She does realize that the show is set in Japan, right?

Yeah, idk either.  Well anyway, I got her to watch by telling her that Utena's attempts to "save" her and play prince aren't really shown in an entirely positive light.  It's shown as her pushing what she wants on Anthy while she's trying to act like a prince.  She seemed to feel better about it after I told her that.

They show that it's about greed and power and not about "morals."

As for why the Wonder Twins were Indian, I have an idea. Basically, India was the crown jewel of European imperialism. It was really the perfect foreign colony. It was gigantic, meaning there was plenty of labor and resources to exploit. Its population was both fairly disciplined, unlike Africa, and docile, unlike China. It had tons of spices and silks and gold to ply the upper and upper middle class with, and as an added bonus, there were all kinds of silly native rituals and abuses that the missionaries and Moral Guardians could sneer at.

It's about how silly it is for Western Civilization to save the developing world from problems caused by Western Civilization. It's also, I guess, about the change in the West's attitude towards the Third World, from one of brutish exploitation (Saionji) to one of "Noble Savage"-style romanticism (Miki) to using it as a stage for proxy wars (Juri) to a means of advancing one's political aims by showing how noble you are, a la Bono/post-Cold War presidents (Touga), and finally, to one of simple-minded "egalitarian" idealism (Utena).

Last edited by zevrem (04-15-2013 07:52:52 PM)

This is all true, Akio and Anthy certainly don't behave like colonial subjects.

I was thinking on how Akio and Anthy and Utena might have been extracted from a manga called Battle Angel Alita. The main character Alita is a cyborg girl who's really good at fighting and rushes headlong into every fight that presents itself to her, making her an obvious analogue for Utena. At one point, she joins a tournament for a sci-fi cyborg game called "Motorball."

The game has a champion that Alita fights named Jashugan who's very Indian looking



and he has a hot sister named Shumira whom he's very protective of.



Also, the centerpiece of the entire series is an evil floating city that is a remnant of a fallen world empire.





Also, at one point, there's a part where one of the side characters complains to his girlfriend that he feels like a loser, and she tells him that nobody wins in the Scrapyard. This, I think, is the best way to describe the Rose Bride duels.

And btw, Battle Angel Alita is probably the best manga ever, so read it.

Last edited by zevrem (04-16-2013 10:09:44 AM)

The OVA only covers volumes 1 and 2, the Wonder Twins show up in volumes 3 and 4, and the "Nobody wins" quote shows up in volume 5.

But doesn't Ikuhara explicitly refer to them as 'Indian' in some interview? Like, "I made them Indian because of Saito's manga," or something like that.

I interpreted your post as "Their ethnicity is entirely symbolic of their separation from the rest of the cast; they're not actually meant to belong to any specific dark-skinned group." Is that not what you meant?

The one major reference to Indian culture I see is the Rose Bride's dress. In India most wedding dresses are red, at least historically. I acknowledge that it doesn't matter one way or another, all we're really supposed to gather is they're foriegn, different from everyone else. I do buy that they're from Colonized India, mostly because everyone else in the mob sequence of episode 34 wasn't dark skinned like Anthy or Dios, and it reinforces the idea that Dios was a slave to the village, eventually working so hard to save every "princess" that he exhausts himself nearly to death. It also explains why we don't see them have a lot of Indian social cues besides the bindi or Rose Bride outfit. But I know that's mostly Wild Mass Guessing and isn't necessarily the intent or needed to understand Double A.

Regardless, calling Utena racist for pointedly putting the Dark Skinned Girl in the position of metaphorical slavery, which is made to make us feel uncomfortable in the first place, then eventually turning the whole idea of her being helpless and needing to be saved on it's head, is kind of like saying Utena is sexist for all of the bullshit that Our Heroine gets for her choice to defy the roles and being patronized for wanting to be a prince. It misses the point. Even at first view, we're obviously supposed to feel very unsettled by the setup of the duels and Anthy's position, that's the authorial intent. The White Savior thing isn't addressed right off the bat, but I'm pretty sure we were led to believe Anthy wasn't helpless and knew a lot more than she was letting on right from the get go.

Yasha wrote:

BlackBeforeRed wrote:

[...] but I'm pretty sure we were led to believe Anthy wasn't helpless and knew a lot more than she was letting on right from the get go.

I don't know anything about Colonized India, so I'm gonna leave that part alone, but we get our first evidence of Anthy's true nature in the first episode-- when Anthy takes such pleasure in reminding Saionji that he's no longer the Engaged. That "Saionji...sempai" is just creepy

I didn't find it creepy first time watching the show, but it did preemptively show that she was more than just a mindless doll.

BlackBeforeRed wrote:

I couldn't remember if her "Saionji sempai" line was in ep 1 or 2

That was in the first episode, so anyone actually thinking she's a mindless doll after that can't have been paying much attention to her (which I'm sure was just according to plan, from her perspective ).

But then, I think even the fact that she said "good luck" to Utena (rather than Saionji) at the start of the duel showed that.

I don't tumblr, so I never saw the rant, but a lot of people used to say the same things back in the day. They're wrong; that's pretty much all there is to it.

As far as racist themes, it's sort of funny that people can see it that way when, after watching the series and engaging brain while doing so (unlike the rant referenced above), the power is in the hands of the hands of the dark-skinned ones, and it's a freak accident that one of the white skinned ones managed to convince one of the dark skinned ones that she was being self-destructive and she should maybe stop-- and then it's the dark-skinned one's choice to do so, which she makes after a while of thinking it over. I would figure a more overt approach if there was meant to be a racial element in the show.

Yasha wrote:

I don't tumblr, so I never saw the rant, but a lot of people used to say the same things back in the day. They're wrong; that's pretty much all there is to it.

As far as racist themes, it's sort of funny that people can see it that way when, after watching the series and engaging brain while doing so (unlike the rant referenced above), the power is in the hands of the hands of the dark-skinned ones, and it's a freak accident that one of the white skinned ones managed to convince one of the dark skinned ones that she was being self-destructive and she should maybe stop-- and then it's the dark-skinned one's choice to do so, which she makes after a while of thinking it over. I would figure a more overt approach if there was meant to be a racial element in the show.

This is pretty much how I feel about the races in the show. The REAL power is basically in Anthy's hands. Maybe you could tell your friend that there is much more to Anthy than you see at first glance? That the whole show is about subverting and twisting fairytales? I mean Utena inspires Anthy to break free of the cycle, but Anthy herself is the one to break free of the actual violence. No one swoops in on a white horse to save her. I also saw the ending as Anthy going to save/rescue Utena from wherever she is now. Utena basically said in the end that she was only ever really happy with Anthy, so this is another way that Anthy saved Utena.

Another point that you could mention is that Anthy literally back stabs Utena. I read this as her trying to save Utena from the swords of hate. One sword is better than millions, right? Maybe you could get her to watch the movie first? Then she'd get the idea that nothing is going to happen the way she thinks it will? Good luck.