To be honest, I mostly agree, although I tend to take his moral beginnings with a grain of salt. It's a fair bet that Touga wouldn't stick his neck out that way for someone other than his ideal... and I tend to think that that's how Touga sees Utena, not as a living, breathing person, but as the ideal.

Actually, I tend to think that should they somehow have gotten into a relationship, he'd get tired of her more reserved attitude in bed (what? Like he's not gonna try! And Utena's never really going to give up that bit of a blush over sex, she's too innocent) and annoyed that she doesn't have pretty manners and immaculate fashion sense.

The ideal of her doesn't have those flaws. The ideal of Utena is pure, strong, noble, dedicated, and something that anyone could fall in love with... but in practice, she is a bit of an airhead. And heaven help her if she forgets to take the football cleats off when walking across the Turkish carpets. Touga would go nuts within a month.

In short, I don't think it's the One True Love in his life, but I don't quite think it's just him learning how to care for people either. I've always accepted without thinking about it that he knows Akio has something nasty planned for the Champion; I'll have to figure out what gave me that impression. Regardless, Touga strikes me as the kind of person who has a very high regard for his own skin; I really don't think he'd offer to have it punctured on behalf of someone he cared about unless that someone represented an ideal he wanted for himself.

This thread is Yasha-bait. I'll shut up now and let the rest of you talk.

satyreyes wrote:

sexecution

I'm stealing this.

Yasha wrote:

And heaven help her if she forgets to take the football cleats off when walking across the Turkish carpets. Touga would go nuts within a month.

So what you're saying is Utena's too butch for a gal like Touga.

(Warning, Yasha and I tend to pretty much agree. It's creepy.)

I think Touga's final duel was too little, too late. More of a good beginning than anything else, because for most of the series, she's a possession to him. Especially early on. She's the one thing in the store he can't afford. The cookies on the table that are absolutely off limits. Then she becomes something to conquer and make his own. And by then, not only is she something to conquer, she's something different. She's noble, and just, and independent. She doesn't need him. At that point, I think his attraction to her must have darkened a little, deep down. After all, the audacity.

Any change in this view of things probably lined up with him eventually realizing Utena was not going to be his. Once he really accepted that, there was just a sliver of room in his mentality to allow for her to be something better than a trophy.

Still, he never does see her as a person, and as an ideal, she's not even his ideal. I agree with Yasha there, I think after a couple weeks of seriously trying to deal with Utena he'd find absolutely no common ground to build a relationship on.

As to whether he's Machiavellian, I don't know. It's a book he no doubt is very familiar with, although he obviously thinks it's better to be loved. (Of course, Machiavelli didn't look quite like Touga does, so feared was probably a more practical option for him.) As for 'ends justifies the means', absolutely that's Touga. Especially since the ends in question are always his own. And when his own sweet ass turns out to be the means? Well there you go. I would say he's the kind of man that would go to disturbing lengths to get what he wants, although I suspect he'd drawn the line at looking like a fool. Had Akio told him to wear a bunny suit while they had sex, I don't think it would flown.

Giovanna wrote:

Had Akio told him to wear a bunny suit while they had sex, I don't think it would flown.

I don't know about anyone else here but damn! I would love it if someone drew up a fanart sexscene with Akio with Touga in a bunnysuit but then again, I am a twisted little spunkmoney (No not Chu-Chu even if you could be forgiven for believing that )

satyreyes wrote:

Spinoff from the "Touga and Akio sitting in a tree" thread.

Touga is fairly clearly a power-mad Machiavelli for most of the series, and a cynical one at that.  He displays this in a hundred ways, but the sexy ones are the most interesting.  We have him and the Chairman in bed throughout the series.  We have his sexecution of Utena at the end of season one.  We even see him establishing sexual tension, if not actual sex, with Miki and Saionji.  And Nanami... god.  But people seem to typecast Touga too early and interpret everything he does as a power play.  My question -- or my argument, really -- is that he largely abandons the power game and pursues redemption late in the series. 

The thing is, I think Touga is in love with Utena... or at least very confused about his feelings for her.  Not at first, obviously, but after she beats him in Soi his attitude and body language become subtly different when he spends time with her.  To cite a dramatic example, he is pissed off when Akio shows up during their horseback ride.  And to me, the nighttime date Touga and Utena share at the pinnacle of the dueling arena feels like the sincerest thing Touga has done all series... even if he has spent too much of his life being Don Juan to know how to talk to women he actually likes.

So why duel her, you ask?  I reply that Touga's third duel is the most misunderstood duel of the series.  Touga has always been sleeping wiith Akio, trying vainly to manipulate him, but lately Akio has been letting his guard down and has let a little information leak to Touga.  We see the two of them talking a lot about revolution, and through these chats Touga has begun to understand, in a very broad sense, what Akio means by world revolution.  Most importantly, there is no way he's spent all this time talking about revolution with Akio and not caught the snigger in Akio's voice when he talks about the Champion Duelist.  By the time of his duel, Touga has put two and two together and deduced that when the apocalypse comes, the Champion Duelist is in for a very nasty surprise.

