I know I’ve just repeated what a lot of you have said (unintentional in most cases) but maybe I came up with something useful?

Miki wanted a girl to be a mirror to admire himself in, his "shining thing".

Is that a literal interpretation of ‘Shining Thing’? I doubt that they meant something that is shiny.

While, in effect, that may have been what Kozue was I doubt that Miki knew this. If he did, he would have known why she wouldn’t perform while he was ill. I imagine that a shining thing is something inspirational? Or possibly another case of someone to love from afar (even if they are at the piano together). It might be worth noting that even without Himemiya, Miki seems to have gained a shining thing according to Touga at least.   

It may be worth noting that until this point the End of the World has been Akio himself. Although… Touga always pluralized the End of the World. Calling him ‘they’ is that just an effect of the subtitling or is there a similar thing going on in the original Japanese? If there is more than one End of the World then what he showed them probably had something to do with himself and Anthy. The power of the Rose Bride (meatshield), the power of Dios (princely powers) and the power of Akio, his manipulative, political, sexual powers, the things that we might consider power outside of fantasy. The type of power you can imagine ignoble people seeking. Rather than the sort of power that Utena posses and Dios once had. An attainable goal?

Also in the film The End of the World was just that, the point at which the closed world of Ohtori Academy ended and the real world begun, perhaps he showed them the world outside of the coffin? Perhaps he scared them into obedience? Or convinced them that they needed to do this to obtain the outside world. This is as far as you may go, if you want more then you have to fight Utena (trust me I’m a president)

brian wrote:

The duellists ride the Akio car and see a world to be conquered not realizing that the World is about to conquer them.

(And at the End of the World) Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept for there were no more worlds to conquer. … my mind is making my fingers do weird things.

I just typed a long winded post then managed to hit the wrong button and off it went to the end of world, for all I know

Paradox wrote:

I really don't think the car drive is about sex.  There's some involved, but it's more about self-realization.  I think when he goes over that windshield, leaving the car driver-less, they're finally forced to look forward, beyond their immediate immature obsessions and see where the car they're riding in is going, and as a corollary, where the rest of the choices they're making are really taking them.

I would like to add that the car ride is also about desire. Not necessarily sexual but desire in a more wide sense. Whatever it is that the duelists are show I believe that it either reinforces their desire by showing their ambitions fulfilled (thus allowing them to have a taste of what it *could* be like) which spurs them to make this illusory scenarion real through their efforts or it reinforces desire via a negative universe in which what they want has been dismissed and done away with. Either way, the idealized version of their desires turned true or a world that has no place for their ambitioned outcomes, it forced the duelists to identify themselves with what they want.
Another thing that it is interesting is the car left without a driver. I take this to mean that the duelists must seize the wheel themselves and drive: they must have agency and be the actors in their own plays.

Paradox wrote:

Oddly, I'm not sure Akio is particularly successful with this.  While he buys into his own obsession, and perhaps assumes that showing them their own fantasies realized will revitalize them to take down Utena, the duelists for the most part recognize the danger they're going toward and end up fighting more to escape their own coffins than to achieve their juvenile dreams. 

In this way, they've already surpassed Akio himself.  He sees what he is right now as the absolute pinnacle, both of the Academy and himself.  He is both God and the Devil in this little world he's constructed.  To his mind, he's offering to elevate them, but at this point they know better.  The duelists can look at Utena and know that they can be better people than they are.    They choose to fight, not for Anthy and her power to change the world, but to change themselves, to break the shells they've sealed themselves in.

I agree. It may be true that the Seitokai fail to be truly revolutionary but in the last arc I don't think they are just pawns in Akio's plans. To truly defy Utena's they must be more than just puppets and Akio is probably aware of this; they must fight for themselves, to break the coffins in which they are sealed. While their motivations serve Akio's agenda they have an existence as self affirmation and growth, the very things that Akio lacks. The final seitokai reunion during Akio and Utena's duel shows that the duelists have indeed gained some kind of emotional/spiritual leverage that is the outcome of their interaction with Utena as much as it results from Akio's plotting. Ironically, it would seem that the tours de force to which Akio indirectly submitted the duelists allowed them to grow as individuals while he himself remains left behind and does not evolve. It could be that the Seitokai may burst out of Ohotori just like Utena did, the movie hints at that possibility. There is a flaw this whole argument of mine, though: those who leave Ohotori are forgotten. That happened with both Mikage and Utena, thus in the very end the Seitokai seems to be back to square one as the lessons they took from Utena disappear with her.

brian wrote:

So in their cases the experiences of being manipulated, bullied, deceived, disillusioned and tormented was a necessary part of becoming grown-ups. That's a melancholy thought and even more depressing to think that Akio can justify his callousness by saying that he did them a favor. I am sure that callous manipulators in the real world do exactly that.

Within story-logic such conclusions are quite understandable. What would Cinderella have been without her Evil Stepmother? Just some pretty face who'd marry off some farmer, be a dutiful wife and die content, but medicore. It's the ogres, evil stepmothers and knights who put the story rolling and make the hero or heroine something they'd never have been on their own.

The story-logic can't be directly applied to real life, but sometimes it works here, as well. Certainly no person who has never faced failure or unpleasant response from other people can be considered very grown up, mentally. But I also very much doubt that many callous manipulators in real life bother with such excuses - their excuse generally is, if they even have one, that if a person is dumb enough to fall for their scam, they deserve everything they get.