Utena is living proof that sometimes, sex isn't love in physical form. It's "HAY LEMME SHOW OFF MY DICK-GIVING SKILLZ!!"

What's odd is that, female breasts were never intended to be sexual, they are the "orbs of life", to put it simply. They give milk to the baby and...look nice. Yet when Ms. Jackson whipped her boobie out at the SuperBowl, the sound of mothers screaming bloody murder was deafening. Ladies, you BRESTFED THEM. That's the first thing they see and feed from.

I agree with Jellineck on everything.

Aaaaaaaaaand this post probably made no sense at all.

Yet when Ms. Jackson whipped her boobie out at the SuperBowl, the sound of mothers screaming bloody murder was deafening.

I found that one of the funniest biggest media dramas of all time. "Oh my god! A nipple! Such indecency! We will never stand for this sort of filth on live national television!" Cut to several cheerleaders bending over and shaking their tits.

As for the whole boobs thing, I just have to quote "The Office" here and bring up the fact that some sociologists believe that cleavage reminds men of the arse, which is the most animalistic target for breeding and hence a reversion to nature.

Ever since I took the South Asia study class, I thought that Akio must've studied Karma Sutra very thoroughly... One of the passage in the book speaks of a story where a god was gravely ill, and the only way to cure himself was to have sex with a girl. And, I thought... Hm... Akio is in a way a god who is gravely ill. He's also having sex to subdue Utena, so that she'll hand over her own power of revolution to him, so he can be Dios again.

That is the most brilliant thing ever. with jelly filling for you. Not to mention the emphasis the show places on Akio's Indian appearance. His body is even built in the perfect Karma Sutran form: masculine and yet possessing of feminine beauty, with long and lithely muscular limbs. Almost serpentine in its grace.

On that note, sex as a means of stealing another's virtue has a basis in many societies. For instance, in a few African countries, it is widely believed that only having sex with a virgin can cure AIDS. Thus, the child sex trade is booming. Such a dangerous concept and so entirely disgusting.

Jellineck wrote:

His body is even built in the perfect Karma Sutran form: masculine and yet possessing of feminine beauty, with long and lithely muscular limbs. Almost serpentine in its grace.

Ahem. I wonder if Akio genuinely values sex enough to benefit in such a way from it. If an ill god can be cured in such a way, I should think the reasoning is that you're finding a new vessel, less valuable, for the sickness. (End of The Exorcist?) But if that's how things 'work', I'd be shocked if Akio believed in it. I don't suspect his view of sex leaves room for something so...unpractical as passing an illness along, or curing it, or healing himself in any way. But he reflects the ideals of the show that way when it comes to sex, it's full of cautionary tales about the dangers of sex, but nowhere are the virtues of it mentioned. For that matter, the dangers have a heavy psychological bent. There are no mentions of pregnancy or condoms. (Which is terrible, god knows how many abortions Touga's paid for if there are no condoms in SKU.)

Only semi-related but I think part of the danger of sex, emphasized heavily in SKU, is that it's like adult views of life in general in that it's infectious and you can't really back down from the fallen view of it once you have it. If you see sex as limited only to power and pleasure, you're not likely ever to find it being worth more than that. People who view sex as special and intimate though can be 'taught' it's not, and Akio seems to rather enjoy making a missionary of himself that way. Which makes me wonder what this is all going to do to Utena's sexuality later on. Everyone in the series suffers for their time in the school, but Utena must have some especially deep psychological wounds here. Her first, and thus far only experience with sex was not a good one. A lot of women get jaded about sex after their first time because it's usually just not very good sex. Painful, short, and not what they'd had in mind. I doubt this was Utena's problem, though. Instead she has to recall her first time as her being used, a pawn, purchased with pretty words and inviting gestures. She got taken for a ride in every possible way, and she's got to have become far more jaded than your average 'well it's not like I got off' ex-virgin. Akio wouldn't lower himself to putting people in a position to question whether sex feels good, but I suspect a lot of his lovers are left wondering if it will ever be emotionally satisfying after they've seen how heartless it can be. (Extra slap in the face for their enjoying it despite that.)

Emiemipoemi wrote:

1) Is she like, not bothered by the fact that she's 14 and he's like five million? Like, at all?

I think the entire coffee shop is staring at me from how obnoxiously loud i just laughed after reading this sentence.



This show is all about breaking barriers... in my humble opinion....

Outside of that, i can kind-of agree that the show shifted in the final arc...

but even in the final 2 episodes... Akio brings up the fact that Utena was ignoring everything....

"you knew i was engaged..."

I think.... maybe, instead of utena just being clueless... she's just... ignoring the truth??

But as for her reasons for being with akio to begin with... Maybe shes.... giving up hope on finding her prince? or replacing her prince? or maybe... she KNOWS that akio is the 'prince' but once again, she ignores the truth... which leads to the final battle because she ignores all of the "obvious" (or intelligent) answers.

so in short:

She knew akio was end of the world. (hmm maybe the fact they look strangely similar gave it away?), she knew the answers to everything... but she chose to be ignorant ... but why? i have to thnk about that one..

Anthiena wrote:

a kind of Kingdom of Children.

i just had the mental image and had to share...

Wish my photoshop was working v.v 5 min of paint doesnt do it much justice

WOW

I guess no one watched the movie...