If Touga were the self-serving egotist most fans make of him, he would never try to take the Bride from Utena at this juncture.  He's a curious guy -- knowledge is power, after all -- but he's not masochistic.  He doesn't want to get speared by Akio's trap.  The only reason he would duel is if he wanted to make sure that Utena didn't get speared by the trap even more than he wanted to avoid it himself.  To this end, he does everything he can to make Utena willing to fight him -- pisses her off, promises the Seitokai will never challenge her for the Bride again, etc.  And mid-battle he utters the tell-all quote: "Tenjou, ore ga omae wo mamotteiru."  "Tenjou -- I am protecting you."  And again after the duel: "You've now become the one who will revolutionize the world.  But you mustn't open your heart to the End of the World, or to the Rose Bride.  That's the last thing I can say."

Of course, due to a combination of wholly justified mistrust of Touga and her usual oblivion, Utena doesn't listen.

Touga is trying to protect Utena.  He isn't yet a prince -- he's been a misogynist for too long, and doesn't have the respect for Utena's independence that Utena has for Anthy's -- but he has come very close.  So close that he's willing to sacrifice himself for her.

Thoughts?

Okay, there are some parts that i agree with ,but not MANY! To me the only reason why Touga is probably looking for redemption is that the people he was trying to manipulate grew up and are hanging around with Akio ( who is the second God of manipulation- Anthy is the first). By his third duel, Utena would have won dispite anything he could said ( after she won Anthy back from him). Plus, in that duel, it looks like Anthy was making sure Utena won. Touga started off power mad and ended up a bitch boy.

satyreyes wrote:

azuresquirrel wrote:

But he does not recognize that Utena is not his One True Love, and that is where he fails in his last duel. Yes, he dueled for noble intentions at last. He was willing to sacrifice himself to save Utena. But he still misunderstands her. He thinks that the only way he can help her is to be her Prince and to save his dear Princess. I don't fault him for this; he's spent so much time playing the Prince role to seduce women that he thinks he can use it for noble means as well. He doesn't see how important it is to Utena for herself to be a Prince, especially Anthy's Prince. That is why his love is not that of the pure soulmate, though he thinks it is. To the end, he never fully understands Utena in his misogynistic ways. I thinkt hat after the series there is hope for him to break out of that mold and possibly become a True Prince, but even then he's never going to have the Princess that he wanted in Utena.

Great!  This is an important point to emphasize.  Touga still hasn't broken out of his misogynist "girls cannot take care of themselves" way of thinking, even with respect to Utena.  And he doesn't understand her as an individual.  Then again, I think he realizes he doesn't understand her; he can't help but realize, after the first season.  He views her with awe and yearning, but not understanding, and I wouldn't go so far as to say he thinks they're true soulmates (though I'm sure he fantasizes about it... constantly).  And among the things he can't understand about her is that a girl can be a prince; to him, she must be a princess, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.  So he goes and protects her.  He does have to break out of his old way of thinking before he can be a prince, but he has gotten pretty close -- probably as close as Miki has, and closer than Saionji or Juri.  (Nanami is beneath mention, except maybe parenthetically.)  I think it's possible that of all the characters, he grows more over the course of the series than anyone except Anthy.

Giovanna wrote:

satyreyes wrote:

sexecution

I'm stealing this.

You can steal it, but you're stealing from a thief    There is some song called Sexecutioner that I heard about half of once, but the name stuck with me.

I will steal it before you will!

Sorry for bringing this back from the low end of the second page, but I missed this topic the first time around.

Giovanna wrote:

That's the strange thing about SKU, none of the characters, save Anthy, are completely resolved in the end. They're happy because you see them starting down a healthier road, but Touga has a lot of work to do, just as Saionji, Juri, and Miki do. That said, maybe Touga has a little longer a road than most of the characters, because his problems are so thoroughly internal. Juri and Miki suffer in response to something they see as an outside influence; naturally that they suffer shows there's something wrong inside, but for them, getting away from the bad influence was a huge step. Touga doesn't have that (no, Akio doesn't count), and Saionji chose to wait it out with Touga, though getting away from him might have accelerated his progress, had Touga not already grown up a lot.

I think even long after the series, Touga's going be a ruthless womanizer. Because at best, he's still going to be a horrible cynic, and most women will fit very comfortably in the narrow view he has of them. Also, a gorgeous man with a talented tongue* is never going to grow out of sleeping with women, sometimes two and three at a time.

*I swear to god I did not mean for that to suggest anything but that he was a smooth talker. I swear. Although I doubt there's any question of that, either.

