u-u maybe i got to watch that over to hear the voicing

i thought utena always said himemiya as showing respect cause everyone does call her anshi but without the whole familarity of calling people by their first name....o.O dont know...probably have ta look into japanese culture

Tamago wrote:

UtenaFanGirl wrote:

u-u maybe i got to watch that over to hear the voicing

i thought utena always said himemiya as showing respect cause everyone does call her anshi but without the whole familarity of calling people by their first name....o.O dont know...probably have ta look into japanese culture

If you call someone by their first name (not their family name) esspecially without a suffix of some kind (eg Anthy-san, Utena-kun, Akio-sama) and you are not a close friend or family member, it can be considered an insult.

And if I'm not mistaken then close friends call each other by their first name. Utena doesn't do that, although she and Anthy can be considered close friends.
Hehe, ironically, Anthy doesn't either, so maybe it's a protest of some sort.

Oooh, something I disagree with Gio on!

I don't think you can characterize it as a business relationship on Utena's end. Anthy's end, certainly-- she's just in the business of being the lure for another Prince, and Utena is it. Just doing her job. Utena, however, was confused by the whole thing, and probably started calling her Himemiya exclusively so that there was a certain amount of distance between them she felt she wasn't getting.

After that, I can really only speculate, but here is one explanation. It may have become a self-conscious habit, one that Utena was aware of keeping up, as opposed to one that becomes unconscious. This would explain why she dropped it at a point of stress.

This does not fit, however, with Utena's insistence on calling her Himemiya at the crucial stress point. Anothr explanation could be that the character of the Prince is calling the character of the witch by the name of 'Princess-Shrine'-- mistaking her for something holy and precious, something to be protected. This explains it symbolically, both pointing out Anthy's masquerade and eventual transformation into the person Utena believes her to be. A metamophosis of sorts.

This doesn't explain the motivation, however. The character motivation in this case could be as simple as a habit of Utena's-- just that that's what she called Anthy, so to her, that was Anthy's real name.

Yasha wrote:

Oooh, something I disagree with Gio on!

Only partially, darling.

I should have clarified, I meant that it was initiated as a business relationship on Anthy's part. Utena might have just gone with what Anthy started out of a total confusion as to what else to do. That doesn't explain how things turn out later on, though; why she doesn't switch later on.

ZSPACE wrote:

Eposide 37 Himemiya and Akio-san were riding in the car and she had the swords coming from her when the light hit her. Do you think they were always there in her since that time and no one except Akio and she could see it? ( I hope this makes sense)

I've always figured the swords come in waves, since she appears in pain when we see them and looks fine the rest of the time. But then that depends on how you define 'fine'. Her silence and vacance could be someone in excessive pain.

My guess is that it has something to do with Anthy's position as the princess but also the fact that no one can -really- access who she is until the end of the series. She's the Rose Bride, Utena's Princess, etc. but once she's able to transition out of that place, she can use her real name.

Of course, we didn't get to see any kind of epilogue, but that's my guess. xD Himemiya is just another formality between Anthy and Utena that Utena has to strip away.

I always liked that Utena referred to Anthy as Himemiya for the fact that she's, consciously or not, calling Anthy a princess. In essence by doing that she's also calling herself a prince, because of their link, which didn't start in friendship. Since the whole relationship starts with Utena protecting Anthy from Saionji, she's always been acting in the role of Anthy's prince, giving Anthy the role of Princess. Not because Anthy wants that role, but because it's required for Utena to be the princely figure she wishes to become. Which fits nicely with the eventual realization Utena has, that she's been facing everything at Ohtori as a challenge to her princely morals, instead of genuinely trying to do what's best for Anthy.

The duel against Wakaba is interesting for a lot of reasons and definitely my favourite of the Black Rose arc. (Although I never caught Utena using Anthy's name.) It's the one time Utena doesn't use a sword at all, although before it even starts Anthy pleads with Utena to draw it out. To fit that in with character reasoning, it's the only time Utena doesn't want to duel in order to protect Anthy. (Even if she says otherwise in her rematch with Saionji.) So in a way, she could be reflexively calling her Anthy because she doesn't want to acknowlege her own princely duties.

Character-wise, I think it was partially because of Utena's attempts at male behavior, calling friends by their surnames instead of their given names. She does this with Saionji and Juri, giving Juri the respectful suffix 'sempai'. However, she calls Wakaba by her given name, and she calls Miki by his given name. So, presumably, she's giving herself some distance from Himemiya, possibly because of the strangeness in their relationship, and also because of subconscious discomfort for romantic and sexual feelings towards her. Repeated use of that name makes it seem more like her name than 'Anthy' is, the same way nicknames work. I remember only one time that she called her Anthy, and that was when she was fighting Wakaba in the Black Rose Saga. "Anthy...I can't." in response to Anthy telling her to use the sword. 

Symbolism-wise, I think there's a lot of credit to the thought of the Prince calling her 'Princess' all throughout the show.

