Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

Arguably they already do, they just don't know it because they're caught up in the game that will ostensibly award them that power. And, that's why they'll never feel they have it. Most of the motives we are privy to fall into one of two camps (or overlap them), those who want something they already have and those who want something they can't even functionally define. Most of the duelists are seeking justification.

Well, sure. Everyone has the power to change their own lives. I meant 'power over life and death' in a cosmological sense; 'the power to revolutionize the world' would imply the ability to physically alter the entire world at once, wouldn't it? And wouldn't someone who possessed such power be, essentially, equal to a god? That's what I was referring to, not to the more metaphorical use of the term.

I'm not disputing that what they really want isn't what they say they want, but that's completely unrelated to what I was saying in the first place. 'Kay?

Well, no point dragging it out.

satyreyes wrote:

If there is a central tenet of horror it is that we are ultimately powerless in the face of a malevolent universe, while SKU puts the ideas of empowerment and agency front and center in just about every character's plot arc.  And if SKU has a one-sentence moral, it is that even an ordinary person can stand up to the universe.  We can change things for the better for ourselves, and we can help our friends do the same.  There's hope for everyone, except maybe Akio.  It's a very hopeful show.  'Swhy I love it.

This is a bit late, but I wanted to address this, since it illustrates the fundamental dichotomy between SKU and some similar shows that came out around the same time. Shows like NGE (which I can't stop mentioning, for some reason) are all about people being broken down into shadows of their former selves; a happy ending actually comes as a reversal, rather than the end result of an existing trend. Utena, on the other hand, shows its characters being built up, and slowly becoming better people. This is why it doesn't require a physical revolution at the end: the conflict was always about internal, rather than external struggles.