I may (ok, almost definitely) be being overly optimistic, but I'd like to think Touga's views of women would have changed a fair bit thanks to Utena. As has been said, I don't think Utena would have been a good match for him romantically, but as being the first time Touga's loved and lost it's possible he'll reevaluate his romantic life, or lack thereof. Touga is used to having girls (or guys) come to him, he has a real 'been there, done that' attitude to the whole thing. The only reason he has any interest in Utena is because she beats Saionji. It's possible, even at Ohtori, that there are some girls that don't fall all over themselves in Touga's pressence. And he's never given them a second, or even a first, thought. But after his failure to obtain Utena he could very well start seeking out a partner, instead of taking whoever gave him the first love letter of the day.

Then again, if he completely forgets Utena after the series ends he's screwed.

Giovanna wrote:

That's the strange thing about SKU, none of the characters, save Anthy, are completely resolved in the end. They're happy because you see them starting down a healthier road, but Touga has a lot of work to do, just as Saionji, Juri, and Miki do. That said, maybe Touga has a little longer a road than most of the characters, because his problems are so thoroughly internal. Juri and Miki suffer in response to something they see as an outside influence; naturally that they suffer shows there's something wrong inside, but for them, getting away from the bad influence was a huge step. Touga doesn't have that (no, Akio doesn't count), and Saionji chose to wait it out with Touga, though getting away from him might have accelerated his progress, had Touga not already grown up a lot.

I was watching the end of SKU again this past weekend and I was thinking about this aspect of the story. I wondered if Touga and Saionji were a bit FARTHER along in their "becoming adults" arc than the other characters just because in Episode 37, Utena has a resolution scene (badminton) with Miki, Juri and Nanami early in the show while she's trying to decide what to do with Anthy. But she has her resolution scene with Touga and Saionji after she's made up her mind as she's going to meet Anthy on the way to the dueling arena. And so symbolically, since Touga and Saionji were physically farther down Utena's path, they seem closer than the others to getting there as well. I saw them really resolving their own relationship and figuring out who they want to be. It just seemed interesting the grouping of those final scenes with those characters since those scenes are Utena's last chance to influence them by her example.

Great postings, especially the first one from satyreyes.

Touga is one of several apprentice-Akios. Ohtori is really a series of circles with Akio in the center. Akio has persuaded several different people including Touga that they stand in the innermost circle with him.  In different ways Anthy, Mikage, Ruka, and especially Touga come to realize that they are outsiders after all.

Touga's attitude towards Utena resembles Ruka's attitude towrd Juri and Juri's attitude toward Shiori: love without real respect and an arrogant possessive belief that manipulating her is for her own good and not being able to see his own -- well not hypocrisy perhaps, actual hyprocrisy would require more self-awareness -- brand of selfish but innocent cruelty.

Blargh, more thread necro.

Don't feel too bad.

I'm pretty sure I remember having read this thread once upon a time, but I've totally forgotten about it since. It kind of has me wanting to rewatch the show a bit with a new look. Which is great, since I've been looking for something to do the next day or two before I head out on a trip. I have all these shows and films I like sitting around on dvd/blu ray, but I rarely end up watching any more than three times or so. It's nice when you read something and are like "hey, I don't remember looking at it that way, I should turn this on again and see what I think now."

It's been awhile since I've watched the series as a whole, but I think the OP is fairly on point as best I remember. None of the characters in this show are really that flat or one dimensional ether, despite frequently appearing very much that way at first glance. Touga is definitely someone who can be pegged in a poor light at first glance (what was his first line... he's like watching the first dual with binoculars and says "you've lit the fire to my heart... baby"). That's actually the line that cracked me up and made me think this show was bad enough to be funny, getting me to end up buying it for lulz (after which my opinion of the show pulled something of a 180). Utena's easy to typecast at first too, although in a much more positive light. But no one really ends up that way once they've been given a chance to take some actions and develop over the 3 arcs.


You're re-writing the Prince as Akio/Touga idea sounds fun, if it was done well (I'd prefer Akio, but hey, what does my vote count for). Also sounds like a pretty tough/time consuming project to get done well, but I'd definitely check it out at least.

Yasha wrote:

I wanted to point out, as a historical note, that to begin with most fans saw Touga as THE GOOD GUY.

Most fans must have only remembered like the last 4 eps of the TV plus that Movie.

Yasha wrote:

I wanted to point out, as a historical note, that to begin with most fans saw Touga as THE GOOD GUY.

Well, sounds like the Utena fandom was interesting back in the day. I've been watching the show with my eleven-year-old sister (I know, but she was really bored and it seemed like a better alternative than showing her Evangelion yet. ) and at the end of the Student Council Saga she didn't seem to have any trouble understanding that Touga was kind of a jerk. Despite him having the prettiest hair (besides Utena).

Anyway, I do like a good redemption story, so I like to think that he does care for Utena by the end. It is interesting how he treats her more "princely" by the end too, whether that was intentional or not... Of course, he still hasn't learned respect yet.

Interesting, zevrem!  So you think Touga doesn't want power in and of itself; he just wants other things, mostly security, and power is a means of getting that.  Is that right?  That's an interpretation of him that resonates with me, but I'm curious: if he doesn't want power in and of itself, why does he make a big deal about being Student Council President and being better than Saionji at everything and so on?