Also note:  She sets them on the night-stand every time she sleeps with Akio, she doesn't wear them when she's impersonating Mamiya and she isn't wearing them either in her coffin or in flashbacks.

My thought has always been is that the glasses are how she mantains the Clark Kent facade of Anthy Himemiya, the weirdo-submissive mortal girl.  Combined with the hair-buns, the glasses are supposed to make her seem frail, shy and up-tight while masking her actual personality.

Note that on the episode where Utena and Akio ride the ferris wheel, Anthy's glasses reflect the light in a way to obscure her eyes totally (very similar to Evil Professor Tomoe in Sailormoon S, which Ikuhara also directed.)  I feel as if this notates mostly that the glasses are a wall between Anthy's real thoughts and nature and the person she lets herself be on the outside.  Her "real" inner life, as it were, her "real" self -- the person Akio knows -- as opposed to the facade -- Utena's "Rose Bride."

The last episode, however, would be a convergence of the two -- the "real" Anthy finally decides to leave the school and thus has no more need for masks.

This is going to sound shallow, but I honestly think it was the animators' way of making her look prettier. Maybe they thought giving her a makeover at the end would be a nice addition to her personality change.

Perhaps they glasses were meant to symbolize the Illusion Anthy partook in-looking through the glasses might be a metaphor similar to Akio's projector-but when she acts in acdeceptive manor, she takes them off possibly signifying that her true colors are showing. By taking them off when she leaves Ohtori, this perhaps means she is discarding both the Illusory self she portrayed, as well as the darker self, and is heading forward into the world for a new start, hopefully with Utena.
Just some thoughts...

According to a long interview with Enokido and Ikuhara, one of the Preview chats had Anthy saying this, "I can see so much without my glasses."

And they commented something along the line of, "That's actually very creepy when you think about it."

I also don't think the glasses necessarily put her at a disadvantage. I think the glasses serve another purpose for Anthy. They are forcing her to see only through the lenses. In a sense, it means she is focused on few things at once. Sometimes you can see individual person reflecting off her glasses. Like a microscope or a magnifying glass, it may allow her to perform more intensive analysis on people, one at a time. It just wouldn't be able to let her see the bigger picture.

Last edited by Hiraku (09-08-2011 08:58:11 AM)