One, adulthoodd is not a bad thing in Utena. Being trapped in childhood is. Akio is like the cheerleader who peaked in high school, or the guy who rapes a redhead because she looked like the girl who turned him down for prom. He can't move on, and neither can Anthy without Utena's help. Akio's actions don't really seem like those of a joyous predator to me. The whole Ohtori prince thing he keeps replaying is more like a sadistic version of gently rocking in a corner and repeating "I'm...still...the prince..." over and over. Akio is "adult" in the sense that porn is "adult". He drinks a whole bottle of rum in one sitting because mommy and daddy are out of town and the other girls mistook him for an underclassman. Anthy and Utena triumph over the neuroses that hold them back and they move forward in a sensible, mature manner.

Two, sex is not an inherently bad thing in Utena. Like in life, sex in Utena can be bad or good, but it is always important. Akio fucks utena (I am wont to say he raped her even though that is not technically true), and the consequences are bad. Such are the consequences of getting fucked by a psychotic playboy. Utena and Anthy have sex, and it becomes just another expression of the bond between them.

minervana: Even if that wasn't a suicide attempt, per se, it was certainly an age-inappropriate existential crisis.

I commend you on that thought - that really makes me start to think more deeply about Utena's character.

Her naïvete might not just be a byproduct of her youth and inexperience; it might also serve as armor against deep psychological pain.

I think that's very possible. And I also think Utena's suicide attempt shows her ability to hmm...react strongly shall we say. Even too strongly. To be emotional about something to the point where she's driven by it beyond what is reasonable. Hence wanting to die at such a young age. And hence wanting to save Anthy in the face of betrayal.

Unlike her coevals, Utena's able to imagine a happy future, albeit a fantastic one; the rest of the characters only want to return to the past and eternalize it.

And of course the other reason for this is her past is so dark. She constantly mentions not having a family, and wishing for a family. She doesn't have a happy past to idealize...the other characters do.

We should all be more like that.

minervana wrote:

It's interesting to me that Utena is presented as being so naive, since we see her attempting suicide when she's six or seven years old. Even if that wasn't a suicide attempt, per se, it was certainly an age-inappropriate existential crisis.

Well- I'm stating for the record that I started fantasising about suicide when I was nine or ten. I won't go into details, but it was many years before I was able to cope with some very strong ishoos. (And no, aside from a couple of scary rounds of doctors and nurses with some amoral boys several years older than I, I was not sexually or otherwise physically abused.) I was responding to unbearable mental pressure. I started writing a list on ways to kill yourself when I was about nine. Age inappropriate to be certain, but I do think that childhood suicide fantasies are more common than is usually thought. So I can completely understand why Utena crawled into her coffin and didn't want to come out.

Also, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the different reactions of Touga and Saionji; Saionji never seemed to recover from it, even if he doesn't remember the  experience after so many years. I think that it's a large reason behind his emotional and mental immaturity; in a sense he was trapped in Utena's coffin with her. He was completely unable to move on from that point and could only assert himself with domestic violence.

Now Touga, on the other hand, I strongly believe that he was already under unbearable pressure before the coffin incident. He also divorced himself from reality and never really moved on from that. I think the difference between his reaction and Saionji's is that Saionji was rendered completely unable to function in an adult manner. I've suggested before that Touga was already on the edge for whatever reason, and the coffin thing tipped him over. Sort of like: "I always thought that the world sucks, and now I have proof. Goodbye!"

What is interesting about both their actions is that both of them manifested their inability to react normally or age appropriately in their dealings with the opposite sex. There's a very good argument to be made that Touga was sexually abused- either physically or mentally- when he was a child. This and playing with Nanami's head was the closest he came to self determination that he was able to experience. And I do think it's also possible that he or someone else sexually abused Nanami while she was to young to remember it, hence her complete inability to manifest affection and love in a remotely normal way. Which makes me wonder just how much he's played with Saionji's head (and maybe his penis) since when their ages were still in single digits. And this whole thing plays into the way sexual abuse is often excused when a boy is preyed upon as opposed to a girl. How the manifestation of sexual abuse in the form of promiscuity is viewed in entirely different ways to how it's manifested in a girl. This further approval of inappropriate levels of sexuality is its own form of trauma.

This, perhaps, would have made him incredibly vulnerable to Akio, much more than he personally realises. When Utena sleeps with Akio and is manipulated by him, it's seen a reprehensible; when Touga sleeps with Akio and is manipulated by him, it's just as damaging but is never explicitly stated as such.

Akio's manipulations on the sexually and emotionally vulnerable go much, much further than is initially obvious. When you think about it, Utena is just the tip of the iceberg. About the closest thing to a healthy emotional relationship in the show is Utena and Wakaba; it's not that it's platonic and unsexualsied. It's because their mental and emotional levels of maturity are at the same level, and because of this neither is able to exert power over the other. And given that there is genuine affection between them (something that's basically non-existent in Ohtori) they both want is best for the other. If it were a normal school environment, it's possible that their first sexual encounter would be with each other; something that often occurs between friends as children, an act that is linked to trust as opposed to sexuality. Utena's emotions were Akio's real target; sex was just the means of getting there.

YostinAust wrote:

Akio's actions don't really seem like those of a joyous predator to me. The whole Ohtori prince thing he keeps replaying is more like a sadistic version of gently rocking in a corner and repeating "I'm...still...the prince..." over and over.

This is perhaps the clearest and explicit description of Akio I've ever read.

(And for the record, no matter how bad their childhood traumas were, I still think both Saionji and Touga are epic pricks.)

(Also, wow. This is a novel, isn't it?)