I suspect that, like her constant impalement by the swords, Anthy's been so accustomed to that sort of abuse and emotional maiming that she's become completely closed-off to the effects of it. She's at a psychological cold point, where her own feelings are so dulled and detached that they must seem nonexistant. I see her as accepting rape, sexual abuse, emotional and verbal abuse, and physical pain as  normal occurences: something she takes no pleasure from, but undergoes anyway. Pleasure would be an alien concept to her now, and anything she feels I suspect would be in small degrees. This gives her moments of true, intense emotion even more impact: the single tear she sheds during Utena's second duel with Touga, and her guilt-inspired attempted suicide near the end of the series. It's hard to even consider the damage at that magnitude.

Dani wrote:

Ivy-chan wrote:

I suspect that, like her constant impalement by the swords, Anthy's been so accustomed to that sort of abuse and emotional maiming that she's become completely closed-off to the effects of it. She's at a psychological cold point, where her own feelings are so dulled and detached that they must seem nonexistant. I see her as accepting rape, sexual abuse, emotional and verbal abuse, and physical pain as  normal occurences: something she takes no pleasure from, but undergoes anyway. Pleasure would be an alien concept to her now, and anything she feels I suspect would be in small degrees. This gives her moments of true, intense emotion even more impact: the single tear she sheds during Utena's second duel with Touga, and her guilt-inspired attempted suicide near the end of the series. It's hard to even consider the damage at that magnitude.

Great analysis of Anthy, I totally agree. A friend asked me about SKU and why it's so good and the (very) short answer I gave was this: Because characters like Anthy aren't supposed to "win". The witch is the villain of the story or the emotionally damaged one is held up as the example of what not to do so that the hero can see that those choices are wrong and go on to make the right ones. But in SKU, Anthy overcomes all that and gets to win, and (presumably) she gets the girl and the hero. That's certainly turning fairy tales on their heads.

Seconded. Anthy's transformation was unique in so many ways-- and I'm sure it didn't hurt that I related to a lot of her issues. xD But it gives the end such a hopeful feel when she leaves, even if we don't get any answers. . .if Anthy can survive, then there's hope for the rest of the world, too.

ZSPACE wrote:

Episode 38 when Utena duels Akio; after the castle starts to crumble. What is going on in her mind? Do you think it took her a lot of self convincing to stab Utena in the back? I was like OH MY GOD! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!! SHE HAS DONE SO MUCH FOR YOU? The sun in the daytime the moon at night. I will take the form of the suspended clock ( is this Anthy).  As the song goes 'BOON BOON KINKOKAN'. THE ETERNAL CITY AND THE MYSTERY OF THE CLOCK. What is the mystery what is the secret?

Yeah, I know, it's such a blow your mind moment. You think you know how deep down Anthy's suffering is, especially after the attempted suicide, but you don't know how deep it is until she does that. The first time I saw it, I stood up and yelled at my TV. I mean, she's faced with salvation and she completely rejects it. And yet you know she loves Utena, you know it. WTF.

And, from a different point of view, if you are the SKU writers (Ikuhara and Be-Papas), you have to have Utena and Anthy and Akio all at cross purposes at the end of the show. Any two against one is too much power on one side. But a three sided conflict on an epic scale with the "world" hanging in the balance is good storytelling to me.

satyreyes wrote:

She loves Akio; everything she has done, even imprisoning him, she has done for love of him.  She probably even blames herself for what he has become.  There's no way she could betray him; in that sense, she really is a puppet.  What she is not is an emotionless puppet.  We see shortly before the final duel that Anthy would rather kill herself than Utena... but Akio must always come first.

I suspect that Anthy's 'love' for Akio is little more than an echoed remnant of her love for Dios. I think her puppet status is due to her incomplete 'soul', a piece of which was 'buried' inside the coffin inside the Rose Seal, a side-effect being that her mind and will isn't exactly completely autonomous.

(It's times like this when I believe that while I might have the mental equivient of a Pentium® 3 brain but with a clock speed of only about 120MHz)

Ivy-chan wrote:

This gives her moments of true, intense emotion even more impact: the single tear she sheds during Utena's second duel with Touga, and her guilt-inspired attempted suicide near the end of the series.

100% agreement, just throwing in her genuine laugh in episode 25. That's a big one.

Dani wrote:

And, from a different point of view, if you are the SKU writers (Ikuhara and Be-Papas), you have to have Utena and Anthy and Akio all at cross purposes at the end of the show. Any two against one is too much power on one side. But a three sided conflict on an epic scale with the "world" hanging in the balance is good storytelling to me.

Damn right it is! For a three-sided conflict that whole thing is a massive trainwreck of intentions and interests. Akio's in it for himself. Utena's in for Anthy, but also to justify herself. Anthy's in it for Utena, then for Akio, then she doesn't know what the crap, then finally she's in it for herself. Or something. There's so much going on there that my head breaks.

Tamago wrote:

(It's times like this when I believe that while I might have the mental equivient of a Pentium® 3 brain but with a clock speed of only about 120MHz)

I got that.