I still say that a big part of Anthy's motivation is to see if Utena will catch her. According to Dios, who I think is a fairly trustworthy source (maaaaybe?), what Anthy truly needs is a Prince she can believe in. But Anthy is fucked up, and she knows that. So why would any true Prince save her? She's the Witch, after all, the monster that the Prince should be fighting against. I think it's safe to say that Anthy doesn't like herself very much, so she has a hard time trusting Utena, who seems to have no idea what she's doing or what she's talking about. To Anthy, it would probably appear (and correctly for the most part), that Utena was standing up for a shadow, a pretend-Anthy in Utena's own head, not the real, complicated Anthy we all know and love. But towards the end, she starts to actually buy that Utena could love and protect her, even knowing what she knows. And that more than anything else is probably what pushes her over the edge. OK, so I just totally changed my mind about why she jumped as I was writing this.

Seems to me now that she jumped out of pure despair, as an act of violence against herself, the hated Witch. It may be the only thing we see her do in the entire show without an ulterior motive. Well, I don't mean without really, just that the surface motive may be the strongest one, which is pretty rare for Anthy. Is it possible that Anthy was genuinely surprised when Utena caught her?

I really agree with Satyreyes here.  While I don't think we can know precisely what would have been the result of a successful jump, I don't think Anthy would manipulate that way, because she remains functional through all these manipulations and charades by ignoring her real feelings of misery.  That pain is too powerful to be wielded the way she'd wield the customer-service false smile she operates with every day.  Therefore, such a dramatic show of pain has to be real.

I'm going to respectfully disagree with satyreyes and interpret it from a more pessimistic standpoint. The way I look at it, everything that Anthy says and does is a calculated move towards one ultimate purpose, from the very beginning of the series until Utena opens her coffin in the last episode. I'm pretty certain Anthy can't die and I'm pretty certain she knows it, so attempting "suicide" here can't even be considered a cry for help much less an attempt to end her own suffering. She knew Utena would catch her, despite the conflict and betrayal she was feeling. Anthy probably knows Utena better than she knows herself.

At that point Utena was completely fed up with the duels and everything, so Anthy does what she always does and plays with her emotions and ideals. Utena wants to be a prince who saves people, so Anthy puts herself in danger; nothing new there. Utena values values sincerity and compassion, so Anthy "comes clean" and admits how she supposedly really feels (after many nights of buidling up to it with, "Miss Utena, the truth is I..."). Lo and behold, it's super effective, and Utena plays one more round of the game.

I'm not saying that the Rose Bride is a single-minded automaton with no heart or soul, though that argument can defintiely be made. Maybe she's just forgotten who and what she is like Giovanna said. But until the moment she's freed, Anthy consistently demonstrates one thing, and that's her devotion to Akio. I just think everything makes more sense (and is generally creepier) if she's doing it all for him.

OnionPrince wrote:

At that point Utena was completely fed up with the duels and everything, so Anthy does what she always does and plays with her emotions and ideals. Utena wants to be a prince who saves people, so Anthy puts herself in danger; nothing new there. Utena values values sincerity and compassion, so Anthy "comes clean" and admits how she supposedly really feels (after many nights of buidling up to it with, "Miss Utena, the truth is I..."). Lo and behold, it's super effective, and Utena plays one more round of the game.

I have to disagree with this. By this point (well more like since episode 33), Utena has been doubting herself and her aspiration to become a prince. This has been going on throughout the story arc, including Utena changing her clothes (when she goes on a date with Akio; compare it to her wearing the girl's uniform in episode 12), thinking that the ring she got from the prince didn't suit her etc. Notice how she gives Akio more attention than to Anthy and by doing that she puts herself in the role of a girl in love and not that of the prince that she had been aspiring to become. Also note that Anthy is torn about who is playing her prince: on one hand there is Akio who she has as her own (since there is nothing to tear them apart, until this is what Anthy does in the end on her own) and on the  other hand there is Utena who she can't have because Utena has fallen for Akio (and because she's a girl, as Anthy put it herself later on. Though this didn't matter in the end either.). The following scene after what happens on the roof (or wherever that was), is where Utena is wearing her ring again and goes to the duelling arena and as Touga points out, for Anthy's sake. Anthy offers her the letter and says it's still possible to turn back but Utena refuses because she has chosen a role to play (a friend/prince). The very first scene of this episode was of little Utena saying she would become a prince, and the following scene shows Utena taking off her ring - by the end, things have come in full circle.

TL;DR Point being, I think we are shown tiny fragments of Anthy's true self during the series (most notably ep 12 duel, ep 25 duel, this scene in ep 37 being the most significant up to this point of the series) which is why I believe Anthy wasn't manipulating Utena in that scene.

PS. Also note that we are shown the full flashback of that scene in the penultimate episode and this is what triggers Utena to do something about Anthy's situation - she knows that Anthy is not merely the Rose Bride and that she doesn't have to suffer for all eternity.

Stormcrow wrote:

In your interpretation...if Akio and Anthy basically have one driving will, Akio's...then is Akio surprised at the end when she leaves? How would he be surprised if he's been controlling everything all along?

I think Akio would be all the more surprised that Anthy left him if she had been so absolutely devoted to him until then. Akio had assumed that Anthy was still in her coffin and she was still going to help further his ultimately futile quest, because she'd never given him a reason to expect otherwise before.

I'm not saying that their wills are as one; Anthy made her bed (coffin?) and she made it a point to lie in it. There are no doubt at least a few instances where Anthy's true self comes through, and it seems like Anthy fenuinely likes Utena sometimes, but I don't think she ever let such feelings get in the way of Akio's game. Not until the very end, of course.

I think she would liquidly reform like the Terminator.

Some fun extra points:
Just because Anthy can't "be murdered" doesn't mean she can't kill herself. 2 dif things in SKU logic.
Also she doesn't have to be aiming for the end result of "dying", to feel the need and engage in the cathartic act of leaping off a tall building.
Suicide for suicide's sake perchance? (the desire to escape? self-punishment? wanted to fly like Mike?)

It's also possible that, while Anthy wouldn't really die from a successful suicide attempt, she might be out of commission for a while, leading the current round of duels might still be declared a mistrial of sorts.  Ohtori Academy may mess with people's memories, but I don't know if this could happen with such a fine granularity as to erase only the memory of her suicide while keeping the rest of Utena's mental state roughly the same, and on the other hand it seems like direct evidence of the supernatural outside of the dueling arena (or things closely related to dueling, like Nemuro Memorial Hall) would... break some key illusion that makes the whole thing run smoothly, perhaps?

Anthiena wrote: I subscribe to the Personal cannon bit- suicide as a reset button. I think she had done it before, too.

Ooh I'd never thought of this being part of Anthy's personal canon behavior...but I like it. I think it's her!
I think I might try and work that into a fanfic...

Stormcrow wrote:

Please include the will of the universe rolling past and apologizing whenever Anthy has to be resurrected...

...aaah, the crazy crossover thoughts, they burn.  Chu-Chu is not emergency rations!

I don't know if anyone else will agree with me on this, but this has always been my impression:

Anthy has a main body, and also one (or even more!) moving around in the "real world".
The real body of Anthy is locked up in a coffin. The body that we see through out most of the show is just one of many. If that body would die, a new one would spawn.
Had Anthy jumped off that building, that body would have died but a new one would appear shortly afterwards. I believe the same goes for each time she's stabbed by the million swords of hatred. They destroy and kill that body, but a new one will appear.
The reason why I think Anthy might even be able to have more than one body present at the same time is mainly because of this scene: http://ohtori.nu/galerie/d/10770-2/Series_ep26_093.jpg