P.D.M. wrote:

*Asks a question like a moron who still does not get it:*
Goddamn, the more I look at it, the more it seems that he is screwed because of circumstances. You guys think that if he were to move forward, he could save Anthy?

No. Because my view is that the only person who can save Anthy is Anthy herself. Akio needs to work on saving himself. He's actually just like Dios, in that he projects vulnerability and need on everyone but himself. The difference is, Dios tried to protect those people to his own eventual detriment; Akio uses those people, also to his own eventual detriment. I saw the series as a whole being about looking inward and accepting ourselves for who we are. That is how we save ourselves; by accepting our failings and our achievements and using both to move onwards. Akio doesn't do either, hence why he gets to play prince in his coffin "forever."

It doesn't mean he CAN'T change. But in this respect he doesn't, because he's serving as a foil to his sister to give the end of the series impact.

By the way, don't feel bad for asking questions or not getting things -- the whole point of these discussions is to stump each other. It's what makes it fun. And this series is just brilliant fodder for this sort of thing.

P.D.M. wrote:

It's exactly Akio's greatest tragedy that he can't do anything about Anthy's suffering.

I'm afraid I disagree with you there.  While I do think Akio does repress some guilt over his sister's fate and has some sympathy for her plight, I emphatically do not think that his goal is to free her.  For that reason, I cannot agree that it is the "greatest tragedy" of his character that, even if he tried, there would be nothing he could do.  (And I am in agreement with Clarice and Stormcrow about that--lovely posts.)

Although it is a facet of his character, as it was so eloquently put, that he "picks at" his and Anthy's situation like a scab, never allowing it to heal and thereby worsening the situation, I am fully confident that he continues in his current circular pattern because he likes it and feels that the devil he knows is better than the devil he doesn't. 

There are many aspects about Akio's current situation in life that he enjoys--his status, his power, his comfortable accommodations, his opportunities to seduce and manipulate.  If he were willing to sacrifice anything to improve her situation, they would not be undertaking their dueling plan.  The role of Rose Bride is not one designed to make Anthy feel better; it can only drive the knife deeper and never let Anthy forget for a moment what she has become.  The goal of the games is power, not a return to innocence.  Akio does not want Anthy to be free because he doesn't know what the consequences will be for him--and he is unwilling to forgo his enjoyment or risk pain for himself in order to aid his sister. 

The tragedy of Akio's character is the self-indulgent cowardice that keeps him locked into his own coffin at Ohtori. 

That's not what he would say, though, so the question I'd like to ask is... what would Akio say is the greatest tragedy of his life?  I think he would say it was that he came to understand the true nature of the world so late.  This is a sentiment that paints his young self, Dios, as an utter fool--Akio's preferred outlook.  It is also a sentiment that dismisses the notion of being able to do anything for Anthy at the outset--the question of whether Anthy can be saved and how is a completely moot point in Akio's mind.  She can't be saved now, and even if she could, she enjoys being a Witch and doesn't want saving.

Because Akio feels this way, he believes he is already doing everything he can by keeping Anthy company--reminding her, "Knowing the whole of you, I love you."  He is fully confident that Anthy enjoys being a Witch and that she enjoys the opportunities he gives her to behave as one.  Oh, and it's true.  Mostly. 

Akio thinks that by improving his situation he's improving Anthy's, not that Anthy genuinely wants something else.

Last edited by rhyaniwyn (08-21-2008 01:34:46 PM)

1. Akio is a master at using people's weak points to control them. He figures out what they need, what they want, and what they're afraid of and uses subtle carrot-stick type mindgames to nudge them down the path that he wants them to go. But it never occurs to him that someone else could do the same to him. And as far as I can tell, no one really does in the show. The only one who would be capable of that would be Anthy, and she's not interested in controlling him. All she seems to want from him is his closeness, and he gives her that anyway. And then by the end, she decides that she doesn't want anything of him at all. I suppose I might put it more as RECOGNIZING vulnerability and need in others rather than PROJECTING...though he does have a big damn projector...

2. My understanding is that most of this stuff came from Ikuni. I seem to recall Saito herself confessing to not understanding very much of it.


...did anyone notice how in my last post I repeated virtually exactly what Clarice said and claimed to be extending her reasoning? Pretty sharp, eh?

I agree wholeheartedly with everything Ryaniwyn has said on the matter.  She pretty much took the words out of my mouth and actually made them intelligent, so I don't really have anything to add.  Just saying that you are brilliant, m' dear. ;-)

Stormcrow wrote:

...did anyone notice how in my last post I repeated virtually exactly what Clarice said and claimed to be extending her reasoning? Pretty sharp, eh?

I did. But I liked it, baby.

P.D.M. wrote:

Clarice wrote:
He's actually just like Dios, in that he projects vulnerability and need on everyone but himself.

Okay, two things:

1. How did you come to that conclusion? Because it seem's like I've really missed something.

Stormcrow sums it up pretty well, but basically what I was saying is this -- Akio, for all that he is the "long-legged older man" with so much experience of the world and its cruelties, actually has a very childish view of it. He doesn't see it through rose-coloured spectacles anymore, though. As Dios he saw people who needed saving -- the princesses -- and the person who could save them: the prince. Himself. He still sees that, but he doesn't seem to think they deserve to be saved anymore. Is is because they destroyed his sister? Debatable. Akio seems to salve his conscience by saying it was Anthy's choice, even though if he'd been more conscious of his own limitations she perhaps would not have sacrificed herself to protect him from the world that was only sucking him dry.

Still, drifting from the point -- Akio still sees the people around him as people who need to be saved. But instead of saving them, he manipulates their weaknesses to his own ends. And his end is whatever lies behind the Rose Gate (presumably, his former princely self's power; the irony being, likely as not, that that power was never anything tangible anyway. Anthy is, after all, what is behind the Gate and she was possibly his real strength). The point is, really, that although he's not being noble and kind he's still acting the role of the prince. He's just fucking with people rather than saving them. He doesn't realise that HE is the one who needs saving, and that the only person who is going to do that is himself. Hence: IRONY. Which is just one of the many reasons why I this show so much!