Nah, it doesn't seem that weird. We don't see the characters check in with their parents any more than we see them eat lunch. I'd imagine that Juri dutifully calls her parents and sister regularly, and exchanges pleasantries. Saionji, on the other hand, probably hates his family. He certainly doesn't seem to be willing to call them for help when he's expelled. (I wonder if he even told them?)

We could extrapolate that anime Utena, like manga Utena, grew up with a cool aunt or some other relative, but that part of the manga really didn't add anything to the story, and would be even more out of place in the anime. Wakaba talks about her mom, Kanae has a wonderful, loving mother, and the other minor characters probably have the normal array of parental relationships, too. And Nameless Protagonist from the game has parents that have a role in the story. (Teaching us that you really, really don't want your parents to have anything to do with Ohtori.)

Miki and Touga are the only ones who have houses near campus. I expect that Touga and Nanami's parents are technically around, just... er... hands-off (read: completely irresponsible, and possibly in Europe most of the time). Miki and Kozue's parents also clearly aren't living with them, which does seem odd. (But Miki's so responsible... he'll take care of his sister!)

pfft, come on guys they are all in neverland no parents there. Remember think happy thoughts ( flies off with fantastic sparkles)

It's a boarding school. The point of those usually is to have no direct contact with the parents for extended periods of time. Besides, most parents that we hear from in the series are either dead or neglectful.

Possibly a muffled trombone, that or maybe shifty Akio 'imprisoned' the students in the boarding school world of Ohtori so that they can have minimal contact with their parents, for their good 'cause' and so that he can maintain their 'projector' illusion of order and sanity, and anyway who would expect their child's boarding school to have a duelling arena? xD

I'm guessing if it works like a lot of private schools do, the parents of the particularly wealthy students associate closely with the board of the school. Which is to say, Akio, or someone working under him. It's all very money-changing-hands snobby and ridiculous. I can see parents not knowing what the hell to do when they walk into Akio's office expecting a gut-wrenching financial squeeze and ending up with a hand in their pants and their checkbooks out.

The parents are nowhere to be seen because that's a very common thing among the stupidly rich. In The Addams Family, Gomez at one points says something like 'I hope someday you know the joy of having children...and paying someone else to raise them.' I know, stupid movie, but that pretty cleanly sums up a way the wealthy approach childrearing.

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

FORGET YOUR PARENTS.  AKIO IS YOUR DADDY NOW.

He totally misses all your baseball games, though.

...well he is basically a Peter Pan.

I just hope to god Robin Williams isn't going to play him.

...

...too obscure?

Giovanna wrote:

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

FORGET YOUR PARENTS.  AKIO IS YOUR DADDY NOW.

He totally misses all your baseball games, though.

...well he is basically a Peter Pan.

I just hope to god Robin Williams isn't going to play him.

I wanna go live with mom. 

J-Syxx wrote:

I think in the end, Akio is supposed to reprsent the totality of "adulthood," as well as the patriarchy, so including other actual authority figures in there is going to kind of mess that up a bit.

Well, we do see other authority figures, in the form of the teachers and Mrs. Ohtori... and they all completely fall over Akio, in awe of him, his charisma, and his temporal power. But I see what you're saying... Akio definitely represents "adulthood," and the creators were definitely careful not to have too many other adults running around to muddle the thematic waters.

I would have to guess though if they were involved, it would lead to even more incest themes being thrown in there, hilariously.

No doubt!

Dallbun wrote:

Well, we do see other authority figures, in the form of the teachers and Mrs. Ohtori... and they all completely fall over Akio, in awe of him, his charisma, and his temporal power. But I see what you're saying... Akio definitely represents "adulthood," and the creators were definitely careful not to have too many other adults running around to muddle the thematic waters.
:

And even when they do show up, they're similarly debauched and miserable representations of immorality. The teachers are trying to bang the students, Mrs. Ohtori is banging her future son-in-law, Miki's father is banging...well god only knows what he thinks he's banging.

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

FORGET YOUR PARENTS- AKIO IS YOUR DADDY NOW.

Is that bad that I want this to be our Utena meme? and at this.

You know how people always say that TV raises people's kids for them, and how we've all kind of agreed that Akio is their surrogate parent? That lends more credence to my theory that he's an author avatar of Ikuhara himself. And in the post-Internet age, that function is now served by forum moderators who name their forum after fictional surrogate parents.

And you know what? Maybe in their world what sets a child from an adult isn't necessarily the level of maturity, since we've seen Akio manipulate adults every bit as easily as he manipulates the kids, but that whether or not the person in question has given up on his/her dreams, whether or not their purity is compromised.

parent, v: to link one's emotional state to that of a child.

Last edited by Overlord Morgus (05-03-2011 10:04:49 PM)