what the episode lacks (relatively) in symbolism it makes up for in body language. It's amusing to note, as I watch the series, what the animators put their effort into. I say body language was emphasized in this episode because a lot of the animation is spent on shots that could have been halfassed without major disruption to the storyboards. (For example, Akio running his fingers over his car.) Juri's duel episode is quite thrifty on the animation until the actual duel, which, while using shots repeated from her first, was animated in full for this episode and a lot of time went into it, especially in the effort of combining her duel with Ruka. A lot of animation is crammed into the sequence leading up to Akio and Utena kissing, for SKU, anyway. It's a major event to be sure, and because of that, the body language is in full swing, and I could frankly spend a month ripping it apart. And I might! I wanna pick this thread back up, so we'll start with a nice easy one.

Hold your hand up, parallel to the ground, and relax. No, don't bother if you're nervous, excited, pissed, or anything but relaxed. If you're like the majority of the population (YOU ARE RELAXED RIGHT IT WON'T WORK OTHERWISE ) your middle and ring finger will touch, line up, or otherwise be closer to each other than your other fingers are.





This behavior continues even when his fingers are in motion. He strokes Utena's ankle and the motion of his fingers favors keeping those two together.




This is usually considered a baseline behavior. It happens for the same reason a lot of people can't move certain fingers without the others wanting to move, the muscles unless otherwise trained don't necessarily operate independently of each other. It's also very reliant on gravity. If you put your hands at your sides, your fingers are likely to group differently because gravity is overwhelming the tendency of the relaxed muscles. (For most, at their sides, the pink and ring finger are closer instead.) Relaxation is all this behavior indicates, and a lack of it only means there's some measure of excitement out of the ordinary for the person. They could be angry, excited, amused, afraid, whatever. Any kind of arousal will usually kill this behavior because arousal, even a little, makes your body more prepared for action, and one of the most important tools your body has for dealing with anything at all is your hands.

That it's so prevalent in this scene indicates the unnatural extreme of relaxation that Akio feels. We already know he's not fluttering heart excited because he totally wants to kiss Utena . But he's so relaxed there's no arousal state that would indicate amusement or satisfaction or excitement at the chase. This is so thoroughly ordinary to him that it doesn't blip on his radar any more than baking a cake does.

Now I'm not saying he takes no pleasure in it. He clearly does. But it's not an anticipated or exciting pleasure to him, of the sort you'd wait for or look forward to. There's none of that here for him, it's not like Friday night drinks with the friends where you look forward to it. He sees this as an especially fun part of a totally ordinary day. Seduce girl? See her flinch before you? Break her? He looks forward to it and is excited by it about as much as one gets excited about listening to music on the way to work.

This behavior of Akio taking pleasure in things but not getting excited by them is repeated in the series time and again. It's a sign of a lot of things, his age no doubt, his comfort with the way his life is led, and the expectation that he'll always get what he wants. (Anyone else, no matter how confident, would show arousal signs in this scene just on account of the near nil chance it doesn't go their way.) It's also, I think, a sign of how he views the world around him. As a watcher, from a distance. He's involved enough to interact and enjoy but distanced enough that his body language almost never betrays that interaction. He's so used to pleasure that it doesn't 'pull him in' as it were. When does he drop these distanced, idle behaviors? When he's pissed at Anthy.

I never noticed that, but Akio always seemed so very confident when he faced Utena in that scene.
Hehehe, and Utena looks so lost!

Giovanna wrote:

When does he drop these distanced, idle behaviors? When he's pissed at Anthy.

That's something I always noticed and found interesting. Blank-faced Anthy is just about the only one capable of pissing off Akio. And she does it so effortlessly. I admire her.

morosemocha wrote:

I've always thought that pisses hims off the most because here he is, able to elicite any reaction he wants from any person, and the one person that he can't manipulate into behaving absolutly and totally predictably is his own sister. But then, I wonder why it surprises him? He must know there's nothing he can ever do to Anthy that's worse then what she's done to herself.

I think he just wants her attention. He loves his sister, after all - he doesn't care that the others act as he pleases since they mean nothing to him. She's the most important person to him [after himself, that is]. He talks to her about this new star he discovered, and she just stares at him with this blank smile and says "Yes, Onii-sama". That ought to drive anyone mad, especially when everyone else are that person's puppets on strings and he's used to getting everything he wants.

Wow, what attention to detail. I didn't even notice any of that, and I still got the distinct impression that Akio was completely relaxed and confident, and that seducing an innocent prince girl was as easy as cake to him. He just oozes that kind of feeling. (I personally would hate being seduced by someone like him, because I simply cannot stand to be around guys who intimidate me.)

Last edited by SleepDebtFairy (03-09-2007 04:09:47 PM)

Maaaannnn, I neverrr would've noticed any of that, really! You're so cool, Gio.

SleepDebtFairy wrote:

(I personally would hate being seduced by someone like him, because I simply cannot stand to be around guys who intimidate me.)

Mm, seconded. I always gotta be the dominant one, I'll admit - and I prefer to do the chasing Unfortunately, I usually get bored once the chase has ended -_-;

P.S. - satyreyes, you live in Ft. Myers? I'm so jealous - I wanna see the Red Sox in spring training

Last edited by A Day Without Me (03-09-2007 05:55:42 PM)

satyreyes wrote:

What is Utena's body language like when she's playing sports?  Sometimes she seems so completely lighthearted about it (e.g. nailing Nanami in the face with a baseball), but other times she radiates competitiveness.

It looks like she's very serious when she's doing it but once she's not actually engaged in it, she's not as serious. It's hard to say much about it since I haven't observed this sort of behavior much, I don't watch sports. I don't think she's excessively driven to win, so much as play. But that might have a lot to do with that she seems to always win. It's harder to say how she'd take getting her ass handed to her, but I tend to suspect she's not as good a loser as she thinks she'd be.

Touga:  What's wrong, Nanami? You have no reason to start dorm life all of a sudden.
Nanami:  I can't.
Touga:  We're only siblings. Shouldn't we help each other and live for each other?
Touga:  Okay? Let's go back together.
Nanami:  We're not really siblings.

Touga:  How do you know that?

As anyone that's read my silly ass Akio essay knows, pupil constriction/dilation is ruled by the autonomic nervous system, and not typically subject to the manipulative whims of the person. To summarize what you can read at length in that essay and again in this thread somewhere, constriction is a sign of distress, anger, fear, or inward contemplation. It's defensive or closing, either way, the constriction occurs, reducing the amount of light you take in, because for some reason you want to block out the world around you.

In other words, Touga either finds this 'revelation' genuinely distressing (though he's been setting it up the whole episode and knows it's a load of shit), or he's a freakishly good actor.

On one hand, it's not entirely far-fetched to give him credit for being able to fake it. There are certainly ways especially motivated people can fake distress. Actors often recall especially traumatic events in their lives to bring up tears necessary for a scene, or to look otherwise distressed beyond what they can accomplish without actually being in some way disturbed.

But it could be argued that treating his sister this way does actually bother him, enough that his distressed reaction is in some way genuine. Proof of Touga's regret for the things he does is rather slim in the series, but if you wanted to take this that way, it would be support for the argument that though it clearly doesn't influence his behavior, and probably doesn't keep him awake at night, that he doesn't exactly feel 100% happy about repeatedly screwing over the people close to him.

Which one is it?