dlaire wrote:

I think that Anthy is more intelligent than Akio, she really wants to be a Utena's friend and she plays with Akio, but she feels too involved in this story to left him. It wasn't accident that Utena catched them while they were having sex, she wanted her to drop this romance with Akio. Maybe she wanted to be a sexual victim in her eyes? Maybe make her envious?

Hey!

Ahem. I try to avoid calling either of them intelligent or not, though they plainly are, because I suspect given a few hundred years, one can  learn to fake it. I actually wonder at times if Anthy's occasional stupidity isn't, if not genuine, inspired by reality. Her sucking at math and inability to cook, I mean. I doubt she really sucks that much at math or that much at cooking, but it doesn't necessarily go as given she'd have either skill, especially the former. I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in their relationship is a false veneer of willful ignorance on her part. After all, Akio and Anthy come from prince and princess territory; though neither of them are that, they are superficially faking it, and it's not the place of princess to be intelligent. She's just a trophy. At the same time, it is the place of a prince to be intelligent. Akio certainly never fakes an inability to do something. Of course for all his formal education about stars and flowers, he's missing all the things that make a fool wiser.

As for being caught, you know I never really figured out who decided that was going to happen. Akio and Anthy both had their reasons by then. But they're also the type to both move on those reasons and ignore that the other did the same. Perhaps they both meant to be caught and pretended the other didn't.

But Utena doesn't suck at math.  Utena is fairly good at math.  That's shown through the way that Wakaba is surprised to see Utena's poor score and Utena's quick grasp of what Miki shows her.

Her poor math score is portrayed as something out of character for her.

This also reinforces their roles.  Utena is good at math because that's a traditionally "boyish" subject ("boys are better at sports,  math, and science").  Anthy isn't cuz she's a feminine girl.  I see her poor luck at cooking as being along the same lines as the Princess and the Pea.  But that doesn't mean much about what Anthy's actually capable of.  She might be as much of a genius as Miki.

It's interesting that no one mentions whether any of the characters do well in Japanese, writing, etc.

SleepDebtFairy wrote:

Anthy being smarter than she looks and Akio being dumber than he looks? That sounds interesting. Akio is the man, so it's expected of him to be intelligent and intimidating, and he shows off his knowledge quite a lot. Although, in all aspects he does appear to be smart, just.. cynical, but foolish? I don't know.

I think it ends up the old smart, intelligent, or wise thing. (And just like smart, pretty, and sane, you only get to pick two.) Akio and Anthy both are intelligent. I would say Akio is smart where Anthy really isn't, though she no doubt fakes much of that. However, Anthy with her blinders (and there were many) removed has a capacity for wisdom that Akio lacks to the point where it's crippling. Utena is wise (The Fool, as it were) and given her ability to absorb the material in her math class she's smart, but she's not especially intelligent. If you want to go with the whole children and adults theme, these all fit. Utena's skill set here reflects that of a child; children can absorb information quickly, and have a way with wisdom that often outdoes older folks around them, but intelligence, or the trappings of it, haven't developed yet, though the potential may or may not be there. Akio as an adult has shaped that potential into intelligence, and had the time to absorb a great deal of material for the smarts, but in his cynical, selfish state, he's not capable of true wisdom. Like most children, Utena mistakes Akio's intelligence and smarts for wisdom, when it's actually her that injects the wisdom into what he says. As for Anthy, she's almost the somewhere inbetween. She's Utena edging in Akio's direction, but the series is all about how she turns from that path. Though it's not really dug into in these terms, we know Anthy is mentally far more 'adult' than Utena, but she bounces back from the threat of it costing her wisdom. At the end of the series, Anthy is capable of all three in equal measure, which is not something you see often at all.

dlaire wrote:

Maybe everyday she gives everybody new blank page, but it's quite strange for me.

That's interesting. It's not a quality that anyone else has much of and it may be part of why both Anthy and Akio are so intrigued and confounded by her.

Smarts is acquired knowledge. You know how to do complicated equations and you know the dates of Napoleon's major battles. Intelligence is the capacity to process information in a meaningful way. You can use a those equations to conceptualize what might happen in a black hole, and you use information about Napoleonic history to analyze the present. Wisdom is the hardest to define. You could call it life intelligence or common sense or emotional smarts. The three can be completely mutually exclusive. A person can be smart but not intelligent; they can spout off a ton of trivia and impress people, but they don't analyze or examine the information they have. A person can be intelligent but not (by our standards) smart; a high-school drop out with elementary language skills might have a 'knack' for working with machines, showing an intuitive understanding of mechanical engineering without any formal 'smarts' education. A person can be wise but not smart; think of the literary device of the fool that says something profound.

Put another way, a smart person knows exactly how hard to push. An intelligent person knows when it could be necessary to push a little harder. A wise person knows when to stop.